Comment on LSU Board news release and actions by Sean Pitman M.D..
@Bravus:
The point Carl was making, that I picked up on, is that if a professor honestly believes that, within the (limited) context of science, evolutionary theory is the best explanation for the diversity of life, and the university asks that professor to claim in his/her courses that this is not the case, that would be dishonest.
Of course that would be dishonest. No one is suggesting that anyone teach anything that goes against what one personally believes! Where did you get such an idea?
However, SDA institutions also shouldn’t be hiring someone just because they are “honest”, regardless of what the person actually believes. Honesty, by itself, isn’t a basis for paid representation. The actual beliefs of a person should also be evaluated to see if they are in line with the fundamental positions of the SDA Church.
There are two ways to be dishonest here. One way is to teach something you don’t actually believe. That would be morally wrong on a personal level. The other way is to teach something you do honestly believe to be true, but which goes directly against what your employer hired you to teach. This is also being dishonest, not against your own beliefs, but against your employer.
On your last paragraph: what you describe is exactly what La Sierra is already doing.
That’s not true. In my last paragraph I noted that accreditation is based on teaching about the theory of evolution to a certain standard of knowledge – – but is not limited to this level of knowledge. Accreditation can also be obtained while teaching about creationism as well – above and beyond the ToE.
You argue that LSU is in fact doing this, which is not really true – at least not when it comes to consistency of teaching. LSU is not promoting the truth of literal 6-day creationism, a fundamental position of the organized SDA Church, in all of its classes. Many, if not all, of its hired science professors are in fact telling their students that the literal 6-day creationist view of origins is utter lunacy – that the evolutionary view of origins taking place over hundreds of millions of years of time is in fact the Gospel Truth. That is in fact what they are teaching their students at LSU.
This is not in line with the position of their employer and is therefore a robbery of their employer’s time and money – a moral wrong in anyone’s book.
And, by the way, I notice that you claim the obvious truth of the ToE yourself, but don’t wish to defend your assertions? – your personal knowledge of the creative potential of RM/NS?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman M.D. Also Commented
LSU Board news release and actions
Carl: We seem to be arguing about two different things. I realize that the issue at LSU has been painted almost entirely as question about teaching evolution, but I am not talking directly about evolution.
What I am talking about is using a literal historical interpretation of Genesis to claim that life was created roughly as it now exists not more than about ten thousand years ago. That interpretation of Genesis leads to so many contradictions of the evidence that it leaves one no better off than believing that God does whatever He pleases whenever He pleases and then provides evidence to make everything look very old. It forces you to believe that there is no rational way to understand the earth and its life.
For many years, Adventists have been avoiding a clear examination of the evidence. For example, where in the Adventist system would a student go to get a BS in geology? There isn’t one simply because we haven’t had the courage to face the facts that exist all around us. The result is that most Adventists can’t have an informed discussion of the earth sciences because we have been biased to believe that the Devil, in the form of “infidel scientists,†is waiting to deceive us. Our fear of being deceived has sometimes left us behaving like a superstitious cult.
To me, the tragedy of Adventism is that we can’t have a rational discussion of the problem because it isn’t safe to do so. As soon as anyone challenges our traditional beliefs, a cry goes up to get them dismissed. That’s the purpose of this Website, and, as long as it’s effective, we will stay locked in our established traditions no matter how irrational our position becomes. By doing so we become completely irrelevant to the educated world, nothing more than another tourist attraction in the history of religions.
You can get a BS in geology at SAU. Arthur Chadwick is there and does a lot of good field research in geology – and is a fundamentalist SDA (in that he actually believes that life on Earth is young).
There is in fact a lot of evidence in support of the author of Genesis and his intent to write a literal narriative about real historical events. However, if you don’t recognize this evidence, why not simply leave the SDA Church and join another organization that is more in line with what you think is so obvious? Why try to be something you’re obviously not?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
LSU Board news release and actions
@Erik:
Then do you also agree with Dr. Lawrence McCloskey that the earth must necessarily be at least 12,000 years old? You see, the sea corals are his specialty, and they add a layer each year, dating back 12,000 years. They have done core drillings on the corals to determine this. If God did not create a mature coral colony, what did God create? or do you agree with Dr. McCloskey that life on earth must be at least 12,000 years old?
I don’t agree with McCloskey’s assumption regarding the age of living coral reefs – to include his notion that corals can only add one growth layer each year. This notion simply isn’t true.
Beyond this, living coral reefs did not survive the flood. Corals reefs are very delicate and would not have survived the world-wide flood intact. While fossil corals do also exist, the fossil “reefs” that supposedly took hundreds of thousands of years to form, really aren’t reefs at all…
For further information on this topic see:
http://www.detectingdesign.com/DesmondFord.html#coral
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
LSU Board news release and actions
@Erik:
Was God “deceptive†because He created a full-grown Adam and Eve, who had the appearance of age, while not being more than a day old? Should God have created just a sperm and an egg for each of them instead, in order to avoid charges of being “deceptive?â€
Hi Erik. I have to agree with Carl here that you can take this argument too far. It can basically be used to argue that anything that clearly appears to be one way could actually be completely different “because God made it that way”. That basically removes any logical basis for belief in God or in the Bible beyond the pretty useless concept of blind faith.
However, Carl is also mistaken in his suggestion that no credible, well-trained scientists have any sort of viable model or basis for interpreting the data as supporting the theory of young-life on Earth and a rapid catastrophic model for the formation of the geologic and fossil records. There are many such scientists – both within and without the SDA Church. It is just that much of Carl’s thinking and understanding of the relevant data is outdated or simply mistaken…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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