WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
@Sean Pitman:

Evolution is a fact. It is not a theory. Evolution, like gravity, is a natural force that we can try to describe and test and form a theory about.

The “theory of evolution,” however, is a theory. The theory of evolution is an attempt to describe the origins of life (or at least the origins of life as we know it), using the natural process of evolution as sort of “framework” upon which we try to extrapolate a history we cannot directly observe.

I’m glad you understand that WASC’s requirements simply require the professors to “inform their students of the mainstream concensus (sic) on the theories of evolution.” This is my point exactly. It is not trying to “meddle” or require “independence” from the church. It is simply requiring that the fact of evolution (i.e., that evolution can and does occur) be taught as just that – fact. Any attempts to extrapolate the facts to derive a cosmology, however – be it the theory of evolution or the theory of creation – is not WASC’s concern. In fact, Professor Bradley was doing precisely this – teaching creation and evolution concurrently—and meeting the requirements for WASC certification. It is a shame that he has lost his job simply for doing it properly.

WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
Let us pray, friends and fellow SDAs, that LSU can cure itself of this cancer it before it is too late – and that it can set an example for the rest of our denomination to follow.

The cancer I speak of, of course, is Sean Pitman, Shane Hilde, and all others who insist on using flawed scientific and theological reasoning to “support” one of our outdated beliefs, without concern for the cost to our church as a whole and those at LSU specifically.

This asinine crusade is poised to destroy a respectable institution. Since its inception, the Adventist church has considered education one of its fundamental missions. EducateTruth is, in short order, threatening to destroy entirely this aspect of EGW’s legacy, and dooming our church to irrelevance in the process. There are some who are short-sighted enough to welcome this change – many of them post to this board regularly – but for the rest of us who still consider things rationally before jerking our knee, we see this as an exceptionally ominous development.

If WASC fails to certify LSU, it will cease to exist. It will not turn into a bible college – it will instead disappear. There is insufficient volume to support a Bible college in Southern California, and the gutted hulk of LSU would be left to drift aimlessly until the board had to finally close the doors for good. Hundreds of faculty and staff—not to mention thousands of students—will be deprived of what has been an appropriately progressive SDA environment. Without an equivalent nearby SDA institution, most will be forced into schools that really ARE secular (or at least of a different denomination), where no hint of the “SDA message” will fall upon their ears. Is this the scenario those at ET desire?

Thanks to ET, LSU has a terrible decision to face: loose ~10% of their funding, break from the church and tighten their belts, likely resulting in ultimate failure due to insufficient funding and enrollment – or choose the path to certain destruction by forgoing WASC certification. Of course, the church at large has demonstrated that it is not concerned with the education of our youth, but rather with irrational adherence to outdated dogma – and the occasional vendetta by those with a personal axe to grind. If the church can continue to exert its undue influence on the board, this conclusion is forgone. If, however, the board can grow a backbone and throw off the oppression of those at the church bent of returning us to 1844, it might have a chance at rescuing the school from oblivion.

If the “church” is willing to destroy LSU (and the rest of my community) over this barely relevant bit of trivia, I cannot in good conscience encourage others to join it.

Without secular accreditation, our schools are useless. To ignore this point is to ignore the entire point of our church to begin with. We were not founded to be separate from the world, but rather to be a beacon within it – doing good in it, witnessing to it, and—yes—evolving with it. Should we withdraw from the elementary and secondary school realms as well? It will absolutely come to that. If we cannot teach proper science to our 11th graders, then we have no business teaching them at all – and we cannot expect the rest of the world to take us seriously if we do.

I cannot fathom that there are those who consider this an issue of religious discrimination. Nobody is telling us we can’t pay teachers to teach whatever we decide they want to teach (within legal limits, of course). WASC isn’t a government entity. WASC is simply charged with developing a standard (like the SAT) and then certifying who meets it and who doesn’t – and then others use that certification to judge whether the degrees the school issues are valuable or not. There is clearly no discrimination going on here – but, yes, all of our schools are at risk of loosing this essential certification (and rightfully so) if this internal witch hunt continues, and other schools are forced to reckon with our medival-minded church leadership.

Frankly, it frightens me that individuals here feel that they can speak to how our church should educate through our institutions, but they are so obviously, completely, violently ignorant. Evolution is not “junk science” – evolution is reproducible, testable, logically-consistent, scientifically-sound fact – in the same manner that the earth’s rotation around the sun is fact, or that gravity is fact. Ignoring it and calling it “junk science” doesn’t make it go away – it just makes you look, well, ignorant. Nobody is claiming that they fully understand evolution, of course – but considering that the Biblical account of creation (and the 6000-year-old earth) is so unfathomably illogical (and so easily disproven), we have to choose a different path to find our answers.

Opening your eyes and accepting evolution is not easy for an SDA – I know, I struggled with it myself. (I’m still not ready to let go of my belief that the Pope is the antichrist, though.) If it isn’t something you can accept, don’t teach science…but, likewise, don’t try to tell our SDA teachers how they should teach it, because you are not qualified to do so.

Consider for a moment how foolish we would look if we, as a church, required our teachers to teach that the sun revolved around the earth. Would we expect anybody to take us seriously? The evidence we have to support the heliocentric model of our galaxy (or, for that matter, that the galaxy even exists) is no more and no less viable than the evidence we have to support evolution – but since the Bible contradicts one scientifically-observable phenomenon, we have to disregard it, while at the same time we accept the other? The Complete Works of God include more than the Bible – and to ignore our admittely flawed, human interpretation of nature simply because it doesn’t jibe with our flawed, human understanding of the Bible or the prophecies of a normal, flawed human being – well, that’s just ridiculous.

If you want to TRULY do something valuable for our church – and for EGW’s legacy—get to work on the wording of Fundamental Belief #6 and bring our church into the 21st century. While you’re at it, fix #23 too, and remove that stupid “man and a woman” poppycock.

WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
Sean is clearly well-versed in using the language of a scientist to speak the thoughts of a layman. He can use the proper terminology, but his conclusions are flawed, his grasp of the research is tenuous, and his obsession with proving his theory in complete ignorance of any scientific search for truth renders him unqualified to discourse on this topic. Yet, discourse he does, and with his pablum he seeks to bring down an entire university (and, potentially, the entire denomination, were he and his friends truly successful in their stated mission) because of his self-centered, egotistical crusade.

Simply put, Sean et al. believe that creation, as per the Bible and reiterated by EGW and our official church position, is the only possible explanation, and any deviation from the literal account is false. In the presence of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, all he can do is manufacture, misquote, or wrench from context “scientific” evidence not to support his position, but rather to destroy the opposing view. His defensive position is, rhetorically, an easy one, given the phalanx of similarly-ignorant foot soldiers he has arrayed around him. Logically and scientifically, however, his chrome-plated babbling is no more scientifically sound than Faith’s emotional aspersions. (And don’t me started on Bob’s unsupported “junk science” claims and personal attacks – we could be here for hours. I don’t claim to be a stellar example of what LSU can provide, but if my intellect and spirituality were to be judged against that of those here who claim superior SDA-ness, I would not fear for the conclusion).

The significantly better educated (and equally well-spoken) contributors to this thread have provided reams of evidence to counter Sean’s laughably narrow and woefully insufficient evidence, yet the rabble continue to be roused. Evidence does NOT support the view that genetic mutation is necessarily degenerative, regardless of population size or generational frequency. While you quibble over contemporary research that fails to conclusively uncover evolution’s “smoking gun,” you ignore the gestalt of a century of research and millions of studies that all point in the same general direction. According to both history (and consistent with evolutionary theory), humanity has frequently faced extinction, and many other species of similar complexity have succumbed. Variants of “humanity” have, in fact, become extinct. As we have also observed scientifically, the term “detrimental mutation” can be falsely proscriptive, as it may take generations for a mortality-increasing mutation to demonstrate a species-saving purpose. There are, too, somewhat unique qualities demonstrated by homo sapiens and other long-gestation, long-generation, low-offspring species that counteract some of these potentially terminal genetic mutations (advanced and abstract concepts of socialization and division of labor, for instance), and some of the genes we carry today would have likely been the end of our species in another organism or at a different point in our own evolution. Is this an argument for God’s hand in observable evolution, or simply blind chance? There within lies an opportunity for theological discussion. Against the argument that evolution has shaped each and every organisms on this planet, however, there is no theological counter that should be given the weight of science in our curriculum.

It’s as if we have a 1000-piece puzzle, and on its cover we can see a beautiful scene of nature. Some maintain that we should never open the box, simply believing that the pieces are there, and be content to enjoy the cover alone (given my personal facility with puzzle-making, perhaps I should consider this approach). Others believe we should put a few of the pieces in place, but if we find something we cannot understand, we take scissors and cut apart the box lid, and try to fit those clippings into the empty spaces to see something approximating the full picture and consider our job finished. Some of us, however, upon putting 800 or so of the pieces in place, come to see a pattern, and continue to search for the remaining pieces-all the while referring to the cover for guidance. The picture on the cover, however, which is smaller and is partially obscured by labels and cropping and a price tag, is not a literal account of what the puzzle will look like when it is complete.

The 800 pieces we’ve found say “evolution.” We might occasionally put a piece in the wrong spot, and we will probably never find all of the pieces – but we know enough to know we’re on the right track, and most of the pieces don’t go together any other way. Are we not supposed to show this puzzle to our students? Are we supposed to feel guilty for understanding this much? Are we supposed to disregard the evidence in front of our own eyes simply because it doesn’t look like the cover? (“but the wildebeast is SUPPOSED to say “$12.99″ on it because that’s what it looks like on the cover!”)

The Bible does not even possess logical internal consistency; it is only through dedicated effort that we can reconcile the entire work in a consistent document. Must we also be forced to jump through these hoops to bring it our current interpretation of the Bible into alignment with our observable world, and if so, must we grant this particular interpretation of the Bible inviolable primacy? EGW never required this – why should we today?
Sean seems to think we need to work on the puzzle, but he seems to feel that we need to trim the pieces to make them fit, instead of accepting we’ve got them wrong. Sometimes, though, we simply need to accept that we are wrong – that is the nature of science, and should also be the hallmark of any valuable religious community.