Comment on LSU Board news release and actions by Bob.
November 15, 2009 The comments so far are most fascinating. No one has suggested how you would go about teaching a “scientifically rigorous†basis for a recent, six-day creation. It’s as if you think that there is something obvious that the professors are not willing to teach. There is not one Seventh-day Adventist who can state clearly how it can be done. That’s why the Board has formed a study group.
What would you teach students about ice cores, the ocean sediments, the massive lava flows, the formation of limestone, the ice ages, the bristle cone pines, the meteor impact craters, and continental drift? Please, go read about these topics and then try to suggest what you would teach.
Do you think that there were Board members in that meeting who jumped up a presented a curriculum that would set everything straight and then, somehow, just couldn’t get enough votes for their proposal? Give me a break. Almost all scientific evidence shows that the earth and the life on it are very old.
I believe this is a perfect illustration of the thinking that went into that Board Action – we should not ignore it.
This thinking is precisely why a pro-evolution LSU administration would so readily propose that “somebody else” come up with an Adventist science curriculum that supports a recent 6 day creation week – because in the minds of these evolutionists (as in the mind of Richard Dawkins) there is in fact “no such thing” as a scientifically rigorous curriculum that supports the Bible doctrine on origins.
hint: One LSU option here is that the two science professors LSU intends to provide in that effort suggested for “somebody else” may well be sent there with the intent of making sure everyone else on that committee knows that there is “no such thing”.
In this board action LSU has found “air cover” for continuing down their present course — awaiting for a “proposed committee” to gain time resources funding and authority “by somebody else” – before they would ever to cease and desist their “sacrifice all for evolutionism” policy in place today. And their back-up hope on this is that since there is “no such thing” as a “scientifically rigorous science curriculum supporting a recent, literal 6 day creation week” whatever effort might be put into the non-existent committee – would be all for naught and might even result in a conclusion allowing all SDA science programs to embrace evolutionism since the Bible facts on the origin of life are not “scientifically rigorous”.
Notice that when it comes to evolutionism — a “by faith alone” position will do (as Collin Patterson pointed out). But when it comes to Bible creation — then it must be “on video and reproducible in the lab”.
All very instructive for the unbiased objective reader.
in Christ,
Bob
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Bob Also Commented
LSU Board news release and actions
@Bravus:
It’s clear, too, that far from extolling the virtues of creationism, Patterson was using it as an example of a very bad theory that tended to hinder the progress of science. He was making the rhetorical point that evolution was often unhelpful in his own field of systematics/cladistics, in a dramatic way, in response to a paper that had suggested systematics should make more use of evolution than it did.
Honesty includes not using someone’s words out of context to mean almost the opposite of what they were intended to mean…
Honesty demands that we admit that nobody is arguing that devoted atheist evolutionist Colin Patterson was ever a creationist.
Honesty demands that we admit that the point of quoting Patterson was neveer to claim “atheiist evolutionists like Patterson really believe creationism” – but rather that Patterson was pointing to the junk-science storytelling so often used to prop up evolutionism — and lamenting it.
However as a devoted atheist himself – Patterson clearly felt he had “nowhere else to go”. How can that not-so-subtle point be missed??
in Christ,
Bob
LSU Board news release and actions
Colin Patterson said:
For Mayr, classifications should incorporate such things as ‘inferences on selection pressures, shifts of adaptive zones, evolutionary rates, and rates of evolutionary divergence.’ Fired up by Mayr’s paper, I gave a fairly radical talk in New York, comparing the effect of evolutionary theory on systematics with Gillespie’s (1979, p. characterization of pre-Darwinian creationism: ‘not a research govering theory (since its power to explain was only verbal) but an antitheory, a void that had the function of knowledge but, as naturalists increasingly came to feel, conveyed none.’
Unfortunately, and unknown to me, there was a creationist in my audience with a hidden tape recorder.
It is all too clear that Patterson was livid about Mayr’s dump-science-just-live-with-inferences approach to “stories about one thing coming from another” and so Patterson wanted to “hold their feet to the fire” as it were trying to weed out as many junk-science principles as possible.
Sadly for Patterson – as he laments — there was a free-thinker in the audience — a “creationist with a tape recorder”. Thus EXACT in context quotes of that speech are now available for ALL to see — and in no way limited to the “faithful devotees of evolutionism”.
Note the reaction of Niles Eldredge as he listened to Patterson’s speech that day (reported by Roy Slingo).
.
Roy Slingo, from the prestigious Scarsdale NY district.Slingo later informed me that at one stage of the talk that Niles Eldredge (well known for his anti-creationist perspective) grabbed his forehead and slid down the wall proclaiming, “ O-M-G, how can he be doing this to us.”[/b]
It gets worse.
in Christ,
Bob
LSU Board news release and actions
@BobRyan:
Bob said
Kinda like the Space shuttle is beyond the science of primitive natives to artificially create, to go back and detect how it was made… but not beyond their ability to “detect designâ€.Turns out God is even more advanced than that.
Bravus said –
Therefore, when teaching science, specifically, it is necessary to teach scientific theories that do not call on miracles to explain phenomena.Bob said:
Well that is what the atheist argument is for naturalism anyway. As Philip Johnson pointed out – by defining science as an atheist concept — then anything that challenges the atheist doctrine on there “being no god†is by definition “not scienceâ€.
Time to take the next logical step in that argument.
Suppose we take that primitive tribe mentioned in the post above and we give them a written language. Then we take them on a tour where they go to the Goddard Space facility outside of Washington D.C and they also go to Red Stone in Huntsville where they continue taking careful notes and making observations about the elements of the space station that they see being assembled or designed.
Yes they make drawings, count the number of people in the room — observe the weight of objects, and generally note the various activities (most of which is still wayyy beyond their own technology) — then we return them to their jungle or desert home village to get along with that project as best they can – starting with the task of relating what they observed to their neighbor.
Are they engaged in “science” or “religion” according to your definition of science??
in Christ,
Bob
Recent Comments by Bob
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
george:
By definition, I don’t believe in miracles or apocryphal, anthropomorphic stories about same.Why aren’t scientists observing them today if they occur?
Circular argument. If they were naturally occurring we would expect scientists to see that they are still occurring today. If they are singular events caused by an intelligent being – that being would be under no obligation to “keep causing world wide floods” as if “to do it once you must continually do it”. Armstrong went to the moon.. shall we argue that unless he keeps going to the moon so each new generation can see it … then it did not happen?
Your argument is of the form “all eye witness evidence to some event in the past is no evidence at all unless that event keeps repeating itself so we too can witness it”. Seems less than compelling.
“Could it be that science is better able to detect hoaxes and false claims?” As a rule for dismissing every eye witness account in the past – it is less than compelling. (even when that event cannot be repeated)
Evolutionists “claim” that dust, rocks and gas (in sufficient quantity and over sufficient time and a lot of luck) self organized into rabbits via prokaryote-then-eukaryote-then-more-complexity. But such self-organization cannot be “observed” today.
(What is worse – such a sequence cannot even be intelligently manipulated to occur in the lab)
By your own argument then you should not believe in evolution.
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@Sean Pitman:
Suppose you were at a crime scene … there is a tree limb on the ground and a bullet hole in the victim — “all natural causes”? or is one ‘not natural’? Those who say that nothing can be detected as “not naturally occurring in nature” – because all results, all observations make it appear that every result “naturally occurred without intelligent design” seem to be missing a very big part of “the obvious”.
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
george:
Gentlemen,What just God would allow an innocent child to be born guilty for the sins of a distant ancestor? …What if there was only One Commandment? Do Good. ‘Kant’ see a problem with that.
An atheist point of view is not often found here – but this is interesting.
1. God does not punish babies for what someone else did – but I suppose that is a reductionist option that is not so uncommon among atheists. The “details” of the subject you are commenting on – yet according to you “not reading” – is that humans are born with sinful natures. A “bent” toward evil. That is the first gap right out of the gate between atheism and God’s Word..
2. But still God supernaturally enables “free will” even in that bent scenario, the one that mankind lives in – ever since the free-will choice of the first humans on planet earth – was to cast their lot in with Satan and rebellion..(apparently they wanted to see what a wonderful result that poor choice would create). John 16 “the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment”. And of course “I will draw ALL mankind unto Me” John 12:32. (not “just Christians”). Thus supernatural agency promotes free will in a world that would otherwise be unrestrained in its bent to evil.
3.God says “The wages of sin is death” — so then your “complaint” is essentially “that you exist”. A just and loving God created planet Earth – no death or disease or suffering – a perfect paradise where mankind could live forever … and only one tiny restriction… yet Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be duped by Satan… tossing it all away. The “Just God” scenario could easily just have let them suffer the death sentence they chose. He did not do that… hence “you exist” – to then “complain about it”.
4. Of course you might also complain that Satan exists – and Satan might complain that “you exist”. There is no shortage on planet earth of avenues for complaint. But God steps in – offers salvation to mankind at infinite cost to himself – – and the “Few” of Matthew 7 eventually end up accepting that offer of eternal life. The rest seem to prefer the lake of fire option… sort of like Adam and Eve choosing disease and death over eternal life (without fully appreciating the massive fail in that short-sighted choice).
In any case – this thread is about the logic/reason that should be taken into account when a Christian owned and operated institution chooses to stay faithful to its Christian mission — rather then getting blown about by every wind of doctrine. Why let the alchemy of “wild guessing” be the ‘source of truth’ when we have the Bible?? We really have no excuse for that. As for science – we can be thankful that it has come as far along as it has – but no matter how far back you rewind the clock of our science history – we should always have chosen the Bible over wild guessing.
Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions
Ervin Taylor:
Perhaps Dr. Pitman would enlighten his readers what on earth “the neo-Darwinian story of origins” might be. Darwin did not address origins.
Origins of what?? the first eukaryote??
Or “origins of mankind”??
Darwin himself claimed that his own false doctrine on origins was totally incompatible with Genesis and that because of this – Genesis must be tossed under a bus.
hint: Genesis is an account of “Origins” as we all know — even though “bacteria” and “amoeba” are terms that don’t show up in the text.
The point remains – Darwin was promoting his own religion on origins totally counter to the Bible doctrine on origins. He himself addresses this point of the two views.
Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions
Ervin Taylor:
Here we go again.If the footprints upon close examination, are determined not to be from a hominim/hominid, I wonder if Educate Truth (sic) will announce that determination.Or if the date of the surface is determined to be much younger, will there be a notice placed on fundamentalist web-sites.If you believe the answer to these questions are yes, I have a big bridge that I would like to sell you for pennies on the dollar.
Here we go again … hope piled upon hope…no matter the “observations in nature” that disconfirm the classic evolutionary hypothesis
Reminds me of “What we still don’t know” by Martin Reese and Leonard Suskind
