Comment on Deal with LSU by Carl.
There is a huge bit of SDA history that people need to know about, and I believe that this site has an obligation to inform its readers as much as possible. It is not right to frame LSU faculty members as arch heretics when, in fact, they are only a small piece of a bigger issue involving many more people.
During the 1950’s, church leaders became aware that the evidence from geology and archaeology (particularly Egyptology) did not fit well with Ussher’s chronology. R. R. Fighur recognized these issues and, among other things, was instrumental in starting Geoscience Research Institute. Dr. Richard Hammill, a GC Vice President, President of Andrews University and chairman of the GRI Research Guidance Committee, was very much involved in discussing these issues. Late in his retirement, Dr. Hammill was very clear that he saw major problems with a short chronology. Here are two quotations from an interview. (The complete interview from 1997 is available on line.)
Hammill Interview: http://www.atoday.com/files/Mar-Apr%201997_1.pdf
“I would suspect that the majority of Adventists will always believe in a short chronology of creation. I think however, that increasing numbers of Adventists who have studied into the subject will be forced to realize, as I have, that life forms have existed on the earth for long periods of time before other genera and species appear.â€
“ … we planned at first that it [Geoscience Research Institute] would be a research group …. We had thought we might even develop a carbon 14 and amino acid dating lab. But then the person that we had trained in that area left the Institute. … Some of the early staff there, like Richard Ritland, Harold James and Ed Lugenbeal, were oriented toward research. The main controlling committee established a group known as the Research Guidance Committee, of which I was the Chair. … However, when Robert Pierson became president of the General Conference, he appointed one of the vice-presidents to be chairman of the Geoscience Research Board. Immediately he disbanded the Research Guidance Committee. Under his influence, the emphasis was changed from research to apologetics. Since that time the Geoscience Research staff has been chosen to be apologists for the short chronology of earth history.â€
The person who left was P. E. Hare. He had started research intending to show that C14 dating was not valid. When he realized that his own work supported C14 dating, he soon found that he was not welcome to continue, so he left GRI and became internationally known for his work at the Carnegie Institute. Others also left because they were no longer free to do honest science.
So, what you might say is that, fifty years ago, the church took a hard look at the scientific data and didn’t like what it saw, whereupon Robert Pierson changed GRI from “research to apologetics.†That’s pretty much where we’ve been ever since. You won’t read about it in the Review because, for some reason, church leaders think it’s better that most people don’t know about such problems. Thankfully, Adventist Today has presented a good bit of what others have wished to suppress.
Before you demand action at LSU, you need to take some time to understand the problem. There have been several meetings to deal with science issues. Generally, these meetings have been dominated by conservative theology, and science people have not found much satisfaction. The issue is not limited to just a few people who have decided to undermine the teachings of the church. It’s a major fraction of science educated Adventists who find themselves in a political process where the power structure of the church has never permitted an open discussion of the problems. Many Adventist scientists have either left the church or chosen to be quiet.
What makes me sad now is that the church leadership has left LSU to suffer alone. If Dr. Hammill, a former GC Vice President and President of AU, found evidence in favor of evolution, what makes you think that we don’t have a problem bigger than LSU? The evidence for the old age of life will not go away no mater how many faculty are driven out of LSU. It is a tragedy for this Web site to over simplify the problem as it has.
PS. There’s a lot of reading that needs to be done. Here is a related article written by Dr. Hammill.
http://spectrummagazine.org/files/archive/archive11-15/15-2hammill.pdf
Also, The Creationists, by Ron Numbers, is an important book for understanding this topic. Further, since the real challenges to a short chronology come from geology more than biology, the book Noah’s Flood, by Ryan and Pitman, is very understandable.
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Carl Also Commented
Sean Pitman, M.D.: This forum is about the issue of professors in SDA schools taking money from the SDA Church organization while teaching their students ideas that directly counter what the SDA Church organization currently stands for. That is a moral wrong.
Sean,
By that reasoning, I conclude that Luther must have committed a terrible moral wrong.
Sean Pitman, M.D.: I never said that the case for or against creationism or evolutionism was “very simpleâ€. It isn’t simple at all.
I was speaking of your alleged case against LSU, not the evolution/creation issue. You are demanding a very simple policy; Either fully support all fundamental beliefs or get out (of LSU). I am saying that there is no simple policy for dealing with something this complex. When people of the stature of Richard Hammill and Raymond Cottrell have raised honest questions about our traditions, I say it’s time to think it through, not rush to judgement. People who claim to search for truth must be tolerant of diverse opinions. Otherwise, you are likely to become locked in a stagnant set of traditions, and that’s exactly the accusation we bring against other religions.
For a considerable time, church administration has use political power to stifle discussion of the issues that challenge our historical literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11. The sequence of three Faith and Science meetings several years ago were not well reported, and the reports were clearly biased. Also, the science participation was kept small enough that even a unanimous agreement of the science-educated participants would not have reached a majority.
So, church administration has chosen to keep our members uninformed. Critical meetings dealing with science issues have been essentially closed. Now, you launch a Web site against LSU as if they are the real problem. I believe it is deceptive to create a Web site making it appear that the problem is as simple as a few errant professors at LSU.
If the church has failed to deal with the science issues, and people like Hammill and Cottrell have raised unanswered questions, is it fair to single out LSU?
Sean Pitman, M.D.: You argue that the SDA Church is not creedal, therefore anything goes essentially…
Your argument by extention is pure nonsense. I have never argued that anything goes and I don’t believe such a thing. However, there are times when issues need to be re-examined, and this is one of them.
Recent Comments by Carl
Panda’s Thumb: ‘SDAs are split over evolution’
These layers should have been washed away many times over by now. That’s the problem.
Well — maybe. I’d say the real problem for your position is that no one has proposed a comprehensive model that can explain the evidence of geology within about 10,000 years. That is such a huge problem that I don’t know why we are talking about anything else. The evidence for life beyond 10,000 years is massive as compared to the few objections that Sean has collected.
Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
Sean,
I understand better how you have reached your conclusions. You have a powerful bias that the Bible must be literal history, and that predisposition has driven much of your scientific thinking. What still mystifies me is that you attempt to take the open issues of science and use them as an argument that a short history is equally as believable (I think you claim more believable) as a long history. That is one huge leap.
I’ve read parts of your personal Web site, and it seems to me that you have failed to establish your points. In what you have written, I have found no compelling evidence to believe a short history. You do well in raising doubts about the standard model, but doubts on one side are not a convincing argument on the other side.
You do not have any detectable theory of how the earth could possibly come to be as it is within about 10,000 years. Your discussion above again misses the major issue. The evidence that is at odds with a short history is much greater than the evidence that is at odds with a long history. You have come nowhere close to showing otherwise. Ten thousand years is a very short period of time.
Report on LSU constituency meeting
Here’s a link for Hammill’s interesting report:
http://spectrummagazine.org/files/archive/archive11-15/15-2hammill.pdf
Report on LSU constituency meeting
@BobRyan:
Not found in Adventist literature.
Not found in Quiquinium voted documents.
So “general†as in you and a few of your closes friends?
How is that “general�
The Consultant Committee on Geoscience Research was terminated and a new emphasis was instituted for staff activities. Research tended to concentrate on selected areas where the data were most supportive of the 6,000-year biblical chronology of Bishop Ussher. Before long, the tacit policy arrived at in the 1950s during the General Conference presidency of W. H. Branson (to the effect that the 6,000-year chronology need not be emphasized in Seventh-day Adventist publications) was abandoned. (Richard Hammill, AAF Spectrum, Vol 15, No. 2 p 41)
I did not know Dr Hammill personally, so, no, this wasn’t cooked up among my closest friends.
Report on LSU constituency meeting
@Art Chadwick:
The theology department has preceded the sciences by some year in losing confidence in the Scriptures and in promoting belief in naturalism.
Here again is the suggestion that we must interpret Scripture literally or else we are “losing confidence” in them. I think it often works the other way around. By insisting on literal details, we can miss the most important point and make it more difficult to believe.
The tragedy of this Web site is that it thwarts the creative thinking that we need for dealing with modern science issues. It’s not an easy problem, and the success of this site will drive many thinking people into seclusion. That’s where we’ve been for decades.
In the 1950s, there was a general understanding that Adventist literature would not emphasize a 6000 year history. President Robert Pierson brought that to an end and set us on a path to avoid any science that we did not like. The result is that many Adventists are very suspicious of science and scientists.
If truth has nothing to fear from examination, which sometimes seems to be a Adventist assumption, I say it’s time to stop trying to fix LSU. Students are pretty good at figuring out who to believe. So, if you’re afraid to think out of the box, go where you’ll be told what to think. If you want think it out for yourself, go where the box has been opened.
I have little doubt that Geanna, Adventist Student, and many others will figure things out with or without the “help” of the reformers sponsoring and speaking on this site.
