Thank you, Shane, for your honest reply. I respect that. …

Comment on PUC responds by Professor Kent.

Thank you, Shane, for your honest reply. I respect that.

Professor Kent Also Commented

PUC responds
Eddie wrote, in dealing with claims about SDA university agendas in hiring liberal science faculty:

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 [of] SDA principles…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.

The bottom line: critics of SDA science education will continue to whine and complain and point fingers, but they lack the integrity to discuss or engage in finding the solutions that Eddie keeps bringing up. Watch what happens next: the conversation will go back to more whining and complaining. Someone will even say “this isn’t the issue at stake.”


PUC responds
@ D. Fender

Is this spin? Are they playing games with us?…This is not a time to beat around the bush. Take a stand. State it clearly so everyone knows! If you use evasive language, we will know where you stand.  (Quote)

Are ye daft? They explained what was stated up front at the classroom presentation. The video excluded that. How can YOU not recognize spin?

I think I know the answer: you, Pitman, Hilde, and others thrive on judging and criticizing others. This excites your Christ-like(?!) passions.


PUC responds
@ wesley kime

Anent Eddie’s financial insight. Hmmmm. Pay professors less and get Evo pushed? More and get Genesis 1? Really? I didn’t know that. But in practice it seems just the opposite, at least for students. If you want Evo you can get it cheaper, and with “better” teachers, at any State U. And u know it. (Money aside, there’s a difference, for some odd reason rarely brought up, between subjectively promoting-pushing, via even the tone of voice in answering, or even allowing, questions, and objectively teaching about.)

There it is. You’ve made my point. And you’ve gone so far as to suggest that students attend our universities specifically to get “Evo,” and belittle them for not getting better for less. You are one bright guy.

By the way, I attended and have taught at both state and private universities. I can state with total conviction that the science instruction at private universities is superior to that of state universities. Two key reasons are the faculty-to-student ratio, and the contrast in emphasis on teaching versus research. And u don’t know it.


Recent Comments by Professor Kent

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Nic&#032Samojluk: No wonder most creationist writers do not even try to submit their papers to such organizations.
Who wants to waste his/her time trying to enter through a door that is closed to him/her a priori?

You have no idea what you’re writing about, Nic. As it turns out, there are in fact many of us Adventists who “waste” our time publishing articles through doors that open to us a priori. Even Leonard Brand at Loma Linda, a widely recognized creationist, has published in the top geology journals. I mean the top journals in the discipline.

The myth that creationists cannot publish in mainstream science is perpetuated by people who simply do not understand the culture of science–and will remain clueless that they do not understand it even when confronted with their misunderstandings. Such is human nature.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Pauluc,

Your questions about conservation genetics are very insightful. I don’t understand how all these life forms were able to greatly increase in genetic diversity while simultaneously winding down and losing genetic information to mutations. Sean seems to insist that both processes happen simultaneously. I had the impression he has insisted all along that the former cannot overcome the latter. But I think you must be right: God had to intervene to alter the course of nature. However, we can probably test this empirically because there must be a signature of evidence available in the DNA. I’ll bet Sean can find the evidence for this.

I’m also glad the predators (just 2 of most such species) in the ark had enough clean animals (14 of each such species) to eat during the deluge and in the months and years after they emerged from the ark that they didn’t wipe out the vast majority of animal species through predation. Maybe they all consumed manna while in the ark and during the first few months or years afterward. Perhaps Sean can find in the literature a gene for a single digestive enzyme that is common to all predatory animals, from the lowest invertebrate to the highest vertebrate. Now that would be amazing.

Wait a minute–I remember once being told that SDA biologists like Art Chadwick believe that some animals survived on floating vegetation outside the ark. Now that would solve some of these very real problems! I wonder whether readers here would allow for this possibility. Multiple arks without walls, roof, and human caretakers.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Ellen White said, “In the days of Noah, men…many times larger than now exist, were buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians [presumably referring to humans] perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history…”

Sean Pitman said, “All human fossils discovered so far are Tertiary or post-Flood fossils. There are no known antediluvian human fossils.”

Ellen White tells us that humans and dinosaurs (presumably referred to in the statement, “a class of very large animals which perished at the flood… mammoth animals”) lived together before the flood. Evolutionary biologists tell us that dinosaurs and humans never lived together. You’re telling us, Sean, that the fossil record supports the conclusion of evolutionists rather than that of Ellen White and the SDA Church. Many of the “very large animals which perished at the flood” are found only in fossil deposits prior to or attributed to the flood, whereas hunans occur in fossil deposits only after the flood (when their numbers were most scarce).

Should the SDA biologists, who are supposed to teach “creation science,” be fired if they teach what you have just conceded?


La Sierra Univeristy Fires Dr. Lee Greer; Signs anti-Creation Bond
For those aghast about the LSU situation and wondering what other SDA institutions have taken out bonds, hold on to your britches. You’ll be stunned when you learn (soon) how many of our other schools, and which ones in particular, have taken out these bonds. You will be amazed to learn just how many other administrators have deliberately secularized their institutions besides Randal Wisbey, presumably because they too hate the SDA Church (as David Read has put it so tactfully).

Be sure to protest equally loudly.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Sean Pitman:

So clearly you believe that science can explain supernatural events. Congratulations on that.