As I have mentioned a few times in earlier threads, …

Comment on PUC responds by Eddie.

As I have mentioned a few times in earlier threads, simply identifying and cyberbullying professors who undermine SDA beliefs in an effort to shame them into resignation or goad educational leaders into firing them is NOT going to reform SDA education. If such professors are fired or forced to resign, who will they be replaced with? Whenever a professor at any given SDA college or university retires or resigns, there are very few suitably qualified candidates for a vacancy, and not all candidates support or are even members of the SDA church. If we really want to reform SDA education, we need to do more–much more–to encourage our youth to become college professors. How many of you actually urge your children to become a college professor?

Let’s be honest. Why is it that we encourage our children who are interested in science to pursue a career in the health sciences? Is it because we want them to altruistically help people, or is it because we want them to earn prestige in society and a good income? Professors require many years of education to obtain the coveted PhD degree and then they are poorly compensated for their years of training. In fact, professors in many SDA institutions–including PUC–are paid less, even as much as 25% less, than primary and secondary school teachers in SDA schools on the same campus. How fair is that? How can we expect our children to obtain a quality SDA education when we fail to adequately support SDA educators who have sacrificed years of their lives to educate our children?

If we want quality SDA science professors who are supportive of SDA views of origins, we need to identify potential candidates and provide more encouragement and support throughout their education, from the undergraduate level through the PhD degree. We need to increase the amount of scholarships and research grants available for graduate students at Andrews University, Loma Linda University and Walla Walla University. And somehow, in some way, we need to find a way to increase the level of compensation of our college faculty to be at least on par with our teachers in primary and secondary schools.

Eddie Also Commented

PUC responds
Inge Anderson wrote: “Unfortunately, hiring practices in Adventist education systems take too much for granted and the world view of potential teachers is not generally checked.”

Unfortunately Adventist education systems do not have much of a choice of who they hire for teachers. They do check the world view of potential teachers but the pool of potential candidates is extremely shallow.


PUC responds
Raul Hernandez states “There is no amount of money that will change or affect the SDA principles particularly in Education.” Unfortunately that is not the case. The average PUC professor earns something like $15,000 less than the average teacher at PUC Elementary School and PUC Preparatory School. No professor in a SDA institution aspired to become a professor for the money. Nobody studies for a PhD degree to make money. Professors simply want an intellectually satisfying job. It’s the LACK of money, not the want of money, that turns away many bright and inquiring minds from becoming a professor. Would you urge your child to borrow thousands of $$$ in loans and spend an extra 6 years in school to get a PhD degree and become a college professor when your child could earn $15,000 more by teaching 1st grade with only a bachelor’s degree? Or earn $100,000 more by earning a MD degree? Is it surprising that only 1 or 2 percent of science students in SDA colleges and universities aspire to become a professor?

So how is SDA education affected? The pool of potential candidates for becoming a SDA professor is extremely shallow. When a professor leaves or retires from PUC, there are typically only a few qualified candidates for the job. If instead there were 10 or 15 candidates, the probability would be much higher that at least one candidate is strongly supportive of SDA principles. As it is, SDA colleges often wind up hiring non-SDAs or marginal SDAs who just happen to live in the vicinity and need a job. Usually they are hired as contract teachers but some are hired full-time as salaried employees. It is NOT because the administration has a liberal agenda and does not support SDA principles, which some have alleged; instead, it’s because there simply is no suitably qualified candidate who is more supportive SDA principles. And why are there no better candidates? Why is it that conservative SDAs who are highly critical of liberal SDA professors did not aspire to become SDA professors themselves? Is it not the money?

If you don’t like what’s happening in SDA colleges and universities, don’t blame the professors–they’re just trying to do a job for peanuts that hardly anybody else wants. And don’t blame SDA administrators, either–it’s not their fault that there are so few candidates to choose from. Maybe the blame is in the mirror. If the SDA Church wants high quality professors who support SDA principles, the church is going to have to invest more money in attracting suitable candidates. It will require a change in SDA culture. Maybe God wants YOU to become a SDA professor! Or to encourage a young, bright mind to become a SDA professor. Or to financially support SDA professors.


Recent Comments by Eddie

Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation

SDA Bio Prof: The Bible makes multiple falsifiable prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar conquering Egypt, yet history never records it happening. Does this mean the Bible is effectively falsified?

Sean Pitman: Egyptians had a strong tendency not to record their losses… only their victories.

Sean, does that mean YOU personally believe Babylon conquered Egypt, just as predicted by two prophets? In the absence of any empirical evidence? If the Egyptians didn’t record their losses, why wouldn’t the Babylonians have recorded such a stunning victory?


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Holly Pham: One of the things that has always concerned me is that, according to what I’ve read, birds and reptiles have completely different forms of respiratory systems (flow-through vs. bellows) How is this explained by evolutionists?

Evidence from the vertebrae of non-avian theropod dinosaurs suggests that they, too, possessed unidirectional flow-through ventilation of the lungs. So, according to evolutionary theory, it evolved first in “primitive” non-avian theropods rather than in birds, and comprises one of many shared derived characters supposedly linking birds with more “advanced” theropods. However, I don’t think there is any evidence or even a hypothesis for a step-by-step process of HOW it evolved. Here is a reference:

http://www.ohio.edu/people/ridgely/OconnorClaessensairsacs.pdf


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Bob Helm: Bob, if you send me an e-mail at sdabioprof2@gmail.com I will send you a pdf file of a 1991 article published by Chatterjee in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 332:277-342, titled “Cranial anatomy and relationships of a new Triassic bird from Texas.”

Curiously his description is based only on cranial anatomy. I don’t think he ever published an analysis of its postcranial anatomy.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

David Read: Eddie, ecological zonation will yield the same basic order that you’re pointing to: invertebrates appear before vertebrates; fish appear before amphibians; amphibians appear before reptiles; reptiles appear before mammals; reptiles appear before birds, etc.

It could, and it’s the best creationist explanation, but it doesn’t explain why flowering plants were absent from lowland forests. Or why so many land plants appeared before mangroves, which today occur strictly in the intertidal zone. Or why no pre-flood humans have been found. Or, if Sean is correct that the flood ended at the K-T boundary, why many modern groups of birds and mammals (including marine mammals) which first appear during the Tertiary were not buried by the flood.

David Read: The fact that something appears before something else in the fossil record is not proof than anything evolved into anything else.

True.

David Read: You seem to be complaining that God has not made the fossil evidence compulsory, i.e., so clear that no reasonable person can possibly doubt it. And if God hasn’t made the evidence skeptic-proof, then the skeptic is God’s fault, God is responsible for the skeptic.

I’m not complaining. I’m merely pointing out that the evidence can be interpreted in different ways by honest people. And I’m relieved to see that even you don’t think the evidence is crystal clear.

David Read: Only people of faith can be saved, that is, only people who are willing to trust God and put away doubts can be saved.

I agree.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

David Read: Those tracks are so obviously bird tracks that the fact that some scientists want to assign them to “birdlike theropods” is itself a very useful teaching tool as to how the model creates the data.

David Read: That the model actually creates the data is one of the hardest concepts to get across, not only to lay people but even to the scientists themselves.

How does the model affect the data? Data don’t change and they shouldn’t change. It’s the interpretation, not the data, that is affected by the model.