@Cheng: Cheng, you’re putting Danny Shelton in some rarefied company …

Comment on It’s about authority by David Read.

@Cheng: Cheng, you’re putting Danny Shelton in some rarefied company where he himself probably wouldn’t be comfortable.

On the issue of why don’t the Darwinists go do their own thing, you’re not understanding something basic. It takes alot of faith to go out and start your own [religion, business, church, etc.]. People without faith do not create and found new institutions. Conservative Adventists often do found independent ministries and independent ventures. ASI is teeming with independent conservative ministries. (There are exceptioins to every rule, and Spectrum/AAF and Adventist Today are independents that were founded by liberals, albeit for explicity liberal purposes.)

Liberal Adventists tend simply to take over the existing structures (which were built up by conservative Adventists in the past). Additionally, it is a law of human action that any insitution that isn’t explicitly and militantly conservative will eventually be liberalized. This has happened to all of mainline Protestant denominations and is now happening to the Adventist Church.

David Read Also Commented

It’s about authority
@Cheng: Cheng, I see what you are saying now. The Seventh-day Darwinians are being very bold about evangelizing their views in the fora they control. That’s the report we have about the Darwinists at LaSierra and was also what we saw in the freshman seminar class from Webster and Johns.

It isn’t in their political interest to advertise that they control LaSierra, although they aren’t really denying it either. The thing that impresses me is that these folks have been and are very politically astute. The sad fact is that the conservatives have been badly outmaneuvered politically, at least in California.


Recent Comments by David Read

The Reptile King
Poor Larry Geraty! He can’t understand why anyone would think him sympathetic to theistic evolution. Well, for starters, he wrote this for Spectrum last year:

“Christ tells us they will know us by our love, not by our commitment to a seven literal historical, consecutive, contiguous 24-hour day week of creation 6,000 years ago which is NOT in Genesis no matter how much the fundamentalist wing of the church would like to see it there.”

“Fundamental Belief No. 6 uses Biblical language to which we can all agree; once you start interpreting it according to anyone’s preference you begin to cut out members who have a different interpretation. I wholeheartedly affirm Scripture, but NOT the extra-Biblical interpretation of the Michigan Conference.”

So the traditional Adventist interpretation of Genesis is an “extra-Biblical interpretation” put forward by “the fundamentalist wing” of the SDA Church? What are people supposed to think about Larry Geraty’s views?

It is no mystery how LaSierra got in the condition it is in.


The Reptile King
Professor Kent says:

“I don’t do ‘orgins science.’ Not a single publication on the topic. I study contemporary biology. Plenty of publications.”

So, if you did science that related to origins, you would do it pursuant to the biblical paradigm, that is pursuant to the assumption that Genesis 1-11 is true history, correct?


The Reptile King
Well, Jeff, would it work better for you if we just closed the biology and religion departments? I’m open to that as a possible solution.


The Reptile King
Larry Geraty really did a job on LaSierra. Personally I think it is way gone, compromised beyond hope. The SDA Church should just cut its ties to LaSierra, and cut its losses.

As to the discussion on this thread, round up the usual suspects and their usual arguments.


La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction
It is a remarkably fair and unbiased article, and a pretty fair summary of what was said in the recorded conversation.