Comment on The Metamorphosis of La Sierra University: an eye-witness account by BobRyan.
“they successfully selected†is right–Fritz Guy then Lawrence Geraty then Randall Wisbey. All left-wing liberals who value secular humanistic philosophies over God’s Truth. Is it any wonder we have this problem at LSU?! (Quote)
Indeed Fritz Guy has since then made his choice for error clearly known to all. In so doing he has shed some light on the back-room strategies worked out in past years – confirming many of the statements made by the author of the text above.
I have stated numerous times on this web site that there are those at LSU whose agenda is to “make LSU the best public university that Adventist tuition, offering and tithe dollars can buy”.
The author of the article above stated the same thing in this way
Their vision was to move the campus away from being a sectarian university that teaches SDA beliefs, and (as was at times openly stated) to take LLU-LS out of the SDA educational system
in Christ,
Bob
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The Metamorphosis of La Sierra University: an eye-witness account
While this discussion continues – the scientific community is going through what it calls a second Copernican revolution over discoveries of earth-like (rock) planets made this year.
TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) conference video – the speaker is a NASA scientist working with the Kepler space-based telescope.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/video-during-ted-talk-kepler-scientist-reveals-discovery-140-exoplanets-are-earth
in Christ,
Bob
The Metamorphosis of La Sierra University: an eye-witness account
Hans Zwick says:
September 8, 2010… they try forever to connect some culture to the Neanderthals when human history does not trace further back in time then about 2200 BC, with one post Flood Ice Age.That is what I studied out with a e-mail friend, the history of the Bible lands. We discovered written evidence that the Queen of Sheba was Queen Hatshepsut, that Shishak was Thutmose III, that the Amarna period belongs in the days of Ahab, that Ben Hadad was known under several names including Ashurnasirpal of which I was able to find some proof in old archaeology magazines from 1905 I believe it was. That makes Ramses II pharaoh Necho of the Book of Jeremiah and the Greek authors whose chief of staff was Necharomes, (garve found in 2002) – the name is made up of Necho – Ramses. As the king’s diplomat he had the right to name himself after his master and how he was non in Egypt and by the Greeks.
Thank you for that thought provoking post – what sources did you use?
in Christ,
Bob
The Metamorphosis of La Sierra University: an eye-witness account
Whatever happens to LSU the denomination needs to be thinking about LLU, Andrews, WWU and others that are facing internal struggles with this issue.
There is a lesson to be learned in the LSU story — Given time and sufficient political maneuvering the conservatives will gradually retire and the pro-evolutionist group will eventually gain control of both religion and biology departments.
The reason for that is four fold –
1. Our SDA professors are being urged to get their doctorates from non-SDA all-evolution all-the-time universities as this helps with accreditation and ranking. They tend to get “first pick” if they do that – and they know it.
2. The degree to which our students are exposed to actual pro-Creation science is limited though we have a few schools with good initiatives. Most of the pro-creation emphasis our students get is from the religion department. There are groups like ICR and Discovery Institute that aggressively push the creation sciencce aspect, in fact the SDA denomination is credited as the founding-father of creation science. But sad to say – and aside from Discovery Institute we are drifting into neutral and are no longer “known” in the creation science groups for being in a leadership role.
We should have stayed at the “head” on this one and the fact that we talked ourselves into drifting back to a neutral milk-toast position has had long term bad effects. Creation science visionaries like Ariel Roth are becoming more the exception than the rule.
3. The junk-science religion of evolutionism is NOT the EASY problem of Kellogg’s “Living Temple” where if you turned off the power to the source – the light simply goes out. Our schools are still obligated to teach the basics on evolutionism – even when they believe it to be false religion.
This problem will not be fixed until we publish our own books on the subject – exposing evolutionism for what it is – stating its claims and exposing its flaws. As long as we send our students and professors to pro-evolutionist text books to get their information – we are risking the very problem Ellen White was warned about in such cases.
4. The general Adventist population of today is much less informed and focused on Bible topics and the writings of Ellen White (per capita) than in prior decades. Thus liberalism in general has gained a strong foothold even apart from evolutionism. That means that even non-evolutionists at all levels of leadership will often be in the form of liberals whose primary model is “to each his own” in an all “I’m Ok you’re OK” – can’t we all get along model of protectionism regarding bad ideas. In their view it is much worse declares something to be wrong or evil – than it is just to let the evil continue. In their thinking – if you are nice to people who have wrong ideas – they will eventually all have good ideas and if evolutionists don’t come around to truth – who cares because God loves us all anyway and isn’t that the whole point?
For the liberal mind set – the only real danger in error – is that it might stir up a conservative to say somebody is “wrong” in way that makes that person “feel less than”. In their mind – meeting the problem “head on” is the worst possible choice. Better that libs and conservatives simply “have more church socials”.
That group is possibly several orders of magnitude larger than the number of actual pro-evolutionists among us. They will oppose efforts to solve the problem even while they agree with creationism.
in Christ,
Bob
Recent Comments by BobRyan
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
george:
By definition, I don’t believe in miracles or apocryphal, anthropomorphic stories about same.Why aren’t scientists observing them today if they occur?
Circular argument. If they were naturally occurring we would expect scientists to see that they are still occurring today. If they are singular events caused by an intelligent being – that being would be under no obligation to “keep causing world wide floods” as if “to do it once you must continually do it”. Armstrong went to the moon.. shall we argue that unless he keeps going to the moon so each new generation can see it … then it did not happen?
Your argument is of the form “all eye witness evidence to some event in the past is no evidence at all unless that event keeps repeating itself so we too can witness it”. Seems less than compelling.
“Could it be that science is better able to detect hoaxes and false claims?” As a rule for dismissing every eye witness account in the past – it is less than compelling. (even when that event cannot be repeated)
Evolutionists “claim” that dust, rocks and gas (in sufficient quantity and over sufficient time and a lot of luck) self organized into rabbits via prokaryote-then-eukaryote-then-more-complexity. But such self-organization cannot be “observed” today.
(What is worse – such a sequence cannot even be intelligently manipulated to occur in the lab)
By your own argument then you should not believe in evolution.
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@Sean Pitman:
Suppose you were at a crime scene … there is a tree limb on the ground and a bullet hole in the victim — “all natural causes”? or is one ‘not natural’? Those who say that nothing can be detected as “not naturally occurring in nature” – because all results, all observations make it appear that every result “naturally occurred without intelligent design” seem to be missing a very big part of “the obvious”.
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
george:
Gentlemen,What just God would allow an innocent child to be born guilty for the sins of a distant ancestor? …What if there was only One Commandment? Do Good. ‘Kant’ see a problem with that.
An atheist point of view is not often found here – but this is interesting.
1. God does not punish babies for what someone else did – but I suppose that is a reductionist option that is not so uncommon among atheists. The “details” of the subject you are commenting on – yet according to you “not reading” – is that humans are born with sinful natures. A “bent” toward evil. That is the first gap right out of the gate between atheism and God’s Word..
2. But still God supernaturally enables “free will” even in that bent scenario, the one that mankind lives in – ever since the free-will choice of the first humans on planet earth – was to cast their lot in with Satan and rebellion..(apparently they wanted to see what a wonderful result that poor choice would create). John 16 “the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment”. And of course “I will draw ALL mankind unto Me” John 12:32. (not “just Christians”). Thus supernatural agency promotes free will in a world that would otherwise be unrestrained in its bent to evil.
3.God says “The wages of sin is death” — so then your “complaint” is essentially “that you exist”. A just and loving God created planet Earth – no death or disease or suffering – a perfect paradise where mankind could live forever … and only one tiny restriction… yet Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be duped by Satan… tossing it all away. The “Just God” scenario could easily just have let them suffer the death sentence they chose. He did not do that… hence “you exist” – to then “complain about it”.
4. Of course you might also complain that Satan exists – and Satan might complain that “you exist”. There is no shortage on planet earth of avenues for complaint. But God steps in – offers salvation to mankind at infinite cost to himself – – and the “Few” of Matthew 7 eventually end up accepting that offer of eternal life. The rest seem to prefer the lake of fire option… sort of like Adam and Eve choosing disease and death over eternal life (without fully appreciating the massive fail in that short-sighted choice).
In any case – this thread is about the logic/reason that should be taken into account when a Christian owned and operated institution chooses to stay faithful to its Christian mission — rather then getting blown about by every wind of doctrine. Why let the alchemy of “wild guessing” be the ‘source of truth’ when we have the Bible?? We really have no excuse for that. As for science – we can be thankful that it has come as far along as it has – but no matter how far back you rewind the clock of our science history – we should always have chosen the Bible over wild guessing.
Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions
Ervin Taylor:
Perhaps Dr. Pitman would enlighten his readers what on earth “the neo-Darwinian story of origins” might be. Darwin did not address origins.
Origins of what?? the first eukaryote??
Or “origins of mankind”??
Darwin himself claimed that his own false doctrine on origins was totally incompatible with Genesis and that because of this – Genesis must be tossed under a bus.
hint: Genesis is an account of “Origins” as we all know — even though “bacteria” and “amoeba” are terms that don’t show up in the text.
The point remains – Darwin was promoting his own religion on origins totally counter to the Bible doctrine on origins. He himself addresses this point of the two views.
Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions
Ervin Taylor:
Here we go again.If the footprints upon close examination, are determined not to be from a hominim/hominid, I wonder if Educate Truth (sic) will announce that determination.Or if the date of the surface is determined to be much younger, will there be a notice placed on fundamentalist web-sites.If you believe the answer to these questions are yes, I have a big bridge that I would like to sell you for pennies on the dollar.
Here we go again … hope piled upon hope…no matter the “observations in nature” that disconfirm the classic evolutionary hypothesis
Reminds me of “What we still don’t know” by Martin Reese and Leonard Suskind