Professors in general–including SDA professors–tend to be tolerant of a …

Comment on For real education reform, take a cue from the Adventists by Eddie.

Professors in general–including SDA professors–tend to be tolerant of a diversity of views, including those that contradict their personal views. They have to be that way. Classrooms are filled with students of diverse backgrounds and beliefs. Many students in SDA institutions are non-SDA and non-Christian. Professors must be respect their views and not impose their personal views on students. This website exists mainly because certain professors did not respect the views of students who believe in the traditional SDA interpretations of origins.

Of course there are devout SDA professors who would like to have colleagues who share their views, but very few care to rock the boat–and not at all because they fear losing their jobs. As I have mentioned before, one of the major challenges of SDA educational institutions is hiring professors who fully support the SDA mission. Any time there is a vacancy for a teaching position there are very few candidates, not all of whom are supportive of the SDA church. What is a college or university administration to do? That is why some non-SDAs and fringe SDAs are hired. I could mention names, but what good would it do? Once somebody is hired full time and has been working for a certain number of years, it is extremely difficult to fire that individual. The lack of supportive SDA candidates is not the fault of administrators, nor the fault of professors who recognize the limitations of what can be done. What we need are more dedicated SDA members who aspire to become professors so that our institutions can be more selective in who is hired.

Eddie Also Commented

For real education reform, take a cue from the Adventists
Nice to see something positive posted here on SDA education. We have a lot to be proud of. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect, of course, or ever will be. I am well aware of some professors who do not fully support SDA beliefs, but there are very many who strongly do, and there are students at all SDA institutions–even at much-maligned LSU–whose relationship with Christ and faith in what the Bible teaches grows stronger during while studying for a degree. SDA educational institutions need the support and prayers of SDA members.


For real education reform, take a cue from the Adventists
In my experience “the progressive ultra-liberal professors at our colleges and universities” are the minority (and a small minority, I think) rather than the majority. They shouldn’t be hired in the first place but unfortunately they are. And what can be done? If you fire a tenured professor (most institutions give short-term contracts for several years before giving tenure) you’re looking at a potential lawsuit against an institution that can barely meet its payroll obligations with borrowed money. And then the institution must scrounge up further money to fly candidates to the institution for interviews and pay for the moving expenses of a selected candidate–who may be no more supportive of SDA beliefs than the professor who is fired. And even if a qualified candidate can be found who strongly supports SDA beliefs, there is no guarantee that the candidate has the personality traits conducive to becoming an effective teacher. I think most of you have had at least one professor who never should have been a professor.

Consider for a moment the issue of LSU biologists. If you fire one or a few or all of them, who are you going to replace them with? As I recall (my numbers could be mistaken), this past year SAU advertised for three biologists and interviewed four, but hired only one deemed to be “safe.” UC advertised for a biologist and SWAU advertised for two. LLU produces a very small number of PhD graduates in its Department of Earth and Biological Sciences–a department which happens to be very conservative in its interpretations of origins (contrary to the mistaken views of some who assume it to be a bastion of liberalism). And as it turns out many of the strongest supporters of SDA beliefs among our science faculty are alumni of the graduate program at LLU, where they were mentored by staunch SDA supporters such as Drs. Brand, Buccheim and Hayes. Yet only a few years ago the administration of LLU announced it was going to shut down the program. As a consequence the department has diverted a considerable amount of its time and resources from research and supervision of students–which should be its priorities–to fund-raising, simply to keep the sinking ship of science graduate education afloat.

So it saddens me to read the disparaging comments of others here clamoring to fire professors, shutter science programs and even disenfranchise institutions. If you guys really want to change the status quo you must find ways to increase the support for SDA science programs, otherwise you’ll simply get what you pay for.


For real education reform, take a cue from the Adventists
@ Johnny Vance:

The Lord sent a prophet to publicly rebuke him and cause enough cognitive dissonance in the minds of all the Israelites present to avoid the apostasy.

Remember when He [Jesus] cast out the priests and money-changers from the temple and called them out publicly?

Good points: God sent prophets and His son to rebuke! Is somebody here at Educate Truth claiming to be a prophet sent by God?


Recent Comments by Eddie

SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
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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?