PUC responds
As I have mentioned a few times in earlier threads, simply identifying and cyberbullying professors who undermine SDA beliefs in an effort to shame them into resignation or goad educational leaders into firing them is NOT going to reform SDA education. If such professors are fired or forced to resign, who will they be replaced with? Whenever a professor at any given SDA college or university retires or resigns, there are very few suitably qualified candidates for a vacancy, and not all candidates support or are even members of the SDA church. If we really want to reform SDA education, we need to do more–much more–to encourage our youth to become college professors. How many of you actually urge your children to become a college professor?

Let’s be honest. Why is it that we encourage our children who are interested in science to pursue a career in the health sciences? Is it because we want them to altruistically help people, or is it because we want them to earn prestige in society and a good income? Professors require many years of education to obtain the coveted PhD degree and then they are poorly compensated for their years of training. In fact, professors in many SDA institutions–including PUC–are paid less, even as much as 25% less, than primary and secondary school teachers in SDA schools on the same campus. How fair is that? How can we expect our children to obtain a quality SDA education when we fail to adequately support SDA educators who have sacrificed years of their lives to educate our children?

If we want quality SDA science professors who are supportive of SDA views of origins, we need to identify potential candidates and provide more encouragement and support throughout their education, from the undergraduate level through the PhD degree. We need to increase the amount of scholarships and research grants available for graduate students at Andrews University, Loma Linda University and Walla Walla University. And somehow, in some way, we need to find a way to increase the level of compensation of our college faculty to be at least on par with our teachers in primary and secondary schools.

PUC responds
Raul Hernandez states “There is no amount of money that will change or affect the SDA principles particularly in Education.” Unfortunately that is not the case. The average PUC professor earns something like $15,000 less than the average teacher at PUC Elementary School and PUC Preparatory School. No professor in a SDA institution aspired to become a professor for the money. Nobody studies for a PhD degree to make money. Professors simply want an intellectually satisfying job. It’s the LACK of money, not the want of money, that turns away many bright and inquiring minds from becoming a professor. Would you urge your child to borrow thousands of $$$ in loans and spend an extra 6 years in school to get a PhD degree and become a college professor when your child could earn $15,000 more by teaching 1st grade with only a bachelor’s degree? Or earn $100,000 more by earning a MD degree? Is it surprising that only 1 or 2 percent of science students in SDA colleges and universities aspire to become a professor?

So how is SDA education affected? The pool of potential candidates for becoming a SDA professor is extremely shallow. When a professor leaves or retires from PUC, there are typically only a few qualified candidates for the job. If instead there were 10 or 15 candidates, the probability would be much higher that at least one candidate is strongly supportive of SDA principles. As it is, SDA colleges often wind up hiring non-SDAs or marginal SDAs who just happen to live in the vicinity and need a job. Usually they are hired as contract teachers but some are hired full-time as salaried employees. It is NOT because the administration has a liberal agenda and does not support SDA principles, which some have alleged; instead, it’s because there simply is no suitably qualified candidate who is more supportive SDA principles. And why are there no better candidates? Why is it that conservative SDAs who are highly critical of liberal SDA professors did not aspire to become SDA professors themselves? Is it not the money?

If you don’t like what’s happening in SDA colleges and universities, don’t blame the professors–they’re just trying to do a job for peanuts that hardly anybody else wants. And don’t blame SDA administrators, either–it’s not their fault that there are so few candidates to choose from. Maybe the blame is in the mirror. If the SDA Church wants high quality professors who support SDA principles, the church is going to have to invest more money in attracting suitable candidates. It will require a change in SDA culture. Maybe God wants YOU to become a SDA professor! Or to encourage a young, bright mind to become a SDA professor. Or to financially support SDA professors.

SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
Will humans and animals in New Jerusalem need to sleep?

Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation

Stephen&#032Ferguson: Sean, how did we get to this position? In particular, why after spending decades and millions of dollars has the official Church’s own pet organisation, the Geoscience Research Institute, done so little to disprove evolution?

Why if it is all hogwash has it been thoroughly not been disproved over the last 150 years? Why do some 99% of scientists across a multitude of different fields (e.g. paleontologists, physicists, archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists, chemists, cosmologists, historians, cosmologists and geologists etc) all consider evolution to be the most plausible model?

Maybe because the evidence for microevolution and speciation is overwhelming. And some evidence for megaevolution (e.g., sequence of fossils) and long geological ages can be perplexing to explain from the perspective of most (but not all) young life and young earth creationists.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: Why, if it is all rubbish, is there Adventist scientists and theologians who believe in evolution? Why would they risk their careers and standing in the Church to promote something they consider truth, given the huge pressure to just shut up, if they didn’t believe there was something in it?

Maybe because they’re not as honest as some prominent supporters here. Or their faith is weaker. Or, perhaps, physicians and lawyers are simply better trained than scientists and theologians to evaluate scientific evidence.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: I really, really hope Christian scientists, especially Adventist ones, will disprove evolution some day.

Me too.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: If the SDA hierarchy wants someone to blame for all this, they should blame themselves. It has been their pet organisations that have so spectacularly failed to offer scientific arguments in favour of YEC. Ted Wilson must accept some of the blame onto himself – if not personally then on behalf of the hierachy he leads.

I wouldn’t blame anybody. But if they were to fire the current GRI staff, hire certain supporters here, and then move GRI from LLU to SAU or SWAU, I suspect a certain faction of the church would be happier.

La Sierra University won’t neglect creation teaching, president, chairman vow
Sean, you have essentially written enough about this to publish a book, which you ought to do, exhorting SDAs to abandon Sola Scriptura and rely exclusively on empirical data, which surely will be a best seller among neoconservative SDAs.

Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
Like Ken, I am puzzled by the lukewarm reception of his suggestion to establish an endowed chair for intelligent design at LSU. Perhaps there was confusion about his term “intelligent design.” I think he had in mind the kind of creationism that most SDAs believe in, specifically young earth creationism or young life creationism (I realize some of you view ID negatively). So it could be called an Endowed Chair of Young Life Creationism, or whatever term is preferred.

For what it’s worth, I like his idea for several reasons:

1) SDA professors in all our institutions with the exception of LLU have relatively heavy teaching loads and scant time available for research, which means they have little time to conduct and publish research on creationism (I’m quite certain Art Chadwick would concur). That’s why as a denomination we have no well published and respected researchers with expertise on the subject, with the sole exception of Leonard Brand at LLU–who ranks among the world’s most successful scientists whose research focuses on YLC (if you believe there are other SDA experts with more expertise, you might be disappointed if you conducted a search of their publication records).

2) Most students in our institutions are seeking a career in a health profession, therefore SDA professors by necessity focus mostly on subjects that prepare students for the biomedical fields. Few have time to keep up with issues related to creationism and evolution, let alone conduct original research on the subject. You can’t really expect all professors to be as well informed with the subject as Leonard Brand.

3) It would be fantastic for LSU to have a professor with the available time and resources to pursue high quality research on creationism, which I believe was the intent of Ken’s wish. We already have one such professor at LLU; why not another at LSU? I’m astonished that some here seem to think it is undesirable to have another expert SDA researcher on the subject. Perhaps some of you naively imagine that ALL professors have the unlimited time and resources to become world-class researchers on creationism–and are wasting the denomination’s money by not doing so.

4) SDA institutions struggle to meet their payroll obligations and can benefit by obtaining financial assistance from donors.

5) If the evidence overwhelmingly favors the traditional SDA position of origins, as some here claim, what harm is there in funding a professor with the time and resources to discover even more evidence? It’s pretty hard to convince the world that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly favors our position unless the evidence is published in respectable scientific journals–as Leonard Brand has done repeatedly. It won’t ever happen unless there are more full-time researchers who focus exclusively on issues related to creationism.

Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Sean&#032Pitman: Most scientists who believe in the Biblical model of origins interpret Tertiary sediments as post-Flood sediments.

So if Noah’s flood ended at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, which coincides with a period of high global sea levels according to geologists, does that mean Noah’s flood is represented by the second of two worldwide floods in this graph?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Sea_Level.png

How would you account for the geological evidence for a worldwide flood during the Paleozoic and the lack of geological evidence for high sea levels during the early Mesozoic?