BobRyan: the Adventist denomination created LSU in the first place …

Comment on WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU by Professor Kent.

BobRyan: the Adventist denomination created LSU in the first place – with the intent that it be free from the corrupting influence of non-SDA groups such as WASC.

Without regional accreditation, which only WASC and its sister accrediting bodies can offer, no graduates from SDA colleges could enter graduate schools or professional schools, including schools of medicine. Only boneheads continue to suggest we should not have accredited universities.

BobRyan: Otherwise – why divert limited SDA funds to building LSU – when we could just hire more missionaries and pastors “instead” with that money?

Because SDA education has been critical for maintaining a vibrant church with its unique culture and for pairing young SDAs with marriage partners. Neglect these young people and you’ll strangle the Church.

BobRyan: If WASC is going to define a soft word like “interference” as “AAA authority and oversight in making sure that all professors hired in its institutions are teachingh values and principles consistent with the mission and message of the Seventh-day Adventist church” then we have a problem.

“If” is very telling. It signals “what I have to say next is nothing but inane speculation.”

Professor Kent Also Commented

WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU

David&#032Read: Now, of course we all know that WASC is pushing autonomy in order to shield La Sierra from church pressure to uphold the church’s doctrine on origins…

Bunk. Nonsense. WASC doesn’t care whether La Sierra upholds Church doctrine. WASC does care that LSU represents itself appropriately when seeking accreditation, which requires for good reason that universities have a reasonable level of autotomy and due process.

You might be right about the disaster brewing for Adventist higher education. Your vigorous pushback against LSU may very well change the Board of Trustees structure for all North American universities. And this on top of a costly lawsuit already in place. Keep up the flogging and let’s see what happens.


WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU

BobRyan: I don’t blame WASC as if they are acting in a vacuum. They are clearly being manipulated by evolutionist sources at LSU.

Clearly. WASC has a long established history of being manipulated, and they would never suspect the clever machinations of the exceedingly brilliant LSU evolutionists.


WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU

David&#032Read: I think you and Richard are right to the extent that if La Sierra, its administration, its Board, and the Adventist Church had presented a united front, there’s no way that WASC would dare to try to micro-manage curricula or teaching.

What kind of logic is this? There’s no way that WASC would dare try to micro-manage curricula or teaching, so your conditional statement about a “united front” is gobbledygook. Why don’t you take the time to read up what accreditation and WASC standards are all about? You simply don’t know what you are writing about.

David&#032Read: Unfortunately, that wasn’t and isn’t the situation. La Sierra has been teaching straight Darwinism for decades and the church has finally begun to complain.

Unsubstantiated malicious donkey dung.

David&#032Read: there’s no way WASC would be demanding changes to the composition of the Board of Trustees if they had not received a strong signal from Wisbey that he was favorable to these changes.

Sure, David; you contrived this from your imagination, as you have zero access to the thinking process of anyone that is actually involved with the issue.

David&#032Read: Clearly, Wisbey is using WASC to loosen church control over La Sierra.

Clearly, you are perpetuating another of many libelous statements regarding a person whose motivation you have no knowledge whatsoever. Just fanatical speculation.

David&#032Read: secular accrediting bodies may be able to effectively keep the sponsoring denomination from re-asserting control on the ground of “institutional autonomy.”

You have quite the imagination. Can’t wait to see your next post.


Recent Comments by Professor Kent

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Nic&#032Samojluk: No wonder most creationist writers do not even try to submit their papers to such organizations.
Who wants to waste his/her time trying to enter through a door that is closed to him/her a priori?

You have no idea what you’re writing about, Nic. As it turns out, there are in fact many of us Adventists who “waste” our time publishing articles through doors that open to us a priori. Even Leonard Brand at Loma Linda, a widely recognized creationist, has published in the top geology journals. I mean the top journals in the discipline.

The myth that creationists cannot publish in mainstream science is perpetuated by people who simply do not understand the culture of science–and will remain clueless that they do not understand it even when confronted with their misunderstandings. Such is human nature.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Pauluc,

Your questions about conservation genetics are very insightful. I don’t understand how all these life forms were able to greatly increase in genetic diversity while simultaneously winding down and losing genetic information to mutations. Sean seems to insist that both processes happen simultaneously. I had the impression he has insisted all along that the former cannot overcome the latter. But I think you must be right: God had to intervene to alter the course of nature. However, we can probably test this empirically because there must be a signature of evidence available in the DNA. I’ll bet Sean can find the evidence for this.

I’m also glad the predators (just 2 of most such species) in the ark had enough clean animals (14 of each such species) to eat during the deluge and in the months and years after they emerged from the ark that they didn’t wipe out the vast majority of animal species through predation. Maybe they all consumed manna while in the ark and during the first few months or years afterward. Perhaps Sean can find in the literature a gene for a single digestive enzyme that is common to all predatory animals, from the lowest invertebrate to the highest vertebrate. Now that would be amazing.

Wait a minute–I remember once being told that SDA biologists like Art Chadwick believe that some animals survived on floating vegetation outside the ark. Now that would solve some of these very real problems! I wonder whether readers here would allow for this possibility. Multiple arks without walls, roof, and human caretakers.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Ellen White said, “In the days of Noah, men…many times larger than now exist, were buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians [presumably referring to humans] perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history…”

Sean Pitman said, “All human fossils discovered so far are Tertiary or post-Flood fossils. There are no known antediluvian human fossils.”

Ellen White tells us that humans and dinosaurs (presumably referred to in the statement, “a class of very large animals which perished at the flood… mammoth animals”) lived together before the flood. Evolutionary biologists tell us that dinosaurs and humans never lived together. You’re telling us, Sean, that the fossil record supports the conclusion of evolutionists rather than that of Ellen White and the SDA Church. Many of the “very large animals which perished at the flood” are found only in fossil deposits prior to or attributed to the flood, whereas hunans occur in fossil deposits only after the flood (when their numbers were most scarce).

Should the SDA biologists, who are supposed to teach “creation science,” be fired if they teach what you have just conceded?


La Sierra Univeristy Fires Dr. Lee Greer; Signs anti-Creation Bond
For those aghast about the LSU situation and wondering what other SDA institutions have taken out bonds, hold on to your britches. You’ll be stunned when you learn (soon) how many of our other schools, and which ones in particular, have taken out these bonds. You will be amazed to learn just how many other administrators have deliberately secularized their institutions besides Randal Wisbey, presumably because they too hate the SDA Church (as David Read has put it so tactfully).

Be sure to protest equally loudly.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Sean Pitman:

So clearly you believe that science can explain supernatural events. Congratulations on that.