@Eddie: Thanks, Eddie. I find it strange that we …

Comment on Rewrite of fundamental belief 6 voted by NCC by Carl.

@Eddie:

Thanks, Eddie. I find it strange that we try to improve on Scripture.

Carl Also Commented

Rewrite of fundamental belief 6 voted by NCC
@John:

Sadly, FB6 does not even begin to be clear about this important biblical point about the “when” of Creation, because FB6 is completely silent about the matter. This silence illustrates the need for FB6 to speak with the clarity of the Bible on Creation on this point, and on any other point about Creation concerning which FB6 is less clear than the biblical teaching.

I agree that FB 6 is less specific than what most Adventists believe the Scripture says. It appears to me that FB 6 was deliberately written as it is because many people already knew that we were in trouble with a short-history chronology. I think it’s really foolish to change it. The idea that life on Earth is older than 6,000 years is just as clear now as the idea that the earth orbited the Sun was clear to Copernicus.

[Edited – the rest of this post is not relevant to the topic in this particular thread and has been transferred to the 3ABN thread instead for those who are interested in arguments for/against young-life creation:

http://www.educatetruth.com/media/educatetruth-com-promoted-on-3abn/comment-page-3/#comment-12669 ]


Recent Comments by Carl

Panda’s Thumb: ‘SDAs are split over evolution’

These layers should have been washed away many times over by now. That’s the problem.

Well — maybe. I’d say the real problem for your position is that no one has proposed a comprehensive model that can explain the evidence of geology within about 10,000 years. That is such a huge problem that I don’t know why we are talking about anything else. The evidence for life beyond 10,000 years is massive as compared to the few objections that Sean has collected.


Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
Sean,

I understand better how you have reached your conclusions. You have a powerful bias that the Bible must be literal history, and that predisposition has driven much of your scientific thinking. What still mystifies me is that you attempt to take the open issues of science and use them as an argument that a short history is equally as believable (I think you claim more believable) as a long history. That is one huge leap.

I’ve read parts of your personal Web site, and it seems to me that you have failed to establish your points. In what you have written, I have found no compelling evidence to believe a short history. You do well in raising doubts about the standard model, but doubts on one side are not a convincing argument on the other side.

You do not have any detectable theory of how the earth could possibly come to be as it is within about 10,000 years. Your discussion above again misses the major issue. The evidence that is at odds with a short history is much greater than the evidence that is at odds with a long history. You have come nowhere close to showing otherwise. Ten thousand years is a very short period of time.


Report on LSU constituency meeting
Here’s a link for Hammill’s interesting report:

http://spectrummagazine.org/files/archive/archive11-15/15-2hammill.pdf


Report on LSU constituency meeting
@BobRyan:

Not found in Adventist literature.
Not found in Quiquinium voted documents.
So “general” as in you and a few of your closes friends?
How is that “general”?

The Consultant Committee on Geoscience Research was terminated and a new emphasis was instituted for staff activities. Research tended to concentrate on selected areas where the data were most supportive of the 6,000-year biblical chronology of Bishop Ussher. Before long, the tacit policy arrived at in the 1950s during the General Conference presidency of W. H. Branson (to the effect that the 6,000-year chronology need not be emphasized in Seventh-day Adventist publications) was abandoned. (Richard Hammill, AAF Spectrum, Vol 15, No. 2 p 41)

I did not know Dr Hammill personally, so, no, this wasn’t cooked up among my closest friends.


Report on LSU constituency meeting
@Art Chadwick:

The theology department has preceded the sciences by some year in losing confidence in the Scriptures and in promoting belief in naturalism.

Here again is the suggestion that we must interpret Scripture literally or else we are “losing confidence” in them. I think it often works the other way around. By insisting on literal details, we can miss the most important point and make it more difficult to believe.

The tragedy of this Web site is that it thwarts the creative thinking that we need for dealing with modern science issues. It’s not an easy problem, and the success of this site will drive many thinking people into seclusion. That’s where we’ve been for decades.

In the 1950s, there was a general understanding that Adventist literature would not emphasize a 6000 year history. President Robert Pierson brought that to an end and set us on a path to avoid any science that we did not like. The result is that many Adventists are very suspicious of science and scientists.

If truth has nothing to fear from examination, which sometimes seems to be a Adventist assumption, I say it’s time to stop trying to fix LSU. Students are pretty good at figuring out who to believe. So, if you’re afraid to think out of the box, go where you’ll be told what to think. If you want think it out for yourself, go where the box has been opened.

I have little doubt that Geanna, Adventist Student, and many others will figure things out with or without the “help” of the reformers sponsoring and speaking on this site.