You completely miss the point of inspired writing if you …

Comment on Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools by Sean Pitman.

You completely miss the point of inspired writing if you imagine they are scientific writing about empirical events that demand scientific verification. Like Moby Dick their value is independent of their ability to be verified as empirically or scientifically accurate.

Kind of like a good moral fable? Is there an echo in here? 😉

The problem here, as I’ve already mentioned, is that you’re not just claiming that the Bible is a good moral fable and that’s it. If you were, we’d be having a completely different discussion. I agree that moral fables have their value – no doubt. However, you believe that the Bible’s claims regarding things like the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Jesus, and the story of Heaven to come aren’t just moral fables – they’re literally true stories about real events that either did happen in real history or will happen in the future!

Don’t you see how that’s a good bit different than getting something good out of a moral fable like Moby-Dick?

I guess if you think Genesis is scientific it is then not at all unexpected that you will lift Barre’s comment about the original understanding of Genesis out of context of his understanding and writing on biblical exegesis.

Oh please. My use of Barr’s quote was strictly limited to addressing your original claim that the author of the Genesis account didn’t necessarily intend to present a literal historical narrative – when that’s obviously what he did in fact intend to do.

Of course Barr never did believe that the Genesis account represents real history. Barr was an evolutionists just like you are. However, what Barr did believe is that the author of Genesis did in fact intend to present real history. Barr just believed that the author of Genesis was wrong. These are very different arguments you understand.

Though you may claim otherwise it appears you follow the Intellectual tradition of fundamentalist Sean.

You’re far more in the mindset of a fundamentalist than I am. How so? Fundamentalism is strongly associated with fideism. While you may not believe many of the historically Christian doctrines, you are still a fundamentalist in the way you approach your Christian faith and your own religion. As with all fundamentalists, your position is impervious to testing and cannot be falsified by any kind of empirical evidence – no matter how strong. You base everything on your own personal “gestalt” as a way to determine truth – as do all my fundamentalist friends of various faiths.

So, regardless of the fact that your version of Christianity is not traditional, you’re still a “fundamentalist” in how you think to defend your religion and your faith.

The scientist who rather than breaking can hold incompatibilities in tension as they slowly resolve these with a continued search for new models and paradigms based on data.

But you don’t base your “gestalt” type of faith on empirical data at all. Like any true “fundamentalist”, you base your faith and your religion entirely on subjective internally-derived feelings of truth.

Again, I ask you, what is the difference between your faith and wishful thinking? How can any kind of meaningful paradigm about the empirical world that exists outside of the mind be based on entirely subjective feelings?

I’ve responded to numerous questions from you. Why not address my one question?

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
As I’ve pointed out before, there are a lot of books claiming to be “The Word of God”. How do you know that the Bible’s claim, among so many competing options, is true? – based on a feeling? That’s how you know? Did an angel show up and tell you that the Bible’s claims are true? – or how to interpret it? Were you born with this knowledge? or did you have to learn it? If you had to learn that the Bible’s claims are true, upon what did you base your learning? – and how did this basis of your learning help you distinguish the true from the false?

At first approximation, the Bible is just a book making a bunch of claims. How can you tell the difference between the origin of the Bible and the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an? In order to determine that God had anything to do with its creation, you have to read it and make judgments about it. If you base your judgments on some kind of deep feeling or gestalt sensation of truth, I say that this isn’t a reliable basis for a leap of faith. However, if you base your acceptance of the claims of the Bible on rational arguments that make sense given what you already think you know to be true, then you have yourself a much more useful and helpful basis for faith… as the Bible itself recommends.

God does not expect us to believe or have faith without sufficient evidence to establish a rational and logical faith in the claims of the Bible. Have you not read where the Bible challenges the honest seeker for truth to “test” even the claims of God? (Judges 6:39; Malachi 3:10; John 14:11; etc…). We are not called to blindly accept anything as true, not even the Bible. The claims of the Bible must be tested to see if they truly are what they claim to be – i.e., the Words of God.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
I haven’t changed my mind. I still see atheism as the most logical alternative to Christianity and any other view of God if such views of God are only based on a wishful-thinking type of fideistic faith. Why should one be a Christian or believe that the Bible is anything more than a good moral fable? – or believe that God exists any more than Santa Claus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? For me, it’s because I see real empirical evidence for God’s existence as well as His Signature within the pages of the Bible and within the universe and the world in which I find myself.

You see, we are called to have an “intelligent trust” in God’s Word – a trust that is based on something more than a deep feeling or internal gestalt. Otherwise, you’re really in the same boat as my LDS friends with their “burning in the bosom” argument for faith in what is or isn’t true.

Now, it is possible to doubt the Divine origin of the Bible while still recognizing the Divine origin of the universe – based on the weight of empirical evidence. This is where quite a number of modern physicists are in their view of God. And, it is a reasonable position given the honest conviction that life and its diversity can evolve via the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection over long periods of time to produce what we have today on this planet.

So, there are different “levels” of recognition when it comes to seeing God’s hand behind various phenomena. And, once His Signature is recognized at a different level, the implications and responsibilities change for us. It’s a “first step” toward God to recognize a Divine Signature behind the origin of the universe and the natural laws that govern it. However, once one recognizes the Divine Hand behind the origin of the Bible and the credibility of the Bible’s empirical claims, one is called to experience different responsibilities and privileges in a higher level walk with God – “in Spirit and in truth”.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
Again, there are somethings that, if seen in vision, cannot be easily misinterpreted. If you see that “there was light” then “there was darkness” and that this pattern of was used to mark off a series of seven days, that’s pretty hard to get wrong or misinterpret. Mrs. White also confirms these biblical claims by arguing that God specifically showed her that the creation week was a literal week “like any other”.

So, what needs to happen now is see which claims among competing claims are most likely true. Where does the “weight of evidence lie”? If the claims of neo-Darwinism are true, then the claims of the Bible aren’t just a matter of honest misinterpretations – they are either completely made up fabrications or they are outright lies – from God.

I will say, however, the Darwins observations did help to shed light on the Bible. For example, there were those who believed in the absolute fixity of the species – that nothing could change and that no new species of any kind could be produced by natural mechanisms. Darwin showed, quite clearly, that this interpretation of the Bible was false. So, Darwin’s discoveries did shed light on the Bible’s comments about reproduction “after their kind”. However, the Bible sheds light on Darwin’s claims by showing the clear limitations of Darwinian-type evolution – to very low levels of functional complexity over a short period of time (i.e., not hundreds of millions of years of evolution).

Again, we have science and Scripture shedding light on each other…


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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.

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