@Erik: No one knows how soft tissues would still be …

Comment on Video show LSU undermining church doctrine by Carl.

@Erik:

No one knows how soft tissues would still be preserved after at least 65 million years. Do you?

Of course not. However, if you read the links that you posted, it’s not so clear that the original finding will hold up.

But new research challenges that finding and suggests that the supposed recovered dinosaur tissue is in reality biofilm – or slime.

“I believed that preserved soft tissues had been found, but I had to change my opinion,” said Thomas Kaye, an associate researcher at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington. “You have to go where the science leads, and the science leads me to believe that this is bacterial biofilm.”

So, there will be a lot more testing and the science people will sort it out. It looks like the initial report came out before the results were really conclusive. That’s happened before and will happen again.

Incidently, there is an explanation for how dinosaur fossils have ended up in Antarctica. So far, no one has figured out how it could have happened not more than 10,000 years ago. If you know of a possible suggestion, there are many scientists who would be really excited to hear about it.

Of course, it’s only a matter of time until scientists find a way to either discredit the soft-tissue find …

Yup. And, it kind of makes sense. It really did seem unlikely even for something that was only 10,000 years old.

Carl Also Commented

Video show LSU undermining church doctrine
@Shane Hilde:

This is not the appropriate thread for a science debate.

If this site is not willing to educate its readers on both sides of the argument, you have chosen the wrong title. You provide a place for people to speak no matter how much or little they know, and then you prevent the introduction of relevant information.

The average SDA knows almost nothing about geology becasue we’ve been afraid of it for many years. Now, people get on this forum and pool their ignorance and you come in and say that’s the way it should stay.

For years, I have feared that Adventism is intellectually dead. No one has been willing to discuss our lack of scientific evidence for a recent Creation. And, here you are making sure that nothing will change.


Video show LSU undermining church doctrine
Sean and Shane,

Several weeks ago, educatetruth.com stopped accepting new comments. I apparently missed an explanatory note and concluded, incorrectly, that the site would be permanently frozen. So, I went happily about my business with a great sense of relief. I was about ready to thank you for your thoughtfulness. Then, as we all know, it all started up again.

It seems to me that you’ve made your point. You have held to your position that you do not wish to destroy LSU, you simply want them to be clear about what they are teaching. You have reminded us that many comments on this site do not reflect your purposes. Even Thomas (above) understands that his desire to purge the heretics and flatten the campus is not your desire.

However, as time continues, you, as the facilitators of this discussion, must accept an increasing responsibility for the comments posted here. In particular, your focus on LSU is unreasonable and unfair. I have previously suggested that you owe your readers a much broader range of information. For at least 60 years, Adventist thinkers have wrestled with the dilemmas presented a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11. That’s why Geoscience Research Institute was formed. However, no matter what we’ve done, no one has found a scientific explanation for how the earth and its life might have come about within the last 10,000 years.

It is simply not possible to explain within 10,000 years how fossils of dinosaurs and tropical animals have ended up in Antarctica; how the mountains and canyons have formed; how the lava flows of the Columbia basalts and the Deccan Traps have formed and cooled; how the Mediterranean Sea floor formed with its thick salt beds (it nearly dried up several times); how the Hawaiian hot spot and the Yellowstone hot spot have migrated; how the mid-Atlantic rift has formed; how Niagra Falls has come to be; how the ice ages have come and gone along with the rising and falling of the oceans; how the coral reefs have formed; and much more. These things can be reasonably explained, but not within 10,000 years.

It is time for us to live with diverse opinions. We have multitudes of theologians telling us what we must believe about science, and, it’s not working. Copernicus was right; the church was wrong and the Pope has apologized. The Earth does not have four corners, it does orbit around the Sun, neither Earth nor the Sun is the center of the universe, and all SDA believers are comfortable with that despite the literal readings of Scripture that supported the previous beliefs.

Science is the honest search for knowledge of the physical world; it’s pursuit will not destroy the young generation. Science is not an instrument of the Devil.

If the SDA Fundamental Beliefs are so fragile that we can’t encourage students to approach them with an open mind, they must and will be changed.

It’s time to permanently freeze this site.

Carlton Cross


Video show LSU undermining church doctrine

… he’s undermining our beliefs. The whole temple theology undermines our doctrine. You’re simply wrong.

Mostly, he’s undermining your rigid literal interpretation, and your concept that we should not adjust any of our fundamental beliefs. It’s quite true that Adventists started as proof-text people, and many have stayed with that approach. But, there’s much more to Scripture than proof texts.

I came across a report, written by Ron Reece, of a meeting of the Adventist Theological Society at SWAU last month. Here’s his comment about a presentation by Michael Campbell:

This paper reviewed the writings of early Adventist leaders; leaders, who mostly expounded a literal 7 day creation story of the ‘entire’ universe 6000 years ago. However, it was interesting to later learn that a seven day literal creation of the ‘entire’ universe and planet earth, 6000 year ago, is not generally taught an Andrews University Theological Seminary or believed by many ATS members or supported by several of Ellen White statements.

That’s quite a shift from a universe created 6000 years ago to the position that the universe is old and the earth is old and life was created 6000 years ago.

Dr. Earl Aagaard gave the final presentation. Reece says:

Being retired emboldens Adventist’s professors. Aagaard bluntly stated that there are significant problems in the geological column that are unexplainable with a literal seven day creation week and global flood – just as the geological column presents problems for Darwinian naturalists. We should be able to tell our college students, ‘We don not know.’ Even though Aagaard would prefer theistic evolutionists not teach in Adventist schools, our battle is primarily not with theistic evolutionists [such as Francis Collins], our real battle is with Darwinian materialists or naturalists where God is absent at any point in cosmic history.

Wow. Even the Adventist Theological Society is undermining Adventist beliefs.


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.