Comment on One reason why the debate about origins is relevant by BobRyan.
@Ken:
After reading your post I wondered why it is even necessary for the SDA to support the teaching and research of science at its respective institutions, if the answers are clear enough from the Bible alone? Why does the SDA need science at all? Maybe, as Sean advocates, it might be better to shut down the GRI, cut off funding to LSU and get out of the science business all together. End of controversy between science and faith within the SDA!
Please note – especially Shane, the tolerant editor- that I am not intending to be sarcastic or disrespectful with this observation. It just seems to me that the SDA is running into profound difficulties within, by the science being taught and researched at its institutions, hence the legitimate reason for this forum. If science is disagreeing with SDA#6, why teach science?; rather just be a faith based institution. Nothing wrong with that in my agnostic books.
It is unclear to me that anybody here said that Avagadro’s number can be deduced from scripture or that it is in some way contrary to scripture to know the significance for that ratio. (Which is the strange area that your comment seem to leap into).
By contrast I DO see a lot of posts here about the Bible teaching on the doctrine of origins being correct and the man-made alchemist fiction about “birds coming from reptiles” being less than trustworthy.
So my question for you is – how do you equate “elephants come from fish” stories with something like “the atomic number for a stable form of Carbon is 12”???
Seems to me that the doctrine on origins is a good home-base domain for a book that starts off with “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.
But if man’s-science is the subject – then it seems to be that a good home domain for that is “chiral orientation for the amino acid chains comprising proteins in eukaryote cells are all L – Levro”. Science appears to be that which we can validate in the lab. We can observe the fact that water tends to hydrolyze the peptide bonds of amino acid chains, but we do not observe birds coming from reptiles or elephants coming from fish or new genomes constantly coming into existence and less complex genomes acquire new coding genes in various eukaryote species.
in Christ,
Bob
Table of Contents
BobRyan Also Commented
One reason why the debate about origins is relevant
The church manual holds that the first reason for church discipline is in the case of those in apostasy against the cardinal doctrines of our faith.
Question – is the Sabbath a Cardinal doctrine for Seventh-day ADventists?
(I think most people know that it is).
And yet – Do we believe that people who cannot be saved if they are not keeping Sabbath today? (I think most people know that we do not believe such a thing). There is in fact no SDA doctrine saying that only Sabbath-keepers are saved.
Question 2 – is it true that having your membership dropped from the Adventist church is the same as losing salvation? (I suppose that question is more difficult in some contexts than in others).
In general we have to admit that this is not the case. The local church in business session is the mechanism by which a person’s name in dropped from the role of membership. We have never taught that the moment such a vote is cast – the person loses salvation.
I realize that this is compounded by the fact that in many cases those names being dropped are for cases where members have gone back to living like the World and may care little for the Gospel at that time.
But even in such cases – they would have turned their back on salvation long before the business session where their name is dropped.
In any case – the point is that if the issue of church membership and the issue of Cardinal Doctrines of our faith is not always tied to “are you saved” then Steve Moran’s scenario is not valid in every case.
On the other hand – “to him that knows to do right and does it not – to him it is sin”. The idea that Adventists can simply leap off the cliff of what Ellen White calls “The worst form of infidelity” and survive that leap in terms of their salvation – is kinda like saying “I can drink poison as it pleases me to do so and suffer no ill effects”.
Those in the church who do “know right from wrong” should be taking such a bold and decisive stand for truth that we will not have an SDA-lemming effect of uninformed dilluded Adventists leaping off the cliff of “disguised infidelity” thinking that it is just another one of those “I’m ok — you’re ok” preferences under “the Big Tent”.
in Christ,
Bob
Recent Comments by BobRyan
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
george:
By definition, I don’t believe in miracles or apocryphal, anthropomorphic stories about same.Why aren’t scientists observing them today if they occur?
Circular argument. If they were naturally occurring we would expect scientists to see that they are still occurring today. If they are singular events caused by an intelligent being – that being would be under no obligation to “keep causing world wide floods” as if “to do it once you must continually do it”. Armstrong went to the moon.. shall we argue that unless he keeps going to the moon so each new generation can see it … then it did not happen?
Your argument is of the form “all eye witness evidence to some event in the past is no evidence at all unless that event keeps repeating itself so we too can witness it”. Seems less than compelling.
“Could it be that science is better able to detect hoaxes and false claims?” As a rule for dismissing every eye witness account in the past – it is less than compelling. (even when that event cannot be repeated)
Evolutionists “claim” that dust, rocks and gas (in sufficient quantity and over sufficient time and a lot of luck) self organized into rabbits via prokaryote-then-eukaryote-then-more-complexity. But such self-organization cannot be “observed” today.
(What is worse – such a sequence cannot even be intelligently manipulated to occur in the lab)
By your own argument then you should not believe in evolution.
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
@Sean Pitman:
Suppose you were at a crime scene … there is a tree limb on the ground and a bullet hole in the victim — “all natural causes”? or is one ‘not natural’? Those who say that nothing can be detected as “not naturally occurring in nature” – because all results, all observations make it appear that every result “naturally occurred without intelligent design” seem to be missing a very big part of “the obvious”.
Academic Freedom Strikes Again!
george:
Gentlemen,What just God would allow an innocent child to be born guilty for the sins of a distant ancestor? …What if there was only One Commandment? Do Good. ‘Kant’ see a problem with that.
An atheist point of view is not often found here – but this is interesting.
1. God does not punish babies for what someone else did – but I suppose that is a reductionist option that is not so uncommon among atheists. The “details” of the subject you are commenting on – yet according to you “not reading” – is that humans are born with sinful natures. A “bent” toward evil. That is the first gap right out of the gate between atheism and God’s Word..
2. But still God supernaturally enables “free will” even in that bent scenario, the one that mankind lives in – ever since the free-will choice of the first humans on planet earth – was to cast their lot in with Satan and rebellion..(apparently they wanted to see what a wonderful result that poor choice would create). John 16 “the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment”. And of course “I will draw ALL mankind unto Me” John 12:32. (not “just Christians”). Thus supernatural agency promotes free will in a world that would otherwise be unrestrained in its bent to evil.
3.God says “The wages of sin is death” — so then your “complaint” is essentially “that you exist”. A just and loving God created planet Earth – no death or disease or suffering – a perfect paradise where mankind could live forever … and only one tiny restriction… yet Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be duped by Satan… tossing it all away. The “Just God” scenario could easily just have let them suffer the death sentence they chose. He did not do that… hence “you exist” – to then “complain about it”.
4. Of course you might also complain that Satan exists – and Satan might complain that “you exist”. There is no shortage on planet earth of avenues for complaint. But God steps in – offers salvation to mankind at infinite cost to himself – – and the “Few” of Matthew 7 eventually end up accepting that offer of eternal life. The rest seem to prefer the lake of fire option… sort of like Adam and Eve choosing disease and death over eternal life (without fully appreciating the massive fail in that short-sighted choice).
In any case – this thread is about the logic/reason that should be taken into account when a Christian owned and operated institution chooses to stay faithful to its Christian mission — rather then getting blown about by every wind of doctrine. Why let the alchemy of “wild guessing” be the ‘source of truth’ when we have the Bible?? We really have no excuse for that. As for science – we can be thankful that it has come as far along as it has – but no matter how far back you rewind the clock of our science history – we should always have chosen the Bible over wild guessing.
Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions
Ervin Taylor:
Perhaps Dr. Pitman would enlighten his readers what on earth “the neo-Darwinian story of origins” might be. Darwin did not address origins.
Origins of what?? the first eukaryote??
Or “origins of mankind”??
Darwin himself claimed that his own false doctrine on origins was totally incompatible with Genesis and that because of this – Genesis must be tossed under a bus.
hint: Genesis is an account of “Origins” as we all know — even though “bacteria” and “amoeba” are terms that don’t show up in the text.
The point remains – Darwin was promoting his own religion on origins totally counter to the Bible doctrine on origins. He himself addresses this point of the two views.
Newly Discovered Human Footprints Undermine Evolutionary Assumptions
Ervin Taylor:
Here we go again.If the footprints upon close examination, are determined not to be from a hominim/hominid, I wonder if Educate Truth (sic) will announce that determination.Or if the date of the surface is determined to be much younger, will there be a notice placed on fundamentalist web-sites.If you believe the answer to these questions are yes, I have a big bridge that I would like to sell you for pennies on the dollar.
Here we go again … hope piled upon hope…no matter the “observations in nature” that disconfirm the classic evolutionary hypothesis
Reminds me of “What we still don’t know” by Martin Reese and Leonard Suskind
