Lucian says: “Dude” — Hmmmm, is “Professor” Kent loosing his …

Comment on An apology to PUC by Oink.

Lucian says: “Dude” — Hmmmm, is “Professor” Kent loosing his cool?

Ah, that’s the macro-mega-question taking over right now. Natural instinct and norms of decorum and usage evolved over the eons would easily recognize that cool is, sigh, being lost. But research into the emergent norms of pop-academia, employing google or data from any mega-macro Postmodernist seminar, especially those of a theological bent, compels the opposite conclusion. “Dude” is not uncool; “dude” is cool. “Dude” is “in” — in academic street talk as well as MTV. Hard to tell the difference sometimes. Indeed the latest underground “Handbook of Style for Postmodernist Doctoral Dissertation,” a privately published mega-macro-volume, duly mega-macro-peer-reviewed, renders “dude” absolutely mega-mandatory to all academic discourse. Working in “dude” is as pivotal to peer-acceptance as working in footnotes and booting out Genesis 1. Micro- vs. mega- may still be quibbled among the unlearned, but not “dude” among the enlightened. “Dude” is the not-so-secret ivy password, like in the trenches of WWII, like to get into a speakeasy, or for a high-five between spies, or when we were kids in tree houses.

That “dude” is mega-established as cool is not moot; whether it is to be coolly applied to friend (as once “brother” was among us) or foe (as in “you’re on a slippery slope, dude”), is. Context herein would seem to suggest the latter, but usage, according to research into it, is sloppy.

Oink Also Commented

An apology to PUC
@Spencer Johnson:
re.: You seem to be trying to make a point! One cannot simply scroll on by; one drops everything and runs to Wikipedia to find out who you are. You couldn’t be the Spencer Johnson of “Who Moved My Cheese?” fame, “one of the world’s most respected thinkers and beloved authors,” could you?


An apology to PUC
It could be inferred from the nervous quibbles dogging Dr. Pitman that his credible-sounding and comprehensive disquisitions pro Creationism, such as the one just above, are just too novel and nonplussing to our sadly undertrained grad students. SDA universities, notably LSU, presently doing such an award-winning job of promoting theistic Evo, are to be urged to begin teaching, however distasteful the idea, Creationism, even Genesis 1, along with Evo so that their students upon leaving the academic cocoon and running up against the likes of Dr. Pitman, will be better able to present better arguments against Genesis 1, in defense of the honor of their professors. There would be the risk that some of the weaker students might actually take Genesis 1 seriously, but, Dr. Wisbey, it’s a risk that must be taken! A petition must be gotten up right now!


An apology to PUC
I’m so old I remember being instructed only, from cradle roll to college (LSU, by the way; back then LSC), from parables. Matthew 13 is naught but parable upon parable. The Speaker Himself said so. But now all I hear about are allegories, metaphors, even paradigms, which must be itself a metaphor for whatever is left over. Genesis 1 is allegoric, the chiefest and fattest. Our scholars say so.

If they say so, but then Job has got to be the most applicable allegory this side of Genesis 1 of this site’s defense of Genesis 1. Behold Job’s cast of characters – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite — metaphors and noms de cyber for our regulars, if you will.

In flaying the lonesome and sore beset Job, the metonymic blog-master, coming through as as testy and touchy as ours, if you must, but eventually exonerated by God (Job hath “spoken of me the thing that is right” Job 42:7), those ancient bloggers were by turns as caustic and sarcastic, every bit as aggressive and abusive, rather more empathetic and courtly if always as profligate of advice and wisdom, even better second-guessers and quicker to tell Job he hadn’t a shredy-shred-shred of evidence, playing not only the devil’s advocates but agents. Biblical precedent, there. But, alas, so much more poetic.

So the question is not where’s your evidence but where’s your meter?


Recent Comments by Oink

Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”

FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)

In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.

FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.

With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.

Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.


Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”

I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.

But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.

Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.

For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.

As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.

What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.

Until then, your jousting friend, W


Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.


Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”

A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.


What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.