Eddie always seems to offer good ideas. However, my concern …

Comment on Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda by Professor Kent.

Eddie always seems to offer good ideas. However, my concern with an endowed chair is that once a new position is funded in a biology department, the administration will be able to reduce its overall budget for the department rather than maintain the same funding level and hire a new biologist. That…or fail to increase the budget and add another professor as the program grows. So once again, we’re left with the dilemma–where are those much-needed biologists?

If the SDA Church wants to maintain viable science at all–and more so if it starts the housecleaning many of you are demanding–there needs to be some very serious planning and a sincere commitment on the part of the Church’s administrators to encourage young students to enter biology graduate programs. Otherwise…well, let’s just say it’s “turtles all the way down” for SDA science. Actually, this degeneration will become a painful reality apparent to all of you soon enough, and it is coming about much more quickly because of Educate Truth. Mark my words.

Professor Kent Also Commented

Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda
@ Sean Pitman

Are you seriously trying to compare your 11-year-old niece to the likes of Arthur Chadwick or Leonard Brand? Come on now. You’re just making yourself look silly at this point…

Excuse me: I didn’t comment on Leonard Brand. I was responding to the mention of Chadwick and Lee. Let’s ask this: what have they contributed to science that my niece has not? They like to dig fossils; so does my niece. They like to talk about their “research;” so does my niece. They talk to college students; my niece talks to schoolmates and Sabbath Schoolmates. One can easily Google the [lack of] publications by these professors (especially as senior authors); one can do the same for my niece.

Okay, since you mentioned Dr. Leonard Brand at LLU, he has published solid papers and several good books. He, at least, is producing real science and I totally respect that. David Read, a lawyer lacking a PhD in science, has published a book on origins (that I have not read), but he is not mentioned among the Adventist “scientists” putting forward evidence for creation. So who is and who is not a “scientist” among this group? And you think I’ve embarassed myself?


Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda

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.

As Geanna correctly pointed out, these gentlemen are hobbyists. There are many fossil collectors and there are many who teach about fossils, but doing these things does NOT make one a scientist. If that were the case, my 11-year-old niece would be a scientist.

[In reference to Panda’s Thumb article] In fact Adventists are known for being the first guys out of the gate on this subject when it comes to evidence for creation as opposed to pabulumist arguments for evolutionism.

Hoorah for Henry Morris and John Whitcomb for making our Church look good! Um…wait a minute…these guys ARE Adventist, aren’t they?


Former LSU student letter reveals professor’s agenda
Pastor Paulson, I’d like to add this: I’m thrilled that you are a committed Christian (and Adventist), care deeply about Biblical truth, and want to ensure that members of your Church do not stray. I have no doubt that you mean well. I hope you never lose your passion for Jesus and the Church.

God bless,
PK


Recent Comments by Professor Kent

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Nic&#032Samojluk: No wonder most creationist writers do not even try to submit their papers to such organizations.
Who wants to waste his/her time trying to enter through a door that is closed to him/her a priori?

You have no idea what you’re writing about, Nic. As it turns out, there are in fact many of us Adventists who “waste” our time publishing articles through doors that open to us a priori. Even Leonard Brand at Loma Linda, a widely recognized creationist, has published in the top geology journals. I mean the top journals in the discipline.

The myth that creationists cannot publish in mainstream science is perpetuated by people who simply do not understand the culture of science–and will remain clueless that they do not understand it even when confronted with their misunderstandings. Such is human nature.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Pauluc,

Your questions about conservation genetics are very insightful. I don’t understand how all these life forms were able to greatly increase in genetic diversity while simultaneously winding down and losing genetic information to mutations. Sean seems to insist that both processes happen simultaneously. I had the impression he has insisted all along that the former cannot overcome the latter. But I think you must be right: God had to intervene to alter the course of nature. However, we can probably test this empirically because there must be a signature of evidence available in the DNA. I’ll bet Sean can find the evidence for this.

I’m also glad the predators (just 2 of most such species) in the ark had enough clean animals (14 of each such species) to eat during the deluge and in the months and years after they emerged from the ark that they didn’t wipe out the vast majority of animal species through predation. Maybe they all consumed manna while in the ark and during the first few months or years afterward. Perhaps Sean can find in the literature a gene for a single digestive enzyme that is common to all predatory animals, from the lowest invertebrate to the highest vertebrate. Now that would be amazing.

Wait a minute–I remember once being told that SDA biologists like Art Chadwick believe that some animals survived on floating vegetation outside the ark. Now that would solve some of these very real problems! I wonder whether readers here would allow for this possibility. Multiple arks without walls, roof, and human caretakers.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Ellen White said, “In the days of Noah, men…many times larger than now exist, were buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians [presumably referring to humans] perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history…”

Sean Pitman said, “All human fossils discovered so far are Tertiary or post-Flood fossils. There are no known antediluvian human fossils.”

Ellen White tells us that humans and dinosaurs (presumably referred to in the statement, “a class of very large animals which perished at the flood… mammoth animals”) lived together before the flood. Evolutionary biologists tell us that dinosaurs and humans never lived together. You’re telling us, Sean, that the fossil record supports the conclusion of evolutionists rather than that of Ellen White and the SDA Church. Many of the “very large animals which perished at the flood” are found only in fossil deposits prior to or attributed to the flood, whereas hunans occur in fossil deposits only after the flood (when their numbers were most scarce).

Should the SDA biologists, who are supposed to teach “creation science,” be fired if they teach what you have just conceded?


La Sierra Univeristy Fires Dr. Lee Greer; Signs anti-Creation Bond
For those aghast about the LSU situation and wondering what other SDA institutions have taken out bonds, hold on to your britches. You’ll be stunned when you learn (soon) how many of our other schools, and which ones in particular, have taken out these bonds. You will be amazed to learn just how many other administrators have deliberately secularized their institutions besides Randal Wisbey, presumably because they too hate the SDA Church (as David Read has put it so tactfully).

Be sure to protest equally loudly.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Sean Pitman:

So clearly you believe that science can explain supernatural events. Congratulations on that.