Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by David Read.
@Eddie: It’s true, Eddie.
Sean Pitman and others have known for several years that La Sierra’s biology faculty was largely Darwinist and has been teaching Darwinism as truth. By 2009, this site had publicized the situation enough so that many people in the church wanted to do something about it. When Ted Wilson was elected GC president in 2010, he immediately started thinking about how to correct the problem. But really the only leverage the GC has over La Sierra, aside from some committee members and constituency members, is denominational accreditation through AAA. And when AAA found that La Sierra had “deviated from the Adventist philosophy of education,” that really got their attention.
Randal Wisbey was still thinking that he could control the situation. His way of controlling the situation was to cut off all channels of communication except through him. The biology faculty was not to talk to anyone except him, and the Board of Trustees was not to talk to anyone but him, including the NAD and the biology faculty. He was hoping to just ride out the storm without really doing anything about the problem. He’s never taken one positive, concrete step to address the problem.
But that wasn’t good enough for Lee Greer, so Greer actually spearheaded an attempt to solve the problem by talking to the relevant NAD officials, particularly Blackmer. Greer opened channels of communication that had not previously existed. After years of complete gridlock there was finally movement. What Lee Greer did was heroic. The administration of the church at large was thrilled with the Joint Proposal that Lee Greer drafted, and that 5 other LSU biology faculty signed.
Read the Joint Proposal:
http://www.adventistreview.org/site/1/2011-1527/Joint%20Proposal%20of%20….
Then read the church’s response:
http://www.adventistreview.org/article/4769/archives/issue-2011-1527/27c….
http://www.adventistreview.org/site/1/2011-1527/Response%20to%20Joint%20….
The church was so relieved and gratified that the biology faculty (six of them signed the Joint Statement) was willing to yield to church concerns even in the slightest degree.
(This is in contrast, to me, Sean Pitman, and other Educate Truth people who want creation science to be taught as science, in a scientifically rigorous manner, not merely as faith. I was very critical of the Joint Proposal when it came out, but unlike Larry Blackmer, I had not been banging my head against the Chinese wall Randal Wisbey had tried to build between the LSU biology faculty and rest of the world.)
The NAD, Dan Jackson, and Larry Blackmer were ecstatic with the Joint Statement, but Randal Wisbey was not. He was incensed, because was Greer did was totally contrary to his own strategy of trying to clamp down on the flow of information and ride out the storm, hoping that Educate Truth would just tire out and go away. So the fact that someone–one of his own faculty members–actually DID SOMETHING about the problem enraged him. Dr. Greer, in his press release, tells what happened next:
“The Administration insisted that the biology faculty sign a hastily-written, official apology memo over the release of the informal proposal. Because of the memo’s mischaracterizations and errors of fact, Dr. Greer refused to sign giving his reasons in summary—despite several warnings communicated to him that failure to sign would place his faculty position in jeopardy.”
The other biology faculty knuckled under to Wisbey’s rage and signed the apology memo, repudiating the Joint Proposal, but Lee Greer had too much integrity, too much character. So Wisbey fired him.
In addition, Wisbey went to the extraordinary lengths of having three of the four Trustees who had also signed the Joint Proposal–Kathryn Proffitt, Carla Lidner-Baum, and Marta Tooma–voted off the Board of Trustees. Obviously, Wisbey was absolutely incensed at the Joint Proposal and everything about it. But because the church had already embraced the substance of it, he could not publicly repudiate its substance.
I believe that Lee Greer is telling the truth in his press release for several reasons. First, it accords with what I’ve independently learned about the situation. Second, it accords with what other, better informed people have told me about the situation. Third, the press release was made in consultation with the attorney who will be representing Greer in a lawsuit with LSU, and I’m confident that the attorney would not have consented to make any factual assertions that will not be provable at trial.
I’m very confident that the facts as I’ve reported them are true.
David Read Also Commented
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Eddie: Eddie, Randal Wisbey is a full grown man. He can tell his side of the story any time he wants. I’m guessing he hasn’t thought about it enough, or consulted with counsel long enough, to decide what his side of the story is.
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Bill Sorensen: Bill, there is a double standard, but I take it as a compliment that they thought that what I posted about Wisbey was defamatory. It shows that they know that what I write is taken more seriously than what others write.
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Holly Pham: Holly, Lee is contemplating a lawsuit against LSU and is not able to comment freely. The press release was written in consultation with Lee’s attorney, who has probably insisted that Lee not make any public comments not drafted by the attorney.
Recent Comments by David Read
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: I do not agree that science must be naturalistic, but if that is your bottom line, it will not trouble me much where it concerns most day-to-day science–the study of current, repeating phenomena. But a rigid naturalism applied to origins morphs into philosophical atheism. Hence, mainstream origins science is not science but atheistic apologetics. This is what should not be done at an Adventist school, but sadly what has been the rule at La Sierra.
Dr. Paul Cameron and the God of the Gaps
@Pauluc: The Adventist doctrine of creation is that God created the world in six days and rested on the Seventh day and hallowed it. (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:11) Do you believe that doctrine? It won’t do to say that you accept some vague “Christian doctrine of creation.” The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a very specific mission to call people back to the worship of the creator God, on the day that He hallowed at the creation.
You say you believe that the “core doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,” but what was Jesus Christ incarnated to do? Wasn’t his mission to redeem fallen humanity, to be the second Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed? And doesn’t your view of origins make nonsense of a perfect creation, a literal Adam who fell, and the need for redemption because of Adam’s sin? You seem to want to gloss over all the very profound differences you have not only with Seventh-day Adventist dcotrine, but with the most basic reasons that Seventh-day Adventism exists.
The syncretistic hodgepodge religion you’ve created for yourself, combining elements of a biblical world view (the incarnation) and elements of a pagan worldview (a self-created creation) is not Adventism. It is anti-Seventh-day Adventism.
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Holly Pham: Holly, I will try, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: Since no creationist could land a job as chairman of a biology department at a public university, it seems entirely appropriate that no Darwinist should be given the chairmanship of a biology department of a Seventh-day Adventist college.
The SDA educational system doesn’t exist to expensively duplicate the public university system. It exists to provide a uniquely biblical and Seventh-day Adventist education to interested young people. If mainstream origins science is correct in its assumptions and conclusions about our origins, the entire enterprise of Seventh-day Adventism is an utterly foolish waste of time. So at Adventist institutions, our professors should assume that Darwinistic science is false, and that creationistic science is true (just the reverse of how it is done at public universities), and proceed accordingly.
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@gene fortner: What I like about your list of topics, Gene, is that it points out that many disciplines are implicated in the necessary change of worldview. It isn’t just biology and geology, although those are the main ones. History, archeology, anthropology and other disciplines should also be approached from a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview should pervade the entire curriculum.
