Forget the semantics. It’s not just meaningless “semantics” here. Words …

Comment on Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution? by Sean Pitman.

Forget the semantics.

It’s not just meaningless “semantics” here. Words and phrases mean different things to different people. It is only honest to present your ideas in a way that you know they will be properly interpreted by those with whom you are trying to communicate. You are not doing that. You are using words and phrases that have specific meanings associated with them that simply do not apply to those to whom you apply the label – without any qualifiers.

You are arguing that the earth is billions of year old.

As you know, it’s a bit more subtle than that. What I’m arguing is that I don’t know how old the basic material of the Earth is. I believe the question remains open and that it is certainly possible that the basic material of the Earth may be billions of years old – which is an important distinction. I simply don’t believe radiometric dating methods (which are used to argue for an old age for the Earth) are remotely reliable. However, it is true that I do not believe that the layers of sedimentary rock that make up most of the geologic column and contain the fossil record are more than a few thousand years old. I believe that the weight of evidence that I think I understand clearly indicates that they were producing rapidly and catastrophically.

You accept a gap creationism which was developed within a particular historical context in response to geological evidence that the earth was very old. That is not the position of EG White nor of Martin Luther or early protestants who accepted a plain reading of scripture before the 19th century.

The concept of an old universe, or a “gap in time” between the creation of the universe and the Creation Week of Genesis dealing with this little planet has been around a very long time – far before any “geological evidence” as interpreted as the Earth being “very old”. And, Ellen White certainly did not hold to the view that the universe, with all of its stars and galaxies and other inhabited worlds, was created during our particular creation week. She specifically denied that notion – as did many others (for reasons having nothing to do with radiometric dating or geological arguments for the old age of the Earth). She also never said how old the basic material of the Earth might be or if it did or didn’t pre-exist Creation Week. She simply left that question open.

That most YEC are Young Universe creationists is beside the point.

No, it isn’t. The fact that the term “YEC” is so strongly and generally associated with the concept of a young universe means that you need to use qualifiers when you use the “YEC” term. Otherwise, you’re simply being deliberately misleading.

That you may pretend that your position of gap creationism is completely determined by your reading of scripture and does not at all reflect the science of Geology in the 18 and 19th century I find extraordinary.

Oh come on. M.C. Wilcox, Uriah Smith, and Ellen White all believed in an older universe without any appeal to geology for this conclusion. The same is true for many others who understand from the Bible itself that this world was created after the universe and other intelligences and worlds were created. (Job 38:7 and Hebrews 11:3)

The reality is that most gap creationists adopt this position because they are interpreting the bible according to a paradigm that is based on empirical evidence or science.

So what? Just because some people make this argument doesn’t mean that everyone has or does. You simply cannot paint everyone who holds to any version of a gap in time between the creation of the universe and the creation of our world with the same brush. That’s simply not honest or reasonable.

Whether you are capable of admitting it or not that is precisely the context of the Rogers article. If we take science as the guide to our biblical interpretation and accept a billion year old earth where is the logic for then discarding the evidences for old life.

Rogers’ article creates a false dichotomy – a false choice between two and only two options that he sets up as the only “consistent” options available.

1) Young universe with young life
2) Old universe with old life

According to Rogers, there is no other valid option. So, clearly, if one has to pick between these two options the obvious choice is going to be to go with #2 and reject any semblance of reading the Bible literally – which is what you and Rogers have obviously chosen to do. The problem here, of course, is that Rogers is wrong in arguing for only two consistent options. The old universe/young life position is perfectly consistent with all of the claims of the Bible regarding the creation of the universe and of life on this planet. And, there is absolutely no need to appeal to “geology” to come to this conclusion. Geology need have nothing to do with it.

It is a critical question which in all your blathering about what EG White really believed has not been properly addressed particularly when you say
“I, personally, would have to go with what I saw as the weight of empirical evidence. This is why if I ever honestly became convinced that the weight of empirical evidence was on the side of life existing on this planet for hundreds of millions of years, I would leave not only the SDA Church, but Christianity as well” (http://www.educatetruth.com/theological/the-credibility-of-faith/comment-page-1/#comment-18717).

That’s absolute right. You yourself have obviously left everything about Christianity behind except for certain of its ethical claims. You don’t believe that God created Adam and Eve with His own hands out of the dust of the ground. You believe that humans evolved through a natural “process” of evolution over a couple billion years or so, with much suffering, pain and death, from single-celled organisms. You don’t necessarily believe, then, in a moral Fall or the literal story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. You don’t necessarily believe in a literal virgin birth or resurrection of Jesus. You don’t believe in a literal carbon-based life after death where sentient animals will no longer suffer and die. You don’t believe many of the statements attributed to Jesus in the Bible. You think they were added in later on. You don’t seem to believe in the Biblical prophecies. Everything in the Bible is just a good moral fable to you – “like Moby Dick” as you explained a while back.

In fact, if I accepted neo-Darwinism like you have, I’d probably think very much like you think. I might still believe in a God of some kind – but certainly not the Christian-style God described in the Bible or my current views of the nature of God. You see God very differently from how I see God – in line with your views of empirical reality. So, it only follows then that as one views the empirical evidence differently, it usually does have a very dramatic effect on one’s views of God as well.

You claim to be an “Adventist”, but that’s really in name only. You keep the title for social reasons perhaps, but you really believe very few of the doctrinal claims of the church. You’ve really defined your own religion independent of anything the church has to say – but still like to use the same name. Not me. If I ended up seeing the world like you see it, I would be honest enough to drop the title “Seventh-day Adventist” and even “Christian” and simply move on to something else. I wouldn’t even pretend to be something that I don’t really represent or use a title that only causes confusion for those who think I believe something very different from what I truly believe when I use a particular title – without any qualifiers.

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
First off, I’m sorry but I feel that your latest posts on this topic needed to be combined so that they are located in the same proximity within this thread – so as to better keep track of individual conversations.

As far as the arguments you’ve presented, there seem to me to be numerous significant problems for your position. First off, your suggestion that post-Phanerozoic granitic rocks don’t exist is just nonsense. They do exist – to include granite rocks with “crystals visible to the naked eye”. Even Gentry himself used such rocks in his original paper on the topic. Consider that numerous creationists admit this particular fact and many have argued that Gentry’s claims simply aren’t tenable. For example, in a 1988 paper R. H. Brown, H. G. Coffin, L. J. Gibson, A. A. Roth, and C. L. Webster (Link) argued:

In Creation’s Tiny Mystery, Gentry repeatedly states (pp. 25, 36, 65, 66, 98, 117, 153, 184) that the Precambrian granites represent the primordial creation rocks. Part of the reason for this statement is the presence of pleochroic halos found in them. However, Wakefield (6) and Wilkerson (7) challenge this interpretation, pointing out that the localities where the pleochroic halos are found represent secondary rocks, specifically dikes of granite and even calcite veins that intrude older rocks; hence, they are at least secondary in origin. Wise (8), who has reviewed the literature on the localities where pleochroic halos have been reported, indicates that a majority (15 out of 22) appear to come from veins or dikes (pegmatites), and hence represent secondary and not primary rocks.

Without entering into the argument as to the absolute age of the rocks (either primary or secondary), it would be safe to state that the majority of halo-containing minerals are younger than the host rock and therefore do not represent primordial material.

The presence of non-polonium pleochroic halos found near polonium halos in biotite, fluorite or other minerals weakens Gentry’s case even further. This is especially true when Gentry must invoke a nonuniform increased radioactive decay rate to account for the presence of U-238, Th-232 and Sm-146 halos, while leaving untouched the polonium decay rates! Gentry must invoke a nonuniform rate increase for some of the halos, because at present the half-lives of these other halo-producing isotopes are on the order of hundreds of millions to thousands of millions of years!

If Gentry’s independence assumption (polonium halos formed from polonium which was not produced by the radioactive parent U-238) is found to be incorrect, or even found to be strongly questionable, his whole contention that pleochroic halos are evidence of ex nihilo creation becomes suspect. The fact that the polonium isotopes involved in halo formation in the rocks are only those which are daughter products of systematic uranium and thorium decay forces one to suspect immediately that they are derived from uranium rather than a special creation.

Also, the existence of older xenolith inclusions within granite rocks (even within Mesozoic or Cenozoic granitic rocks) is also inconsistent with Gentry’s notion that God created all granite rocks instantaneosly during the Creation Week. It just doesn’t make sense that God would incorporate such xenolithic inclusions, some obviously from sedimentary rock, within such specially created granite rocks. Consider Collins’ arguments further in this regard:

Precambrian granite bodies in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Colorado have an erosion surface on which the horizontal, Paleozoic, fossil-bearing sediments are deposited, with the Cambrian Tapeats sandstone at the bottom and the Permian Kaibab limestone at the top. The eroded surface indicates that these granites are older than these sediments, the so-called “Noachian Flood deposits.” On the other hand, the Donegal granites in northwest Ireland intrude and enclose inclusions of sedimentary rocks of Cambrian age, illustrating that the granites are younger than the Cambrian deposits, whose contacts with the granites have a high-temperature metamorphic aureole (Pitcher and Berger, 1972). The same kinds of metamorphic contact-relationships are found in the granites that intrude fossil-bearing sediments in Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island (Harrison et al., 1983). The Narragansett Pier granite in Rhode Island surrounds inclusions of Pennsylvanian metamorphosed sediments containing flora fossils, Annularia stellata (Brown et al., 1978). The flora fossils are now totally carbonized as graphite, indicating the high temperature of the granite body that metamorphosed the sedimentary inclusions. The fact that the granite contains inclusions of these fossil-bearing sediments makes the granite younger than these supposed “Flood” sediments. The Sierra Nevada granite intrusions in California also have intruded and metamorphosed supposed “Flood sediments” in roof pendants containing Ordovician graptolite fossils (Frazier et al., 1986) and Pennsylvanian brachiopod fossils (Rinehart and Ross, 1964; Rinehart et al., 1959). In other places, the Sierran granites have intruded and metamorphosed “Flood sediments” containing Triassic ammonites (coiled cephalopods) (Smith, 1927). A granite in the Mojave desert in California near Cadiz intrudes Cambrian limestone containing stromatolite fossils. At the contact, this limestone is converted to marble with high-temperature metamorphic minerals, but remnants of the stromatolites can still be found (Richard Squires, oral communication, 1998). Thus, it is very clear from the above examples that some granite masses are the same age as or even younger than the “Noachian Flood deposits.” (Collins, 1998)

As another example, consider the Bathurst Batholith which intrudes into fossil-bearing layers of sedimentary rock. At the contact with this granite batholith the host fossiliferous sedimentary strata have been metamorphosed by the heat of the cooling granite batholith (Joplin 1936; Snelling 1974; Vallance 1969). Numerous minor granitic dikes cut across the margins of the Bathurst Granite and out into the surrounding host strata. Good exposures of these dikes are seen in the many railroad cuts between Sodwalls and Tarana. Up to 45 m (about 150 ft.) wide, these granitic dikes have the same composition as both the Bathurst Granite and the Evans Crown dike, often with the same porphyritic texture (Snelling 1974). The granitic bodies making up the batholith invade host country rocks as young as upper Devonian, and on the eastern margin are overlapped by Permian sediments. (Link)

As far as your reading of the SoP, I’ve gone over what Ellen White has to say about origins very very carefully and have discussed these comments with you in some detail already. Suffice it to say that your arguments remain unconvincing to me and I highly suggest that you not press the issue with others or become “dogmatic” in your position on this topic. It simply isn’t fundamental to Adventism.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
I do believe that God parted the sea for Moses and the Israelites to cross over while drowning the entire Egyptian arm. I also believe that God created the structure of the planet needed to support complex life. And, I believe that He accomplished these feats outside of what mindless natural mechanisms can achieve. The same is true for explaining the origin of a computer or an F-16 or a highly symmetrical granite cube or a chocolate cake. None of these artifacts of intelligent design can be explained by mindless natural mechanisms or “processes” either. Just like we can create beyond what mindless natural laws and processes can explain, so can God – just on a higher level is all.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
I agree…


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Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!


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Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…


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Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…


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Where did I “gloss over it”?


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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).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.