I just had a brief telephone conversation this afternoon with …

Comment on MBA employee discourages students from attending LSU by David Read.

I just had a brief telephone conversation this afternoon with someone who is on the board of LaSierra University. I have confidence that this situation is eventually going to be straightened out, but it may take quite a while. The boardmembers don’t want to act in a way that creates more problems than they solve, but they do want to get the situation corrected. Don’t write off the leadership; they are men of God trying to do the right thing. But keep the pressure on, and be prepared to continue fighting this cause for several years. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

I am grateful to Shane Hilde, Sean Pitman and David Asscherick for taking the steps necessary to make this situation public. But because this situation was allowed to fester for the better part of two decades, our adversaries are deeply intrenched. They are counting on us losing interest over time. Do not let it happen.

David Read Also Commented

MBA employee discourages students from attending LSU
Shane, I wish I were as sanguine as you are about what is and is not up for debate in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A year ago, I would have agreed with you. But just within the past year, I have been reading sites like Atoday and Spectrum. I know that alot of the folks who post there are former Adventists, but many are presently on the books of, and actively involved in, some Adventist Church or other.

I’m thinking specifically of Ervin Taylor, Ron Osborn, Charles Scriven, and Matt Burdette, but there are many others, many of whom will not give their names on the sites. They say: “We have always been Adventists, our parents and grandparents were Adventists, we went to Adventist schools, K through 16, and we’re always going to be Adventist. We don’t believe in a literal creation week, nor in the ‘inerrancy’ of Ellen White [on origins], and since we are unquestionably Adventists, our views on the topic of origns are by definition within the spectrum of acceptable and normative Adventist views on the topic.”

Do I think they are nuts? Of course, but let me say this definitely and with emphasis, we cannot assume that the leadership recognizes this. I’ve lived in southern California for over 12 years and I’ve seldom heard a doctrinal sermon preached, and never in the last 7 years. I have heard a pastor deliberately deny from the pulpit the Adventist view of the substitutionary atonement in favor of a variant of the moral influence theory. I’ve heard several other doctrinally suspect tidbits in Adventist sermons. I don’t think we can just assume that the leadership understands how Adventist doctrine fits with various scientific issues on origins. I don’t think we can just assume that all of our pastors understand our doctrinal structure as well as we do; in fact, that assumption is increasingly suspect.

We can assume, however–you can bet your life on it–that our adversaries are making the arguments I enumerated in my previous post. They are bending the ears of people on the board and in leadership positions, sounding ever so reasonable, and portraying us as a vocal minority, a fringe, divisive, strident, witch hunters, right-wing radicals, etc. They’re hoping to sell the idea that the real issue is theism vs. atheism, or that the important point is that God created, not how He created or how long He took. They’re hoping to muddy the water just enough to keep decisive action at bay. And they’re pretty confidant, because they’ve successfully performed this song and dance for almost 20 years now. Why should this time be any different?

Our adversaries are benefitting from the fact that people of our persuasion, that is, doctrinally well-grounded Adventists, find it inconceivable that anyone could try to blend Adventism and Darwinism (as Cliff Goldstein put, “Nazism’s a snugger fit”) and have a hard time beleiving that a sizable contingent of Adventists have made this their life’s work, their motivating passion. Well, we’d better start believing it. It’s happening right now, people, in the real world!


MBA employee discourages students from attending LSU
BobRyan, that is a very perceptive question. I do not know the extent to which this particular website is being monitored, but I do know that the word about LaSierra has gone out to the four corners, and the Seventh-day Darwinians are on the defensive. Here are their main strategies for deflecting and indefinitely deferring any appropriate response:

1) They argue that students are being taught evolution for informational purposes only, not as truth. We know this is a lie. No one has any problem with evolutionary theory being taught for informational purposes, as long it is contrasted with creationist theory, which is the Adventist understanding of our true origins. The problem is that Darwinism is being taught as truth and creationism is ignored or ridiculed.

2) They argue that evolutionary theory is a valid and acceptable option for the Christian as long as it is theistic evolution of some sort, as opposed to dogmatic naturalism. This was the deflection contained in Randal Wisbey’s first open letter on this topic back in April or May; he stated that LaSierra was not teaching “atheistic evolution.” I think they would like to have us believe that the issue is being fairly dealt with as long as some like, say, Michael Behe, William Dembski or Stephen Meyer is invited to campus to give a talk on intelligent design every once in a while.

But this is a trap we must not fall into. Theistic evolution and progressive creation (over millions of years) are just as contrary to Seventh-day Adventism as is naturalistic or atheistic evolution. Adventists believe in a literal six-day creation in the not too distant past, and that the world was destroyed by a universal aqueous catastrophe that reshaped the surface of the globe. And we expect to find support for those views in geology and paleontology. The fight is really over geology much more than over biology. Any sort of acommodation to long-ages is comprehensively destructive to Adventism, but the ID crowd doesn’t have any issue with long-ages geology. So merely discussing ID views doesn’t cut it, but in the end, the professors who reject young earth (or young life) creationism will also reject Intelligent Design.

These are the two main arguments this website should seek to rebut.


Recent Comments by David Read

The Reptile King
Poor Larry Geraty! He can’t understand why anyone would think him sympathetic to theistic evolution. Well, for starters, he wrote this for Spectrum last year:

“Christ tells us they will know us by our love, not by our commitment to a seven literal historical, consecutive, contiguous 24-hour day week of creation 6,000 years ago which is NOT in Genesis no matter how much the fundamentalist wing of the church would like to see it there.”

“Fundamental Belief No. 6 uses Biblical language to which we can all agree; once you start interpreting it according to anyone’s preference you begin to cut out members who have a different interpretation. I wholeheartedly affirm Scripture, but NOT the extra-Biblical interpretation of the Michigan Conference.”

So the traditional Adventist interpretation of Genesis is an “extra-Biblical interpretation” put forward by “the fundamentalist wing” of the SDA Church? What are people supposed to think about Larry Geraty’s views?

It is no mystery how LaSierra got in the condition it is in.


The Reptile King
Professor Kent says:

“I don’t do ‘orgins science.’ Not a single publication on the topic. I study contemporary biology. Plenty of publications.”

So, if you did science that related to origins, you would do it pursuant to the biblical paradigm, that is pursuant to the assumption that Genesis 1-11 is true history, correct?


The Reptile King
Well, Jeff, would it work better for you if we just closed the biology and religion departments? I’m open to that as a possible solution.


The Reptile King
Larry Geraty really did a job on LaSierra. Personally I think it is way gone, compromised beyond hope. The SDA Church should just cut its ties to LaSierra, and cut its losses.

As to the discussion on this thread, round up the usual suspects and their usual arguments.


La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction
It is a remarkably fair and unbiased article, and a pretty fair summary of what was said in the recorded conversation.