Comment on WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation by Professor Kent.
Sean Pitman: That is because they are irrelevant to the question. Most adaptations are the result of Mendelian-style variation or sexual recombination of pre-existing alleles, not functionally novel mutations within the vast gene pool of pre-established phenotypic options.
This is a faith-based assertion. You simply cannot establish precisely what was present or absent in an original gene pool with “pre-established phenotypic options,” so you are operating on assumptions of what “was there,” not actual data. How is your position any better than that of evolutionists?
Sean Pitman: This continued ability for very rapid adaptation to new environments has nothing to do with the fact that the underlying gene pool is slowly devolving.
Can you spell o-x-y-m-o-r-o-n?
Sean Pitman: The potential for diversity is not enhanced by phenotypic/genetic isolation. It is reduced.
Did you take a course in General Biology? Let me guess: your course at Southern Adventist University (your alma mater) actually skipped the chapters on evolution.
Sean Pitman: The fact that novel breeds and even “species” can still be produced over time has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that detrimental mutations are building up in all slowly reproducing gene pools faster than they can be eliminated – i.e., that they are in fact headed for eventual extinction.
A remarkable assertion. Was this God’s screw-up, that life–or at least “slowly-reproducing” life–is not sustainable?
Sean Pitman: What you don’t understand is that the ability to adapt and diversify has absolutely nothing to do with the gradual buildup of detrimental mutations within slowly reproducing gene pools – nothing!. Once you understand this you’ll begin to understand the significance of this problem for the overall ToE.
So, you argue that we have extremely rapid adaptive changes that promote extremely rapid divergence (as in dog breeds), which you argue occurs most rapidly in sympatry (living together) rather than in allopatry (living isolated from each other). Moreover, the buildup of detrimental mutations does not impair adaptive divergence. Amazing. Are you able to calculate when all these continually evolving races and species are scheduled to crash because of the deleterious mutations they are accumulating? Have many species already succombed due to deleterious mutations rather than other causes of extinctions (e.g., environmental change)? Can you name some examples?
“Overall ToE” concerns all life forms, so if the accumulation of deleterious mutations is a problem only for slowly-reproducing species, then why is this a problem for “overall ToE?” Don’t you think you’re overstating your claims?
Sean Pitman: You also assume that we humans have really been on this planet for “thousands of generations” when the Bible suggests that we have been here for less than 500 generations (given an average generation time of 20 years).
Who said anything about humans? My entire post was about non-human primates.
Sean Pitman: You simply don’t get it. Reproductive rates and the potential for adaptability can be maintained at a fairly constant level until the near-neutral mutations build up to a threshold level that actually starts to affect these abilities. Until then, everything goes on in an apparently normal fashion, masking the slow rot that is taking place in the underlying gene pool.
So what does your “model” predict: a gradual decline in population fitness followed by extinction, or something that functions perfectly well with a sudden, precipitous extinction over one or several generations? Having such detailed knowledge with your population genetic models (which I have yet to see), surely you could tell us WHERE some specific species are in this factual “decline” that you insist exists. Dogs, for example: how close are their genomes to extinction? A few generations? Hundreds of generations? Thousands of generations?
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.
