Comment on Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda by Eddie.
Susie, I think Professor Kent’s comments were in response to Bob Ryan’s original comment:
As SAU’s professor Spencer, and Southwestern’s Chadwick and others at LLU and AU etc – illustrate, we have good science going forward and doing research to demonstrate the evidence in favor of creation science.
In my opinion–and I think many would agree with me–the best science among SDA professors that favors creation science is emanating from the labs of Drs. Leonard Brand and Paul Buccheim at Loma Linda University, where the professors supervise graduate students, have access to research funding, and are unencumbered with undergraduate teaching. Professor Kent is correcting in noting that Drs. Lee Spencer and Arthur Chadwick unfortunately have published very little in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t done good research. Both happen to be professors in institutions with only undergraduate students and both happen to have heavy teaching loads. It’s very difficult to be a productive scientist–even to do any science at all–when you’re teaching three courses with labs per term to dozens if not hundreds of students, advising students, attending committee meetings, maintaining family relationships, observing the sabbath, etc. There simply isn’t much time available for scientific research.
If we as a church want our science professors to succeed in creation research, we have to create conditions that are more conducive for them to conduct and publish their research. Our SDA scientists clearly need more time and financial support for conducting their research. I suggest establishing a large endowment providing research funds for SDA professors to conduct original research on origins. The endowment could be controlled by those of you who are conservative in your views and will help conservative professors compensate for the difficulty in obtaining funding for research on origins from conventional sources. Professors could apply for the funds which would be awarded based on merit as judged by a committee. Just think of it: you could establish the Sean Pitman Creation Research Fund or the David Research Creation Research Fund! The availability of such funding for research would likely encourage young, aspiring science students to become professors in SDA institutions.
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Eddie Also Commented
Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda
I wonder whether the dying thief on the cross was told by Jesus that he needed to believe in a 6-day creation week in the past 4,000 years and in a worldwide flood that covered every speck of land before he could be saved?
Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda
@Kevin Paulson:
You insist that correct doctrine will save no one. And you are wrong. Over and over again, in Holy Scripture, truth is declared to be the means of salvation (Hosea 4:6; Matt. 4:4; John 8:31; II Thess. 2:13; I Tim. 4:16).
Hmmmm. As a lifelong SDA I can’t recall ever being told this by a SDA pastor. So only Sabbath-keeping YECs are going to make it to heaven? And as long as I’m a Sabbath-keepig YEC and believe in all the other correct doctrines I can go out and commit adultery all I want and still be saved?
Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda
Oops! I meant the David Read (not Research) Creation Research Fund.
Recent Comments by Eddie
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
SDA Bio Prof: The Bible makes multiple falsifiable prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar conquering Egypt, yet history never records it happening. Does this mean the Bible is effectively falsified?
Sean Pitman: Egyptians had a strong tendency not to record their losses… only their victories.
Sean, does that mean YOU personally believe Babylon conquered Egypt, just as predicted by two prophets? In the absence of any empirical evidence? If the Egyptians didn’t record their losses, why wouldn’t the Babylonians have recorded such a stunning victory?
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Holly Pham: One of the things that has always concerned me is that, according to what I’ve read, birds and reptiles have completely different forms of respiratory systems (flow-through vs. bellows) How is this explained by evolutionists?
Evidence from the vertebrae of non-avian theropod dinosaurs suggests that they, too, possessed unidirectional flow-through ventilation of the lungs. So, according to evolutionary theory, it evolved first in “primitive” non-avian theropods rather than in birds, and comprises one of many shared derived characters supposedly linking birds with more “advanced” theropods. However, I don’t think there is any evidence or even a hypothesis for a step-by-step process of HOW it evolved. Here is a reference:
http://www.ohio.edu/people/ridgely/OconnorClaessensairsacs.pdf
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Bob Helm: Bob, if you send me an e-mail at sdabioprof2@gmail.com I will send you a pdf file of a 1991 article published by Chatterjee in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 332:277-342, titled “Cranial anatomy and relationships of a new Triassic bird from Texas.”
Curiously his description is based only on cranial anatomy. I don’t think he ever published an analysis of its postcranial anatomy.
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
David Read: Eddie, ecological zonation will yield the same basic order that you’re pointing to: invertebrates appear before vertebrates; fish appear before amphibians; amphibians appear before reptiles; reptiles appear before mammals; reptiles appear before birds, etc.
It could, and it’s the best creationist explanation, but it doesn’t explain why flowering plants were absent from lowland forests. Or why so many land plants appeared before mangroves, which today occur strictly in the intertidal zone. Or why no pre-flood humans have been found. Or, if Sean is correct that the flood ended at the K-T boundary, why many modern groups of birds and mammals (including marine mammals) which first appear during the Tertiary were not buried by the flood.
David Read: The fact that something appears before something else in the fossil record is not proof than anything evolved into anything else.
True.
David Read: You seem to be complaining that God has not made the fossil evidence compulsory, i.e., so clear that no reasonable person can possibly doubt it. And if God hasn’t made the evidence skeptic-proof, then the skeptic is God’s fault, God is responsible for the skeptic.
I’m not complaining. I’m merely pointing out that the evidence can be interpreted in different ways by honest people. And I’m relieved to see that even you don’t think the evidence is crystal clear.
David Read: Only people of faith can be saved, that is, only people who are willing to trust God and put away doubts can be saved.
I agree.
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
David Read: Those tracks are so obviously bird tracks that the fact that some scientists want to assign them to “birdlike theropods” is itself a very useful teaching tool as to how the model creates the data.
David Read: That the model actually creates the data is one of the hardest concepts to get across, not only to lay people but even to the scientists themselves.
How does the model affect the data? Data don’t change and they shouldn’t change. It’s the interpretation, not the data, that is affected by the model.
