@Professor Kent: You have no problem …

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

@Professor Kent:

You have no problem calling people out in public who you think have done wrong in public; you just don’t think anyone else should be able to do the same thing… – Sean Pitman

Wrong.

I’m on a public forum making statements directly to a person; and I restrict my comments to the substance of theirs.

I also restrict my comments to the substance of what has been said and/or done in public by paid Church representatives. You’ve done as much yourself in various public forums, such as Atoday regarding those who were not specifically part of the particular forum in which you disagreed with various statements or actions of various particular people.

This is perfectly Ok. To suggest that no one in a paid position of official representation should be questioned or called out regarding their public position or comments is simply nonsense. Likewise, to suggest that the Church constituency at large has no right to know what is really being taught by our own teachers in our own schools is equally mistaken.

You’re on a public forum making statements about others who are not on this forum, who are injured by your statements, and who know better than to get on here and try and defend themselves. You use this forum to create a court of public opinion that serves as judge and jury. The verdict, of course, is predictable for the “suspect” who lacks representation. Where is the fairness in your approach?

Again, people have a right to know what their own teachers are teaching in our own schools. They also have a right not to like it if such paid representatives are attacking key pillars of the SDA faith on the Church’s dime.

Here’s an example of what I consider inappropriate: the President of Southern Adventist University has a conversation with your father, and you decide it should be made public. I don’t think SDA employees should live in fear of being exposed for every misstep they make, or every opinion that someone has a beef with.

This isn’t what happened. What happened was that Dr. Bietz gave a public presentation to a full room of educators and other Church representatives, of which my father happened to be one. I did not report on a private or otherwise confidential conversation between Dr. Bietz and my father. I’m sorry if this was your impression…

Beyond this, I have not suggested that Bietz is out of line as a Church representative. He has not attacked the SDA Church’s fundamentals or misrepresented the Church as a paid representative. I think he has made public statements that are mistaken and for which I am very disappointed. But, these statements were not an attack against the Church’s pillars of faith or against the reason for his employment within the Church. He is therefore well within his rights to make the statements he did, however much I think his very public statements and arguments are mistaken – a mistaken position that deserves to be publicly discussed.

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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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

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