@george: If in 2009 I was surprised when the comments …

Comment on Academic Freedom Strikes Again! by wesley kime.

@george: If in 2009 I was surprised when the comments on this then-new blog veered from the putative subject and into Academic Freedom, now when the most recent topic, duly headlined, actually is Academic Freedom and another straying off has occurred, setting off a nice little stampede, the better vector, I’m not. Neither nonplused nor nettled. The Masked Man Strikes Again, a-rip-roarin’ into town a-firin’ his’n Socratic six-shooter ever which way, fer the egg-nostic helluv-ut!

As to the emergent evolving topic, St. Teresa expressing agnostic questions, the diocesan tribunal in annunciating her beatification justly gave the greater weight to the divine principle of her doing miraculously so much for the least. To counter a question with a question, was her “journey” to be compared to that of St. John the Baptist who, having declared Jesus the very Messiah, in the darkness of the dungeon needed revivification? To that question I’ll not be surprised at any answer, nor nettled. I expect to be fulsomely (definition #2) delighted.

wesley kime Also Commented

Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@george: Dear ole pard, For giving offense I don’t feel compelled to apologize, as the pop culture requires. For imposing confusion, I do, with pleading hands and furrowed sweating brow. I apologize! Meanwhile Sean, for whom we’re so grateful, is all no-nonsense and clear. When in doubt, consult him.
Carry on, friend!


Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@george: Dear ole pard George: I am in receipt of your latest set of Georgian questions: First: Embedded in the answer (no religious person has ever answered yes) is “Has God ever actually spoken to you?” Second: Ergo, “Kind of leaves us on our own to use our own faculties doesn’t it?”

Of course and with relish I’ll take the bait, as has been my pleasure and privilege for, as you say, like 8 years or more. However this time in more, though not wholly, the style of dialectic than dialect a la Rick O-Shay or Will Rogers. BTW Rogers elevated his dialect beyond dialectic, even, and so do we, don’t we?

So you’ve been asking (as is your egg-nostic wont, may I insert, winking) religious people for years and years and never yet heard anybody answer that God has actually talked to them? Not surprised. You wouldn’t in the legalist and Laodicean circles you’ve been socializing in (or, ahem, in them badlands circles ya’ll been goin’ roun’ ‘n roun’ in – couldn’t resist that hoop trope, you know me), which excludes serial killers, who hear some god without letup bugging them to do ungodly things, as they zealously witness in court. Hmmm… I hear an ear-splitting egg-nosticogeorgian question popping out of that one!

But He does, really. At the beginning He did routinely, in pleasant evening walks in the woods with the two new humans He’d just created. But, having been created with free will as well as ears, they decided they’d rather hear Satan and his serially ungodly shtick. You cannot serve – certainly not talk to – God and Satan. A sound-proof curtain fell between man and God, a total barrier, a wall, a great wall (Trump’s wall should be so lucky) between man and God, a communication barrier plus radio interference plus electromagnetic wave cosmic hacking. No more casual, pleasant God-to-man chats while strolling in the woods. A situation requiring salvation and the intervention of God in the form of Man, who did speak and talk directly to man. And His coming, and talking, made it possible for eventual restoration of those face-to-face evening chats in the woods of whispering pines of which we are not speaking loudly or urgently enough. For God did not simply shrug us off and retreat to some alternate more appreciative universe, to start to answer your second question. Can’t wait to work it further.

He Himself has actually talked directly to people, I’ll say it again. And if you had asked your question to Matthew or Peter or John you would have heard a resounding, shouting, ringing YES! And over history He has singled a certain few to talk to if less directly, like my best friends Isaiah and Paul (whom I enjoy hearing at least as much as you, for different reasons, dear pard), on condition they relay the message to the rest of us, which is why we have the Bible, to which EG White constantly directs us, thanks to His talking to her too.

But you know all that, you’ve heard tell as long as you’ve been hanging around this here corral, even while you’ve been asking us whether God has ever talked to us. Your ears have heard only “no’s” and not our “Yes we have, through the Bible, through creation, through the Royal Law of Love, and certainly through backlit clouds and babbling brooks and whispering pines.” Having heard only “no’s,” you ergo yourself right on to: “kind of leaves us on our own faculties, doesn’t it?” He that hath ears, let him hear, like the Man said, loud and clear.

Well, OK, if you must. Yup, we do of course have faculties, God-given you are reminded, and of course He expects, requires, us to use them – He that hath ears let him hear, like the Man says. And we’d be left only with those frail resources if indeed, as not a few Christians would zealously tell you (the ones who honestly answer no to your “have you actually…” question), that God, assuming He exists, set the Evo wheel to spinning and then yawned and stretched (not rested) and moseyed away. But would our God really abandon us like that? He would not, has not. He has promised, promised sworn and covenanted, to be with us always, and to talk with us through the bible and whispering pines and in other mysterious ways, adding, “without Me ye can do nothing.” So much for faculties. Glad you asked!


Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@David Morris: Oh indeed, indeed! I concur, and I add my thanks to Sean.


Recent Comments by wesley kime

Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”

FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)

In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.

FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.

With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.

Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.


Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”

I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.

But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.

Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.

For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.

As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.

What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.

Until then, your jousting friend, W


Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.


Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”

A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.


What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.