“Don’t go backwards to interpret Genesis as allegorical or symbolic”
@Bobbie Vedvick:

Well your eye-witness stats are more encouraging! The man who originally quoted a 2/3 win (I was wrong on the 3/4 win) says he got it from a lead in the Gleaner and is now trying to find that statement to forward it to me. Who ever reported on the session, obviously either got the stats wrong or it was a typo. Thanks for the positive correction. I presume it was by ballot??

Everyone held up their yellow voting cards for “yes” or for “no”.

It was a “sea of yellow” for the yes – and about 25 cards held up for “no” on that second vote.

The first vote only had one or maybe two in the “no” column and it is hard to tell the difference between two “seas of yellow” in the yes column for the two motions, so I just call it 2000 to near-nill.

in Christ,

Bob

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“Don’t go backwards to interpret Genesis as allegorical or symbolic”
I was there for the vote. The motion was split into two parts.

Part 1. The motion to affirm the 2004 statement – the “affirmation Creation”. The vote was taken by raising yellow cards (a yellow 8.5×11 page from what I saw). The vote was massively overwhelmeng. About 2000 to 5.

Part 2. The motion to authorize the Exec Comm to update FB6 to bring it in line with the more explicit wording of the “Affirmation” just approved, and then submit it in final form to the GC session of 2015.

That one passed by about 2000 to something close to 25. (I think I have them both on video but will check my tapes).

I have no clue where they are getting a 25% margin voting against it – unless they have hidden rooms where people are voting outside of the delegate floor area – and to be honest I saw no evidence of that whatsoever.

in Christ,

Bob

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“Don’t go backwards to interpret Genesis as allegorical or symbolic”
@Ken:

Dear Michael and Bob

Thanks for your comments.

I appreciate the distinctions you are making between the Catholic Church and the SDA Church.

So it was not OK for the Catholics to strong arm Galileo because The Catholics were wrong about their science, but it is OK for the SDA to sanction the LSU biology professors,

As it turns out we do not teach the immortality of the soul or atheism as valid options in our schools. If you want that – you can go to public universities or certain other private schools.

This is really ‘not news’.

Our understanding is that belief in theistic evolutionism “is the worst form of infidelity” and why should a Church – create a school dedicated to the “Worst form of infidelity” in its biology and religion departments? It would be better for a Church to just stick to Gospel evangelistic crusades rather than to divert resources to such a wrongheaded mission.

Surely this is not the hard part of this dicussion. I would hope you would agree.

in Christ,

Bob

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Academic Freedom Strikes Again!

george:
By definition, I don’t believe in miracles or apocryphal, anthropomorphic stories about same.Why aren’t scientists observing them today if they occur?

Circular argument. If they were naturally occurring we would expect scientists to see that they are still occurring today. If they are singular events caused by an intelligent being – that being would be under no obligation to “keep causing world wide floods” as if “to do it once you must continually do it”. Armstrong went to the moon.. shall we argue that unless he keeps going to the moon so each new generation can see it … then it did not happen?

Your argument is of the form “all eye witness evidence to some event in the past is no evidence at all unless that event keeps repeating itself so we too can witness it”. Seems less than compelling.

“Could it be that science is better able to detect hoaxes and false claims?” As a rule for dismissing every eye witness account in the past – it is less than compelling. (even when that event cannot be repeated)

Evolutionists “claim” that dust, rocks and gas (in sufficient quantity and over sufficient time and a lot of luck) self organized into rabbits via prokaryote-then-eukaryote-then-more-complexity. But such self-organization cannot be “observed” today.

(What is worse – such a sequence cannot even be intelligently manipulated to occur in the lab)

By your own argument then you should not believe in evolution.

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Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@Sean Pitman:

Suppose you were at a crime scene … there is a tree limb on the ground and a bullet hole in the victim — “all natural causes”? or is one ‘not natural’? Those who say that nothing can be detected as “not naturally occurring in nature” – because all results, all observations make it appear that every result “naturally occurred without intelligent design” seem to be missing a very big part of “the obvious”.

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Academic Freedom Strikes Again!

george:
Gentlemen,

What just God would allow an innocent child to be born guilty for the sins of a distant ancestor? …What if there was only One Commandment? Do Good. ‘Kant’ see a problem with that.

An atheist point of view is not often found here – but this is interesting.

1. God does not punish babies for what someone else did – but I suppose that is a reductionist option that is not so uncommon among atheists. The “details” of the subject you are commenting on – yet according to you “not reading” – is that humans are born with sinful natures. A “bent” toward evil. That is the first gap right out of the gate between atheism and God’s Word..

2. But still God supernaturally enables “free will” even in that bent scenario, the one that mankind lives in – ever since the free-will choice of the first humans on planet earth – was to cast their lot in with Satan and rebellion..(apparently they wanted to see what a wonderful result that poor choice would create). John 16 “the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment”. And of course “I will draw ALL mankind unto Me” John 12:32. (not “just Christians”). Thus supernatural agency promotes free will in a world that would otherwise be unrestrained in its bent to evil.

3.God says “The wages of sin is death” — so then your “complaint” is essentially “that you exist”. A just and loving God created planet Earth – no death or disease or suffering – a perfect paradise where mankind could live forever … and only one tiny restriction… yet Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be duped by Satan… tossing it all away. The “Just God” scenario could easily just have let them suffer the death sentence they chose. He did not do that… hence “you exist” – to then “complain about it”.

4. Of course you might also complain that Satan exists – and Satan might complain that “you exist”. There is no shortage on planet earth of avenues for complaint. But God steps in – offers salvation to mankind at infinite cost to himself – – and the “Few” of Matthew 7 eventually end up accepting that offer of eternal life. The rest seem to prefer the lake of fire option… sort of like Adam and Eve choosing disease and death over eternal life (without fully appreciating the massive fail in that short-sighted choice).

In any case – this thread is about the logic/reason that should be taken into account when a Christian owned and operated institution chooses to stay faithful to its Christian mission — rather then getting blown about by every wind of doctrine. Why let the alchemy of “wild guessing” be the ‘source of truth’ when we have the Bible?? We really have no excuse for that. As for science – we can be thankful that it has come as far along as it has – but no matter how far back you rewind the clock of our science history – we should always have chosen the Bible over wild guessing.

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Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions

Ervin Taylor:
Perhaps Dr. Pitman would enlighten his readers what on earth “the neo-Darwinian story of origins” might be. Darwin did not address origins.

Origins of what?? the first eukaryote??
Or “origins of mankind”??

Darwin himself claimed that his own false doctrine on origins was totally incompatible with Genesis and that because of this – Genesis must be tossed under a bus.

hint: Genesis is an account of “Origins” as we all know — even though “bacteria” and “amoeba” are terms that don’t show up in the text.

The point remains – Darwin was promoting his own religion on origins totally counter to the Bible doctrine on origins. He himself addresses this point of the two views.

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Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions

Ervin Taylor:
Here we go again.If the footprints upon close examination, are determined not to be from a hominim/hominid, I wonder if Educate Truth (sic) will announce that determination.Or if the date of the surface is determined to be much younger, will there be a notice placed on fundamentalist web-sites.If you believe the answer to these questions are yes, I have a big bridge that I would like to sell you for pennies on the dollar.

Here we go again … hope piled upon hope…no matter the “observations in nature” that disconfirm the classic evolutionary hypothesis

Reminds me of “What we still don’t know” by Martin Reese and Leonard Suskind

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