Comment on WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation by Professor Kent.
Let’s see now…sin entered the earth. Non-human primates, assuming they were created (I certainly believe they were), began accumulating degenerative mutations that immediately fated them for extinction because, after all, the “decline in the functionality of the gene pool” (Pitman’s words) is inevitable.
How many species existed before or immediately after the flood is unknown. However, a handful of individuals of each species emerged one morning from the ark on Mt. Ararat, and soon began to multiply and disperse, as God commanded. Over a few thousand generations (no more, since constrained by the roughly 4,000 years after the flood), they multiplied to millions, and somehow walked, swam, hitched rides with eagles, rode the shoulders of humans…whatever…to find their way to the most remote regions of the earth.
Today, we have more than 430 species of non-human primates (lemurs, lorises, galagos, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes) represented by 16 families scattered across most of the tropical and subtropical regions of the earth. Some 294 species representing 8 families presently occur only in the New World. How every individual of each species within each family arrived in the New World, without leaving any of their descendents in the Old World where they emerged from the ark, remains a mystery that only God and possibly Sean Pitman can explain. We can assume one of two most likely scenarios: that most of the species evolved in situ in the New World, or all of the individuals of each species made a pact that they would all migrate together to the New World, leaving none behind.
Considering only the New World monkeys, they somehow managed to acquire diverse adaptations that allowed them to persist in novel environments that, Sean Pitman assures us, were very different from the pre-flood environments (yes, the flood dramatica lly changed the earth’s environments…with RAIN forests being but one that could not have existed prior to the flood). Some species are big, others are small. Some rely on fruit, others folivory (leaves). Some are territorial, others are highly social. All recognize local food items and predators (in some cases having a demonstrated genetic basis), but are vulnerable to unfamiliar invasive species (exotic toxic plants and predators). All have aquired some genetic resistance to disease, but remain vulnerable to exotic diseases. Curiously, the New World species form monogamous pair bonds, and show substantial paternal care of their young, unlike most of their Old World counterparts.
So how DID all these primates manage to overcome the inevitable accumulation of deleterious mutations? Wow!!! And Sean tells us that HE is right–they cannot overcome such a genetic load–because WE cannot explain a mechanism for explaining how, in fact, they have actually done what he says cannot be done.
Professor Kent Also Commented
WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
WHAT DOES SEAN PITMAN TRULY BELIEVE?
Science has irrefutably shown the Bible’s claim that a human body decomposing several days cannot come back to life. Thus, science and scripture depart on this claim. There is no middle ground.
Who do YOU believe: God, because you take Him at his word, or the empirical evidence that drives human reason and science?
WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
Sean Pitman: Epistatic interactions (the effects of a given mutation modified by other mutations) are irrelevant to the problem at hand – as are your arguments as to the nature of the environment and the presence of other mutations.
If you don’t think the environment or epistatic interactions are relevant, then you’ll have much difficulty deciding whether a given mutation is deleterious, neutral, or beneficial, and you won’t have a clue how strong selection is on it. I suggest you read the April 2010 issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Don’t bother if your mind is already made up.
Sean Pitman: “This problem is explained rather neatly by the Biblical model of origins.”
Where does the Bible tell us that animals accumulate deleterious mutations faster than selection, recombination, and other mechanisms can overcome them? Where does the Bible tell us that lineages have a finite lifetime limited by their genes?
Sean Pitman: The data is clear and the implications are straightforward. The standard arguments of evolutionists fall flat in that they don’t actually solve this particular problem by a long shot – a problem that is fundamental to the entire modern theory of evolution.
There’s no point in arguing further with established fact, so I’ll desist. Congratulations, Sean, on elucidating and solving yet one more riddle that 99.5% of the world’s scientists have completely overlooked or denied. I’m gaining a clearer understanding why you are unwilling to take God at his word and prefer to rely, instead, on your own extraordinary reason and intellect. Clearly, God needs you to save the world from disbelief.
WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
Sean Pitman’s doctrine of salvation merits a double-take:
“Salvation is about doing to others as you would have done to you.”
“Salvation is based on love – love toward our fellow man. The law of love is the Royal Law mentioned in James (James 2:8 NIV). Because the Royal Law is written on the hearts of all, all can be saved by living according to this law.”
Seventh-day Adventists do not teach or believe in salvation by works. Salvation is a free gift and is NOT procured by our actions toward fellow man (which is fortunate for Sean’s sake). So why does Sean undermine SDA fundamental belief #10? I am astonished by his heterodox theology. Wait a minute…I hear his supporters clamoring to claim he is (as always) correct.
Recent Comments by Professor Kent
Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Nic Samojluk: 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.
