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?”

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

Conrad Vine Continues to Attack Church Leadership
If the human immune system were the “perfect mechanism” that God originally designed it to be, you’d be right. However, after ~6000 years of sin and decay, the human immune system is no longer what God originally designed it to be – as evidenced by the great many, even among healthy vegan SDAs, who died during the pandemic. Water and light therapies are great and are helpful as layers of protection, but for many, especially those over the age of 65, whey were not enough. The mRNA vaccines were very effective in providing an additional much needed layer of protection during the pandemic. Now, I’ve very glad that you did not get sick enough to require hospitalization and that you avoided long-term injuries and death during the pandemic, but many many others were not so fortunate.

Conrad Vine Continues to Attack Church Leadership
Yeah, I think you’re right…

Conrad Vine Continues to Attack Church Leadership

Hi Sean,

Hope all is well.

I see you wrote a recent article defending the covid vaccine. You seem to be the main protagonist in the church championing the cause of the covid vaccines.

I am on the opposite spectrum

I personally did not touch any of those vaccines, and won’t ever either. I just see to many red flags and it’s alarming to me. Could you possibly explain to me what Revelation 18:23 speaks about please? I would love to hear your take on that verse.

Justin S

Hi Justin,

Thank you for your note. I do appreciate your concerns and your convictions. It can be very confusing to sort out so many different voices saying so many different things regarding what to think and what do to keep oneself as healthy as possible.

Regarding Revelation 18:23, in particular, the term “pharmakeia” is best translated as “sorcery” here. There is no intended advice at all against modern medicine in this passage. After all, would it be wise to suggest that medications like antibiotics to treat bacterial infections or insulin to treat diabetes are evil “sorceries”? Again, such arguments only make the Christians who say such things look sensational and irrational – which puts the Gospel Message itself into a bad light for those who are considering following Christ.

COVID-19 and Vaccines – Update

Consider also that Ellen White herself promoted various medications and medical therapies of her day that she considered to be helpful in various situations? – to include the use of what was generally regarded as a “poison”, quinine, to prevent malarial infections for missionaries who worked in malaria-infested regions of the world? She wrote, “If quinine will save a life, use quinine.” (http://www.educatetruth.com/featured/the-arguments-of-adventists-opposed-to-vaccines/#Ellen-White-and-the-Smallpox-Vaccine) She also supported the vaccination of her son William, both as a child and as an adult (despite William having had an adverse reaction to vaccination as a child) (http://www.educatetruth.com/featured/the-arguments-of-adventists-opposed-to-vaccines/#Ellen-White-and-the-Smallpox-Vaccine). She supported blood transfusion when necessary, despite their risks (https://text.egwwritings.org/publication.php?pubtype=Book&bookCode=2SM&lang=en&collection=2&section=all&pagenumber=303). And, she even supported using radiation therapy when appropriate, despite its risks (https://text.egwwritings.org/publication.php?pubtype=Book&bookCode=2SM&lang=en&collection=2&section=all&pagenumber=303). Beyond this, she recognized the advantages of anesthesia during surgery and the use of medicines to relieve the intense pain and suffering of the injured or sick (https://text.egwwritings.org/publication.php?pubtype=Book&bookCode=2SM&lang=en&collection=2&section=all&pagenumber=286&QUERY=before+major+surgery&resultId=1&isLastResult=1).

I hope this helps you at least understand why I take the position that I take. I mean, I’m a pathologist with subspecialties in anatomic, clinical, and hematopathology and have studied COVID-19 and the mRNA vaccines in great detail. Beyond this, I’ve seen the results myself, with my own eyes – and so has my brother-in-law, pulmonologist Dr. Roger Seheult who runs a large ICU in S. Cal. We’ve seen ICUs overflowing, beyond max capacity, with the very sick and the dying during the height of the pandemic – the vast majority of whom were unvaccinated. Roger’s face and hands are the last things that many saw and felt on this Earth. It was very personal for us. We were actually direct eyewitnesses. And, we’re not alone. This very same situation was happening all around the world during the pandemic. Truly, the mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives and prevented many many more hospitalizations and long-term injuries.

Conrad Vine Continues to Attack Church Leadership
Regarding Mandates:

“While the available data in 2021 and early 2022 suggested that being vaccinated conferred tremendous personal benefit to the recipient, such that it was unclear if there could be added gain for demanding others be vaccinated too for added protection. By mid-2022, vaccines did offer modest reduction in transmission, but personal health benefits against severe disease were largely retained. Yet, by the fall of 2022, with the emergence of the Omicron variant, a new verdict had emerged. Vaccines were unable to halt transmission in the presence of escape variants; thus, here too, mandates failed to meet the ethical pre-requisite of benefit to others, as a vaccinated person could still spread the virus. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed comparable rates of viral shedding comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated people with COVID-19 (Boucau et al. 2022).” (Vinay Prasad, 2024) 

I was never personally a fan of the vaccine mandates put out by the US government (or other governments around the world) since they seemed to me to be largely counterproductive and provide little benefit regarding limiting the spread of the virus after the Omicron variant came out. As Dr. Prasad points out here (Link), the mRNA vaccines were so good as far as personal protection was concerned, that limiting the spread of COVID-19, once the vaccines became available, was kind of a moot point.

That being said, once the government mandates were in place, I also didn’t see it as appropriate to claim religious liberty as a reason for refusing to get vaccinated – since there is nothing in the Bible that would prevent one from obeying a government mandate along these lines (Link). People often cite the case of Daniel and his three friends refusing the king’s meat as a Biblical basis for refusing to comply with vaccine mandates. The problem here is that the vaccines themselves were not unhealthy or unreasonable during a pandemic and their use was not recognized as a form of idol worship. Also, Daniel’s proposed 10-day test would not have had the same results with respect to the mRNA vaccines, but would have shown benefits for the significant majority of people.

As Ellen White put it:

“In cases where we are brought before the courts, we are to give up our rights, unless it brings us in collision with God. It is not our rights we are pleading for, but God’s right to our service.” (Ellen White, Manuscript Releases 5:69 – 1895)

Conrad Vine Continues to Attack Church Leadership
Wow! I had no idea.

However, this does seem to be inconsistent with the following on Canadian Law regarding Religious Liberty (from the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms):

Sincerity of belief is a question of fact. To establish sincerity, an individual must show that they sincerely believe that a certain belief or practice is required by their religion. The religious belief must be asserted in good faith and must not be fictitious, capricious or an artifice. In assessing the sincerity of the belief, a court will take into account, inter alia, the credibility of the testimony of the person asserting the particular belief and the consistency of the belief with that person’s other current religious practices (Multani, supra at paragraph 35; Amselem, supra at paragraphs 52-53). It is the sincerity of the belief at the time of the interference, not its strength or absolute consistency over time, that is relevant at this stage of the analysis (R. v. N.S., [2012] 3 S.C.R. 726 at paragraph 13).

The Court does not want to engage in theological debates when examining the practice or belief in question. The practice or belief in question need not be required by official religious dogma nor need it be in conformity with the position of religious officials. Freedom of religion extends beyond obligatory doctrine to voluntary expressions of faith and is not restricted to major and recognizable religions (Amselem, supra at paragraphs 46-50, 53, and 56). A protected religious practice need not be part of an established belief system or even a belief shared by others. An individual need only demonstrate a sincere belief that the practice is of religious significance to the individual (Little v. R., 2009 NBCA 53, leave to appeal dismissed, [2009] S.C.C.A. No. 417 at paragraph 7). It is not appropriate to adduce expert evidence showing sincerity or lack thereof (Amselem, supra at paragraph 54).

https://justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art2a.html

So, given the above, are there any examples were someone actually was able to present so-called “objective” evidence in the form of a “tenet of religious faith”, which actually achieved success? where such an individual would not have been fired? I mean, let’s just say, for argument sake, that the Catholic Church had a fundamental tenet of faith which opposed vaccinations. Would this really have made a difference in Alberta for members of the Catholic Church? Would these people have been allowed to keep their jobs while all other vaccine objectors lost theirs? – despite the statements above suggesting that personal religious belief and liberties are not dependent upon that of an established belief system?

It’s not that I’m opposed to mandated civil laws in an effort to maintain public safety/health. For example, various kinds of jobs require one to be follow various personal health regulations – like working in the hospital or performing surgeries while masking and wearing sterile gloves and taking various vaccinations. There are also quarantine laws that are quite reasonable in various situations/settings. That being said, great efforts should be made to support personal religious/moral convictions as long as such support does not significantly interfere with the liberty and/or safety of others.

Any suggestions on any potential improvement of the wording of the SDA position on vaccines or other modern medical therapies and/or religious liberty statements?