@Professor Kent: Educate Truth pushes things too far. My problem …

Comment on Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe by Sean Pitman.

@Professor Kent:

Educate Truth pushes things too far. My problem is less with the message, and much more with the method. You guys (I’m speaking generally) come across as very harsh and intolerant, enthusiastically and unapologetically so. You have no problem publically lambasting others. I see little to no charity or humility. Most moderate Adventists, and most Christians and non-Christians, probably find this website deplorable. But it’s your passion, so carry on the brutal work. Might as well enjoy it.

And what do you call this? Are you not “publicly lambasting others” right now? and have you not been doing so for some time in this and other forums? – publicly blasting those for their methods and even perspectives when they don’t happen to agree with yours? I guess its Ok for you to do, but not others? ; )

The fact is that if your job involves public service, you are going to be scrutinized in public. When it comes to teaching, in particular, current and potential parents and students in general have a right to know what they are paying for or will pay for with their hard-earned dollars. When it comes to a Church school, the Church membership at large also has a right to know what all of the hired teachers are actually teaching their students. This information should not be kept private or secretive.

Also, to suggest that nobody has a right to get upset when a pastor or teacher is promoting ideas that are directly counter to what that person was paid to teach or preach is nonsense. Such a pastor or teacher should only expect to get called out, publicly, for their deliberate public loss of trust with their employer – the Church constituency in this case.

We aren’t talking about exposing secret sins here. We are talking about exposing what everyone has a right to know to begin with regarding the education of their sons and daughters in the Church. And, people have a right to get upset if they aren’t getting what they thought they were paying for. I certainly would be very upset if my own son were at LSU and I happened not to be aware that LSU teachers were teaching contrary to the SDA position on origins there.

Beyond this, many have worked many long years behind closed doors to try to solve this problem discretely. None of these methods or efforts have worked at all. If anything, the problem has only gotten steadily worse and more and more brazen over the years, decades, at LSU in particular. It was time that this information became general public knowledge since there are many who simply did not and still do not know the extent of the attacks on the pillars of the SDA faith that have been and are currently taking place at LSU by many staff members in both the science and religion departments.

This is not right. It is theft from the SDA Church and from the Church membership at large. It must stop or the Church is in real trouble…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe
In any case, any further comments concerning the morality or lack thereof of those involved with the LSU situation will no longer be posted here on Educate Truth. However, You are free to send me a personal E-mail if you wish (my E-mail can be obtained by visiting my website listed below).

Sincerely,

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe
@Ron Stone M.D.:

Well, Sean, atheists have written books explaining what, why, and how they have rejected God’s Truth. Those at LSU have explained what they believe and why they have accepted Man’s word and rejected God’s Truth. You say we can never know anything about this, and they must not really “understand” what they are doing.

I don’t know if they do or do not really understand what they are doing; and neither do you. Only God knows for sure…

Not only would I and others here disagree with you, but I believe the atheists would disagree. The idea that church members cannot be “judged” by their words and actions is simply not biblical.

And the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross would have claimed at the time that they knew exactly what they were doing too… but did they really? Jesus prayed for them saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” – Luke 23:34 NIV

It is quite possible that even if a person is very adamant that he/she knows exactly what he/she is doing, that this person may not really know. This is a possibility that only God knows for sure. You simply cannot make this particular type of moral judgment with complete accuracy. You and I can judge the rightness or wrongness of the word or act (specifically regarding a doctrine like the literal 6-day creation week), but we cannot judge the rightness or wrongness of the heart; the motive.

There is a difference between being mistaken and sinning. Sinning requires a deliberate rebellion against known truth – something that you cannot tell for sure in cases of doctrinal disagreements on such things as the literal creation week or the true origin of the Sabbath or any other such commandment that deals specifically with man’s relationship with his or her God and God alone.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe
@Ron Stone M.D.:

Sean says Moses and the Prophets are “empirical” evidence then says they are not!

Moses and the prophets are only “empirical evidence” in support of the Bible’s credibility if they actually say something true regarding the real world in which we all live (which I think they clearly do).

However, if Moses and the prophets did in fact clearly contradicted the real world (i.e., real history), the hypothesis that the Bible’s credibility is supported by them would be effectively falsified (as is the case for the Book of Mormon, for example) in such a situation.

It is in this sense that things like biblical prophecy must be held up for testing before biblical prophecy can be rationally accepted as credible (at least any more credible than the Book of Mormon).

In other words, biblical credibility is dependent upon the empirical evidence. Without the empirical evidence, there would simply be no greater rational reason to believe the Bible as any more credible than some moral fable that someone simply made up as a “cleverly invented story”. – 2 Peter 1:16 NIV

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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