I have three immediate questions for you, Sean: First, was the …

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

I have three immediate questions for you, Sean:

First, was the statement from Ellen White that you quoted (Ellen White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 115) divinely inspired, or was it her opinion?

Second, were her opinions on science always correctly informed?

Third, do all of Ellen White’s opinions represent the “historical Adventist position?”

There were instances when Ellen White gave incorrect statements about science for reasons we have yet to understand, but clearly her personal understanding of science was, in some cases, incorrect.

There was a time, for example, when Ellen White wrote of “for nearly” 6,000 years and “over 6,000 years.” Which was correct? Both could not have been. She clearly referred to Bishop Ussher’s widely discredited chronology, which at that time was in the margin of virtually every Christian’s KJV Bible. How would those in her day have accepted a direct revelation giving a different time? Willie White even acknowledged that his mother did not consider herself an authority in the areas of dates and chronology. But if Ellen White’s understanding of science was 100% correct, we would have to accept that the earth was no older than 6,000 at some point during the later years of her life.

Further, when Joseph Bates questioned her authenticity, she once went into a vision in his presence. During the vision, she described regions in space having beautiful belts and rings, and planets having six and seven moons. Bates understood some astronomy and recognized the planets she described as Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus. What was the purpose of this vision? It was to convince Bates that she was for real. But do the numbers agree with what we know about those planets. Heavens no! She clearly UNDERSTATED the number of moons present, which we now number in the dozens for those planets. Could she have understated other numbers, like 6,000 years, or should we accept her words as de facto science. You might argue she was not shown all of the moons, and someone else might argue she was not show the full length of time since the creation.

Consider two more examples. Ellen White had it all wrong when she described how buried coal beds occasionally ignited to produce earthquakes and volcanoes. This concept was largely believed in her day, but now has no credibility. The same can be said regarding how masturbation causes mental illness, which we now politely smile at.

So if her own understanding of certain scientific ideas was misinformed, how could she possibly “know” (without also being misinformed) that science NEVER contradicts Scripture? Her views were often culturally conditioned and sometimes were flat out wrong. This doesn’t delegitimize her prophet calling, but we should be cautious in how dogmatic we are in the use of her quotes.

There is yet another problem. If we accept her statement that you often quote at face value, we would have to conclude that Satan has never been permitted to intervene in human history or in nature in ways that might lead to contradictions between real data and Scripture. Do you accept this conclusion that logically follows if her statement is 100% correct? Either her statement is wrong (to some extent), or there is no circumstance under which real data, properly interpreted, could ever contradict Scripture. Which way will you have it?

Kristen Schmidtz Also Commented

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools

Sean Pitman:
The position of some of the church leaders on how to interpret the Bible via the “historical-grammatical hermeneutic” is not a “fundamental belief” or doctrine of the church as an organization.Therefore, there is no reason to “leave the church” over different views as to how the Bible’s credibility should be established.

Have you not read the church’s official fundamental beliefs? Here they are: http://bit.ly/1y9b2CS. The very first statement in the prelude to the beliefs reads, “Seventh-day Adventists accept the Bible as the only source of our beliefs. We consider our movement to be the result of the Protestant conviction Sola Scriptura—the Bible as the only standard of faith and practice for Christians.”

Obviously, the 28 fundamental beliefs are based on this premise. You couldn’t get any more “fundamental” than this.

I do admire your willingness to challenge the church’s official hermeneutic, though many of its leaders would see your philosophy and approach as dangerous. In his recent sermon before the Annual Council, Ted Wilson said Satan was using every means at his disposal to try to destroy the Adventist Church and neutralize its mission of proclaiming Jesus’ soon coming. According to the Adventist News Network (http://bit.ly/1wiTqmI):

He singled out the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation as undesirable, saying it clouded the themes and topics of the Bible. ‘As we seek to know God’s will through a study of His Word, we must not place strange interpretations and employ interpretive gymnastics to draw out conclusions that are not evident from a plain reading of the Word,’ he said.

Have you tried sending an article to the Adventist Review to present your arguments why the historical-critical approach is essential to establish faith in Scripture, and that accepting Scripture on its own merits (blindly) constitutes fideism? Somehow I don’t believe the church’s leaders or the editors of AR would tolerate your views.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools

Fred: At the conference Ed Zinke and Richard Davidson gave close to a dozen talks between them that extolled a historical-grammatical hermeneutic devoid of any form of criticism. In their view the Bible ABSOLUTELY takes precedence above science and human reason. During several lectures Zinke even had the audience repeat after him “Scripture AND…” referring to the (presumably dangerous) alternative hermeneutics. Davidson answered a question during a panel session about whether their approach, the proclaimed “official” approach of the SDA church, constituted fideism to which he insisted it did not because the evidence considered derives from scripture rather than blind faith. At the end of the conference Ted Wilson forcefully endorsed the historical-grammatical hermeneutic during his final lecture.

If their beliefs derive from scripture, how do they know scripture is correct? If they eschew the use of science, history, or culture to interpret scripture, then why are they not fideists according to the definition all you people are using here, accepting scripture at face value? How do they accept the claims of scripture any differently than Pauluc?

Most of you here at Educate Truth are opposed to the church’s official historical-grammatical hermeneutic. You can deny it all you want, but your view absolutely contradicts the church’s official position. If you don’t get in line with Ted’s position, then you should have the integrity to leave the church and form one of your own that espouses your own critical hermeneutic.


Recent Comments by Kristen Schmidtz

Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science

The same is true for the hypothesis that biblical prophecies are real and could only be produced by Divine power. This empirical claim is both testable and easily falsifiable. All you have to do is show one of two things to effectively falsify this biblical claim: 1) that the “prophecy” was written after the fact or 2) that that the prophecy didn’t come true in real history.

And this two-prong means of “falsifying” Scripture also has a convenient loophole. Most Biblical prophecies are subject to interpretation, and spiritual things are spiritually (not empirically) discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14). Thus, fulfillment, as we all know, is very seldom agreed upon universally. And if everyone agrees that the prophecy finds no fulfillment from historical events (if interpreted properly, which will always be subject to disagreement), then the prophecy cannot be falsified, of course, because it is projected into the future.

Again, Dr. Pitman, your empirical test of Scripture utterly fails.


Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
So, I gather from Sean’s and Gene’s responses that science can be conveniently bypassed anytime something happens that defies all probability because, of course, an intelligent being had to do it (and not an intelligent creature that might have arisen through random processes on another of the innumerable planets and stars elsewhere in the universe). And, with this loophole reasoning, science can only support creationism and never refute it. Very clever approach.

And sorry, Sean, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that if humans one day show that there is a “natural” way by which life and complexity could evolve on their own, then this would prove God could not have done so. God could have simply used the very same means. Your argument is a false dichotomy.

I see no point in engaging this philosophical mumbo jumbo further. Enjoy your sanctimonious intellectualism.


Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science

Sean Pitman: The testable claims of the Bible, on the other hand, have passed test after test which has been brought against them – which gives the Bible superior credibility and provides us with a rational basis to also believe those empirical claims made by the Bible that are not directly testable. And, that is why faith in even the non-testable empirical claims of the Bible need not be a fideistic or “wishful thinking” type of faith.

I have described testable claims of Scripture that have CLEARLY and UNMISTAKABLY failed the test of science. They have absolutely failed and failed miserably, and you know perfectly well they have failed. Yet you declare that their failure is evidence that the claims must be true. In other words, you insist that testable claims of Scripture that can be supported prove the claims are accurate, and testable claims that cannot be supported prove the claims are accurate.

Obviously, you have set up your reasoning such that there is no test by which Scripture can fail. And you apply much more stringent tests to Evolution than you do for Scripture. Any intelligent reader can see your asymmetrical application of reasoning to Scripture versus Evolution.

Honestly, I think you’re a bit delusional.


Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
Many of you continue to claim that Christianity and SDA beliefs are superior because the claims of Scripture can be verified by science (or historical accounts, which are equated with science). You further insist that the claims of atheism and origins through evolutionary processes defy probability, and that anyone who accepts them (or claims of scripture without an evidentiary basis) is a fideist.

Here are a few tenets of evolution that are statistically very improbable:

1. Abiogenesis
2. Construction of molecular machines
3. Evolution of complex molecules (1000 or more fairly specified amino acid residues with a new function)
4. Beneficial mutations keeping pace with or exceeding deleterious mutations in long-lived organisms

Sean points out that the probability of these events happening are so infinitesimally small that they simply could not happen. And therefore one cannot believe in abiogenesis or common descent.

Yet there are many claims of Scripture and Christianity that are clearly refuted by science as well:

1. A living, breathing human can be formed from a pile of dirt upon a voice command (Adam) or from a human rib (Eve)
2. A virgin human (Mary) can give birth to a child (Jesus)
3. A deceased human body can return to life after being dead for three days (Lazarus, Jesus)
4. A living, breathing human can lift skyward without any visible means of propulsion until it disappears from sight (Jesus)

If we are going to claim that our beliefs are superior to those of Mormons or even atheists because we have so-called “reason” and “evidence” to back them, we really should reconsider. Many of the claims of scripture, including these four which are foundational to our beliefs, have been shown by science to be physically impossible. Evolutionary claim #1, for example, is no less scientifically tenable than Scriptural claim #1; yet we mock the former and insist it is impossible, when science offers not a speck more support for the latter. The same can be said for Scriptural claims #2 and #3. There have been trillions upon trillions of mammalian births and deaths, involving a wide range of genome configurations under highly diverse conditions, yet there has never been one recorded instance of virgin birth or a life revived three days subsequent to death. And Scriptural claim #4 has been clearly refuted: humans have experimented endlessly with flight. We have as good a grasp–if not a better–on the physical laws that are defied by the Scriptural claims as we do those that are defied by the Evolutionary claims.

Sean has insisted that these claims of scripture are “metaphysical,” and cannot be falsified. This is total rubbish. Why would “life cannot assemble on its own from basic elements” be any more testable or falsifiable than “a human life cannot assemble from elements of dirt when a sound is made,” or “a human life cannot be assembled from a human rib.” If anything, the latter hypotheses are easier to test, as they are much more restrictive. None of these claims of scripture are any more “metaphysical” than the claims of abiogenesis and common descent. If anything, there have been far more experiments (millions of mammalian births and deaths EVERY YEAR) showing the impossibility of scriptural claims #2 and #3 than all experiments of science to date in the history of mankind that have sought to demonstrate evolutionary claims #1-4 combined.

So, Sean, Wesley, Gene, Ron, Bob, and Phil, upon what basis do you believe that these empirical claims of Scripture, which are as directly testable as many claims of evolution, are literally true when science offers abundant evidence to show they are flat-out wrong? If you are claiming that other evidences from the cannon of Scripture (the stories of a handful of men) can be supported, which prompts you to accept ALL claims of scripture, then why is your “reasoning” superior to the claim that other evidences from the cannon of evolutionary theory (the detailed, replicable experiments of thousands of men and women scientists) can be supported, which prompts someone to accept abiogenesis and common descent?

And who is the “fideist” among us?