Deal with LSU

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.

Deal with LSU

Sean Pitman, M.D.: I never said that the case for or against creationism or evolutionism was “very simple”. 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?

Deal with 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.

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.