@Jan Long: Sean, we have no guarantee that science has

Comment on Adventist Education–at the crossroads? by Sean Pitman.

Sean, we have no guarantee that science has correctly interpreted all data. In fact we can assume that as Thomas Kuhn has shown, it is likely that there will be future paradigm shifts. Because of this reality, some, such as yourself apparent dismiss or diminish the scientific enterprise.

I’m not sure how what I actually wrote in response to your article suggested to you that I’m trying to diminish the scientific enterprise? That’s hardly my position since I’m a very strong believer in scientific methodologies and basic rules of logic and empirical testing, with at least the potential for falsification, to help us humans approach truth in all aspects of our lives.

I’m also a fan of many of the ideas of Thomas Kuhn, believing that all of our efforts, scientific or otherwise, are influences by our various biases since we are inherently subjective creatures.

The problem with your suggestion that the literal 6-day creation week is “anti-science” is that it isn’t inherently anti-science. It is only opposed to what is currently popular within the scientific community. The minority position in science is not necessary wrong, however. Time and again the majority opinion in science has been replaced by what was once a distinctly minority perspective.

The fact remains that the historic SDA perspective on origins is supported by a great deal of evidence – I personally believe that it is supported by the significant weight of evidence. Scientific reasoning strongly suggests to me that current popular theories of origins are painfully mistaken. As just one example, the Darwinian mechanism of evolution (RM/NS) is clearly untenable beyond very low levels of functional complexity. There are no examples of evolution in action beyond very very low levels of functional complexity and, if you actually sit down and do a bit of statistical analysis, you will find that higher and higher levels of functional complexity are exponentially harder and harder to achieve in a given span of time. Well before the level of 1000 specifically arranged amino acid residues is reached, the evolutionary mechanism completely stalls out this side of trillions upon trillions of years of time.

The only reason the scientific community doesn’t come out and openly admit such failures to the public is because they know they have nothing else to go on. And, they know the implications of this – i.e., it clearly allows the Divine Foot in the door. That thought scares most mainstream scientists to death.

But fleeing to the refuge of revelation may not be the complete answer either. We know, for example, that Jesus introduced his own paradigm shift. It was a radical departure from business as usual. I must ask, what theological paradigms shifts await usâ€”or do we have all the truth? At the very least we know that with the proliferation of theological interpretations in just about every area of thought, we should use extreme caution in arriving at categorical conclusions on most theological matters.

As already noted above, the SDA Church stands on the concept of “Present Truth”. By no means does this suggest that the Church has discovered all Truth. Quite the contrary. The Church, since its inception, has recognized the limited and progressive nature of the human understanding of Truth and progress toward Truth.

Special or privileged revelation of Truth, as is found in the Scriptures, is quite helpful, but is not independent of empirical evidence. The Divine origin of the Scriptures is confirmed by the natural world, by the currently available empirical evidence. If God exists, He is the Source of both the written Word as well as Nature herself. He is also the Source of science, of the ability to think and reason scientifically about the world in which we live. If all of these share a single Author, they should all agree with each other. Inspiration should not be in conflict with empirical evidence or rational thought. As Mrs. White so eloquently put it:

God is the foundation of everything. All true science is in harmony with His works; all true education leads to obedience to His government. Science opens new wonders to our view; she soars high, and explores new depths; but she brings nothing from her research that conflicts with divine revelation. Ignorance may seek to support false views of God by appeals to science, but the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other. – Ellen White, PP, p. 115

So, you see, true science is not in conflict, or at least should not be in conflict, with a clear reading of Scripture – if in fact Scripture truly has a Divine origin…

The point of my article was to articulate that there is a current scientific paradigm in place and any educational system that wishes to remain credible must educate students in that paradigm irrespective of those forces within the Church that may oppose that scientific paradigm.

There are several issues in play here. For one, credibility is in the eye of the beholder. Why would the Church necessarily want to be seen as credible by those who are fundamentally opposed to God and his revealed will? Was Jesus seen or promoted as “credible” by the powers that be in his own day? Should he have altered his teaching to be more in line with what would be seen as credible? See what I’m driving at here?

Beyond this, I most certainly agree that students in our SDA schools should be very very well informed with regard to the theory of evolution. However, our SDA educational system should go beyond this to also inform our students of the serious weaknesses that are abundant in this theory as well as the weight of evidence that clearly favors the SDA position on origins. You see, our students should know everything that the best of secular education has to offer – and more…

Furthermore, I donâ€™t believe a university can remain credible if it teaches the reigning scientific paradigm, but pledges allegiance to a hypothetical anti-scientific position. That is the reason for the wisdom of maintaining the current FB #6â€”what ever its shortcomings, at least it is not anti-scientific.

You mean you want a statement and official Church position that is not clearly opposed to mainstream evolutionary science – i.e., you want room in the Church for our schools to promote the mainstream idea that life has existed and evolved on this planet, in a Darwinian manner, over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

You clearly do not understand the fundamental challenge that mainstream evolutionary scientists pose, not only to the SDA faith, but to the rational acceptance of the Christian faith at large. Mainstream evolutionary theory, if true, paints a God who would use such an overtly evil process to create, a process that requires the death and suffering of untold billions and trillions of sentient beings, in a very bad light indeed. Who would want to serve such a God? I certainly wouldn’t.

I much prefer the God of the Bible – a God who never intended for there to be “Survival of the Fittest”; a God who is actually grieved when a sparrow falls wounded to the ground; a God who is so upset by the current order of things that He came to die to have the right to change it all to how it was originally intended to be – a place where there is no sorry or pain or death for any of his sentient creatures.

This is the God I believe in and this is the God I still see reflected in His works of nature – even though they have been marred by sin over the course of several thousand years…

Thanks again for your thoughts, but suggest to you that the SDA Church cannot follow your advice if it wishes to remain viable for more than a couple more generations…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

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Sean Pitman Also Commented

Adventist Education–at the crossroads?
@pauluc:

My point in quoting Davies’ review of Polkinghorne was to show that they base their ideas on God’s existence on evidence, on certain features within the universe, which they think can only be explained by deliberate intelligent design on the level of God-like intelligence. That is an intelligent design hypothesis on at least some level.

Just because those who appeal to intelligent design theories on at least some level may also believe in various aspects of the modern theory of evolution doesn’t mean that an ID theory hasn’t been invoked on at least some level. It has.

After all, even I believe in evolution via RM/NS as being responsible for many features of living things. Many features of living things are very well explained by neutral evolution or by low-level functional evolution. This doesn’t mean that all features of living things can be therefore be explained by RM/NS. It is this leap of logic or extrapolation of low-level evolution to much higher levels of evolution, within mainstream science, which isn’t scientific. Many features of living things go well beyond the creative potential of any known mindless mechanism while being well within the realm of ID. This is the very same argument used by Davies to support his belief in a God as the designer behind certain features of the anthropic universe.

By the way, I do know Norman McNulty. I’m just not familiar with his views on perfectionism – which is, in any case, irrelevant to this purposes of this particular website. Also, my transitional internship was completed at Eisenhower Army Medical Center (not an SDA institution) and my hemepath fellowship was completed at the City of Hope under the world-renown Lawrence Weiss (not SDA either).

I remain as perplexed as ever how you can hold views on the the nature of intelligent design as a natural phenomena and the requirement for faith to be subservient to reason and evidence but deny anyone in church employ any leeway to explore or articulate anything beyond what you consider truth.

It isn’t what I consider truth. It is what the Church as an organization considers to be fundamental “present truth”. All are free to join or to leave the Church at will. This is a free civil society in which we live – thank God. However, the Church, as with any viable organization, must maintain a certain degree of order and discipline within its own organizational structure if it is to survive. The Church simply cannot afford to hire those who are ardently opposed to the basic fundamental goals and ideals of the Church as an organization and who go around teaching and preaching against the fundamental positions of the organized Church.

You may not consider the organization of the Church to be all that important. I think that without organization, and the order and control that goes along with maintaining any organization, that the Church would quickly fragment into a meaningless hodgepodge of isolated groups with widely divergent ideas. The organizational aspect of the Church is what gives it its power to spread a unified Gospel message more effectively.

I appreciate your responses to my questions and the glimpses I have gained into the mind of a person who seems to discern truth and sees the justice in imposing it on others.

What employer doesn’t impose various rules and restrictions on its paid employees? – rules that are known upfront before the employee agrees to take the job? You very well know that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t be paid by an organization for doing whatever you want. You are paid to do what the organization wants you to do. If you don’t like what the organization wants you to do, you don’t have to take the job. Again, it’s as simple as that. This isn’t some deep philosophical mystery here.

It is self-evident, is it not, that when one takes on employment in an organization of one’s own free will, one is obliged to take on the restriction, the rules, of that organization. Is it wrong of Reebok to require its own employees to only promote and even wear Reebok shoes? Would it be wrong of Reebok to fire and employee for publicly promoting Nike as making a superior product?

Come now. If you really believe that Nike makes the better shoe, and you are bound and determined to be honest to yourself and tell everyone about the superiority of Nike, why on Earth would you expect to be paid by Reebok to promote Nike? You’re simply making no sense here. You’re basically an anarchist who thinks you deserve to be paid simply for your honesty. I’m sorry, but no viable organization works that way. An honest Catholic should work for the Catholic organization. An honest Baptist should work for the Baptist organization. And an honest evolutionary scientist should work for those numerous organizations who would be more than glad to pay such an individual for their efforts. Why should the SDA Church pay anyone who doesn’t actually want to promote what the SDA Church, as an organization, wishes to promote?

God bless and give you as much insight into his Grace.

Likewise. God is a God of order and disciplined government – not anarchy. All are free to come and enjoy the gifts of God as given through the inspired organization of the SDA Church. However, not all are free to expect payment from the SDA Church for their services since not all are well suited to be official representatives of the Church as an organization.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Adventist Education–at the crossroads?
@Eddie:

I’m a partner in an independent pathology practice. We do some contract work for a Catholic hospital, but I have not been hired by the Catholic Church to be a representative of the Catholic Church or to promote Catholic doctrinal positions.

Teachers in our SDA schools, on the other hand, are specifically hired by the SDA Church to actively promote SDA goals and ideals within the classroom – specifically with regard to the topic of origins. This has been made very clear, in no uncertain terms, by the General Conference Executive Committee:

We call on all boards and educators at Seventh-day Adventist institutions at all levels to continue upholding and advocating the church’s position on origins. We, along with Seventh-day Adventist parents, expect students to receive a thorough, balanced, and scientifically rigorous exposure to and affirmation of our historic belief in a literal, recent six-day creation, even as they are educated to understand and assess competing philosophies of origins that dominate scientific discussion in the contemporary world.

http://adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main-stat55.html

Science teachers, in particular, are not hired to actively undermine the SDA position on origins in our classrooms. Clearly, such activity is counterproductive to the stated goals and ideals of the Church. Why would the Church wish to hire anyone to go around and tell people that the Church’s position is irrational and part of the “lunatic fringe”? – as so eloquently put by LSU science professor Gary Bradley? – in an interview with a secular journal?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Adventist Education–at the crossroads?
@pauluc:

J H Kellogg’s ideas were pantheistic – i.e., God actually within everything. This is not quite like suggesting that various features of the universe in which we live can only be rationally explained by invoking intelligent design on at least the human level of intelligence or beyond. Quite a number of old world and even modern physicists have come to this same conclusion as well. My position is more along the lines of Sir Isaac Newton or of the well-known Australian astrophysicist, Paul Davies, who writes:

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is “something behind it all” is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists…

The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe.

* Davies, Paul C.W. [Physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Adelaide],”The Christian perspective of a scientist,” Review of “The way the world is,” by John Polkinghorne, New Scientist, Vol. 98, No. 1354, pp.638-639, 2 June 1983, p.638

* http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1572643.htm

You don’t seem to grasp my argument that the term “natural” is a relative term. What seems “natural” to you may seem supernatural to someone else with less knowledge than you have. If God does in fact exist, his own intelligence and power would seem perfectly “natural” to him.

In short, the term “natural” is meaningless without a much more specific definition as to what you’re talking about when you use this word. Simply saying that science is restricted to examining “natural” phenomena does not mean that science cannot therefore detect an intelligent origin behind certain types of phenomena… even if that intelligent origin just so happens to be God. While a God could certainly hide himself from us quite easily. It is most certainly within God’s power to reveal himself to us in a manner that we can in fact detect as requiring a very high level of deliberate intelligence. Certainly you can recognize this as at least a possibility given the hypothesis of God’s actual existence – can you not?

You seem to be able to do this, on at least some level, for you write:

I do agree with you that nature is not enough and is an insufficient explanation of the universe. There is an intelligibility to the Universe and that things like Love, suffering and beauty call out for higher level explanations. But in this I agree with theologians such as Haught, McGrath and Polkinghorne who see the intelligibility of the universe and the anthropic principle as well as those higher functions as supporting a notion of the divine but do not simplistically restrict the divine to [plugs] for the holes in our knowledge or immediate explanations for origins.

Scientific theories are the plugs for the holes in our knowledge. We have limited knowledge. If we had perfect or absolute knowledge, science would no longer be needed. It is because we have limited knowledge that scientific methodologies become helpful to bridge the gaps or “holes” in our knowledge. The ID hypothesis is often a valid scientific bridge for certain types of holes in our knowledge. The notion that intelligent design cannot be invoked by science is simply mistaken.

Did you leave the armed forces when the government became Democrat rather than Republican? (I am of course assuming you are republican in political persuasion but given the statistics I have a high probability of being right). Do you agree in every point with your current employer? Will you resign when they express for example a view on abortion with which you disagree? Like the pharisees of old you are placing on church employees a burden much more than I suspect you would be prepared to bear.

If I felt I had to publicly counter my employer on some issue considered “fundamental” by my employer, and I was originally hired to promote this particular position of my employer, I would most certainly resign. If an employer hires me to do a particular job, and that job is made quite clear when I am hired, it would be morally wrong of me to undermine the clearly stated fundamental purpose of the job for which I was hired. That would be, in effect, stealing money and time from my employer. I would have misrepresented myself to my employer to get paid for something I never intended to deliver to my employer. Such activity is very deceptive and underhanded. It is a lie calculated to rob the employer of what the employer hired me to do – no bones about it. And that, I’m afraid, is a moral problem in anyone’s book.

If you think the SDA Church was somehow unclear about what it expects from its science professors regarding the topic of origins, think again. The following statement of the SDA General Conference Executive Committee is very clear in this regard:

We call on all boards and educators at Seventh-day Adventist institutions at all levels to continue upholding and advocating the churchâ€™s position on origins. We, along with Seventh-day Adventist parents, expect students to receive a thorough, balanced, and scientifically rigorous exposure to and affirmation of our historic belief in a literal, recent six-day creation, even as they are educated to understand and assess competing philosophies of origins that dominate scientific discussion in the contemporary world.

http://adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main-stat55.html

Regarding Brinsmead’s teachings, and their dramatic evolution over time, I’m sure I’m not aware of all of the subtleties of his numerous theological positions as they changed over time, but I think I’m well enough informed.

Also, Des Ford (since you brought him up) was not simply let go from Church employment for some minor issue. He was attacking clearly stated fundamental pillars of the SDA Church – to include the Church’s position on origins. Ford believes in and strongly supports theistic evolutionary ideas where life has existed and evolved on this planet over hundreds of millions of years of time. Ford does believe in the Divine inspiration of Genesis, but not based on the straight forward reading of the text so much as on a hidden mathematical code similar to the “Bible Code” of Michael Drosnin – on the same level as astrology if you ask me.

It is for such reasons that the likes of Ford and Brinsmead cannot represent the SDA Church in any sort of official capacity.

Really though, I do not want to get off on a debate on perfectionism. I do not agree with Brinsmead, and am not familiar with the views of Normal McNulty on this issue, but that isn’t the purpose of this particular website.

The purpose of this website is to inform members of the SDA Church as to what is really being taught in some of our schools on the issue of origins… a fundamental issue for the SDA Church.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com