@Ken: Ken, Gallup has been polling this issue for about …

Comment on SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines by David Read.

@Ken: Ken, Gallup has been polling this issue for about 30 years, and consistently about 40% of Americans identify as creationists. That’s about 120 million of us. See this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism.

“According to a Gallup poll in December 2010, around 40% of Americans believe in YEC,…”

As of 2008 a Gallup poll indicated that 36% of US adults agreed with the statement “human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.”, 14% believed that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.” and 44% of US adults agreed with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

The purely atheistic opinion on origins has recently risen sharply from less than 10% to 14%, but the increase does not seem to have come at the expense of the young earth creationists.

David Read Also Commented

SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@Sean Pitman: It doesn’t make better sense to me as a straightforward reading of the text. God created light, and also created days with a dark portion and a light portion, on the first day. Gen. 1:2-5. Then, on the fourth day, God created the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. Gen. 1:14-19. These were apparently the sun and the moon, although they are not specifically named in the narrative (perhaps to further demean them and show them to be unworthy of worship).

From a straightforward reading of the text, these seem like two completely different creative acts on two different days. But I sense that you have some external scientific concern that would be eased by not reading the text in this way, and instead interpreting the light created on the first day and the “greater light to rule the day” created on the fourth day as being the same thing. What is that concern?


SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@krissmith777: God can create in any way He wants to, but the Genesis narrative is the authentic account of how He created. God could have created the world instantaneously, but He chose to create over the course of six days. God does not have to do everything He can do. God has free choice in how He creates; He does not have to work to the limit of His creative capacity. We see this again in the fact that He rested on the Seventh Day and hallowed it. Gen. 2:2-3. God did not need to rest because He was tired, but chose freely to rest, in part as an example to us.

God may not have needed the light to work by, but the light was needed to have 24-hour days with a dark portion and a light portion on the first, second, and third days, before the creation of the sun. (Light may also have been needed for photosynthesis of plants, which were created on the third day, before the sun was created on the fourth day. Gen. 1:11-13.)

That God chose to do things in the way He did, even though He could have done them differently, does not demean Him.


SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@krissmith777: Kriss, you write that you can’t accept the argument because it demeans God by implying that He didn’t get it right the first time. But the fact that God created light on the first day (Gen. 1:3) is not an “argument.” It is a Scriptural fact.

You also write, “What would be the point in God creating a light source, getting rid of it, then making a new one?” I don’t know, maybe to have light to work by during the first three days of creation?

When builders are framing a house, the house doesn’t yet have any electricity, but the builders need electricity to run power tools. So they bring in a generator or set up a temporary power pole at the site. When the house is finished, the generator is taken away, the power pole taken down, and the house is powered by the wiring that was eventually installed and hooked up.

Does it “demean” the builders that they brought in a temporary power source until the house was permanently wired? I think not. To the contrary, it shows their power, in that they were not dependent upon what they eventually built.

In the same way, it is an important aspect of the Genesis narrative, in the context of ancient societies that worshiped the sun, to show that God is not dependent upon the things He creates. He did not need the sun for light; He created another light source before He created the sun. The sun is merely the permanent light source that he installed later in the creation week. To acknowledge this is the opposite of demeaning God; to the contrary, it demonstrates that we should worship God, not the sun.


Recent Comments by David Read

The Reptile King
Poor Larry Geraty! He can’t understand why anyone would think him sympathetic to theistic evolution. Well, for starters, he wrote this for Spectrum last year:

“Christ tells us they will know us by our love, not by our commitment to a seven literal historical, consecutive, contiguous 24-hour day week of creation 6,000 years ago which is NOT in Genesis no matter how much the fundamentalist wing of the church would like to see it there.”

“Fundamental Belief No. 6 uses Biblical language to which we can all agree; once you start interpreting it according to anyone’s preference you begin to cut out members who have a different interpretation. I wholeheartedly affirm Scripture, but NOT the extra-Biblical interpretation of the Michigan Conference.”

So the traditional Adventist interpretation of Genesis is an “extra-Biblical interpretation” put forward by “the fundamentalist wing” of the SDA Church? What are people supposed to think about Larry Geraty’s views?

It is no mystery how LaSierra got in the condition it is in.


The Reptile King
Professor Kent says:

“I don’t do ‘orgins science.’ Not a single publication on the topic. I study contemporary biology. Plenty of publications.”

So, if you did science that related to origins, you would do it pursuant to the biblical paradigm, that is pursuant to the assumption that Genesis 1-11 is true history, correct?


The Reptile King
Well, Jeff, would it work better for you if we just closed the biology and religion departments? I’m open to that as a possible solution.


The Reptile King
Larry Geraty really did a job on LaSierra. Personally I think it is way gone, compromised beyond hope. The SDA Church should just cut its ties to LaSierra, and cut its losses.

As to the discussion on this thread, round up the usual suspects and their usual arguments.


La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction
It is a remarkably fair and unbiased article, and a pretty fair summary of what was said in the recorded conversation.