I don’t mean to impugn anybody’s integrity, but I question …

Comment on Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’ by Eddie.

I don’t mean to impugn anybody’s integrity, but I question whether any human being is honestly willing to forego ALL preconceptions and objectively embrace as truth whatever the weight of the evidence reveals.

Eddie Also Commented

Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
@ Wesley Kime:

Meanwhile, hmmm, don’t all our other professors say Genesis is “allegorical”?

Some here seem to want to believe that, especially at LSU and PUC, although I don’t believe it. But since I’m usually mistaken it may well be true.


Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
Unless I am mistaken, Sean is not a YEC (young earth creationist). He is a YLC (young life creationist). He believes the unviverse and planet Earth were created millions or billions of years ago and that life was created about 6,000 years ago. He accepts the “big bang” as the creation of the universe.

Sean has pointed out that the SDA church has no stated position on the age of the universe or planet Earth. But what I don’t get is how some SDAs interpret literally “For in six days the LORD made” but not “heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is” (Exodus 20:11). Isn’t that being inconsistent for a Biblical literalist? Especially because it was engraved with God’s finger in stone! How can you demand that SDA professors be YLCs but not YECs?


Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
@ Sean Pitman:

A convincing demonstration of the clear weight of empirical evidence being most consistent with the theory of millions of years of life existing and evolving on this planet would effectively falsify, scientifically, the theory of a literal 6-day creation week.
If such evidence were presented to me such that I became convinced of its superior weight vs. what I currently understand as the weight of evidence, I would not only leave the literal 6-day creation model behind, but the SDA Church as well…

Evidence is in the eye of the beholder. People view evidence through different filters–in your case, a filter of faith. Even if the evidence strongly favored life existing and evolving on this planet for billions of years–which many, but not me, Professor Kent or OTNT_Believer believe, although some of you want to believe we do–it still does not falsify the hypothesis of a six-day creation week, which could have occurred billions of years ago.


Recent Comments by Eddie

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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?