Eugene Shubert: Sean, I believe that you are presupposing a few …

Comment on LSU undergraduate biology bulletin by Sean Pitman M.D..

Eugene Shubert: Sean,

I believe that you are presupposing a few false assumptions. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is not a monolithic structure. The General Conference Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists does not hold title to LSU property. Those in control of LSU seek to promote evolutionism. Adventists that oppose that idea are powerless to remove evolutionism from LSU’s curriculum.

You’re mistaken. The GC of the SDA Church owns the name “Seventh-day Adventist” and has the power to remove the use of that name from LSU as an official “SDA” institution. The GC also has the power to stop providing funds, derived from tithes and offerings, in support of LSU. The GC also has the power to put pressure on the local SDA conference and union that does own the actual property of LSU.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman M.D. Also Commented

LSU undergraduate biology bulletin

Ervin Taylor: Sean Pitman and Shane Hilde should be encouraged to maintain EducateTruth.com so all can read the vitriolic inclinations of the supporters of its mission. Forward looking parents who want a modern, progressive Adventist education for their children are choosing LSU and students are benefiting from the increased attention to this topic. They are becoming aware that there are reactionary forces which want their church and its educational institutions to return to those dark days of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and will stop at nothing to accomplish this. These students and their parents are choosing to be part of the right side of Adventist history—the bright side that looks to the future and the search for truth wherever it leads and rejects the repression of free and open exchange of ideas.

First off, supporters of both sides of this issue have gone just a bit overboard with personal attacks and pejoratives. Erv’s own AToday website is filled with angry comments and personal attacks against those who would wish to uphold the fundamental views of the organized SDA Church. LSU professors have gone public calling those who actually believe in a literal 6-day creation the “lunatic fringe” in secular journals. Erv Taylor has himself written numerous tabloid-style articles published by AToday poking personal fun at 6-day creationists and the staff of EdTruth in particular – to the point of comparing us and our tactics to the Nazis during WWII. The president of LSU, Randal Wisbey, has also gone on public record questioning the evidenciary basis for a literal interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis.

Wisbey supports his theistic evolutionist professors and their right to promote Darwinism in their classrooms parroting Erv’s argument that all should be allowed to freely express their ideas, whatever they may be, on the Church’s dime.

Certainly a free civil society is important where a free expression and exchange of ideas is a primary civil liberty. However, it is also a civil liberty for a person or an organization to freely hire only those who will accurately represent the goals and ideas of the employer. Actively countering the stated goals and requests of the employer, even if you think the employer is wrong, is stealing. It is a moral wrong. Go and work for someone who is willing to pay you for your ideas. Why steal from someone who is not willing to pay you for your particular ideas?

The SDA Church, as an organization, has asked all pastors and teachers who are employees of the Church, to actively support the Church’s fundamental positions on doctrinal issues from pulpit and classroom – especially with regard to the Church’s stand on a literal creation week. Like it or not, this is an official stand and request of the Church as an organization. Therefore, for an paid employee of this organization to expect to get paid for directly undermining the Church’s positions is sheer audacity and morally corrupt – a robbery of the Church’s time and money…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Recent Comments by Sean Pitman M.D.

After the Flood
Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!


The Flood
Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…


The Flood
Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…


Pacific Union College Encouraging Homosexual Marriage?
Where did I “gloss over it”?


Review of “The Naked Emperor” by Pastor Conrad Vine
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.