@Professor Kent: Sean Pitman: As I’ve …

Comment on Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation by Sean Pitman.

@Professor Kent:

Sean Pitman: As I’ve already explained, the Virgin Birth Jesus, in particular, like the Resurrection, is not testable in a falsifiable manner. That does not therefore mean that it has been disproved by science.

Then the Flying Spaghetti Monster could be real. So could Santa Claus. And the Tooth Fairy. No one has ever disproved them. And no one has ever disproved abiogenesis or any of the main features of evolutionism.

So why don’t you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Santa Claus? – while you do believe in God? I’ve asked you this many times before, but you’ve yet to produce a universal basis for determining which miraculous being to believe in as “real” vs. all other competing options…

While Santa Claus or garden fairies may not be absolutely falsifiable this side of eternity, the reason why it is not rational to believe in these while it is rational to believe in the existence of God is because of the strength or weakness of the corroborating evidence.

Consider that the God-only hypothesis is testable in a potentially falsifiable manner. In other words, certain phenomena can only be explained by the existence of a God or God-like being as being responsible. This is not true for fairytale creatures like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, garden fairies, and the like. There are no phenomena that can only be explained by any of these…

[The LDS claim that American Indians are descendants from the lost tribes of Israel] is no more impossible–or falsifiable–than the virgin birth or resurrection of a 3-day old corpse. The evidence is based only on a prediction of what we should see today, but DNA inheritance does not always follow expected rules. If mitochondrial DNA provided the basis for the evidence, then all we know is that all of the individuals tested (we know nothing about those NOT tested) were descendents from a single Asian-derived female. That hardly falsifies the possibility that many indians at that time, particularly men, were from Israel.

Many aspects of nuclear and mtDNA have been tested in American Indians, none of which suggest Jewish ancestry. This finding does in fact effectively falsify the LDS claim that the American Indians have Jewish ancestry. There is no LDS claim to the miraculous for the genetic structure of the American Indian. Such a claim would have actually been far better than simply claiming a natural Jewish ancestry for the American Indian – a claim which is quite clearly falsified by modern genetic analysis.

Contrast this to stories of Divine miracles described in the Bible as being the result of deliberate design by God. Such miracles of Divine design are not falsifiable by science in the same manner that the LDS claim is falsifiable…

Another explanation could be that Satan rather than God arranged for the evidence to appear as it does today. You can’t rule this out.

You can rule it out if you expect anything to be predictable – even those things which were not described as being designed by God or any other intelligent agent, Satan, human, or otherwise. That is why such demonstrable inconsistencies clearly undermine the credibility of the Book of Mormon for people who want something more rational than blind faith. The same would be true if the Bible were in the same boat as the Book of Mormon.

You have the same problem with flood geology/theology, which fails two central predictions: (1) that organisms living together were preserved together in the flood, and (2) that biodiversity today shows a dispersion pattern from Mt. Ararat. These are predictions that fail miserably.

Not at all. While unanswered questions do indeed remain, as already discussed, the Biblical model is far more consistent with the fossil/geologic records than is neo-Darwinism. Also, dispersion patterns are not inconsistent with a single point of dispersion within recent history – as we’ve discussed extensively before…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen:

The Bible makes claims about the future. It does not cause the future. It therefore is not “self-validating”. It’s just a book after all. It can be read, but it cannot itself act to perform any tasks. Therefore, it’s claims, if they are to be rationally understood to be “true” must obviously be supported by external evidence based on the historical sciences. In other words, its own claims regarding history are validated by external sources – based on independent evidence that comes from outside of itself. How is this concept not self-evident?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Professor Kent:

Let’s get a few things straight. I have not attacked the claims of scripture regarding the “the recent origin of all life on this planet, created within just six literal days, and the worldwide nature of the Noachian Flood.” All I did was point out that the physical evidence supporting flood geology has serious problems.

That is an attack on Scripture. When you attempt to undermine the empirical claims of Scripture as being contrary to the weight of empirical evidence, you are in fact undermining the rational basis for Scriptural credibility.

Don’t you recognize that in claiming that the weight of scientific evidence clearly favors the neo-Darwinian perspective, a perspective which is diametrically opposed to the Biblical perspective, you do in fact undermine the credibility of the Biblical account? Your faith-only approach, regardless of the evidence, simply doesn’t do it for many people. For many many people such arguments as you are presenting do in fact undermine the rational basis for their faith despite your own ability to be able to have faith despite the weight evidence. Many people see this as irrational – and for good reason.

Faith, without a need for a basis in the weight of evidence, is irrational by definition. It is blind-faith in that it cannot be rationally distinguished from a form of wishful thinking.

And you were the one, not me, who has asserted that the flood did not create all of the layers of the geological column.

Of course. I fail to see why this might be a problem?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Eddie:

By implication Nebuchadnezzar won the battle with Egypt – just as Ezekiel prophesied. Otherwise, it is unlikely that the Babylonians would have recorded the event…

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).

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.