Susie, I think Professor Kent’s comments were in response to …

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.

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
A couple of those professors no longer teach at LSU.


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?


Recent Comments by Eddie

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Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation

Stephen&#032Ferguson: Sean, how did we get to this position? In particular, why after spending decades and millions of dollars has the official Church’s own pet organisation, the Geoscience Research Institute, done so little to disprove evolution?

Why if it is all hogwash has it been thoroughly not been disproved over the last 150 years? Why do some 99% of scientists across a multitude of different fields (e.g. paleontologists, physicists, archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists, chemists, cosmologists, historians, cosmologists and geologists etc) all consider evolution to be the most plausible model?

Maybe because the evidence for microevolution and speciation is overwhelming. And some evidence for megaevolution (e.g., sequence of fossils) and long geological ages can be perplexing to explain from the perspective of most (but not all) young life and young earth creationists.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: Why, if it is all rubbish, is there Adventist scientists and theologians who believe in evolution? Why would they risk their careers and standing in the Church to promote something they consider truth, given the huge pressure to just shut up, if they didn’t believe there was something in it?

Maybe because they’re not as honest as some prominent supporters here. Or their faith is weaker. Or, perhaps, physicians and lawyers are simply better trained than scientists and theologians to evaluate scientific evidence.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: I really, really hope Christian scientists, especially Adventist ones, will disprove evolution some day.

Me too.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: If the SDA hierarchy wants someone to blame for all this, they should blame themselves. It has been their pet organisations that have so spectacularly failed to offer scientific arguments in favour of YEC. Ted Wilson must accept some of the blame onto himself – if not personally then on behalf of the hierachy he leads.

I wouldn’t blame anybody. But if they were to fire the current GRI staff, hire certain supporters here, and then move GRI from LLU to SAU or SWAU, I suspect a certain faction of the church would be happier.


La Sierra University won’t neglect creation teaching, president, chairman vow
Sean, you have essentially written enough about this to publish a book, which you ought to do, exhorting SDAs to abandon Sola Scriptura and rely exclusively on empirical data, which surely will be a best seller among neoconservative SDAs.


Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
Like Ken, I am puzzled by the lukewarm reception of his suggestion to establish an endowed chair for intelligent design at LSU. Perhaps there was confusion about his term “intelligent design.” I think he had in mind the kind of creationism that most SDAs believe in, specifically young earth creationism or young life creationism (I realize some of you view ID negatively). So it could be called an Endowed Chair of Young Life Creationism, or whatever term is preferred.

For what it’s worth, I like his idea for several reasons:

1) SDA professors in all our institutions with the exception of LLU have relatively heavy teaching loads and scant time available for research, which means they have little time to conduct and publish research on creationism (I’m quite certain Art Chadwick would concur). That’s why as a denomination we have no well published and respected researchers with expertise on the subject, with the sole exception of Leonard Brand at LLU–who ranks among the world’s most successful scientists whose research focuses on YLC (if you believe there are other SDA experts with more expertise, you might be disappointed if you conducted a search of their publication records).

2) Most students in our institutions are seeking a career in a health profession, therefore SDA professors by necessity focus mostly on subjects that prepare students for the biomedical fields. Few have time to keep up with issues related to creationism and evolution, let alone conduct original research on the subject. You can’t really expect all professors to be as well informed with the subject as Leonard Brand.

3) It would be fantastic for LSU to have a professor with the available time and resources to pursue high quality research on creationism, which I believe was the intent of Ken’s wish. We already have one such professor at LLU; why not another at LSU? I’m astonished that some here seem to think it is undesirable to have another expert SDA researcher on the subject. Perhaps some of you naively imagine that ALL professors have the unlimited time and resources to become world-class researchers on creationism–and are wasting the denomination’s money by not doing so.

4) SDA institutions struggle to meet their payroll obligations and can benefit by obtaining financial assistance from donors.

5) If the evidence overwhelmingly favors the traditional SDA position of origins, as some here claim, what harm is there in funding a professor with the time and resources to discover even more evidence? It’s pretty hard to convince the world that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly favors our position unless the evidence is published in respectable scientific journals–as Leonard Brand has done repeatedly. It won’t ever happen unless there are more full-time researchers who focus exclusively on issues related to creationism.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Sean&#032Pitman: Most scientists who believe in the Biblical model of origins interpret Tertiary sediments as post-Flood sediments.

So if Noah’s flood ended at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, which coincides with a period of high global sea levels according to geologists, does that mean Noah’s flood is represented by the second of two worldwide floods in this graph?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Sea_Level.png

How would you account for the geological evidence for a worldwide flood during the Paleozoic and the lack of geological evidence for high sea levels during the early Mesozoic?