@Richard Osborn: As an academy principal at Takoma Academy, we …

Comment on ANN reports on affirmation of creation and FB #6 enhancement by Sean Pitman.

@Richard Osborn:

As an academy principal at Takoma Academy, we also had strict rules on jewelry and dress and only taught what is being advocated on this web site. The results aren’t a lot better. Perhaps there are more important aspects of our church that we need to worry about.

There certainly are many other important things that our Church needs to worry about, but this does not mean that our Church should no longer worry about promoting and actively upholding its fundamental doctrines – doctrinal truths discovered and preserved at the cost of many fortunes and lives so that we might have the benefit of their understanding. The current secular society in which we live is naturally attractive to many young people. Interest in religion and God in general is waning in this country and in European countries as well.

In his book, “Already Gone” Ken Ham points out that young people see the church as simply a nice social club that really doesn’t stand for anything anymore – at least not anything worth sacrificing for much less dying for. Most denominations even question the literal reality of most of the Bible stories – presenting them more as allegories or moral fables.

For me and most other people, young and old, the idea that the Bible stories aren’t really true or reliable throws out a great deal of meaning that used to be present in Christianity. No one wants to be seen as ignorant or stupid. The opinions and conclusions of mainstream scientists have largely replaced the Bible as the only really reliable source of truth. Churches are therefore rapidly becoming hardly more than glorified social clubs without real conviction or a sense of purpose or of belonging to something important – a movement that is worth risking life and limb to support.

If you really want the Church to grow, really grow in a vital way, offer something that is worth dying for. Offer something that produces real meaning in life and a solid hope for the future. The promotion of higher critical ideas of the Bible and mainstream evolutionary concepts that strike at the very heart of biblical credibility will end up eroding real growth for any Christian church. Those Churches that are experiencing the most solid growth are those Churches that actually stand for something – where people actually believe what they say they believe and are willing to sacrificing everything for what they see as extremely valuable truths.

In the final analysis, interest in God and overcoming self cannot be forced and success should not be based on the numbers. After all, looking just at the numbers Noah wasn’t very successful at all. Therefore, what’s the point in watering down truth in order to increase numbers? Numbers are up to God and His Holy Spirit. Our job is to stand for those important truths that God has given us to improve and make our lives more hopeful and joyful – truths which many have sacrificed a great deal to deliver to us; even their very lives.

These Gospel truths, these precious foundational doctrines of our Church, should not be taken lightly. I myself was brought under the threat of court martial twice while in the Army for refusing to attend unnecessary classes on Sabbath. One time Admiral Barry Black, the highest ranking chaplain in the armed forces at the time, offered to come and defend me and the case was dropped when this was made known. I would not have been able to stand against such pressure if I didn’t believe in the reality of the literal nature of the Genesis account. But, because of my carefully studied confidence in the reality of my religion, it was a thrilling experience for me to be able to stand for God in such situations – a true honor.

This same sort of call and confidence in the Word is needed to keep our young people in the Church; to successfully compete with the innumerable attractions that the secular world has to offer to distract the mind from the most important issues and decisions of life.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

ANN reports on affirmation of creation and FB #6 enhancement
@Geanna Dane:

Evidently many Seventh-day Adventists- including most EducateTruthers- feel the Bible can’t be taken at face value and therefore more words must be added.

The Bible can be taken at face value given its entire context. Individual phrases, taken out of context, can be quite ambiguous and need context for clarification. Even though they are taken from the Bible, biblical passages do not stand alone. Their intended meaning is dependent upon other contributing passages and the overall context in which the passage was found.

Clearly then, taken in context, the obvious intent of the author of the first passages of Genesis was to convey the idea that the creation week was a literal week. This is quite clear to most Hebrew scholars, conservative and liberal. Even Lawrence Geraty supports this conclusion.

So, the effort to clarify the wording of SDA FB#6 by adding the word “literal” is by no means going beyond the obviously intended in-context-meaning of the biblical text itself.

Therefore, the resistance to adding this clarifying word to FB#6 by Geraty and others is based entirely on the effort to pacify those who would interpret Genesis in an allegorical manner, contrary to its clearly intended meaning, in order to try to somehow maintain the Genesis narrative while incorporating the evolutionary beliefs of mainstream scientists at the same time.

The SDA Church need not be open to this sort of pacifist effort – to pacify those with ambiguous language who hold beliefs that fundamentally oppose what we consider to be a vitally important Gospel message of hope as a Pillar of our SDA Faith; and even science.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


ANN reports on affirmation of creation and FB #6 enhancement
@Richard Osborn:

http://www.wascsenior.org/findit/files/forms/Handbook_of_Accreditation_2008_with_hyperlinks.pdf .

In these documents you will find the Standards and Criteria for Review with guidelines that visiting teams and our Commission will use to evaluate whether a university which voluntarily applies for regional accreditation meets.

I looked in your document for how WASC expects “academic freedom” to co-exist with certain specific goals and ideals of the organization that owns the school, but am still a bit confused.

For example, several Catholic schools have let professors go who opposed Catholic doctrines in or even outside of class. A recent case of a math teacher in a Catholic school who questioned the existence of God on a public website comes to mind. She was fired for this ( Link ). Would this case be viewed by WASC as a violation of “academic freedom”? – especially given that she wasn’t even a religion professor at the school?

There is also the fairly recent case of the well known evangelical scholar, Bruce K. Waltke, who was forced to leave his position at the Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando) because of his stand on evolution ( Link ). Is this a violation of “academic freedom” according to WASC?

I apologize, but it is pretty difficult for me to tell from the document you referenced. It seems like this is about as good a definition of “academic freedom” as I could find in your document:

Institutional policies and practices that affirm that those in the academy are free to share their convictions and responsible conclusions with their colleagues and students in their teaching and in their writing.

What is a “responsible conclusion”? Who defines this term and upon what basis? What rights and protection does the institution have against the attacks of a professor against the primary goals and/or ideals of the institution? Does WASC only protect the professor’s rights? – or does WASC also consider the ideals and goals of the institution as well?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


ANN reports on affirmation of creation and FB #6 enhancement
@Richard Osborn:

What kind of a person needs to ascribe motives without even finding out from the individual his/her motivations, especially when the Bible admonishes us not to judge others?

The Bible admonishes us both to judge and not to judge others at the same time. While only God can accurately judge the heart, He has left certain forms of judgment up to us regarding the running and maintenance of His Church here on Earth. We are called to judge the correctness of ideas and actions as far as they are in or out of line with what we feel we have been given as “present truth”; and to act accordingly to correct errors within the Church.

I think it is quite clear that many in the SDA Church today, especially in areas of higher education, are using the intended vagueness of the authors of the current language of FB#6 to promote various theistic evolutionary theories and discount the historical SDA position on a literal Creation week.

Lawrence Geraty, along with Fritz Guy, both publicly admit that this was in fact their motivation when drafting the current language of this doctrinal position. Gordon Bietz and Ben Clausen are well aware of this motivation and the current use of the vague language of FB#6 by those at LSU who are actively undermining the validity of a literal interpretation of Genesis in their classrooms – in no uncertain terms.

In this light, it is very difficult not to be at least somewhat disappointed in the action of Bietz and Clausen at the GC – regardless of their motivation. I’m sure their motives are very good indeed. However, in my opinion, they both made a non-trivial mistake that, regardless of their motivations, will reflect negatively on GRI and SAU in the eyes of those who understand the background behind the current conflict with LSU.

This is especially unfortunate since I know that the biology department at SAU is very supportive of and actively promotes the scientific validity of a literal interpretation of the Genesis account while, at the same time, providing their students with a good understanding of the modern evolutionary view of origins. The same is true of several other members of GRI.

If Dr. Bietz or Dr. Clausen wish to clarify their respective positions, and help out SAU and the GRI at the same time, they know very well how to do so. The problem is that Beitz, in particular, is in full support of LSU and opposes any effort to limit the “academic freedom” of those at LSU who by no means support and are still continuing to oppose the SDA view on origins. If this is not a true reflection of Dr. Bietz’s position, as reported to me by my father and supported by Bietz’s actions at the GC, I’d be very glad to hear him say otherwise. The same is true for Dr. Clausen.

The same is true for you (are you really not allowed by WASC to make statements concerning the “academic freedom” of teachers with regard to the stated goals and ideas of the institution for which they work?).

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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