@Shane Hilde: My point in posting here is that I …

Comment on La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article by Carl.

@Shane Hilde:

My point in posting here is that I am responding to the assumptions of many who have posted here. Most comments seem to imply that LSU should stop teaching the science of evolution and start teaching the science of creation. Sean is arguing that because he can muster important objections to the dominant scientific views, there is more evidence for a short history of life than a long history; therefore, a short history should be taught.

If someone has a scientifically supportable short-history model, I would think that the science staff at Geoscience Research Institute would make us aware of it and provide information so that it could be taught. GRI has been funded for more than fifty years to do just that – to provide a scientific basis for a recent creation. I am amazed at how casually Sean claims that he has accomplished what others have failed to do. It would be very helpful to get comments from GRI to clarify this issue.

Since Sean repeats his claims frequently, I also will repeat mine: There is no scientifically supportable short-history model. There are many compelling evidences for a long-history model, many that Sean has not disputed.

People who read this site must understand that the LSU biology faculty would enthusiastically teach a short history of life if someone could give them a scientific basis for doing so.

Carl Also Commented

La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article

Sean Pitman M.D.: Invalidating the standard model can only be done with the presentation of evidence which necessitates a short-age more catastrophic model.

Nowhere have you presented a critique of dating methods that would shorten the time to about 10,000 years. For your argument to succeed, it’s not good enough to show that you can explain 100,000,000 years in 1,000,000 years; you must show that the dating can be compressed into less than 10,000 years. Your argument about erosion certainly does not invalidate radiometric dating. As you have said to me, perhaps you simply lack the imagination to see how some improvements in the standard model might resolve the problems that you have raised without changing the time frame by very much.

Sean Pitman M.D.: The many magnetic reversals are a consequence of the massive disturbance within the Earth’s core due to the enormous energy released at the beginning of the Catastrophe and occurring rapidly over time as the continents were ripped apart and moved rapidly away from and into each other, quickly building huge mountain ranges and ocean trenches.

In a few hundred years, the floor of the Atlantic Ocean forms complete with magnetic reversals and you conclude that magnetic reversals must have happened very quickly. You know that the reversals happened quickly because the ocean floor formed quickly. Sounds a bit circular.

Sean Pitman M.D.: I don’t think the Earth has been nearly as “stable” as you suggest. There have been numerous massive catastrophic events since the Flood.

Really big cataclysmic events in the last 3,000 years? And, no one wrote about them? And, these events somehow show that the earth is young?

Also, what are the dating problems with the Bretz Floods that cut through lava layers that were already in place with multiple layes of vegetation between lava layers? Only 3,000 years ago rather than the proposed 12,000 years ago?

Sean Pitman M.D.: That’s right. Rapid proliferation and adaptation is easy if there is enough food. Mendelian variation is a form of change over time which is influenced by natural selection, but it is based on pre-programmed information that was already there pre-existent within the ancestral gene pool of options.

The root idea here is interesting, that God created life in a way that would facilitate evolution (with or without natural selection). I think your suggestion is that genetic material in the animals in Noah’s Ark was programmed to evolve and proliferate very, very rapidly for a short period of time and then to stabilize as we now see it. Where’s the evidence for that? The only reason I can see to favor such a speculation is that you can’t have a short history without it. Seems rather circular.


La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article

Sean Pitman M.D.: Now, why don’t you at least try and answer my questions?

I’ll try to be more clear about my main point, a point that you have not addressed in any way that I can recognize. I give you credit for raising questions about the standard model for earth history – some of your questions are more than trivial. However, invalidating the standard model does not provide a short-age model.

What is your sequence of events following the Flood? Let’s suppose that the Flood occurred about 2,300 BC. Further, suppose that we can be pretty sure from historical records that the earth has been generally stable since 1,300 BC. So, in the 1,000 years following the Flood, the continents broke apart and separated by about 3,000 miles, the sea floor formed with many magnetic reversals, Mt Everest leaped up to 28,000 feet, we had a warm period quickly followed by an ice age, it got warm again (but not as warm as before), the ice melted and the oceans rose several hundred feet.

In the animal kingdom while these cataclysmic geological events were taking place, kangaroos found their way from the Ark to Australia (or maybe they just rode along as Australia moved), Ice Man got to Europe, Kennewick Man got to North America, during the warm period of a few hundred years the animals proliferated rapidly and divided into the many species that we see today (was this evolution?), many froze in the ice age, others survived and quickly adapted to a different climate, etc.

Then, suddenly, all of these very rapid processes stopped and things have been very stable for the last 3,000 years.

Somehow, discrepancies in erosion rates, sedimentation rates and dating methods still don’t convince me that a short-age model can work. The earth and its life look to be very old whether or not I like it (which I don’t).


La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article

Sean Pitman M.D.: I’d love for someone like Erv to explain the general lack of expected uneven erosion, the maintenance of sedimentary layers for tens of millions of years on mountain ranges, the lack of sediment in the oceans, the lack of expected bioturbation within the geologic record, Chadwick’s universal paleocurrents, the existence of sequencable proteins and flexible soft tissues within many dinosaur bones, numerous Lazarus taxa, extensive, very thick and very pure coal seams, residual radiocarbon in both coal and oil, the lack of a statistically viable evolutionary mechanism, and on and on.

While we’re getting explanations, perhaps Sean can explain the following: the Mid-Atlantic Rift, the Deccan Traps, Grotte Cosquer, Ice Man, the major impact craters, the Blue Lake rhinoceros, how the earth quickly stabilized to nearly its present condition following an ice age which followed a warm period which followed Noah’s Flood, Kennewick Man, river canyons that extend into the oceans, the formation of Mt. Everest and how we got all of our present animals from Noah’s Ark without much evolution. Since we know pretty well from history what was going on for at least the last 3,000 years, it seems that all of these explanations should fit into about the 1,000 years following the Flood.


Recent Comments by Carl

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.