Comment on Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers by Wesley Kime.
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”
I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.
But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.
Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.
For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.
As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.
What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.
Until then, your jousting friend, W
Wesley Kime Also Commented
Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@ken: Re. your oft-repeated suggestion of a Chair of Intelligent Design at LSU or some other Adventist university, that you see as having been ignored by everybody, whether eonic or Genesis 1 Creationist, your perception is accurate, almost. There’s not been much reaction. And understandably so, considering the mindsets, polarized and polymerized as they are, on this particular site.
Being the tidy sort that gets jumpy when things dangle, obsessive is probably the word for it, I am, dear friend, disquieted by your latest lament, and will take it upon myself to address it, again.
This is revised version of what I said to you November 14, 2011: ID is an oxymoronically impossible leap for an atheist, if a very insightful and intelligent leap for an agnostic. Congratulations on making it, as I am assuming you have, or sort of have, or at least not altogether dismissed. But for a Christian, a great devolution, a great recidivation, a tragic forfeiture, foreclosure, worse. If I were to use the vocabulary of some of our recent posters, I’d not put it as delicately.
So the establishment of a Chair in Intelligent Design at Harvard would be a quantum leap of insight and enlightenment. I’m all for it. Three cheers! The establishment of new such Chair at LSU would a step backwards. Sad. Hand me another Kleenex.
Anyway, establishment of a new Chair in Intelligent Design at LSU would be redundant. LSU already has such a chair de facto. It is called the Chair of Biology, which does not not teach theistic evolution, or eonic creationism, naught but Intelligent Design ramped up towards God, too far to assuage the Western Society of Accreditation, not far enough for the Adventist Association of Accreditation.
But might not LSU itself squirm for other reasons at the idea of a Chair of Intelligent Design? The very term “Intelligent Design” seems to make, say, Erv Taylor (nominee for the Board to establish such a Chair) squirm, as at the Tea Party, with which he has equated ID. That’s just our Ervy Taylor being whimsical again, but he’s got a point. “Intelligent Design” is no longer just a scientific notion. It is connected with a formal and, for all I know, legally structured organization, with attendant political baggage, that has undertaken to promote (and defend) the scientific concept in court against the formal, structured ACLU, and thus has earned its popular image that somehow troubles Dr. Taylor, and, I suspect, the LSU administration, certainly the Biology Department.
You trying to make the very people you’re trying to help, both sides, nervous?
Which raises the final question: Where at LSU, would that Chair be put? In the Science Department? In the Religion Department? Surely you recall the arguments for both, and how heated? So back to you, Ken, where would you put it? Don’t answer that question. Ignore it.
Mainly, thanks for making your suggesting again, thus to give me the opportunity, for which I’ve been on the lookout, to thank you for your interest and your attitude. Perhaps ironically and surprisingly, no, not surprisingly, our “agnostic friend” has been generally rather more empathetic and less difficult, just nicer, than our own updated brethren and colleagues, the likes of whom I grew up with and knew at La Sierra (then) College. Routinely, it’s gotten to be a familiar routine, they appear here clad in shimmering anonymity, and, after proclaiming a certain superior holiness, depart in a huff, blowing our dust off their sandals. You’ve stuck with us a couple of years now. But it’s time to move on from that Chair to our park bench.
Recent Comments by Wesley Kime
Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”
FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)
In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.
FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.
With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.
Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.
Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”
A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.
An apology to PUC
@Spencer Johnson:
re.: You seem to be trying to make a point! One cannot simply scroll on by; one drops everything and runs to Wikipedia to find out who you are. You couldn’t be the Spencer Johnson of “Who Moved My Cheese?” fame, “one of the world’s most respected thinkers and beloved authors,” could you?
