Eugene Shubert: Sean, It’s good that you believe the Bible but …

Comment on La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate by Sean Pitman, M.D..

Eugene Shubert: Sean,

It’s good that you believe the Bible but what evidence demonstrates that most believing Seventh-day Adventist scientists agree with your definition of a scientific theory?

A scientific theory is, by most definitions anyway, a process of inductive and/or deductive reasoning whereby a limited set of data is used to predict the future or the past with a measurable degree of predictive value in a potentially falsifiable manner.

Determining the reliability or dependability of a witness (which includes written texts) falls into the realm of science. Such a determination can be shown to carry a useful degree of predictive value and is therefore a form of science.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman, M.D. Also Commented

La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate

Jordan Blackwelder wrote:

By not allowing students to ask questions and search for truth themselves how does one gain knowledge and grow as an individual?

Who is suggesting that students shouldn’t be allowed to ask questions and search for truth? Certainly not Shane. Where did you get such a notion?

Of course students should be allowed to ask questions and search for truth as best as they can. However, the whole point of having a Church school is so that the Church’s perspective can be provided in answer to any and all sincere questions. If we as Church members consider that the Church’s perspective is important to share with the world, then why should we hire those persons to teach our children who do not subscribe to this perspective? – who go about actively undermining that which we consider to be so important?

Your argument is like someone suggesting that medical students should be exposed to those who subscribe to all sorts of ideas on the practice of medicine, even to those persons who hold ideas about medical practice that are known to be harmful to patients. In other words, our medical schools should hire witch doctors, New Agers, and snake-oil peddlers to teach in the medical school classroom just so that students can better make up their own minds as to how best to practice medicine? Please…

If you really believe in something enough to develop a school to teach your children, you want the beneficial bias of your belief to be presented in your school. This isn’t a matter of suppressing questions. This is a matter of providing thoughtful and well-reasoned SDA-based answers to those questions. The student can still be taught how to think for his or herself at the same time, but bias cannot be avoided and is not necessarily bad. Presenting the student with a bias in a good direction is a very beneficial thing.

I for one believe that the bias that the SDA perspective has to offer, even in science, is an excellent bias for our young people – a bias to which they should be consistently exposed if it is to be effective in influencing their lives for the good…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate
By the way, Eugene, I must say that I do agree with you when it comes to your views and many of your comments regarding A. Graham Maxwell’s Moral Influence Theory of Christ’s Atonement. Good work there on a very subtle and difficult problem for the SDA Church today…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate

Eugene Shubert: I see the merit of their scientific philosophies and reject your ultra-fundamentalism. Instead of defining science with the certainty of irrefutable and unambiguous ideas, you want to reduce scientific creationism to what the Bible says. I simply can’t imagine well-informed Adventist scientists accepting your point of view.

Nothing in science is absolutely certain or irrefutable. The same is true of useful religious ideas. If anything were “irrefutable”, you wouldn’t need science to support it. Science is only needed when the data set that is available is limited and the prediction deduced from the limited data set less than certain. This is why a leap of faith is needed when it comes to arriving at conclusions in both science and religion. This is the reason why both science and useful forms of religion are in fact one in the same.

If you actually read the information on my website and knew me just a bit better, you’d know that I do not reduce creationism simply to “what the Bible says”. Creationism is based on empirical evidence that supports what the Bible says. This is the scientific basis for believing in the reliability of the biblical texts – testable empirical evidence that is potentially falsifiable.

Let me ask you, upon what basis do you believe in the existence of God? – or the reliability of the Bible as a Divinely inspired source of information? – warm fuzzy feelings? or empirical evidence of some sort? What is your “reason” for the “hope that is in you”? – upon what basis do you believe the dreams of your “prophet” are anything more than wild fantasy? – that they are in fact derived from God himself? Hopefully you have something more than warm fuzzy feelings – some actual scientific empirical testable potentially falsifiable evidence…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.