In a memo from Jerry Page, dated Dec. 2009, addressed to all pastors, office staff, bible workers, principals, head elders, and prayer partners, the Nov. 12 board decisions were shared. CCC is the second conference (Michigan Conference being the first) we know of that has used its official memos to communicate the ongoing developments at LSU, illustrating the concern and importance with which church leadership has taken in this issue.
Source: Central California Conference Memo
La Sierra Update: So many prayers for LSU are being answered. Board members all agree that God really “showed up” recently at a 2-day meeting. There was an amazing spirit of unity and unanimous votes to strongly support the Church position on a literal 7 – 24 hour day creation week according to God’s word. They have also issued statements calling for a new curriculum for colleges about creation. The Board now plans to hold the Administration accountable to bring the needed changes in faculty.
Praise the Lord!
View CommentPraise God! An answer to prayer indeed!… but many more prayers for wisdom for our leadership are needed; as well as the continued active support and involvement of individual Church members worldwide…
It ain’t over yet… “It’s just the end of the beginning” – Winston Churchill
Sean Pitman
View Commenthttp://www.DetectingDesign.com
This sounds very promising…I will continue to pray for God’s leading in the upcoming meetings that will deal with this issue. Like Sean, I feel it isn’t over yet…not until the changes are actually made. But I am thankful that the Board is starting to stand up for the truth.
View CommentLet not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid God is at work. Thank you for standing for truth. It is not easy but LSU is precious in God’s sight. As long as the body of God stands for truth not allowing even one dot or title to be removed from God’s instruction of truth We will know His blessings, but if we tolerate any beliefe that is not Bible teaching then God can not Bless. Our Group is praying.
View CommentI stand proud that we still have leaders in our church who are taking the reins for the truths and pillars
View Commentthat God has given to our church. It will hit the iceberg, but the ship will go safely on. Thank you for
standing up for the truths of scripture. We may need some new leadership in LSU if the current ones cannot
make happen what needs to happen.
As I stated on a posting regarding this matter on anther provided site, it seems to me that at least one of the most important issues needing to be addressed is that this institution is claiming to be one of ‘higher learning’. At least I would imagine this is the case. It behooves LSU, then, to follow a mandate of true ‘academic freedom’, regarding what is presented to students; that is, that all courses be taught in an impartial manner, and that the choice of what to believe is left to the student, based upon personal conviction and research. It would seem to me to be professional incompetence, or at least abrogation of duty, to promote one philosophy or ‘explanation’ of our origins as the professor’s personal pick, while then making a mere pretension of the statement that BOTH choices are being presented impartially. The appropriate facility for the promotion of one of these ‘explanations’ would be the campus church (assuming there is one on campus), and, for the other explanation, an off-campus forum for discussion or promotion.
View CommentJerry Page says
Question – has Wisbey shown any signs of changing or that he is looking to make changes in his faculty to comply with the board directive?
What is wrong with this picture?
in Christ,
Bob
View CommentI am happy to “believe the best” – but it seems to me that Wisbey has been publishing statements via the LSU marketing and Comm department that are more of a defense and gloss-over of LSU pro-evolutionist hisotry – rather than a “turn” from it.
Did I miss something?
Where are the posts from pro-evolutionist biology department “faculty and friends” – complaining here that their supposedly brilliant and selfless efforts to promote evolutionism have now had to end and that they “blame us”. I have not seen any such thing.
View CommentNo school or teacher is truly “impartial”. There is always bias. Certainly the theory of evolution is not taught in an impartial manner in public secular universities or even at La Sierra University. It is taught as the true story of origins in the science classrooms by professors who actually believe that this is the only reasonable option to present to their students.
The fact of the matter is that there would be no point in having a Church school if the school didn’t present a bias in favor of what the Church as an organization felt was beneficial to share with the world as “truth”. Presenting this bias in a favorable light to students is the whole point of having a Church school…
All schools, even secular schools, are about indoctrination into a particular view of reality. All that really matters then is what form of indoctrination do you want to buy for your children?
Remember also that indoctrination into a certain biased perspective isn’t always a bad thing. Even Jesus was biased and indoctrinated his own disciples into his own unique world view – quite effectively. Remember the advice to “train of a child in the way he should go…”
So, all you have to do is to pick the right bias to support in the indoctrination of yourself and your children ; )
Sean Pitman
View Commenthttp://www.DetectingDesign.com
Teaching students to think critically might be an objective.
View CommentInteresting. I’ll be curious to see what all this talk looks like in active reality. Maybe there is hope, after all! I’m not totally convinced, as similar things were said at the last meeting without anything changing, but we’ll see. Kudos to the board members for standing behind Biblical principles.
View CommentThis would all be well and good if you were not at a “Christian” stated school in the first place. Being at such a place, then you are obviously biased in the goals and ways the students will be educated in every class and way–hopefully! It will not just have a church on campus–by the way–public universities have that as well.
We have built these schools–LSU included to be different in each and every class in order that teachers can openly talk about God and point people to His power, love and creative abilities.
No one is arguing that learning everything unbiased as some people think possible (I tend to agree with Sean on this one) and then making a decision is not an option and a good one for education of young people in public realm. This is what public universities are for–I have been to one. At an openly Christian university, I feel Christian principals should permeate all classes–not just the religion classes. This concept is what makes it special. If a teacher feels uncomfortable with these concepts and principals at defined by the organization–however biased–he is welcomed to go to a public university where he will be able to teacher without hindrance.
It just seems to me like we think everything has to be treated as a public university–it isn’t. If someone came to your house and started spouting off stuff to your family and children that you didn’t agree with, you would have every right to ask them to leave because it is your private house. This is our churches’ private school–house is that different?
View CommentYes, but you can’t do that without injecting bias… which isn’t necessarily bad. Bias can be a very good thing if it is the “right” kind of bias. So, how do you know if you have the “right” bias? Well, at least you can be aware that you are in fact biased. I think that’s the best anyone can do in an honest search for truth.
Sean Pitman
View Commenthttp://www.DetectingDesign.com
Great Post Shannon
As you said our schools are different from other public schools and should be.
The main reason for us to have our own privite schools is to prepare our youth to carry the Gospel/Three Angels message to the world!
Thus our main goal should be to teach them what they will need to know to accomplish that goal in whatever environment God has called them to work.
View CommentOf course they need to get a proper degree to do that, but that should be secondary to the God centered education we should be incorperating into every class. In every area of study, we should teach what God has said about that topic so our students can bring that point of view to their respective career fields and be effective witnessing tools.
Shannon,
Thank you. Very clearly stated on Feb. 11, 2010.
God bless,
Rich
View Comment@colin campbell:
I agree!
So they could show them the list of confirmed junk-science fraud after fraud used for 10, 20, 40 even 50 years to prop up the religious view of origins promoted by evolutionism — and then how later that fraud was so convincingly exposed and publically admitted to be deception.
In other words – exploring “the propaganda machinery” behind evolutionism – given such a large volume of historically proven blunders, falsehoods and deceptive practicies already available to the objective unbiased reader. Blunder so massive that even atheist evolutionists “know to blush”.
There is a massive amount of “instructive value” for students who are given the opportunity to “be informed about that history” and then to “review the lessons learned” from it — case by case. Then some study of the principle that “Evolutionism only flourishes in the vaccuum of data we don’t have”. As soon as the full scope of data shows up – the evolutionist blunder is exposed!
The other aspect to this – would be to have a course in the Theology department where detail study is done showing how evolutionism has destroyed the Christian church in Europe – leading it to it’s current “post-christian age” and also showing in detail which doctrines in the Adventist list of 28 Fundamental Beliefs are undermined by evolutionism’s counter doctrines on origins. (Hint – it is amazing that we have evolutionists here that admit that our 28 FB would need to be changed – but they are often reluctant to list all the changes that would be needed to logically and consistently accomodate the false doctrines on origins offered to believers in evolutionism.)
Sadly – I don’t think that level of “critical thinking” is welcomed among the current group of LSU biologists.
in Christ,
Bob
View Comment@Glenn Orin Clifford Stansal:
And of course – currently we have that at LSU in the form of the biology department’s public evangelism for evolutionism and denegrading God’s claims to have Created all life on planet earth in a literal 7 day Creation Week — commemorated by the 7th day memorial Sabbath.
Certainly the religion department should have its own “critical thinking” course customized to show the damage that evolutionism’s doctrines on origins do to the Bible doctrine on origins. We can agree to that part.
But the sciences also have a part to play in showing the evidence that remains from that 7 day literal creation week less than 10,000 years ago.
(Evidence from river delta formations, Helium build up, C14 equilibrium measurements in the atmosphere, rapid fossilization, global sea evidence, the impossibility of abiogenesis given what we know about necessary chiral orientation of amino acids, the lack of necessary- plasticity in the genomes for eukaryote systems that would be required for “birds came from reptiles” story telling, the fact that even atheist evolutionists admit that fossils do NOT reveal ancestors to a given species … etc)
And as for getting off campus evangelists for evolutionism – I agree that watching some kind of dog-and-pony show conducted by an evolutionist “true believer” would also be an excellent field trip.
in Christ,
Bob
View CommentI think critical thinking is a lot about detecting bias and neutralizing, or a least minimizing it, so that one can make objective judgments.
View CommentThe idea that “critical thinking” is useful or even possible is itself a form of bias. What is the “right” way to “think critically”? There are many different opinions on this you know…
It is simply impossible to avoid bias. Any time you have an opinion on any topic, you have a bias that is not known or knowable as being absolutely true or even objective. You can’t be “critical” of everything if you actually have opinions or beliefs which you believe to be “true”. Upon what basis did you decide what was or wasn’t “true”?
The SDA Church has a certain position on what is and isn’t true. It is the goal of the Church to present the reason for its position from both the pulpit and classroom. It is not the goal of the Church to present all opinions with equal weight, but to guide the world toward its own view of what is truly valuable.
The biblical authors, and even Jesus himself, did the same thing. They spoke with power and authority as to what was and was not true. They did not present the Gospel Message as simply one of many different options with equal weight to let their readers or listeners decide all by themselves as to what message, among many many options, was actually true. They gave the weight of their own influence for what they thought was right and their reasons for their personal bias for the truth…
Sean Pitman
View Commenthttp://www.DetectingDesign.com
Critical thinking is necessary to avoid being duped by outright propaganda.
Propaganda typically takes the form of “appearing to have substance” when really nothing more than “POV designed to manipulate the reader/viewer” is present in the material. Thus marketecture or marketeering rather then reporting substantive facts that support the perceived claims being made.
An easy example “Doctor’s recommend CREST” or “Doctors prefer Crest” – simply says that more than one doctor was found that would admit to recommending or prefering Crest — but is stated in a way to “appear” to claim that Doctors do not prefer anything but Crest in general. Critical thinking is needed to discern reality vs spin-doctoring.
Thus Colin Patterson responds to the “suggestion” that he include an artist’s drawing of an imagined intermediate form – in his book on evolution, was that he could not find a way to do so without misleading the reader.
in Christ,
Bob
View CommentQuestion for ‘Colin Campbell.’ You wouldn’t happen to be *the* T. Colin Campbell would you??
View CommentThe word â€biased’ should never be applied to the Saviour.
A child may receive sound religious instruction; but if parents, teachers, or guardians permit his character to be biased by a wrong habit, that habit, if not overcome, will become a predominant power, and the child is lost. {CG 201.2}
Possible to Be Conscientiously Wrong.–The idea is entertained by many that a man may practice anything that he conscientiously believes to be right. But the question is, Has the man a well-instructed, good conscience, or is it biased and warped by his own preconceived opinions? Conscience is not to take the place of “Thus saith the Lord.” Consciences do not all harmonize and are not all inspired alike. Some consciences are dead, seared as with a hot iron. Men may be conscientiously wrong as well as conscientiously right. Paul did not believe in Jesus of Nazareth, and he hunted the Christians from city to city, verily believing that he was doing service to God.–Lt 4, 1889. {1MCP 322.4}
The more room one shall give for the entrance of the Word of God, the more he is enriched intellectually as well as spiritually. He will have a clearer and less biased judgment and his views will be more comprehensive. His estimates of spiritual things will be more correct. His understanding, under the working power of the Holy Spirit, is exercised to digest the truth by making it a personal benefit by the strengthening of the soul to do self-denying works. {HP 139.4}
View CommentSteve,
You evidently do not understand that words in the English language system can mean different things in different contexts. The word “biased” doesn’t necessarily have a “bad” meaning in English in certain contexts. One can be biased for the good…
Come on now… Do you really not understand that a person can be biased for the good? – in favor of the truth just as God is biased in favor of the Truth? Bias is not always a bad thing – as I already explained here in this thread. The definitions of “bias” include a “bent” or “tendency” or “an inclination of temperament or outlook.”
God most certainly has a very predictable inclination of temperament or outlook when it comes to standing for what is right… for Truth. In other words, God has a bias toward Truth. Contrary to the suggestion of some in this forum, God does not present all ideas with equal weight to leave it up to the individual to decide which ideas are true and which ones are false. God biases the individual toward what God knows is truth. In comparison, Satan has a bias toward evil, lies and deception.
Again, contrary to the advice of some in this forum, teachers and pastors who claim to represent and who take a paycheck from the SDA Church should not simply present a host of ideas to their students in a “unbiased manner” to leave it up to the students to decide, free of the biasing influence of the teacher, what is right and what is wrong. A bias for the right is a good thing!
You seem to have a very predictable bias toward deliberately trying to misquote people and take statements out of their obvious context. That is a form of lying Steve. That’s wrong. You need to apologize for this and repent of such activity…
Sean Pitman
View Commenthttp://www.DetectingDesign.com
@Glenn Orin Clifford Stansal: @Glenn Orin Clifford Stansal:
*****************************
“Academic Freedom” does NOT include heresy–and in an SDA school which bases it’s whole reason for existing on a firm belief that God’s Word is absolute there is no room for a “freedom” that goes contrary to this belief.
God has granted every human being the “Academic Freedom” to believe what he/she wants to believe but that does NOT include the “freedom” to go teach heresy in one of our schools and lead our young people into error.
Let those who choose to believe in evolution go teach in a school that also believes in it. Teaching this in a school that is supported by the tithe of Adventist parents and grandparents is reprehensible! It is not “Academic Freedomâ€â€“it is grossly dishonest and should not be tolerated! Why we have put up with it for so many years is a mystery to me!
View CommentFor Steve Billiter:
Bias:
____________________________________
Ok, one last time Steve:
Consider the sermon thought of Robert South noted above. Is it not possible and very clear in the context of this passage, to be able to place the name of Jesus in this text? to say,
Clearly then, the concept of bias can be used to work both ways – to describe the good and the bad predispositions of a person. This is part of the English understanding of and cultural background and boundaries surrounding this term. In context, the idea of a bias is not required to have a negative meaning in English. And, as I have used this term, my context has always been extremely clear.
The passages you quote from Ellen White use the term “bias” in a negative context that is made quite clear from the passage itself. It is quite clear then that the intended or evident meaning of a word must be considered in the context in which it is used.
You seem to have a marked difficulty judging context. Several times now you have taken my words out of their otherwise clear context and intended meaning. You seem to have tried, deliberately tried, to apply evil interpretations to statements of mine that are clear to the vast majority of people in the SDA Church as obvious statements for the good and in keeping with the fundamental ideals of the SDA Church. You also quote the Bible and Mrs. White against ideas with which they do not actually oppose. In other words, you take the words of Inspiration out of context as well in your attacks on those who are clearly innocent.
Sean Pitman
View Commenthttp://www.DetectingDesign.com
i find it interesting and also disturbing that the comment that is probably the best advice on this whole board got a bunch of dislike votes, but i realize that most people who visit this site, are the people who are conservative people who do not understand the new generation of adventists, and their wish for an honest portrayal of all the different views, so that they can make their own choice.
View CommentThat idea would never have launched a single institution of higher learning by this denomination. IF the church had stated the goals and vision for education as you just did and then had to weigh spending time and resources on building more impartial – neutral (read “public universities in theory not in practice” ) or else staying 100% focused on just spreading the Gospel — the Gospel would have won that decision tree exercise hands-down! (Obviously public universities are not neutral at all – but are heavily biased for evolutionism so technically they don’t even qualify – but in theory they should have qualified for this example)
If we had started with the goal of “impartial” education that did not in the least promote Adventist doctrines as even being correct – but merely taught evolution’s doctrines on origins and said “you are free to believe it or not” — (as if our job was done at that point) – we would have ZERO Adventist tithe, offering and tuition dollars diverted to such a pointless exercise.
But the “actual” goal was to teach health, sciences and religion in a way that stressed the distinct Advantages in all of those areas that is available within the Adventist world view. Makes for a horrible “public university model” but works well as an Adventist method for promoting the Gospel and the benefits of the truth given to this end-time people of God.
I agree that Adventist professors should not claim to be neutral on this subject. They should tell students up front that they think God actually has credibility and that His Word is to be trusted and that they affirm the Adventist 28 Fundamental Beliefs as they apply to the subject of origins.
And guess what! – -you do not see “origins” (abiogensis) under a microscope. Neither do you see “birds coming from reptiles” there.
So those Adventist science professors never need to give credibiliyt to the hype and fear that a student will see abiogensis or will see birds coming from reptiles. It is pure fiction on the part of hopeful evolutionists and nothing more.
in Christ,
Bob
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