Comment on A big reason why so many people are leaving the church by David Read.
@Professor Kent: Kent, I’m not a hypocrite. I’ve frequently said that creationists and Darwinists are both operating on faith-based assumption, because no one can really know anything about origins. Both sides have their arguments, and it is good and right for creationists to have their reason-based arguments just as Darwinists do, but both sides are ultimately exercising faith.
I handicap not science but atheism, and only when it pretends to be reason and evidence as opposed to philosophy and faith. It is only when Darwinists claim, as they frequently do, that they are operating from reason while creationists are operating from faith, that I want, and soon find occasion, to ridicule them.
David Read Also Commented
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
Sean, I agree with you that free will is a strong argument for the existence of God. If Darwinism is true, there isn’t any reason why there should be free will. In fact our actions should be biologically determined. The obvious fact of free will–which one doesn’t have to be a religious believer to see and acknowledge–is a powerful argument for a Creator God.
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
Eddie says, “I don’t understand the assumption of genetic determinism.” That’s the assumption that sociobiology is based upon: that your social behavior is determined by your biology. That why it is called sociobiology. Obviously, biological determinism is completely incompatible with Christianity, morality, free will, or a morally ordered society.
And I don’t just reject sociobiology because it is a terrible slander of our species; it is nonsense as a general explanation. Take kin selection or “inclusive fitness”, for example, which is thought to be an explanation for parental altruism. In every sexually reproducing species, a parent donates half of the DNA to each of its offspring, yet parental altruism varies in sexually reproducing species as widely as it can possibly vary, from zero in plants and many animals, to a very high degree in humans. The species that don’t display parental altruism are as “successful”, in terms of reproductive success, as that those that do. The fact that offspring share DNA with a parent does not determine how a parent treats an offspring, nor does nature select species that display parental altruism for success and those that don’t display it for oblivion.
If you went into a maternity ward and switched every couple’s baby for a genetically unrelated child, the parents would still treat the child exactly as they would have treated their own biological offspring. This shows that parents are altruistic to their children not because their children share the parents’ DNA but because their are expectations in every human culture about how parents should treat their children. (Plus the darn things are just so lovable anyway.) If you told the parents that the child was not their biological offspring, and they didn’t treat the child as well, that just shows that the cultural expectations are lessened for “other people’s” children as opposed to one’s own. But many people make extraordinary sacrifices for children that they KNOW are not theirs, so their altruistic behavior is not driven by genes or by cultural expectations, but by their own higher standards of altruism, which are most often the result of a strong religious commitment. Free will is a repeatedly observed phenomenon of the human condition.
Our current knowledge of genetics is nowhere near adequate to support the sort of theorizing that is part and parcel of sociobiology. Maybe someday we will be able to determine what behaviors are genetically driven, if any. But right now, we don’t have that kind of genetic knowledge.
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
Says Professor Kent: “it’s very easy to demonstrate that genes regulate the behaviors, including social behaviors, of animals, … It’s just as easy to demonstrate that genes regulate the behaviors of humans,…”
Then Professor Kent says: “Sociobiology does NOT dismiss ‘free will.’ Never has, never will. To suggest that it does is ludicrous and a gross mischaracterization.”
Either genes determine behaviors in humans, in which case there is no free will, or genes do not determine behaviors in humans, in which case sociobiology is a crock of nonsense.
Then Professor Kent, hiding in obscurantism, says, “well, scientists don’t really know what free will means.” Yes, I’ve noticed that.
Then Professor Kent, realizing that he’s losing an argument with himself, says: “Any discussion of ‘free will’ at this thread lacks merit, far as I’m concerned, because of semantics surrounding the term. I’m not going to engage it further. To each his/her own; believe as you wish.”
Prof. Kent, I see that I’ve provoked you into thinking through some of the issues, which is good. But I don’t think you can just brush aside the unpleasant implications of sociobiology by saying, “we don’t know what words mean, so everyone believe as you wish.”
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.
