@Ron: I for one am not sure there are any …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@Ron:

I for one am not sure there are any limits. You think you can define limits, and I am not second guessing you, but your ideas have not become main stream, and they really don’t seem to hold water from a philosophical/theological perspective.

Of course the Adventist perspective on many different concepts isn’t “mainstream”. That’s why we have our own schools instead of just sending our kids to much cheaper public schools. You are also mistaken to suggest that creationists have not long accepted various forms of “micro-evolution” while rejecting “macro-evolution”.

Very limited forms of genetic “change over time” or evolution do happen. However, these changes are very limited to very low levels of functional complexity. If you or someone else does not recognize the creative limitations to the evolutionary mechanism, then you simply cannot adequately represent the Adventist perspective on origins… and shouldn’t be hired to teach contrary to the Adventist perspective in our own schools…

I think it is morally wrong to censor teachers because they are not teaching concepts that
1. are not accepted by the main stream, and 2. are so recent or obscure that they might not even be aware of them.
3. especially when you yourself agree with the principles that they are teaching, you just disagree on the extent to which those principles are operationalized.

Again, this has always been an issue over the “extent to which evolutionary principles are operational”. It has never been an all or nothing issue – never. Everyone involved with this debate over the creative potential of evolutionary mechanisms recognizes the reality of limited forms of evolution. The only difference is over degree – i.e., over the question of if there are or are not limitations to the degree of functional complexity that can be produced by the evolutionary mechanism of random mutations and functional-based natural selection.

The Adventist position is that there are very clear limits along these lines. The position of secular scientists is that there are no such limits – that given enough time the statistically improbable becomes inevitable.

The problem, of course, is that mainstream scientists just don’t do the math…

[Regarding the origin of highly symmetrical polished granite cubes vs. amorphous rocks vs. automobiles] I am not sure I always can [tell the origin], when it comes to design intelligence. Certain rocks contain a lot of very complicated information about their history, chemistry, and some of them, like fossils, for instance, can be pretty complicated, and certain rocks, like my supercomputer processor are highly designed. And unfortunately, my car is often poorly designed.

There you go, you can tell the difference between your computer processor and an amorphous rock. You know that your processor required intelligent design over and above that of the shape of an amorphous rock. I dare say that even mainstream scientists would be able to tell the difference between a highly symmetrical granite cube, if found on an alien planet like Mars, and an amorphous rock. Such a find, say of a 2 x 2 x 2 meter highly symmetrical polished granite cube on the surface of Mars, would hit the front pages of every news paper in the world as clear evidence of intelligent design at work.

But you are missing the point. You are the one claiming that God created the earth, as opposed to it developing naturally. You are trying to use Intelligent Design as proof of God’s creation. So you tell me. How does the amorphous rock show enough intelligent design to prove that it was created by God? The burden of proof is really with you.

I’ve been very clear in explaining that I do not think something like an amorphous rock requires the input of intelligent design. I do not think that God intentionally sits down and consciously carves out out each amorphous rock that exists on this planet or in the universe at large. God created the natural laws that then created the amorphous rocks, and snow flakes, and weather patterns, etc. God is not directly manipulating these things on our planet.

I’m not sure how many more times I have to explain this concept to you? Natural laws, created by God, work independent of God’s need for direct deliberate action. That’s why He created these natural laws instead of doing everything directly by Himself all the time. These laws are tools that He has made. The have their detectable limits as tools. While God is not limited in His creative ability, the natural laws that He has made, the tools, are limited. They are not themselves God.

For example, let’s say I make a hammer. This hammer is a tool that is made for a specific job. The hammer is not me. It has limitations that I do not have. These limitations can be investigated and defined. The very same thing is true of the tools that God has made – the natural laws of the universe.

As another example, God made you. Yet, you are not God. You have limitations that God does not have. You are just a tool of God’s creation. Your limitations can be investigated and defined…

I am doubtful of the quality of these websites, but they at least talk about particles spontaneously forming in space.

As far as I’m aware, the claims of these websites are mistaken. No one has actually observed electrons or any other subatomic particle popping into existence from nothing… never.

“God uses His power and intelligence to create the final product in one fell swoop. There is no need for trial and error when God creates. He does it right the first time” – Sean Pitman

For living organisms, doing it right the first time would include the ability to change in response to changing environments.

Yes, but like with my hammer, there are limitations to how much change can be realized via mindless mechanisms – like random mutations and natural selection. Nature is not God nor is it intelligent like God. Nature is not infinite. It is finite. Nature’s limitations can be investigated and determined to a very useful degree of predictive value.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectignDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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