It is self-evidently preposterous to claim that, because Gabe Diaz …

Comment on LSU Responds to Issues Regarding Dr. Diaz and WASC by David Read.

It is self-evidently preposterous to claim that, because Gabe Diaz was baptized as an 11-year old, his current views are orthodox. And yet that is what Larry Becker does. Incredible!

I do want to address Larry Becker’s soothing words about the bylaw changes. Randal Wisbey is far too smart to try to get all of the church officers kicked off the La Sierra Board of Trustees. That might shake some important people out of their collective coma. He understands that he has to work incrementally to loosen the university’s ties to the church, and that is what he is doing.

But let us not minimize what a big step these bylaw changes really are. Under the current bylaws, the president of the Pacific Union is automatically the chairman of La Sierra’s Board of Trustees. He doesn’t have to be elected to that position; it goes with his office. Now, Ricardo Graham, if he disagrees with Wisbey on origins (and I am told he does) has been ineffective at overruling Wisbey and correcting the problem; Wisbey has been easily able to control him. But what if a new union president came into office, one who was opposed to Wisbey’s agenda and was strong enough to effectively resist Wisbey? That would be a huge setback for Wisbey and his Darwinistic, liberal agenda. But with these bylaw changes, that can never happen. That hypothetical new union president couldn’t even be elected chair of La Sierra’s board. Assuming that Pacific Union College doesn’t change its bylaws, the president of the Pacific Union will still be the ex-officio chair of PUC’s board and hence can never again serve as the chair of La Sierra’s Board of Trustees.

We are told that, under the proposed bylaw changes, the chairman must be a church officer, but that leaves several persons to choose from. The chairman must be elected by the board, and Randal Wisbey has been packing the board with liberals who he hopes will support his agenda. He flexed his muscles in late 2011, when he had three strong creationists and opponents of his agenda (Carla Lidner-Baum, Kathy Proffitt, and Marta Tooma) kicked off the Board of Trustees. The liberal board that Wisbey has put in place can easily vote for the most liberal of the several church officers who are on the board.

So the current bylaw changes are a major step toward “institutional autonomy” and away from church control of La Sierra. Moreover, Larry Becker’s press release notwithstanding, “institutional autonomy” has been WASC’s stated concern and the stated reason why WASC recommended bylaw changes for La Sierra. The purported conflict of interest posed by having one man chair both PUC’s and La Sierra’s boards was not a concern of WASC; it is a cover story put forward by La Sierra to divert attention from the fact that they are about to approve bylaw changes that loosen their ties to the Adventist Church. What we have here is WASC recommending bylaw changes to strengthen “institutional autonomy” and diminish church control, and La Sierra carrying out exactly that type of bylaw changes, hence setting a disastrous precedent for other regional accrediting bodies and other Adventist colleges.

This is a blueprint for how to separate every Adventist college from the denomination, and yet no one seems to be paying attention. What will wake denominational leadership up to the fact that our entire post-secondary educational system is about to be imperiled by a vote on February 21?

David Read Also Commented

LSU Responds to Issues Regarding Dr. Diaz and WASC
@Professor Kent: Jeff, the messenger of the Lord for our time is Ellen White, and you should be familiar with her warnings regarding Lyellism and Darwinism. If not, some of the more pertinent passages are set out in chapter 7 of my book, “Dinosaurs — an Adventist View.”

In promoting an atheistic origins narrative in opposition to the biblical, Adventist view of a creation in six literal days a few thousand years ago, La Sierra is flagrantly disregarding the Lord’s messenger for our time. I should think this would be obvious to you.


LSU Responds to Issues Regarding Dr. Diaz and WASC
@Professor Kent: Jeff, your refusal to deal with reality in this situation is exceedingly strange. You’ve admitted there was a problem at La Sierra, but bizarrely insist that it was magically solved as of 2009, when in fact AAA saw problems after that time, the Board of Trustees formed a creation-evolution study group to solve the problem after that time, a survey was conducted after that time and even La Sierra admitted it had a problem as of February 2011, and Lee Greer got himself fired for trying to solve the problem in 2011.

I don’t want to play games with you about the word “atheistic.” The problem is teaching mainstream origins science as a valid, factually supported theory of origins, rather than as a false theory. That problem has been ongoing for decades and continues unabated to the present moment.


LSU Responds to Issues Regarding Dr. Diaz and WASC
@Professor Kent: Jeff, obviously your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek, but I really do admire Wisbey as a tactician and strategist. He is way ahead of the laity (who aren’t really even in the game, because no one wants to believe how committed the Left Coast is to liberalizing the SDA Church), he easily outmaneuvered Ricardo Graham (who is a creationist but is hopelessly over his head with Randal), he eventually outmaneuvered the three capable creationist women on his board (and had them kicked off the board), he is way ahead of AAA (he has them utterly bamboozled), he managed to use the LSU-3 situation, which should have revealed to the larger church how liberal La Sierra is, to his advantage vis-a-vis his strategy to use WASC to loosen church control, and he managed to thwart Lee Greer’s attempt at compromise with Larry Blackmer, AAA and the NAD, and not only to thwart it but to use it to consolidate his power, by kicking 3 of the 4 board members who signed the Greer document off the board and eventually firing Lee Greer.

So you may ridicule Wisbey’s conspiratorial abilities, but I do not. I have a healthy respect for both his determination to liberalize La Sierra and the larger church and his ability to make it happen.


Recent Comments by David Read

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@pauluc: “Science has no opinion on whether God or the supernatural have never intervened . . .”

Not true, Paul. When science insists on abiogenesis, even though there is no empirical or logical reason to believe that it could happen, science is expressing an extremely strong– in fact absolute–philosophical opinion that if God exists, to exist is all God has ever done. If Science were open to the existence of a Creator God who had ever created or otherwise intervened in nature, science could easily say, “God created the first life forms, then evolution took over.”

But, of course, the entire purpose of evolutionary science is to be able to deny the existence of a Creator God without looking foolish. It has not been entirely successful. Because when people claim that life can accidentally self-assemble, or that the genetic code somehow wrote itself, they look foolish.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: Jeff Kent says, “Recognizing the error in much of apologetics does not equate to blind faith. Twisting every fact to fit a theory about a supernatural event that cannot be duplicated by the naturalistic approach of science is simply misinformed belief based on a fragile faith devoid of the surety . . .”

But twisting every fact to fit a naturalistic theory is okay? Because that’s exactly what mainstream science does.

For example, everything in human existence, absolutely without exception, shows that you never get a code without a codemaker. You never get music without a musician, writing without a writer, computer code without a programmer, etc. Yet mainstream science insists that we got the genetic code, which is more complex than all of the foregoing, without a designer. That’s what I call “twisting every fact to fit” into science’s philosophy of naturalism.

Why is it okay for mainstream science to twist facts to fit its theories but not for creationist to construe and interpret the data of nature in accordance with revealed truth?

God wants you to be fully converted, in both heart and mind. And it doesn’t matter which is converted first. Some people have a heart experience that eventually results in them changing their views on origins, while others see design in nature and it leads them to the God of nature. Either is okay.

But you seem to be “halting between two opinions.” You believe in God and have a relationship with Christ, but that relationship has not converted your mind or your approach to your profession. You insist on doing your scientific work in a way that effectively denies what you claim to believe. It would be too rude to say you lack integrity, but clearly your Christian beliefs are not integrated with your work life; there is no integration between your faith and your work.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: “What do you think is the single most compelling geological, fossil, or biological evidence that life arose via fiat creation?”

I think it is the genetic code. Coded information–written books and articles, computer programs, musical compositions, etc.–never arises accidentally but always has an author. And the genetic code is a language of such complexity and genius that we’re still trying to figure it all out. I don’t think the genetic code wrote itself any more than I think “War and Peace” wrote itself, or “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” wrote itself.

The second best evidence is life itself. Even single-celled organisms are so staggeringly complex that accidental self-organization and self-vivification would involve a miracle. Science cannot do this in a laboratory much less come up with a generally agreed upon “just so story” (that passes the laugh test) as to how it could have happened accidentally.

The other thing in the realm of biology I would point to is the difference between humans and animals. The gap there is very large, and supports the biblical teaching that man was created in the image of a Creator God, whereas the animals were not.

The fossil record is ambiguous, but the Cambrian Explosion fits the Flood model far better than it fits the Darwinian model. It’s not what Darwin expected at all; he even admitted that the fossil record from the Cambrian on up should be matched by an equally long fossil record leading up to the Cambrian. (This doesn’t directly bear on fiat creation, but does compare Bible history to the natural history Darwin posited.)


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: Jeff Kent said, “Evolutionists believe there is a designer, and that it’s a random process rather than a supernatural being.”

That’s nonsense. Design implies teleology, intent, and purpose, all of which evolutionists deny a priori. Evolutionists officially believe that the world and its life forms did not require a designer but arose from random processes.

And, frankly, whenever the Darwinists use teleological language like “design” and “designer,” we should call them on it and force them to use language that reflects what they officially purport to believe.


The Rise of Theistic Evolutionism – The Salvation of Christianity?
Lydian, I think Jeff Kent is right that church administrators prefer to work quietly, behind the scenes. But there are a couple of other reasons that I think are probably more important.

First, as I noted above, there are effectively two Adventist Churches, and one of them doesn’t have a problem with what is happening at LaSierra. So you may not have an administrator who feels motivated to do anything. But even if the particular administrator is a traditional Adventist believer, his task will be greatly complicated by the fact that many of his constituents and fellow administrators are part of the other Adventist Church.

Second, the church is not organized in a top-down chain of command organizational structure, like the military or a corporation. The church has elements of that, but also very important elements of local control and organization. For example, the local church controls its own membership. If the local church says someone is a member, she’s a member, and no one at the conference, union, or GC can do anything about it.

The colleges are affiliated with the unions, so no one at the GC level can really do much about the colleges. (There are exceptions; I believe that Oakwood, LLU and the Seminary at Andrews may be General Conference institutions, not union, but most Adventist colleges are union colleges.) The colleges are controlled by their boards, and the board chairmen are the union conference presidents. The boards are designed to have a preponderance of church officers, ensuring indirect church control, but it is control at the union level, not at the GC level. The only leverage that Ted Wilson has over colleges is that Adventist schools (in addition to secular accreditation) are all accredited by the Adventist Accrediting Association (AAA), and (I believe) the GC President can exert control over the AAA by appointments to the board. So the only influence that Ted Wilson can exert over LaSierra is the somewhat indirect influence of accreditation through AAA.

A third factor is that in the modern Western world, including America and especially including California, it is very difficult and costly to fire people. And academic tenure adds another level of protection for teachers. So even if the stars align, and you have traditional believers at all the control positions, it will still be very difficult to make changes that involve changes of personnel.

About a year ago, Shane posted an anonymous article that outlined the fact that what has happened at LaSierra is the result and fruition of more than 30 years of planning by a liberal faction of professor who wanted to take LaSierra, if not outside the SDA Church altogether, at least outside the effective control of the church. With Fritz Guy and Lawrence Geraty, they’ve had presidents who were sympathetic to their ideological perspective. (President Wisbey may actually be relatively conservative, compared to those two.)

So, the bottom line is that making real changes to LaSierra is going to be a long, slow process.