Beautifully articulated. Thank you!

The conflict that will rip Adventism apart is not creationism - it is fundamentalism and literalism.

I understand such concerns, although they are not mine.

What amazes me is that concerns for being honest about the evidence occupy so little time and space in the minds of so many religious people (while others have them).

Surely telling demonstrable falsehoods to students must be considered a sin within Adventism. Closing off one's mind to the fact that creationism is not truth, and denying reasonable inferences from "God's creation," can hardly make such dishonesty into something tolerable.

The other issues matter, but I know that I resented having been lied to, once I studied the evidence and the theories with an open mind, not privileging any subject. How can demonstrable untruths ever be justified when teaching the trusting student?

Glen Davidson

Well said.

Let us exchange creation wars for creating community through conversation.

I hate adding even a little more attention to all David Asscherick was seeking when he wrote this letter. Because that's what a lot of this is about: about David's ego. He could have tracked down the answer to this quietly, but he got a lot more attention with an open letter. He got on the soapbox and we all rushed over to fight with him. Still, such accusations shouldn't go unanswered.

Like Glen, this isn't a hot button for me. That God is Lord of all that exists is very important to me, but my faith doesn't hinge on precisely how it all got here. I've tried to read the creation scientists, but I get weary of their being perpetually on the defensive. So not being a scientist, and not especially wanting to pretend to be one, I tell the story as Genesis does, draw the important conclusion that God is creator, and let the scientists hash out the details. This view would please neither conservatives nor liberals, I'm sure, but it's mine for now.

It is important to many people, though, and to those, I don't think this will seem like any kind of answer to what is a very simple question. Does La Sierra teach students that life came about by evolution, or not? Did it happen by God's command in six days, or over millions of years? You're calling for a new consensus, but the question posed is pretty simple. It's like a husband asking his wife, "Did you cheat on me, or not? Yes or no." And she says, "Let's talk about what marriage really means."

These are fundamentally different ways of thinking. We are asking different questions, seeking different answers. It won't be solved by sitting down with one another and saying, "OK, can you guys live with a little bit of evolution? How much? Species only, or genera too? How about the gap theory? Can you expand the time from a week to 2 weeks, or 2 years, or 2 million years? Can we agree that the number of years since creation can be as much as 10,000, or 100,000—or maybe we can just leave that one blank?" Scientific truth arrived at by negotiation isn't any better than theology arrived at by negotiation.

In the end, what needs to be achieved is not a mutually acceptable theory of creation/evolution, but the maturity to disagree and still be respectful. But that's never been a quality we Adventists, certain as we must be about most everything, have been very good at.

Loren Seibold

To be fair to David Asscherick, he said in a phone conversation with me that it was not his intent for those letters to go public.

He sent the letter to four friends to check before he sent them to church leaders, and one of those individuals shared it with someone else, and from there it spread like fire.

Sean Pitman has seemed a little more willing to publicize the letters, but I think it is inaccurate to say that Asscherick's letters to church leaders were open letters.

Loren said:

"In the end, what needs to be achieved is (...) the maturity to disagree and still be respectful. But that's never been a quality we Adventists, certain as we must be about most everything, have been very good at."

I'm not sure what this means, practically speaking, in a church that by defintion is based on a set of beliefs. The SDA church is defined by its beliefs...its beliefs define the church. Just like Buddhism, the Mormon faith, Catholicism, Judaism is defined by a set of beliefs. Anyone who attends an SDA church IS free to disagree. Anyone who is a member is free to change their mind about membership. Free to talk to a pastor about their struggles. Free to voice their thoughts with friends. Free to leave the church and write a book about "Those Crazy Adventists" or publish a website outlining why SDA beliefs are wacky. But to work FOR a particular instituion that stands for a Church with a very particular set of beliefs should consider that promoting a whole new set of beliefs as The Truth isn't going to go over very well.

At this time, the SDA church has a set of 28 fundamental beliefs. If an SDA school is going to call itself part of the SDA church and market itself to SDA youth and their parents...shouldn't that school also take it upon itself to ensure that the curriculum of classes and general values the school teaches kinda go along with the 28 fundamental beliefs??? Nobody is asking that other ideas aren't addressed or that the word 'evolution' is forbidden. We are merely asking that other views are shared as 'other views' not as 'other views that are actually FACT compared to the SDA view which is fiction.' Is that too much to ask?

If the intelligent professors feel they are being stifled...why did they choose to work for a denominational Christian school where 6-day Creation is part of the basic belief structure?

This is STILL about what is being taught at an SDA school. This has nothing to do with whether SDA's are right or science is right or if there is a fresh way to look at what is right...or if there is a fresh way to mesh science with faith. None of that is relevant to the fact that a theory incompatible with the SDA 28 fundamental beliefs (the definition of "SDA-ism") is apparently being taught in an SDA institution. Why all this going on about the possibility that evolution and Christianity might be compatible? The SDA version of Christianity is NOT compatible with evoluation. We can spend weeks online discussing it along with apparent Biblical evidence for other options besides a 6-day creation. We can pull scientific journals out and attempt to prove that SDA's are wrong and convince a lot of people to change their minds. That still misses the issue about SDA official positions vs. what is being taught as fact in La Sierra (assuming all allegations are true).

But there is nothing in the 28 fundamental beliefs (whether all agree with them or not, they ARE the official church stand and the beliefs of countless SDA's around the world) that fits in with naturalistic evolution at this time. They are incompatible just like Judaism and Christianity are incompatible as beliefs to hold on to simultaneously.

Excellent. Thank you for raising the level of discourse!

APearson,

I think that your comments would be spot on if one phrase you include were operative--

"promoting a whole new set of beliefs as The Truth"

I think many people, including La Sierra faculty, students and administration might dispute the idea that La Sierra is engaged in promoting a whole new set of beliefs, but then you haven't entirely qualified what you mean by the phrase.

As for the 28, two observations might be helpful:

First, there is a preamble to the set of beliefs that states explicitly that we ought to expect the 28 to change. That preample is as much a part of Adventist belief and church history as are the 28 themselves. It is more than a shame that most discussions of our beliefs omit the preamble--it is deceitful (whether intentionally so or not).

Second, the reason that preamble is so significant (George Knight referred to it as "the all important preamble") is that Adventists from the outset resisted and were suspicious of any creedal statements, particularly creedal statements that might be used as a test of fellowship. John Loughborough, one of the church's pioneering pastors famously called such credal statements apostasy!

For an indespensible look at the origins of the 28 Fundamental beliefs, read this article at sdanet.org:

http://www.sdanet.org/atissue/doctrines/au2002conference/guy/guy27origin...

This is akin to Liberty University outlawing a Democratic students
party.

If Adventists wish to have accredited universities or colleges, there are certain requirements that must be met. No SDA parent who wishes her child to have an education in the sciences that disses evolution could hope to see that child's future jeopardized by deceptive and biblical fundamentals of the Genesis story taught as "science." Why anyone but the most fundamentalist parent would
pay for such an education is incomprehensible.

The one medical school that Adventism operates was forced in 1910
to adopt strict measures in order to be qualified to offer degrees.
This, in turn, required that the "feeder" SDA colleges also were accredited, and especially in the sciences. If this discipline jeopardizes both the academic standing and professional integrity of the teachers, no good will come of such effort. Whether this disclosure was planned or not, the SDA grapevine moves more rapidly than ever today and it will affect the financial stability of the schools: schools that are already facing possible closures and lack of funding.

David is one of several featured speakers at an all-day meeting tomorrow at the Fresno Central SDA church. Sorry, folks, I ain't goin' but maybe someone will attend and report.

On the college level, which it seems the LSU attackers don't have much experience with, or long-term experience with, subjects being taught need to be seen as subjects being presented. Our ministerial friends live in the world of "What I say is truth-accept and go to heaven; reject and go to hell". Our educational friends live in the world of "What I say is true about this subject--believe or not, but this is what this subject is about." --It doesn't have to be believed as something religious--it's just what that subject is about. I think if everybody understood the differences, the discussion could return to civility and the hunt would cease.

Where and what is the present truth?

Life is an experience to be lived not a problem to be solved.

Life is a perception.

Are we truth seekers or security seekers?. Are we truth seekers or truth keepers?

time to move on into the modern age. God through Jesus has promised that HE will convict ( convince? ) the world of sin and of righteousness.

Do we trust HIM enough to allow us to move on from the ancient theology of the past.

If the Adventist church is to survive it will have to change the way it has been stuck in a rut.

Lets use the Brain that God has so graciuosly endowed us with and MOVE ON!

Harlen, of course you are correct. But it's the administrators who rule all the other institutions, and their academic qualification in science is usually sorely lacking.

I'm a little shocked that some would judge Asscherick's motives (See Loren Seibolt's comment, "that's what a lot of this is about: about David's ego.") even while making a plea for "the maturity to disagree and still be respectful." In what way is it respectful to not only pretend to peer into a person's heart, but to impugn the most devilish of motives? Where is all this creating community through conversation? I can't think of a better way to end both community and conversation than to make such accusations.

All professors, educators and pastors who espouse any form of Evolutionism or Theistic Evolutionism MUST BE PURGED from the SDA church and ALL it institutions!

Allen Roy
Bozeman, MT

Allen Roy, you are so correct. Just purge 'em all. That way, only the fittest professors, educators and pastors would survive. Oops! There we go evolving again...

I just read the first sentence.

Working scientists agree, overwhelmingly, that evolution explains much of what we see in nature. Many Christians, including some with doctorates in science, reject this consensus.

This article starts with a falsehood. As a Christian scientist who believes creation, I don't reject that evolution can explain what we see in nature. I believe evolution is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I do reject the fundamentalist belief that evolution is the only possible explanation.

Now, I'll go and read the rest of it!

..

OK, that should teach me to not knee jerk! I have read the rest of it now. I ended up enjoying the article overall. I support the fight against disdain. Some evolutionists are respectful and understanding - we should treat them with as much respect and understanding as they treat us. Actually even more so, if we appear to be the keepers of the moral high ground!?

"In the end, what needs to be achieved is not a mutually acceptable theory of creation/evolution, but the maturity to disagree and still be respectful."

There are a handful of huge issues facing the SDA denomination

1. The age of the Earth and the origin of life on it
2. The role of women in the ministry
3. The attitude towards homosexuality
4. The positioning of the writings of EGW and her assistants
5. The interpretation of 1844
6. The changing demographics

The denomination is not going to survive these challenges in its current form. The support for the traditional positions in each of these areas is simply and literally dying out, and in 30 years time there are four possibilities.

1. The Lord has come
2. The SDA denomination will be a third world church populated by people lacking a college education
3. The SDA will be a social club, like the Later Day Saints, populated by people pretending to believe what they know is blatantly false, but afraid to leave its cloister
4. The SDA will have reversed its position on all of the above

To reverse its position, we will see

1. As in many mainstream churches today, a tolerance of those who believe in recent creation, while the educated understand it to be a literary device
2. Women in the ministry, in those cultures that want it
3. Homosexuality will be tolerated, monogamy will be required
4. The positioning of the writings of EGW and her assistants will be seen as pastoral and largely a product of her times,
5. The interpretation of 1844 will be seen as a quirk of the early church, of no relevance to the times
6. The changing demographics will have caused a big change in the concept of 'unity', and it will be replaced by 'strength in diversity'.

To get here without most of its educated members and its young people just walking out the door, the SDA is going to have to start doing a few simple things

1. The Adventist Review is going to have to become more tolerant of diversity of opinion - right now it is backing the status quo, by choosing authors who back the status quo.
2. The Sabbath School Lesson is going to do the same, for the same reasons
3. The leadership is going to have to explicitly reject the intolerant conservatives who say things like "All professors, educators and pastors who espouse any form of Evolutionism or Theistic Evolutionism MUST BE PURGED from the SDA church and ALL it institutions!", and including getting Clifford Goldstein to undo his call for evolutionists to quit the church.

While there were other issues, I came home from church one day about 6-7 years ago, read a Clifford Goldstein anti-evolutionist diatribe in the Adventist Review, wrote my letter of resignation from my officer of treasurer and my church membership, and have not given the SDA church more money than occassional token offerings when I have made the mistake of going with my wife to a church service.

It is interesting watching the train wreck, with guys like Allen Roy pushing the train...

/Bevin

This article gives me some hope that it is still possible to be centrist rather than progressive or historic and still be Adventist.

Are the administrators concerned about accreditation? If the universities began teaching Creationism, there goes accreditation, and a large student population! Only those "90-day evangelists" will be content with such a "college."

Bevin,

Bottom line, it's about the money, isn't it? That paltry 10%.

David Asscherick is not Pope Urban VII and the Black Hills School is not exactly like the Vatican but I must say there are some eery similarities

Elaine

Accreditation is not on the line because of evolution. It would be on the line on how the institution states its purpose, hires and supports its faculty, selects its students and fulfills its objectives. The term university does not mean all things to all people. It means there shall be no limits or barriers to the pursuit of truth in the domains of its charter. If those domains are restricted to the 28 Fundamental Beliefs, the institution must select faculty competent in those restricted areas and their cognates.

It is appropriate for the institution to inquiry academically into the content, style, and substance of what a employed teacher includes in their lectures, reading assignments, and projects.

Certainly, the hysteria surrounding the alleged naturalistic evolutionary teaching does no one any good.

Certainly the concept of Sunday worship is thoroughly examined and obviously condemned as unbibilical. Origins is no different in concept or evidence. So the issue comes down to not simply what is taught but how, why, and to what end. Moreover, by whom, with what credentials and what mission.

Unfortunately, the way the Church and its institutional boards are constituted, there is little chance for any objective review or conclusion.

As a parent, I would not send a child of mine into such a boiling mess. So for enrollment sake alone, the issue should be resolved quickly and objectively by people with a strong academic background and a commitment to the mission statement of the institution.

As a dental student, I studied the comparative anatomy of teeth from the shark's tooth to man.

I then did extensive research on native American dentitions as compared to oriental dentitions.

The idea of intelligent design dominated my thought pattern.

If my teachers thought differently that certainly was their priviledge. The tooth patterns were objective. The conclusions were subjective. Tom

Tom,
That's very interesting research about American Indians and Orientals. What did you find out? In simple terms, are American Indians Orientals? More specifically, are they akin to the Chinese in any special way?

Bevin,

I'm not sure who you are, or where you're coming from, but you are completely, 100% correct in your thinking. The church leadership needs to print out Bevin's comment, discuss it at staff meetings and GC sessions, because it is *exactly* what will happen and is happening to this church, and clearly outlines exactly how the church can appropriately respond.

Seriously, I'm copying Bevin's comment, printing it out, and going to check back in 30 years to see that *everything* that s/he has said was spot-on.

Hansen

The five South Western Indian Tribes that I studied were closest to the contemporary Chinese than any other oriental group, in tooth pattern, and facial bone configuration. My findings were consistent with the Harvard Studies of the Indians of Alaska. Tom

Bevan, Thank you for your incisive analysis of the issues. Personally, I fear the fundamentalist majority will succeed in preventing the changes that need to occur. I hope time proves me wrong.

Bevin,

Wow. Your last comment should be expanded into a full essay/article posted as its own post for others to see and comment on.

Dead on and brilliant.

Jared,

Those who wish to quote early statements of Loughborough on the idea of creeds and church order forget that Loughborough changed his tune in later years.

Consider again the following comments and quotes by JN Loughborough in his The Church, Its Organization, Order and Discipline (1907):

"When those who back in the "sixties" [1860s] witnessed the battle of establishing church order now hear persons, as conscientious no doubt as those back there, utter almost the identical words that were then used by those opposing order, it need not be wondered that they fear the result of such statements as the following: "Perfect unity means absolute independence, - each one knowing for himself. Why, we could not have outward disorganization if we all believed in the Lord. . . . This question of organization is a simple thing. All there is to it is for each individual to give himself to the Lord, and then the Lord will do with him just what he wants to, and that all the time. . . . Our only safety, under God, is to go back to the place where God is able to take a multitude of people and make them one, without parliamentary rules, without committee work, without legislation of any kind." - General Conference Bulletin of 1899.

God Requires Rules:
"Superficially considered, this might seem to be a blessed state, a heaven indeed; but, as already noted on a preceding page, we read of heaven itself and its leadings that "the god of heaven is a god of order, and he requires all his followers to have rules and regulations to preserve order." - "Testimonies for the Church," No. 32, page 30.
"As our numbers increased, it was evident that without some form of organization, there would be great confusion, and the work could not be carried forward successfully. To provide for the support of the ministry, for carrying on the work in new fields, for protecting both the church and ministry from unworthy members, for holding church property, for the publication of the truth through the press, and for other objects, organization was indispensable."

____________

As it turns out, the leaders of the early SDA Church at first thought that no enforcement of any kind was needed to keep the Church from fragmenting. This was true as long as the Church was small and made up of originally like-minded people. However, as the Church grew larger, this view soon became obviously untenable. Loughborough was one of the main proponents of this sort of church order and discipline - along with James White. Very quickly all of the early Church leaders changed their minds regarding Church order and discipline when they saw that their original ideas of completely hands-off freedom of Church representatives were quickly failing to do what they thought they would do. So, the leadership started issuing cards of commendation signed by James White or John Loughborough.

Of course, those who were not considered to accurately represent the views of the Church did not receive these cards of commendation. And what was the attitude of such persons? - according to Loughborough?:

"Of course those who claimed "liberty to do as they pleased," to "preach what they pleased," and to "go when and where they pleased," without "consultation with any one," failed to get cards of commendation. They, with their sympathizers, drew off and commenced a warfare against those whom they claimed were "depriving them of their liberty." Knowing that it was the Testimonies that had prompted us as a people to act, to establish "order," these opponents soon turned their warfare against instruction from that source, claiming that "when they got that gift out of the way, the message would go unrestrained to its `loud cry.' "

One of the principal claims made by those who warred against organization was that it "abridged their liberty and independence, and that if one stood clear before the Lord that was all the organization needed," etc. Upon this point, when church order was contested, we read: "Satan well knows that success only attend order and harmonious action. He well knows that everything connected with heaven is in perfect order, that subjection and thorough discipline mark the movements of the angelic host. . . . He deceives even the professed people of God, and makes them believe that order and discipline are enemies to spirituality; that the only safety for them is to let each pursue his own course. . . . All the efforts made to establish order are considered dangerous, a restriction of rightful liberty, and hence are feared as popery." - "Testimonies for the Church," Vol. I, page 650.

____________

Sounding familiar? Be careful when you use Loughborough to try to support the notion of pure "academic freedom" within Church schools and a hands-off approach to Church government. Not only does there have to be at least some very specific direction and discipline within the Church government to maintain order and viability, as with any viable organization, it turns out to be a truly loving path to travel as well. A Church without discipline and enforcement of rules on its own representatives, like a home without discipline, is a very unhappy, even angry, Church and family.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Loren,

It is a HUGE statement to say that this is all about David's ego. What a completely unwarranted comment to make. I can appreciate much of your balanced approach to many of these things, but by making such a claim you seem to be just as guilty as others in your judgmental perspective.

I agree with C. Scriven's approach to respectful dialogue. It reminds me of Obama's plea to NDU graduates to find common ground on an even more divisive issue. To achieve such consensus for Adventism would in some ways be proof of a certain evolution in and of itself.

Hi Chuck Scriven,

Greetings from my father, Tui Pitman.

You write:

"Now a question: who can cite examples anywhere--from the Bible, from the early or medieval church, from the Reformers--that show Genesis 1 being read as a statement that is REALLY about dates, times, and sequences? The Psalms and the book of Revelation, for example, set for very strong doctrines of creation, but they don't invoke details of Genesis 1 as if THESE were the point."

As a SDA pastor, you have to know the answer to this question. Throughout the Bible the biblical authors reference Genesis in a very literal manner. Even Jesus clearly believed the literal interpretation of the Genesis account.

But, beyond this, consider comments of Professor James Barr, Religion Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford:

“Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.”

Letter from Professor James Barr to David C.C. Watson of the UK, dated 23 April 1984.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

"There are a handful of huge issues facing the SDA denomination"

There are not all of the same value, but here goes.

"1. The age of the Earth and the origin of life on it"

This is a No Brainer. According to The Bible, the origin of life on this planet is some 6000 years ago. The age of the universe and the planet is undetermined by the Bible and Ellen. However, the Bible and Ellen both talk of the the origin of Satan and his influence on the inhabitants of the universe. The implication is that the universe (and planet earth) and other inhabitants of the universe have existed for a very long, undeterminable time. HOwever, this long time does not allow for evolutionism, because evolutionism never happened. The Fossil record, which is lyingly called the 'evidence' for evolutionism, is simply the result of the cataclysm commonly called Noah's Flood.

2. The role of women in the ministry

There are already have been and continue to be women ministering to the body in all kinds of roles traditionally thought to be men's roles. This includes pastoralship and ministry. It won't be long before this is recognized officially with ordination. This is blown WAY OUT OF PORPORTION!

3. The attitude towards homosexuality

Homosexuality is not a Christian lifestyle. Period. I have no problem if people choose that lifestyle. They just are not and cannot be Cristian. And should not be given membership in a christian organization. There is no such thing and the homosexual 'gene', that is such a lie.....

4. The positioning of the writings of EGW and her assistants

Ellen was inspired by God. The problem is that people have either made too much of it or too little of it.

5. The interpretation of 1844

Are people still confused about this? We are saved by faith in Jesus through grace alone. Work come by obedience out of love. If you don't do what you say you believe, you don't believe what you say. It's that simple. We are judged by our works because they show what we really believe.

6. The changing demographics

This means a shift toward what are arrogantly called "fundamentalists" by ignorant 'highly educated' elitists (whose education has gone to their head and perverted their beliefs). There are no "fundamentalists" in the SDA church because the SDA church never ascribed to "fundamentalism". This label is misapplied by the liberals to mislead.

What difference does it make who thought what thousands of years ago or yesterday? It is how we perceive things today, and we can't turn back the clock and ever fully understand the ancient Hebrew concept of space, time, and their world and environment.

Few people seriously believe all the myths of other cultures, but for some few, the Bible is sacrosanct and should not be questioned.

There is freedom to believe what one wishes. There is also freedom to dissociate from a cultic environment; and the more intolerant the SDA church becomes in its perceptions, it will
attract the poorly educated and those who need a leader to tell them what to think. This is the most effective way to purge the church of its intellectual members who no longer see a future in the church. Some of us saw it many years ago and walked out the door, only looking back to be grateful for the courage to move on.
If the church is willing to sacrifice its youth (already with approximately 50% fallout), there can be no better method than to continue to move backward.

Sean,

Now I know (I considered this before) who you are. Thanks for the hello from you Dad. (What about your Mom? I...uh...admired her all through grade school and high school.)

I agree with Barr, whose quote says the "writer(s)"--a bit of a higher critic he is, or so I gather--of Genesis would have understood themselves to be describing literal events.

But the biblical writers also thought (consider the word "corners") that the earth was flat.

What I want us ALL to struggle with is how to be passionate about a faith that was first packaged inside of a cosmology no one today FULLY accepts.

The struggle is hard. As I heard a young PUC graduate say, "Faith is not a walk in the part for us."

Some are at a different stage of the struggle than you and I. Surely people with doctorates in biology and other sciences have faced more spirtual stress than many of us--faced, as is quite likely, an even more difficult struggle.

I may misread you and those who seem to side with you. But I take it that you expect the La Sierra science teachers we are thinking about these days to change into the same sort of creationist that you are, or leave / be fired from their jobs?

Assume (for argument's sake) that these professors love the Lord, celebrate the Sabbath and embrace the Advent hope. Assume further that, by deeds and testimony, they communicate this to their students.

Then why exclude them from full participation in Adventist life just because their stage of struggle is different from ours? Why do this when, in any case, God's ways and thoughts are higher than ours? Why do this when later biblical and Christian writers (up to, as I think, the modern period) never seem to think that dates, times and sequences are the main point of the creation doctrine?

Thoughts? Any room for difference inside of unity? How, really, can the church get past the curse of mutual disdain?

I think it was Madeleine L'Engle who once imagined a society so homogenous (or maybe she said "authoritarian") that the children even bounced their balls in unison. I don't think any of us wants that.

Chuck

A lot of the evolution/creation issue comes down to whether or not we believe evidence or not. The evidence we see in the earth's crust (fossils, buried forests, oil and coal deposits, etc, etc) heavily supports a very long history for the earth--millions and billions of years.

To interpret this evidence to be in harmony with a short (ie, 6000 year) chronology for the earth would require essentially that the Creator intended to deceive us by creating the earth with "apparent age".

I believe the Creator does not deceive us--(s)he created the universe with consistent universally applicable laws and properties, and created the human race with sufficient intellect to correctly discern some of these.

Science--a very successful application of intellect to studying the creation--is impossible unless evidence can be trusted. If evidence cannot be trusted, we are thrust into the realms of superstition and voodoo--which have not been notably successful in dealing with reality.

Accepting evidence can create difficulties, and can be disorienting and upsetting. Because of this, we all need to manifest forbearance toward one another, and toward the stories which we have traditionally told in order to make sense of things.

For instance, we need a mental framework that accounts for the manifest depravity of human beings, and also for their goodness. Traditional Christianity has accounted for this by the story of the Fall, and more broadly, by the Plan of Salvation as suggested in Scripture and elaborated in EGW's writings.

Some have alleged that accepting evolutionary ideas contradicts the validity of this story. I am not so sure of that. It seems to me that rather than spending our energies tossing doctrinal brickbats at one another, it might be more creative and useful to spend them on extracting from the story an essence--which would be true to the witness of scripture, but not so fragile as to be utterly destroyed by a willingness to look candidly at evidence.

My late brother-in-law was chair of the art department at Walla Walla for more than 30 years. During the "witch hunt" with the theology department there several decades ago, he felt secure, because, he said "They don't even know what I do anyway." I think the same thing could be said about administrators evaluating the science departments. How many non-academic administrators make the final judgments on how teaching is done at SDA schools? Past history has shown that the least academically qualified, make the decisions and oust presidents and faculty. Is this deja vu all over again? How often is this cycle repeated?

It seems that many are more concerned with our church splitting and disagreeing than finding and defending what is true and right! You are right. This whole disagreement among us is ridiculous, but only because the teaching of evolution within our church is ridiculous! If you want to learn about evolution then go somewhere else.
It boggles my mind that so many in our church are trying so desperately to follow in the ways of the world. You have forgotten that the founders of this church studied the Bible more thoroughly than anyone before them and found its words to be true and unshakable. Too many of you have settled for being spoon fed rather than studying for yourselves and finding out for yourselves what the Bible says! And if you are not interested in what the Bible has to say (it has no room for evolution), then you do not belong in the SDA church. God loves you so infinitely and it breaks His heart to see you deny Him this way. If you want to be like the world then go be like the world. The purpose of the Bible is not to pick some here and choose some there and then throw the rest away. Believe the whole Bible or none of it at all. Those of you who have used cruel and hateful words towards those who are defending God, and those of you who are, in essence, denying His very existence-I am sincerely and truly praying for your salvation.

Do I remember from my prior Adventist experience something about in the final days, "knowledge shall be increased?" And a lot of "running to and fro?"

There is no denying that there has been an explosion in knowledge in the sciences in the last century or two. And that knowledge ranges in orders of exponential magnitude from what is happening on the sub atomic scale to the cosmic scale . . . and all things living in between.

Some people are willing to recognize, to tolerate, to accept, to affirm the coherence of this evidence . . . and others are not. Each has their reasons. And their agendas. And their sacred cows.

But there is another corpus of evidence that has not been studied nearly enough. At least objectively. In Adventist circles.

And that is the "objective" critical scholarship of sources of these ancient writings that have come to us as "The Bible." And objective is a key word here.

When one looks at either biological evidence and/or historical-critical textual evidence of scripture with the intent on "proving" one's preconceived ideas and denying the legitimacy of everything else . . . then it is a lost cause. There is therefore no "knowledge to be increased."

In my layman's perusal of the evidence of the history of the Deuteronomistic narrative of the Old Testament, to read Genesis as a verbatim, literal, CNN transcript of breaking news back "in the beginning," is to hopelessly, haplessly and helplessly hobble one's self in a state of denial. But then if the Faux Noise Machine were to be doing it, it would have at least been "fair and balanced."

As I recall, that siren call of "knowledge shall be increased" was taught to me in the negative. It was a bad thing. And the badder it got, the more it would provoke "the end." But then, that was supposedly a good thing.

Before the puritans purge the knowledge from the Adventist institutional science departments, it would be a little helpful for them to re-align their blinders with respect as to their own denier mantra's of what is happening in objective Biblical scholarship.

Maybe there is a good reason why people don't accept Genesis 1-11 as the textbook for Earthscience 101.

But of course, discoveries such as this are far more threatening.

And hence, the wailing and the running to and fro.

Kenneth James

Alan Roy doesn't like to be called "fundamentalist."

"This means a shift toward what are arrogantly called "fundamentalists" by ignorant 'highly educated' elitists (whose education has gone to their head and perverted their beliefs). There are no "fundamentalists" in the SDA church because the SDA church never ascribed to "fundamentalism". This label is misapplied by the liberals to mislead.

Fundamentalist was once an honorable term, one assumed by those who espoused it, not one imposed from outside. After the Scopes "monkey" trial, the term gradually became discredited, and fundamentalists chose other names such as evangelicals or conservative Christians. But "fundamentalism" did not disappear, and the Adventist church has always been "fundamentalist" in its approach to theology.

James Barr, to whom some of you have referred, has written a fabulous book called "Fundamentlism" in which he defines it as an approach to theology characterized by certain features, such as:

1. Assuming that "inspired" scriptures cannot contain erroneous ideas. Contractions and errors are apparent, not real.

2. Starting any theological inquiry with the desired answers and working backwards toward the evidence.

3. Drawing a line in the sand between those on the inside and those on the outside. Either you're with us or you're against us. Fundamentalists need enemies in order to feel that they're fighting the good fight.

Adventists have always rejected the label fundamentalist because it implies that you're uneducated and liable to reach for a rattlesnake after a few stirring hymns. Fundamentalist, however, does not mean "uneducated" (although some are). It describes an approach to life that is intolerant of amgiguity and doubt, which puts a premium on clarity, even if it means editing out facts that don't fit.

Kenneth

The Bible by its very name is a compendium of narratives that span centuries. Written and rewritten, translated and retranslated time and time again. But one theme carries through. God is the timeless/ageless Origin, The Redeemer, and in due time the coming King. Man is the object of God's supreme affection and Lucifer is His Arch Enemy.

Dogma and confusion are the domain of Lucifer. To an unseemly extent both the Church and science have been the tools Lucifer uses to spread confusion and disorder.

The bottom-line is that we all see through a glass darkly--but soon, no one knows how soon, we shall see our Creator/Redeemer/King face to face. In that day: I pray for the depth of vision to exclaim: "My Lord and My God"! The very one that made me and saved me.

It surely is the theological trash that has given science the foothold that Lucifer so devotely wished for. Thus the Church has lost out on the two eternal songs of heaven found in Rev. 4:11 and Rev. 5: 9.10

Science never was designed to answer the question "When?"
It is poorly designed to answer questions of history. It was designed to answer how? In that arena, it has failed completely to answer diversity.

It is only against the dogma of Churchmen that science has appeared rational beyond its scope. True education is to share what is known and to be every candid about what is yet to be learned. Here again religion and science have not been forthcoming.

How in the world could one choose between Cliff and Dawkins?

Tom

Despite a number of scattered self-supporting health institutes hearkening back to 19th century health principles, most Adventists aren't running from the law, trying to keep their children from receiving up-to-date medical treatments. In fact, the Adventist focus on medicine has been on the cutting edge.

The same science, condemned by modern day cave dwellers turned theologians, is the basis of the medical institutions the church proudly flaunts as one of its accomplishments. We can't be running hospitals and upholding the medical work of the church on the one hand, and disowning the scientific inquiry that is the foundation for that work, on the other.

You can't run a medical facility, along with doctors and nurses that deliver, modern, up-to-date medical services based on ancient explanations from the Old Testament.

For those who have never darkened the door of a bona fide medical school they might be surprised to learn that to be a doctor or a nurse or anything else that has to do with medicine, one has to go to school and learn physiology, chemistry, biology along with other sciences that are based on the very concepts that rise out of the above contested ideologies.

The next time you or a family member comes down with a serious illness why not access the literal Old Testament practices of healing instead of going to a modern health facility.

Sirje, you go girl!

If your child gets sick I will tell you to pray for healing and use a mud plaster; if my child gets sick I will consult the best physician available.

How can anyone claim that the Bible contains the best and most trusted scientific information while at the same ignoring most of its instructions in Leviticus concerning human conditions? What a paradox!

Kenneth James:

It is "Fox News" not "Faux Noise Machine" and if you would take the time to listen and look around in the world you would realize it is "fair and balanced"

Sirje and Elaine,

Great argument, if only true. The advances of medical science of course resulted from the freedom from Churchmen and its Old Testament dogma. However, the advances in medical science has little or nothing to do with an evolutionary cast to origins. It came about through observation--hypothesis-testing--retesting--and measured application. (Science)!
Please don't confuse the two. ie Science and the NeoDarwinian theory of origins.

Recall that the greatest advances in life span have resulted from prevention and nutrition. (OT ideas) (from Moses no less) Also recall that vaccination against Smallpox came about through observation that milk girls who contracted Cowpox were immune to Smallpox. Also it was observed that those who contracted Malaria with its attendant high fevers also were rid of Syphilis. None of the above had a fig to do with origins or science so called! Tom

Tom, your observations are always spot on. I will disagree on a point: although lifespans have increased in the past 100 years (at the turn of the 20th century it wasn't even 50 years), infant mortality was once the leading cause of deceased lifespans and today, infant mortality has greatly improved that in large part, due to Semmelweiss and bacterial "childbed fever" which was not given credibility for a good while after its discovery. Also, smallpox was "observed" by those who were most interested in finding a causative factor, rather than relying on ancient, untested treatments. What about TB, and leprosy as a very treatable disease within the past 50 years? Was the Bible treatment for leprosy correct then? Did God not know the cause?

"Science" was in its infant stage 200 years ago, compared to today, but it has all been built on the shoulders of predecessors who began asking "Why?" And then connecting the dots. We are still threatend by some new strain of flu, or even the dreaded staph (hospital illness) but neither of us are ready to forego science. Without it, neither of us might be alive today. (Unless we are the rare exception.) One hundred years ago, living to the mid 80s was extremely rare; now it is rather ordinary. What caused the difference if not science? Good luck? Isn't nutrition considered a science?

Dear Billo The Clown

It is not nice to make one snort his drink all over the keyboard. :)

KDJ

Charles Scrivens...

Please, when making a statement such as the following remember that you do not have the right to assume that I, nor anyone else, do not FULLY accept the cosmology as it was first packaged.

"What I want us ALL to struggle with is how to be passionate about a faith that was first packaged inside of a cosmology no one today FULLY accepts."

I have no problem with you, or any other person who chooses to tear the Bible apart and, in the process, attempts to dismantle "God". God has given you the freedom to do whatever you want. In stating that God used the evolutionary process to create is to then intimate that Moses was a liar, delusional or both. Perhaps God forgot to tell Moses that creation did not consist of 7 literal days. Or, maybe, Moses wasn't inspired at all. The unraveling that results destroys the Bible so why bother with religion. Become a humanist; become and athiest; become an agnostic; become an evolutionist!

Michael Behe discovered the problems with Darwins theory and in the process discovered, for himself, intelligent design.

It is so sad that humans believe that God must be made to fit inside "our" beliefs as opposed to us accomodating our world view according to God's truth. After all since God is the author of creation (of which science is a part) then science should be explained through His lens not ours.

I pray that God will move greatly to bring a close to this "people bashing" extravaganza that has resulted from one man's honest effort to bring an end to the chaos growing in our institutions of learning.

Elaine

I thought of child birth death rate and after posting knew I would get it right back at me! The communicable diseases were address under Moses, the Father of Public Health, by isolation or quarantine. In the desert and tent living--TB was probably not a major problem like its kin, Hansen's disease. Modern plumbing did more for the life span that the CAT Scan, and so did Vitamin C and the B complex. Glutin and Worthington Foods and Loma Linda Foods (an oxymorom) did zilch. One walk through the mall and two (light) meals a day would look like a blessing. Obesity is the American curse.

Cheers Tom

Julie

You are so right, those "coming" to God's defense do Him more grief than the doubters. Tom

Julie wrote:

--
Michael Behe discovered the problems with Darwins theory and in the process discovered, for himself, intelligent design.

--

Would it surprise you Julie to learn that Behe is in the camp of Theistic Evolutionists? Probably because you think intelligent Design means young earth creationist as in six literal days. But Intelligent design covers much more and that is the tragedy in this Adventist brouhaha only one very limited interpretation is being proposed for the Adventist church and it's educational system.

Here is an article by a Christian opposing Theistic Evolution.
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5447

Behe writes, "I grew up in a Catholic family and have always believed in God. But beginning in parochial school, I was taught that He could use natural processes to produce life."

Let me pause for a moment here. This is a standard theistic evolutionist response, that God could use natural processes to produce life. Of course, we understand how such a thing can be the case when we read the book of Exodus. God uses the wind to part the Red Sea. He uses a natural process as a tool to accomplish a miraculous result. He uses the wind to miraculously part the sea, and the people walk through on dry land.

Or this article:
http://telicthoughts.com/behe-and-theistic-evolution/
--
In reality, it is more accurate to label Behe a theistic evolutionist, as this label would accurately communicate that a) Behe is an evolutionist and b) believes God was involved in the process of evolution. And in fact, this is how most people interpret theistic evolution, as some sort of God-guided process. How most people interpret a label is the most important point.
--
The article concludes:

--
So as you can see, the belief that God creates through evolution is theistic evolution. Of course, just as there may be different types of creationism, so too are there different types of theistic evolution, where the nature and frequency of interventions differ (even to the point where there is no intervention). Thus, if we label Behe a theistic evolutionist, we tap into this common understanding and more accurately communicate.
--
I rather like having Behe in my camp.(or maybe better said I am in his camp)
Ron

Tom,
It's about having a respect for the scientific process in one field but denouncing it in another - when it makes us reconsider long held, emotionally charged beliefs.

Granted, science has its problems as well, being able to be manipulated by special interests and the funding they provide, but the scientific process works the same whatever the field.

I would take issue with your statement that evolution has nothing to do with health sciences. It comes into play in research when similarities in species plays an important role; and it underlies the basic concepts that educates the healer.

I would suggest that those who stumble over the issue of evolution watch "The Genesis Conflict" series by Dr. Walter J. Veith. He used to teach evolution. He used to be an atheist. He blows the evolutionary theory away in his lectures. Only one with blind faith could still believe in evolution after watching his presentations.

There is no hard evidence for evolution; only lots of suppositions and speculations.

All the evidence points away from evolution and toward intelligent design; as well as an earth that is less than 10,000 years old. If our schools are going to teach about evolution it needs to be presented with all its warts and inconsitencies--and along side all the recent discoveries that point toward a Creator. An honest investigation of the two belief systems (that's what evolution really is, since it ignores many of the basic rules of scientific inquiry) will show the bankruptcy of evolution, be it "theistic" or otherwise.

Chuck,

I have always admired the clarity of your writings, at least the ones I read. You are right that we need more humility, and more tolerance. We certainly need more dialogue. We also need less efforts at control.

But there are two ways to control. One is the traditional way of forcing those who oppose you (the generic you, not you personally) out of positions of authority (and teaching is a position of authority). The other way is by deceiving others into believing that you are something that you are not, so that they will not have the information they need to decide that they really do not want you in charge of their children at their expense. That is a softer approach than the forcible approach, but it is no less immoral.

If La Sierra University were advertising its biology department with words that clearly reflected Randal Wisbey's stated belief that "evolutionary process" is " a subject that is foundational to the modern biological and behavioral sciences" and "of growing importance in biomedical applications", and thus presumably not just some subject to study like Catholic or Islamic theology but in all probability true, then the sense of outrage and betrayal would not be so deep. But it is only when pressed that he makes this admission. When not pressed, he talks about "difficult issues" and a "spirit of openness", and makes the claim that "We expect that students will be introduced to the prevailing scientific views within a supportive classroom environment that values the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s contribution to the understanding of biblical creation."

I have personally talked to the biology teachers at La Sierra University while trying to get a little bit of dialogue started. One was utterly contemptuous of not only a short age for life on earth, but even the idea that it was possible to detect evidence of intelligent design in nature. One was gracious enough to dialogue. I also talked to a past president of La Sierra University who gave the standard pablum, and then when pressed admitted that there was not a single full-time biology faculty that believed in a short age for life on earth. If parents who are paying their hard-earned (well, for most of them) money to send their children to La Sierra for an Adventist education knew this up front, there would not be quite the reaction when it was finally revealed. (Some might even continue to send their children there, and if so, that is fine. That's what freedom is about.)

I I think it is wrong to fire the faculty in question for their beliefs. There is the question of academic freedom for tenured professors. And more importantly, there is the question of whether this is the Dragon's method, control, and even in the worst-case scenario, the parable of the wheat and the tares urges caution.

But if we try to avoid control, we do at least need sunlight. I do want to plead for honesty and openness, not just of the faculty to their department, or to the administration, but also to the people who are paying the bills, the parents and the church in general through its offerings.

"Yes, but the people won't understand." Then maybe we need this debate out in the open, so the parents can see the reasons why you believe you should teach their children the way you do. "But my side might lose." Then you relinquish control. That's part of avoiding dragonish behavior. Remember, the Christian church tried deception and force before, and it wasn't a pretty sight.

And while La Sierra is at it, is it too much to ask them to have at least one class dealing with the integration of science and religion which gives a more conservative perspective on the age of life on earth, at least as an option, taught at least partly by someone knowledgeable and friendly to that perspective? It wouldn't be so bad if conservatives were not systematically shut out of the conversation.

I know, because Sean Pitman was invited, now twice, by students, not the university, and I myself was invited once. Otherwise, conservatives are made to feel that they are all alone. Deliberately repairing that balance would go a long way towards alleviating the concerns of conservatives, much farther than letters full of bureaucratic sophism by university presidents.

And by the way, any time Randal Wisbey, or any of his biology department, wants to debate the utility of what George Gaylord Simpson called megaevolution in the biomedical sciences and specifically in medicine, I'd be happy to oblige.

Paul Giem, MD

PS Tell your wife hi for me.

Sirje

What comes into play is similar DNA, similar cellular function, similar structure--same designer. Evolution is a theory not a science. It uses the tools of science to advance its theory not to prove it. That is a vast difference. Tom

Thanks Charles for the good post.

I cannot help but wonder if many responding to this subject have read the second creation story in Genesis 2 which begins with these words in verse 4: "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created." In this creation story there are some remarkable things to consider. My contention is that if Genesis 1 must be literal, then so must this story be literal. Consider what that requires.

In verse 7, "the Lord God FORMED the man from the dust of the ground.

In verse 8 God "PLANTED a garden."

In verse 9 God "made all kinds of trees GROW."

In verse 10 a river "FLOWED from Eden."

In verse 15 God "TOOK the man and put him in the garden."

In verse 19 God "FORMED out of the ground," both beasts and birds. Then he "BROUGHT them to the man." This results in an animal naming ceremony and Adams search for a mate among the animals. This search was not productive as verse 20 indicates with these words: "But for Adam no suitable helper was found."

In verse 21 God puts the man to sleep and then "TOOK one of the mans ribs."

In verse 22 God "MADE a woman from the rib."

The capitalized words show action. If literal, many implications must be assumed, including the need for time. Furthermore, many creative acts take place between the man at the beginning of the story and the woman at the end. Genesis 1 permits one creative fiat per day for four of the days, and no more than two on the remaining two days.

I must conclude from this story that the man and woman were not created on the same day as Genesis 1 requires. If we insist they were, then in this story God created most of the earth in one day. The stories cannot be reconciled with each other if we insist on being literal, thus only one of them can be true.

What I have found very meaningful is the truth found in both stories. Such as:

God is the creator. Mankind is very special. God wants relationship with mankind. Everything we need for life was created and given as gifts from God. This is truth that frees the soul to rejoice, and both stories teach this wonderful truth.

In love,
Karpistian

Evolution describes a process involving not only life, but religion and all institutions that survive. It is called "survival of the fittest" and is evident for any student of history, anthropology, as well as the sciences.

All animate and inaminate forms that have survived have evolved; some over a very long time, others only hours. All change is evolution in process: i.e., the Christian church with which most of us are familiar has weathered many changes. Other sects and cults have not withstood time. The Adventist church, even in its comparatively short history has evolved: it is not the same church in belief, doctrine, and other positions with which it began.

This current controversy will not be the death of the church. It may, however, emerge both leaner and meaner. Is that the "purification" desired?

Karpistian
I see something different in the 2 Genesis accounts. The first is time oriented and starts in the beginning and proceeds to the creation of man and then the Sabbath rest. The second is relationship oriented and starts with the creation of man and then speaks of how the other elements relate to him. I am told that the Hebrew does not have to imply that the animals were created after Adam, but that the animals God had created where brought to be named.
I support the idea of open dialog on creation/evolution but frm Dr. Giem's post above it appears that La Sierra University is not.
Compromise? See the following link:
http://www.arcamax.com/nonsequitur/s-547966-309037

Beaven, You were not the only one to have been offended by Clifford Goldstein's articles. It seems that he has no pastoral concern or respect for those who consider the important issues of the Genesis account to be "who and why" rather than "how and when."

Here is a link of exactly what Clifford Goldstein wrote:

http://www.adventistreview.org/2003-1530/story4.html

Article by Clifford Goldstein in Adventist Review July 24, 2003:

"Seventh-day Darwinians

Rarely has there been a belief so ridiculous or contrary to the Scriptures that, once it becomes popular, some Christians haven't attempted to incorporate into the faith. In its long and often crude lust for cultural and intellectual correctness, the church has become what Jacques Ellul called "an empty bottle that the successive cultures fill with all kinds of things." Roman paganism, Platonism, Marxism, even Nazism have all had baptized aficionados struggling to cram these "things" into the bottle, now so warped and piecemeal it resembles a kaleidoscope image inspired by someone needing Prozac.

Of all the bizarre mismatches, though, none's worse than the attempt to harmonize evolution with Christianity. Evolution? Please! Nazism's a snugger fit." (See the above link for the full article.)

Response from readers back in July 2003:

http://www.adventistreview.org/2003-1538/story6.html

Here is an example of one response from a reader:

I would like to ask if Goldstein's article now represents the tone and attitude of the Review, the North American Division, and leadership of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church. I hope not. I would hate to see our attempts at apologetics take on the pugnaciousness and anger expressed by a leader of our church in this article. It is not the personally held views of Goldstein about creationism that I find objectionable. Nor his assertion that he represents the beliefs of millions of Adventists concerning creation. He no doubt does. It is his polemical tone and "in your face" approach that I find unpalatable.

I do not fear the debate. I do not fear being wrong in my beliefs. I have changed many of them over my lifetime when I heard better arguments or ideas than mine. I believe that Scripture teaches that those who have the truth have nothing to fear. I do fear Goldstein's attitude. I fear that others in our church may adopt the insensitivity and callousness that came through loud and clear in his prejudicial statements. I fear that others in our church will lower their inhibitions and begin to spout hatred, rage, and vituperation in the guise of a brave new world of Adventist orthodoxy, of which Goldstein represents himself as the self-elected model. I respect the right of Goldstein to offer his views. I respect the rights of anyone, as does God, to hold their views, even if those views are not to believe in God. It was God in Christ, who, with tears in His eyes and a sob in His voice, grieved over those who wouldn't accept the grace He offered. I detected none of that in this article. An observant man, Marshall McLuhan, once said, "the medium is the message." Which message came through in this article?

I know many friends in this church who are genuinely perplexed over how to resolve the teachings of the Bible and the observations of the natural world. This article did nothing to help them move forward in gaining insight or knowledge. It did make them afraid to pursue the issue. Who will help them now? Maybe Darwin will. Goldstein left little option otherwise.

Dave Evans
Kettering, Ohio

Another response very similar to the way you (Bevin) responded:

This is another attack on fellow believers who do not see any problem in accepting ordinary natural science and still believe in the Creator, as most Christians do here in Europe. Why this harsh judgmental tone? Why this bitter condemnation of brethren and sisters who do not think exactly like Goldstein? Does he really want to get rid of me as a church member? Does he want some kind of dictatorship of opinions in the church? All of us know that we do not have any other official creed than the Bible. Could the editors help me with an explanation?

Kristen Falch Jakobsen
Straumsjoen, Norway

(This post is being copied to post in the other blogs where Clifford Goldstein challenges you (Beaven) to give him some references.)

Blessings,
Mike

Aage Rendalen,

1. Assuming that "inspired" scriptures cannot contain erroneous ideas. Contractions and errors are apparent, not real.

At least Adventism does look at some of the things that happened in the OT and say that it no longer accepts them. For example, the old ways from Leviticus etc, which are done away with. I guess that fits, as you say the editing out the facts that don't fit.

2. Starting any theological inquiry with the desired answers and working backwards toward the evidence.

Interesting, that this is exactly how science works! It starts off with an idea, that idea may or may not have come from a few fragments of evidence, it may be completely imagined like some of Einstein's theories, then it goes looking for evidence to fit and support the idea.

If you are comparing science vs religion. I dare say that science is necessarily a lot more fundamentalistic than religion.

3. Drawing a line in the sand between those on the inside and those on the outside. Either you're with us or you're against us. Fundamentalists need enemies in order to feel that they're fighting the good fight.

This is unfortunate, and is happening on both sides of the creation vs evolution debate.

I think I understand what you are saying about fundamentalism. My point is to suggest that it is not only one side of the argument that are fundamentalist.

It is also extremely fundamentalistic to say that a religion MUST change its religious beliefs. They are religious beliefs after all, not scientific beliefs.

Thanks Charles for the great post!

Now if only we can find a way to make some progress on the goal of meaningful discussion... not only in this area but in all others where fundamentalism and literalism reign.

Elaine,

One of your comments reminded me of one of the reasons I was glad I didn't go to the Adventist high-school in our town. The students compulsorily had to choose Bible as one of the six final subjects.

All of my six subjects were chosen to get me into the Engineering course at University, and Bible would not have counted as one of them, I needed all six that I chose. If I went to the SDA school, I would have had to do extra bridging courses and summer work to get into uni.

I was fortunate to go to a multi-denominational Christian school, we were free to choose our academic subjects, and they managed to still teach Bible to everyone anyway, very gospel focussed as well, but it did not take the place of any of the academic subjects. I never understood why the SDA school had to force Bible as one of the six subjects required for graduation.

Also, evolution theory was taught at the Christian school I went to, in some of the biology subjects and some in middle school science as well. The approach was very simple, they said to us that they were not asking us to believe it, just understand it if we want to pass the subject. I don't see what is wrong with this approach from a Christian organisation.

Many atheistic evolutionists understand this as well. That people are entitled to religious beliefs. The ones I have spoken to understand that religions do NOT NEED to change, just because of the theory of evolution. These atheistic evolutionists have been very happy to agree to disagree on the 'truth' of the matter. So, why should Adventists be so paranoid about all of this?

It seems to me that it is just as fundamentalist to say that Adventists NEED to change their religious beliefs. As the article says, there comes a point where we all have to simply agree to disagree. You don't have to accept the other person's position. But we don't have to demean with ridicule either. And, we can still discuss our reasons with respect if we so choose.

Mike MacLennan,

Thanks for posting some of the quotes of Cliff Goldstein.

Bevin,

I have never heard of, or looked at any of Cliff Goldstein before this forum. I can see from what you said, that he is offensive. If he is like Mike posted, then I fully understand your indignation.

Sometimes I have said things, I wish I hadn't. I wonder if Cliff ever feels like that.

I don't mind a good debate sometimes on the issues. But I want to say that I fully respect the evolution theory, it seems very reasonable to me. I don't support it because it is against my religious beliefs, but I never mean any disrespect to those who see it is the right thing - I can understand why they do.

You and I have debated this before, and if I have been demeaning in any way, I would hope that you could tell me. Because I honestly never meant to be.

As to the issue that the church should change its religious beliefs - I do not accept that it must. These are religious beliefs. I don't think that creation is any more difficult to maintain than believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Or that we will be resurrected and one day be eternally in God's presence. It's a religious belief.

We do have the capacity to maintain the religious belief, while accepting that the scientific model of evolution is reasonable within the assumptions that it makes. The religious belief in creation, as do most religious beliefs, do not usually fit within the scientific assumptions. It's not normally a problem.

That Adventism is incompatible with Darwinism can't possibly be a subject of good faith debate. The Adventist Church upholds the biblical Sabbath, the biblical rationale of which is that God rested on the Sabbath day after having created the world in six days. And, of course, the church's founding prophet made scores, possibly hundreds, of statements affirming a recent creation in six literal, 24-hour days. If she was wrong about that, her prophetic credentials would be impeached beyond any hope of hehabilitation, and the whole Adventist movement would be based on a shabby fraud.

I repeat these facts, because after reading Spectrum's bloggers, I'm starting to doubt that they are facts. Maybe I just confabulated them; maybe what I thought was my life experience was actually a long, drug or injury-induced hallucination.

What needs to be investigated by competent psychologists is the hold that Adventism exercises over numerous people who no longer subscribe to its doctrines. I have two siblings who were raised in the church and educated in church schools through college, just as I was, and who left the church in young adulthood and have never looked back. If I no longer believed the Church's beliefs, I don't think I would leave the church, I know I would. The idea that the church's weird little subculture would exert any pull on me after I had rejected its grand, integrated doctrinal structure is too ridiculous to contemplate. I couldn't even imagine insisting that the church validate my rejection of its doctrines, or insisting that it consider my "Adventism" as valid as that of a member who still subscribes to Adventist doctrines. That partakes of an arrogance so breathtaking that I don't even want to try to wrap my mind around it.

David,

A question for you. How should we, as creation believing Adventists, respectfully disagree with the majority of the scientific world?

From the snippets I have seen of Cliff Goldstein, I really don't believe that is the right way to do it. I don't mean to judge him, I have only seen what has been presented in this thread. But if that is any indication of how we come across, then we are truly in trouble.

I think we can and should present what we believe, but we need to be wary about the idea that the evidence can only point to creation. Because this is not true. There is evidence that points to evolution. My way around this is to not accept the uniformitarian assumptions used in the conclusions of that evidence. But we have to be fair, and understand that people without faith in the supernatural, are left with having to take those assumptions.

We overreach sometimes (often), in trying to disprove evolution. In doing so, we are saying that almost the entire scientific community is nuts. We need to be a lot more thoughtful than that. They are not nuts, some of them are the most intelligent people I have spoken with.

Why do we need hard evidence to believe in creation, when we don't need hard evidence to believe in resurrection?

Our supernatural beliefs have coexisted against the scientific conclusions for centuries. There is no reason this needs to change.

When science dreams a dream and then works backwards to prove its validity they call that dream a THEORY. Science is full of theories - some provable while others remain theories. Religions, in their various forms work from traditions; and the SDA tradition (the only one I know) is glued together so tight that no amount of light, from whatever source, including science, can possibly penetrate.

Religion, including SDA beliefs, can not afford to be wrong; but beyond that, it can not ever say, "WE DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT CONTRADICTION". The salient parts of SDA belief can never be modified or even questioned because the whole ball of yarn would then unravel. The conflict is not just about evolution vs. creation. For Adventism its about the pillars that hold up the facade.

The dogged stance of religiou s tradition is motivated by fear, not faith. Fear dictates that there be an immutable answer to every question; while faith rests on the trust that comes from personal experience, and can afford to say, "I DON'T KNOW, BUT I TRUST GOD TO WORK IT OUT FOR ME". Fear will denigrate the opposition, while faith will respect the other guys life experience.

The debate between science and religion is in the hands of those same blind men trying to describe an elephant.

David,

One turn we absolutely MUST make is a turn away from religious intellectualism, or the conviction that faith is basically embrace of some elaborate set of propositions.

When Adventists first organized (into the Michigan conference, in 1861), meeting delegates specifically refused to publish a “creed” and instead agreed on what was essentially a promise: they would “covenant together” to “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”

Promises like this (elegant in their beauty and their brevity) do imply beliefs. The point is not to dismiss the relevance of doctrine altogether. But doctrines are secondary—they serve the PRACTICE of the faith.

No one can show how, say, a belief that the earth is some 6,000 years old better serves the practice of compassion than one that allows a much longer time span.

Remember, too, that the Last Quiz (I’m thinking of Matt 25) has one question on it: Did you show compassion? There is no biblical evidence that on Judgment Day God will disqualify anyone for having a different theory of nature than you or I have.

Chuck

Sirje,

Yes, it can appear that way. It did to me for a while. What I have learned though, is that allowing myself to acknowledge that my beliefs are actually based on faith rather than science, then I suddenly found this amazing sense of release.

That tight ball of yarn suddenly didn't seem tight at all any more. I know you and I have spoken about faith before, to me, faith, simple childlike, unties all of the knots.

Chuck,

I really appreciate the faith focus that you are bringing to this creation war.

Chris:

Unfortunately, the question being discussed here is not "how should we, as creation believing Adventists, respectfully disagree with the majority of the scientific world?" (That question would lead to a debate regarding the tone with which we should reject Darwinism, e.g., respectful and solicitous vs. sarcastic and dismissive.) The question being discussed here is "should we disagree with the majority of the scientific world" and the answer of many spectrum bloggers is an emphatic "no." Hence my previous post: Darwinism/long ages geology is a dagger pointed at the heart of the biblical rationale for the Sabbath, the signature doctrine of the SDA Church. This is so clearly and obviously the case, that one really is entitled to a little impatience at the obtuseness of a purported Seventh-day Adventist who would argue otherwise. Which brings us to Clifford Goldstein.

Clifford Goldstein doesn't have a problem with Darwinism; he was a Darwinist himself before he converted to Christianity. Goldstein has a problem with people who think that Adventism can be made compatible with Darwinism, or that the Church should abandon its Bible-based belief in a young earth created in six 24-hour days. If Goldstein were writing a piece intended to be read by the unchurched, for unconverted people who philosophically are where he was when he was 23 years old, you'd see a different tone and different arguments. But the piece entitled "Seventh-day Darwinians" was intended to be read by doctrinally well-grounded Adventists, and in it Goldstein was communicating his moral indignation at folks who draw tithe-supported salaries while actively undermining the doctrines and mission of the church he loves.

Few would argue that the evidence can point only to biblical creationism, or that Darwinism does not enjoy a certain measure of success in organizing and viewing the facts of nature according to its hypothesis. But Darwinism has serious weaknesses, and the facts of nature can also be viewed and organized within a creationist model. So there are really two competing models or paradigms of origins, the Biblical and the Darwninian. The last chapter of my book, "Dinosaurs - An Adventist View" argues that the choice of one's origins paradigm is really a faith choice, and that the science is secondary. (If you read the thread following the book review at Adventist Today's website, you will see that Sean Pitman disagrees with me about this, but I stand by my position.) The science you find most convincing will depend upon your choice of paradigms.

David,

There are Adventists who believe in evolution. I was one, until I realized that evolution can not falsify creation. So, now I choose, on faith, to believe in creation again. But, when I did believe in evolution - I never walked out of the church. It didn't destroy my faith completely - although I will say that it did erode my faith gradually for a while.

That erosion was more because of the shaky paradigm, that tight ball that Sirje is talking about. That paradigm says that you need evidence for all truth. But in truth, faith does not always need evidence! It is actually a lie to say that faith always requires evidence. Sometimes, even the creation side inadvertently push that shaky paradigm.

Questions have been posed, evidence for evolution, that I have no answer for. And, as a rational person, I have to admit that evolution provides reasonable answers to those questions. They don't outright falsify creation, so it doesn't shake my faith at all - any more - but I have to admit that I don't know how they can be fit into the creation model either. And I do try to look at the science from the creation model. I choose to have faith that there might be a way. That is simply my religious faith.

Don't get me wrong, because I do like to see that the evidence can fit into the creation model. And, I am usually the first to point out that a lot more fits than people realize. But there are a couple of things that evolution seems to answer better, in my opinion. I have to acknowledge those things.

Chuck
"Remember, too, that the Last Quiz (I’m thinking of Matt 25) has one question on it: Did you show compassion? There is no biblical evidence that on Judgment Day God will disqualify anyone for having a different theory of nature than you or I have."

Thanks so much for your comments. You truly have gotten a glimpse of the big picture of what is critical for Christians to do. IMHO Knowing that God was involved with our creation is an important concept for us as mere mortals to believe in--it puts us in the proper perspective in relationship to the Divine. However, how it was done is something that we will take eternity in heaven to truly understand.

Trying to use the Bible as a scientific text is a mistaken use of a book filled with prose and poetry. Undoubtedly plenty of poetic license was used by the tellers of the story as it was told to generation after generation of people until it was finally written down. Remember, we as humans did not really understand the relationship of even the earth to the heavens/space until just recently in our history.

The really sad thing about this debate is hearing some of the attitudes of those in a position of authority in the SDA church, and their vitriolic comments about others that believe differently than they do. I, like David Read's siblings, have left the church despite my PK and third generation roots and have not looked back until recently, and it is sad to see the complete lack of wisdom by some related to the "Big Picture" of Christianity as evidenced by Christ's life and His words to us.

In my experience, Adventists have too often been focused on the minutiae of trying to live a righteous life, just like the Jews of Christ's time--we need to be reminded constantly of what the big picture truly is--related to the PRACTICE of faith and Christlikeness within us in a modern world. It is hard though growing up as an Adventist to leave it all behind especially if one's family is still intimately involved with the SDA church--and truly believe that if you don't believe the way they do, you are lost and will not be in heaven with them.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Chuck:

Surely you would acknowledge that reducing Christianity down to just compassion is, well, a bit reductionistic. Even Matthew 25 has two other parables, one about the duty to invest your talents and earn a return for your master, and the other about keeping your lamp full because you know not the hour the bridegroom cometh.

But since you've chosen to make your stand on compassion, I'll take you up on it, and show you how a belief that the earth is some 6,000 years old better serves the practice of compassion than belief in long ages geology.

If the fossil record reflects some 600 million years of time, then God evidently "created" the world over the course of those millions of years. So for 600 million years, God allowed his creatures to engage in and suffer carnivory, predation, disease and death. Since I just published a book on dinosaurs ("Dinosaurs - An Adventist View" available on Amazon.com or at your local ABC), I have many examples of carnivory, predation, disease and death in the fossil record close at hand:

In 1971, a Velociraptor was found with its jaws clamped on the neck frill of a Protoceratops, and the deadly talon of its second toe ripping into the Protoceratops’ belly. The Protoceratops, meanwhile, seems to have pierced the Velociraptor’s chest with its beak. The animals were buried and fossilized in this position, preserving the evidence of their deadly encounter.

Here's another passage from the book:

The dinosaurs lived lives of extraordinary violence. Most skeletons have broken bones that healed prior to the animal’s ultimate death and burial. The famous T. rex “Sue” had many injuries to her legs, tail, ribs, and skull. Sue’s skull has a series of perforations, caused by an attack by another large predator, or by a bone disease, or by abscesses that ate through her jawbone. She had multiple broken ribs on both sides, probably from two separate incidents. The ribs had tried to heal, leaving ugly, swollen bone growth. She had an abnormality of the left leg that has been variously interpreted as a healed break, arthritis, and a long-term infection resulting from a major wound. Sue must have lived a life of violence, pain, and suffering.

“Big Al,” an Allosaurus found in the Morrison Formation of Wyoming, had nineteen skeletal abnormalities, including numerous fractured and healed bones, infections to bones of the hands and feet, and perhaps even the bone marrow infection osteomyelitis. Broken and rehealed bones are common among predatory dinosaurs, but many herbivores show evidence of injury, as well:

"Most dinosaur skeletons seem to have rehealed bone injuries, ranging from broken fingers, toes and ribs to broken leg bones that must have been very painful to the living animals. One hadrosaur had a broken jaw that caused some messy problems in the growing teeth, but the animal obviously survived for a long time after it had the injury. Injuries at the backs of young horned-dinosaur skulls could cause neck crests to grow in strange, asymmetrical ways. Shallow wounds sometime got infected, and abscesses would invade the adjacent bones to leave great gaping holes. There are several specimens of plant-eaters that appear to have been attacked and bitten to the bone by carnivores, but escaped and lived long enough for the bones to heal." Currie, Phillip J. and Eva B. Koppelhus, 101 Questions about Dinosaurs (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996), p. 36.

What a cruel and uncompassionate way to create! God may be asking us to be compassionate now, but given how He created the world, He's sending out some very mixed signals. Which God are we to take seriously, the God who tells us to be compassionate or the God who used remorseless survival of the fittest, nature "red in tooth and claw," to create the world?

If God really did allow his creation to groan for millions of years in this violent, disease-prone condition, then it seems I can be just as "godly" in being selfish, violent, and cruel, as I can be by being compassionate. In fact, I think there might be a better argument for selfishness, because it seems that when God gets down to the tough business of creating, he uses the principle of selfishness, survival of the fittest, over millions of years of time.

I'm not making up theoretical arguments. The Darwinian philosophy has been used in the real world to justify eugenics--sterilizing and aborting the "undesirable." It was used by Hitler to justify the mass extermination of the "inferior races." Ideas have consequences in the real world. The long-ages view of the fossil record does not support or encourage the practice of compassion.

However, if God created the world perfect and disease free, and created the animals without carnivory and predation, and these things are a result of the fall, and the fossil record was largely created by a universal flood some 5,000 or so years ago, and in point of fact God brought the Flood partly to solve the excessive violence prevailing at that time and give the world a fresh start, then these problems go away. The Creator God really is a loving, compassionate God, and when he encourages us to be compassionate, he's not being inconsistent.

Bottom line: if promoting compassion is my main goal, then I'm out there promoting young earth creationism with every fiber of my being.

Many years ago I listened to Dr. Charles Thomas lecturing on health reform at Prescott campmeeting in Arizona. He describe how he often lectured to non Adventist groups on health reform. He discouraged taking food between meals as part of a good dietary plan. The non Adventist groups accepted his counsel gladly, happy to learn how to better preserve health. The Adventist groups routinely complained, were reluctant to change their habits and questioned the things he said. Nothing between meals? Can't we even have juice? they whined.

Same attitudes, different issue. Why can't we believe evolution? Do we have to believe the Bible?

This is a church,not a social club. Central to the teaching of this particular denomination is the fourth Commandment:

"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy."

Have we forgotten? I completely understand Cliff's view of the matter. People who become Christians and SDA's have often left behind Atheism, evolution, rejection of Scripture, and so forth because they have been convinced by the spirit of God. To then enter a fellowship where many of the people, at least those represented here, are essentially heathens, is shocking.

How can Adventism remain at all relevant if a central feature of its belief system, the Sabbath of the Creator, is rejected?

Now many may think that the Sabbath should be scuttled. Perhaps so. But then the name of the church should be changed. Its mission should be rethought as well. Obviously, without a Creator, it hardly makes sense to call people to worhip him.

Br. Scriven's call for compassion a bit too simplistic for my taste. If compassion is all we need we may as well scuttle the cross and justification by faith. Matthew 25 is one dimension of a doctrine with many dimensions. Salvation is by faith, not by works.

A religion which rejects Scripture, rejects the Creator, and emphasizes works for salvation is a system of unbelief, not a community of faith.

David wrote:

--
However, if God created the world perfect and disease free, and created the animals without carnivory and predation, and these things are a result of the fall, and the fossil record was largely created by a universal flood some 5,000 or so years ago, and in point of fact God brought the Flood partly to solve the excessive violence prevailing at that time and give the world a fresh start, then these problems go away. The Creator God really is a loving, compassionate God, and when he encourages us to be compassionate, he's not being inconsistent.
--

It is kind of funny to think that with a world wide flood we have uncovered nests of dinosaurs with the eggs etc. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/21/us/fossil-of-nesting-dinosaur-strength...

The flood is often used as the giant miracle that answers all geological questions. The flood brought the Ice Age, the flood gave us the evolutionary fossil record. The flood explains the love of God by having Him kill everything.

Now if God created the world perfect without death and disease. Then these things all came from God because He restructured the world. Some guy eating fruit from a forbidden tree did not then go out and change a lions teeth and make him a predator. So we are left with God did it, and God did it intentionally.

Theistic Evolution sees God as the Creator who set in motion the growth and development of life, integral to life is death and decay because that is how the atoms are recycled throughout the system. That goes for organic as well as inorganic material. The Genesis story is trying to explain why things die, it puts the blame on man because the point of the story is to instruct man to a higher level of thinking. That we have responsibility for the things we do, both to humans and to the world around us. Man dies and that is it, that is the majority of the Old Testament's conception of life and death. Live a good life and if you are lucky you can be buried on the same ground as your ancestors. Which ultimately indicates that you have not lost your land to invaders.

I don't see 6 thousand years of death and disease as any real difference between 4 billion years. At least to God who does not seem to be too concerned with time. We are because we only have a little time but when you have eternity even 6 billion does not add up to much. Then again in Theistic evolution most of that 3-4 billion years is spent on living things that don't know if they are alive or not. Then we get to animals with brains and we are less certain whether they know it or not or if they are simply reacting. Then we get to mankind with the idea of a living soul, we realize from simple Old Testament history that they knew nothing of life after death that we progressed to that understanding and then we get to the concept of the gift of eternal life. And that is where the statement that through one man sin entered the world and through sin death. But it is a contrast to the one man who brought life into the world. Not everything Paul said was literal, women really aren't saved by childbirth etc. He is making a point about how the gift of life is introduced via the life death and resurrection of Christ.

And for Chris the resurrection of Jesus is not simply based upon faith but upon history, eyewitnesses, and those eyewitnesses changed the world that is evidence. Faith without evidence is nothing. A person can have faith in anything at all that does not make it reality. People have faith that Moses wrote Genesis, there is no evidence though for that, people have faith that the Bible is the word of God, again that ignores the evidence that there is clearly human ideas, human interpretations inserted into the Bible. You can't get past the reality and the reality is that Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 are pretty clearly written by different people.

So what so many people claim is faith is faith in a tradition and that tradition can frequently be wrong. So does that mean that because we have a tradition we can say well that is the answer to our origins nothing else need be considered? No because we are thinking human beings and we examine evidence, and evidence is constantly being discovered and evaluated and reevaluated. God does not ask us to have faith in tradition, but to have faith in God and there is a big difference between those two kinds of faith.

Ron

Chuck said in his article:

"The conflict reaches deep into Adventism, and has the potential, as everyone knows, to tear our church apart."

Wasn't it a Catholic monk approximately 500 years ago who tore the church apart? Would Adventists not be here, but for him? Didn't Galileo, less than a hundred years later, have a great effect on the Catholid church? Whether he proposed a "good" depends on one's perspective. However, the church, only after 400 years "forgave" him.

If any institution survives on such fragile pillars, is schism the worst of all worlds? How many times has Protestantism split in the years since Martin Luther? Whether that was a good thing or not depends on one's view, but for certain, Adventism is a result. And the precedence was set long before SDA became an organized religious denomination. How many denomination ancestors does Adventism have?

Does anyone with to return to a powerful church that was able to conquer Spain with an Inaquisition and a Torquemada? We shouldn't forget that the first "atheists" were dubbed that by the Romans:
"our gods are better than your god."

Christianity will survive if there is a schism in Adventism. In life, cell division is the means of growth; a single cell eventually dies. Divisions are a part of living organisms. Either the church is a living organism or a dead entity.

Either evolution is an objective reality or is not. The geologic record seems to say that it is. We have ample confirmation of natural selection, one of evolutionary theory's foundational principles, in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, to cite only one possible example.

Deciding that one is going to support a short-chronology special creationist viewpoint does not affect reality one whit. Our opinion does not change reality. What is, is, and what is not, isn't. Our role is not to define truth, but to find out, as best we can, what the truth is. Sometimes we can't figure it out. We are confronted with mystery.

Irrespective of how one accounts for origins, 2000 years ago a man lived, died, and was resurrected. His followers believed he was divine, and that he brought into being a whole new way of living--even a whole new order of things. Maybe Jesus completed creation.

Some people can't understand how a believer in Jesus can also be a believer in Darwin's theory. That's counter-intuitive to them. But quantum theory is counterintuitive, yet "true".

Perhaps our faith needs to have room for some mystery, and not be so concerned about having everything we know harmonized in a linear-thinking, Newtonian manner.

Lots of really thoughtful people in this conversation. Thanks to all of you.

Three brief points:

1. Jesus kept the Sabbath. This wonderful gift does not depend on a straightforward, as opposed to poetic, reading of Genesis. And no one, remember, has yet posted a single quote, either following the Pentateuch or in Christian history (before the modern period), showing that preoccupation with times, dates and sequences is crucial for the doctrine of creation.

2. If the world is 10 minutes old, nature red and tooth and claw is be a problem for faith. Faith is a stance you take in the face of evidence that could push you either way--easily enough into sheer materialism, that's for sure. No matter how old the earth is, faith, as my friend has said, is no walk in the park. (But faith REALLY matters. I follow philosophers like Nicholas Wolterstorff and Charles Taylor who show how non-theistic accounts of the universe put radical generosity at risk.)

3. The evidence is startlingly difficult to deal with. So I want to go on record--no doubt you've already surmised this--as being eager to belong a church which welcomes both the Cliff Goldsteins of the world and also the embattled science teachers. I just don't see why we can't transcend mutual disdain and, together, celebrate the Gospel--it's message of hope, it's vision of how to live. (Of course I recognize that there's the little matter of the sin that has a grip, even if, for many, a weakening grip, on all our hearts.)

Posted by: Chuck Scriven | 30 May 2009 at 5:35

Sean,
Now I know (I considered this before) who you are. Thanks for the hello from you Dad. (What about your Mom? I...uh...admired her all through grade school and high school.)

Mom remembers you with fondness. She really enjoys her childhood and the memories of growing up with you are good ones.

I agree with Barr, whose quote says the "writer(s)"--a bit of a higher critic he is, or so I gather--of Genesis would have understood themselves to be describing literal events. But the biblical writers also thought (consider the word "corners") that the earth was flat.

I know that this is a common interpretation, but isn't the Hebrew word in question "Kanaph" literally translated to mean "extremity" or "extremities"? Given this sense of the term, the passages in question could easily be read to mean to "the very extremities of the Earth." Given that the Biblical writers also talked about the Earth as a sphere or "circle" (Isaiah 40:22), this seems to be at least a reasonable interpretation.

The Genesis account of a literal week, on the other hand, is far more difficult to misinterpret or to misunderstand - even from an Earth-bound perspective with very limited scientific understanding or background. After all, even a child would be able to understand and accurately describe a situation that took place over a small number of literal days and describe such an event as being marked off by "evenings and mornings". It is very hard to misinterpret such a vision or revelation of events.

This is especially true given the repeated confirmation of this intended message throughout the Bible - regarding the literal nature of the Genesis narrative. This makes it very difficult to simply relegate this narrative to myth or legend or even a good moral fable without removing the basis for interpreting all such "miraculous" events described in the Bible as legend or good moral fables as well - such as all of the miracles of the Old Testament, the Virgin Birth, Jonah and the Whale, all the miracles of Jesus, the Resurrection of Jesus, the Second Coming, and the hope of eternal life itself - all lovely moral fables if you discount the attempt of the Biblical author(s) of Genesis to describe something in very literal terms, with an obvious intent to be taken literally, as a good but completely mistaken effort.

What I want us ALL to struggle with is how to be passionate about a faith that was first packaged inside of a cosmology no one today FULLY accepts.

No one? I'm sorry, but although the group is certainly in the minority, it is hardly devoid of members. I myself fully accept the stated cosmology as represented by the fundamental doctrines of the SDA Church - and I am by no means alone on this one. And, I have not come to this position on blind faith alone. I think there is a great deal of very good scientific evidence and logical argument to support this position - far more than the "moral fable" position that it seems you are trying to promote . . .

The struggle is hard. As I heard a young PUC graduate say, "Faith is not a walk in the park for us." Some are at a different stage of the struggle than you and I. Surely people with doctorates in biology and other sciences have faced more spiritual stress than many of us--faced, as is quite likely, an even more difficult struggle.

I don't discount the severity of the Spiritual struggles of anyone. However, I am trained in the medical sciences with a particular emphasis on the more basic scientific aspect of medicine. I have had extensive training in biochemistry, genetics, pathology, the process of disease via mutations as well as natural selection, endless blood disorders that are related to genetic mutations, etc. I have published over a dozen papers and abstracts in the medical literature. One of my papers formed the basis for changing the diagnostic criteria for a form of Hodgkin lymphoma.

If anything, this training and experience has brought me to a place of much greater faith in the stated SDA interpretation of the Scriptures - as an organized body of believers. Science is in harmony with true religion. There are not two separate paths toward "truth" that are called "religion" and "science". Science is inherently religious in method and philosophy and religion can be scientific in method and philosophy as well.

I may misread you and those who seem to side with you. But I take it that you expect the La Sierra science teachers we are thinking about these days to change into the same sort of creationist that you are, or leave / be fired from their jobs? Assume (for argument's sake) that these professors love the Lord, celebrate the Sabbath and embrace the Advent hope. Assume further that, by deeds and testimony, they communicate this to their students. Then why exclude them from full participation in Adventist life just because their stage of struggle is different from ours? Why do this when, in any case, God's ways and thoughts are higher than ours? Why do this when later biblical and Christian writers (up to, as I think, the modern period) never seem to think that dates, times and sequences are the main point of the creation doctrine?

I think it was Madeleine L'Engle who once imagined a society so homogenous (or maybe she said "authoritarian") that the children even bounced their balls in unison. I don't think any of us wants that.

This isn't personal. Some of my very best friends are adamant atheists. Many others are admittedly agnostic. And, of course, many others believe in various ideas of God from the Hindu view to the Baptist view. And, we all get along just fine and actually enjoy each other's company. This doesn't mean that I want my tithe dollars going to support a Hindu pastor in my church or an agnostic teacher in my school.

You see, I think a bunch of people tie all of this in with salvation. But, as far as I see it, these issues are not inherently a matter of salvation. I personally believe that there were be a lot of very surprised atheists in heaven. There are simply a lot of honestly confused people out there. But, as honest as they are (and therefore savable) I don't want them teaching my children or friends in my schools - even though it is also true that I may be the honestly confused one. Like Charles Barkley once said, "I may be wrong, but I doubt it." - and that's true for everyone who has any opinion on anything.

In short, they are perfectly free to teach in their own schools paid by those of like mind who want that sort of thing taught as "truth" to their own children and friends. In fact, I encourage such a freedom of diversity of types of schools in a free civil society at large.

However, the SDA Church is unique from free civil society at large and one is free to join or to leave it without any fear of civil inducements or reprisals. Despite numerous efforts to compare an attempt at producing some form of internal control and order in the SDA Church, this sort of effort is not the same thing as the efforts of the Church in the days of Galileo to enforce this or that view with the threat of civil penalties.

There is also no inherent moral condemnation for wanting to leave the SDA Church. As already noted, lots of non-SDAs will be in heaven - the vast majority in fact. However, there is an inherent moral disconnect when those who hold views that are diametrically opposed to the church still expect the church (and therefore me) to pay them for their views. That's obvious nonsense - at least it should be obvious to anyone considering this problem with a candid mind. Any viable organization must have very clear rules and regulations set in place that are actually enforced. No viable organization on Earth or in Heaven functions very long otherwise before complete fragmentation and homogenous dispersion takes place.

This is what the early SDA Church founders quickly realized - that without some form of enforcement of church discipline and order, the SDA Church would not long last as a distinct entity with anything worthwhile to contribute to the world (see the 1907 work of J.N. Loughborough on church order and discipline).

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough for now. Thanks again for your thoughts on this very important issue.

Chuck

Sean
www.DetectingDesign.com

Ron: You wrote; "human interpretations inserted into the Bible. You can't get past the reality and the reality is that Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 are pretty clearly written by different people."

I included the "human interpretations" part of the previous sentence intentionaly. You have your right to your own human interpretation and could say that "you see them" as written by different people but when you add "pretty clearly" and imply that what you see is "reality" to the mix I'm hearing you say "you're stupid if you don't see it my way," since it is so "clear" and "real".

You don't list your reasons but I've heard this before so I'll respond to what others have observed.

In my response to Karpistian's coments above about the two accounts I wrote:
"The first is time oriented and starts in the beginning and proceeds to the creation of man and then the Sabbath rest. The second is relationship oriented and starts with the creation of man and then speaks of how the other elements relate to him. I am told that the Hebrew does not have to imply that the animals were created after Adam, but that the animals God had created where brought to be named." Hebrew does not have all the tenses that English does.

It seems reasonable to me that since the first account is poetry and the second is prose that one person could have written both, just coming at the subject in 2 different forms from 2 different perspectives. An artist might write an essay on a subject and also a poem and they will be different but not contradictory in the mind of the writer.

Another conflict often mentioned is that there are different names for God in the 2 accounts. In the first account the name is "Elohim" (God) and in the second this is compounded as "Yahwey Elohim" (Lord God). What I see in this is the activity of the Trinity in the first account "come let Us make man in Our image", and the activity of the second person of the Godhead in the second. Since the second account I see as relational it makes sence to me that the One who relates to the creation face to face would be the one mentioned. (The Father interfaces with the creation from a thrown high and lifted up in light unapproachable and the Spirit indwells to maintain the image of God in the unfallen.) Lord God then continues to be the primary name through the rest of the Old Testament as God interacts with the human race.

I see this as one possible interpretation as is yours.

Yours in Christ,
Dennis Blomberg

The irony of all this is that while we spend the time trying to expose the flaws in evolutionary theory we have missed that fact that most of our fundamental doctrines do not reveal a God who is seen as Creator at all. For us, creation begins in the Garden of Eden. We never consider what must be true about any Being who is capable of creating the vast universe.

Dennis I don't really care if you don't see the clearly part of Genesis 1 and 2 being written by different people. But then again I am not demanding that the church hold to one particular view of origins. Neither do I demand that people realize that human ideas about God are inserted into the Bible. Maybe someone really does think that God said He made a mistake with the creation. I guess that would fit the Open View of God. I don't demand that they leave the church either. I just want people to be convinced in their own minds and be able to explain what they think. That is where dialog and growth come in and that is where we sharpen each others ideas about God and life.

That is much different from what you are hearing from those on the traditionalist side here say. They say this is what we believe nothing else is allowed. If they get their way they will destroy the Adventist church (my perspective), just as fundamentalism has basically destroyed Christianity in the Western World. We can either be open to continued growth or oppose any growth. That is the choice before the Adventist church today. And frankly the Adventist church as an agent for change and growth has just as long of tradition as the fundamentalist Adventist church, actually probably longer, the pendulum just seems to swing and in my lifetime it has been stuck a little too long on the fundamentalist side of things.

Ron

There is a degree of civility, and openness needed.

The administration believes this is basically not possible - the Faith and Science Conferences were held behind closed doors because (a) that would be less threatening to the participants, and (b) it would be less threatening to the laity. These were valid concerns, and the conferences were a great first step.

The administration then blew it with the "all is well, we affirm short-age-creation" summary in the Adventist Review.

The correct next steps were

1) The hierarchy, needs to admit that the issue is contentious, and maybe even do a survey to find out how many SDA think that the evolutionary model of the origin of life on earth is more likely to be correct than the recent creation model.

2) Given that the issue is so contentious, the main media of the church (Adventist Review and the SS Lesson), financed by the whole church, needs to stop being so one-sided in its treatment of the issue - they can't expect to repeatedly poke the evolutionists with outrageous claims without getting a reaction.

3) The vast majority of creationists do not understand evolution, and yet are certain it is wrong. If the issue is going to be resolved amicably, there is going to need to be a lot of willingness to learn - and a big part of that is to allow the teachers to speak in the same forums that the creationists speak - the Review, the SS Lesson, and the pulpits. The leadership should issue a statement saying (a) that such speakers are valued SDA, and (b) such opinions are quite possibly correct and people should feel free to use their conscience to decide their position.

This issue will resolve itself - but the current path is inflicting a lot of damage.

/Bevin

I just don't see it. Maybe I'm too simple. Let's all just not have any labels. Lets all unite. Let's just believe the same thing or accept each other believing anything we want. For that matter, let's just do anything we want as well. In fact, I will plan on doing anything I want to you and your families because it is my belief that I am better or need to spread my seed or maybe suppress yours or whatever. Isn't that how it works. Somewhere along the line to anarchy we all become fundamentalists or self preservationists. Usually, when thing get to be happening just like "I" (who ever the one complaining at the time may be) likes them but no more. Let's be honest. This is what the extent really goes to but there really is an end to it.

A lot of you would have a real problem with the greatest prophet--John the baptist--he really was fundamental. He told people to repent. He told people to live right. He lost his head for telling Herod to put Herodias away. Jesus himself told people to stop sinning or a worse thing would happen to them. He kicked people out of the temple--but that wouldn't be us would it. He said narrow is the way that leads to life. All you guys seem to think that He went easy on this thing called sin--He didn't. He HATED sin but love the sinner. My understanding is that at the root of sin is selfishness and dominance of others. What does this sound like? Sounds just like Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest to me. SO HOW IS IT THAT SOMETHING THAT CHRIST HATED AND CAME TO DESTROY IS THE MECHANISM THAT HE USED TO START LIVE AND HELP IT EVOLVE ON THIS PLANET?!?!

Shannon.

It is a great question.

However the other question is "how come the world looks like birth, life, and death have been going on for hundreds of millions of years?"

Creationists use your question to defend their position. 99% of them - arguably 100% of them - don't fully understand the evidence that justifies my question.

These are hard questions - and they deserve better than the trite answers you see in these online chats.

/Bevin

Let's do dispense with the labels and terms that have been loaded with emotional baggage. What exactly is "survival of the fittest"? Isn't survival about the basic needs of a living creature - food and procreation. Were the disciples demonstrating survival of the fittest when they threw their fishing nets into the water at Jesus' direction? Who survived here and who was sacrificed?

Life, itself, is a process of dying and regeneration. Metabolism, one of the miracles of creation for which we thank God, is a process of death and regeneration. Does it matter more if millions of cells die as the organism dies, rather than just a few, as does every day as the metabolic process keeps the larger organism alive? Death was built into the system of living things, including man. From the very beginning, something had to die for something else to live as Adam plucked the fruit and ate. To Christians that should sound familiar. Perhaps that pattern of death giving life was a cycle from the beginning as it foreshadowed the ultimate life giver.

We have no business to marvel at nature as God's handiwork without acknowledging death as part of the package. Either it's all God's creation or we should abhor nature as a result of sin. Which is it? We can't have it both ways - marveling at the beauty of nature while denying the intricate workings that include death on some level. Either those canine teeth were created by God or what... they evolved?

David said:

"If I no longer believed the Church's beliefs, I don't think I would leave the church, I know I would. The idea that the church's weird little subculture would exert any pull on me after I had rejected its grand, integrated doctrinal structure is too ridiculous to contemplate. I couldn't even imagine insisting that the church validate my rejection of its doctrines, or insisting that it consider my "Adventism" as valid as that of a member who still subscribes to Adventist doctrines. That partakes of an arrogance so breathtaking that I don't even want to try to wrap my mind around it."

I appreciate this. I find it to make the most sense of any position. Because to me the 'opposite' viewpoint makes no sense. Staying 'in' the SDA church regardless of one's views on religion baffles me. Why? Should every nuance of varying belief be 'accepted' within the SDA church as a valid Adventist belief? (Note I'm not talking about judging salvation or accepting people with love...)

I just don't get how that can be. How can a church BE anything worth fighting for if it really doesn't mean anything? To me at that point it becomes a collection of people...who don't have any real ties other than they like to gather on Saturdays for 'old times sake.'

I've heard many on here say or imply that they are worried about this 'splitting' the church. I'm certainly not for a big split or fight or making anyone feel hated. BUT--sometimes when something matters enough...there are splits. It's scary, but I'm not sure it's wrong or bad -- not if each party truly believes in what they are standing for.

I believe in a young earth and Creation and do not believe the theory of evolution to be correct. But despite what it seems...I know that neither Sean or most anyone else who sides with him in this debate is against people having different views. I have had atheist friends, agnostic friends, friends of different Christian denominations. I don't look down on them or think they are less intelligent. I don't consider them less likely to be saved or less loved by God. I think wonderful, kind, intelligent people are found on both sides and various points between the two sides.

I personally hold no animosity toward anyone solely for their beliefs. I hold no negative feelings toward the science professors at La Sierra. But I STILL believe that La Sierra is not an appropriate venue for teaching that evolution IS the truth about origins. Preamble or no preamble...at this time there are still 28 fundamental beliefs that need to be respected by a school and its faculty when it comes to what is taught. If at a future point in time, the SDA church changes its official stand on origins to support or accept evolution... then at that time those who continue to reject the theory of evolution have a choice to make about the church in which they worship, the church they call their own. Life is full of tough choices. But why stick with something you don't believe in?

Chris:

I wanted to respond to your subsequent post. It seems that you have come around, on your own, to the competing paradigms viewpoint. It is very easy for lawyers to grasp this, because in our adversarial system, each side is working with the same set of facts, but each side has a different and usually almost opposite theory of the case. Each side argues to the jury that the facts better fit their theory of the case, and gives the reasons why. So like most lawyers, I feel very much at home with the "choice of paradigms" philosophy.

Honestly, it is such an enormous advantage coming to the origins controversy with a legal background. Lawyers learn how to take apart the other side's case, learn to look for premises or assumptions that might not be true. Most importantly, they learn how to take facts that their opponent has admitted and show how those facts support their theory of the case more than their opponent's theory of the case. (I can't tell you how many times, as I was researching the dinosaur book, that I would read something and think "Oh my goodness, this fact fits better--much better--in a creationist scenario than it does in a Darwinist!" And there were a couple of times when I was shocked at how bad a Darwinian argument was.) It sounds like you've learned to do this, to a certain extent, with the origins controversy.

Another thing that every lawyer learns is that there is no such thing as a perfect case; every case has problems, but guess what, you can't walk away from your case just because it has problems. You make the best of it, the best arguments you can. It sounds like you've come to that attitude on your own, as well.

Some people, including many people trained in a scientific field, are uncormfortable with this "choice of paradigms" approach to origins. These people feel there must be a right answer out there, if only we work the problem hard enough and gather enough data. In theory, there is a right answer, but it isn't knowable in this life; anyone who says otherwise is engaged in self-delusion. In this life, we will always have to make a faith choice, a choice of paradigms based upon faith. (This is one reason why the problem of Seventh-day Darwinians is so frustrating to people like me and Clifford Goldstein: How can anyone, having made a faith choice in favor of the Darwinian model and against the Adventist model, expect to remain an Adventist or even expect the Adventist Church to jettison its biblical model and adopt the Darwinian one? Isn't that the most astonishing thing you ever heard of?)

Anyway, you seem like a sincere and thoughful person, and I've enjoyed your posts.

Dear Shannon,
I'm sorry to have to point out some inaccuracies in your argument, but I can imagine they may be leading you to the outright rejection of evolution without getting to know the facts.
- Evolution is NOT domination to survive. You have in mind a "primitive" form of Darwinism, which no longer dominates science. In fact, scientists point out to how co-operation became a major force in evolution - instead of just competition.
- As Christians, instead of being appalled, we can actually celebrate evolution! Seriously. Google up "Evolution Weekend", celebrated every year by many denominations every single year. Get hold of the book "Thank God for Evolution" by Michael Dowd. If a tongue-speaking pastor can celebrate evolution then surely so can Adventists?
- You say that "The God of the Bible also wrote the ten commandments with His own finger stating the the world was made in 6 days". Well, last time I checked, That God's finger had written 3 different sets of 10 commandments, and only one of them mentioned the 6-day creation. "The God of the Bible", it would appear, is not sure Godself how God created the world.
- When you talk about believing the Bible you really mean believing your interpretation of the Bible. How is it better than others? Most Christians have no problem with evolution.
- How's "neo-Nazi dogma" etc. rooted in evolutionary movement? Last time I checked the history books, Hitler's was inspired by Luther's morbid antisemitism at least as much as by the so-called "social Darwinism" (something that was really a mistaken interpretation of Darwin's thought). And the Adventist church in Cermany and Austria did support both Hitler and his antisemitism. And Christians who supported slavery quoted from the Bible to justify it. Don't the 10 commandments and apostle Paul sanction slavery after all? Take out the log from your own eye first please...

David,

Thank you for your understanding. I look forward to more conversation with you.

Recall Matthew Arnold's dark image of ignorant armies clashing in the night. It's cautionary for all of us engaged in this conversation.

Now consider:

1) No one (inside of Adventism) is saying evolution is the ultimate explanation, or if anyone is, that position is clearly incompatible with Adventism. Some do say an "evolutionary process" can be detected. (As a non-scientist, I don't claim to have answers on this; I do claim that Adventist scientists, including those who perceive an evolutionary process, should be respected and welcomed.)

2) No one is saying ANY belief is okay, and should be accepted as Adventist. But I think propositional clutter defeats community--defeats the shared life of the beloved. when we fret the the point of discord over HOW creation happened, it's just toxic. And those who keep inviting people who are different from them to get out illustrate the toxicity. We'd bear a more convincing witness if we stuck to what the Bible upholds as crucial. That would be praise of God for the gifts of grace and hope; embrace of love and peacemaking, resolving to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

All this presumes, by the way, that God is our Maker; the doctrine of creation really does matter!

Chuck

1. God is from Everlasting to Everlasting: The Great I AM
The Self Existant One. No one can add more billions than God, not even Carl Sagan. Man not God is bound by time.

2. The geology of the earth is as old as the universe.

3. Its geological history demonstrates the same chaos as the other planets within the solar system, if not more.

4. Using geology as a marker for biology beyond human history is a fools errand. Vesuvius and other eruptions within the history of man are excellent examples of the limits of testability. Pre-History impacts, floods, and tidal waves are projectionary estimates.

5. God created diversity.

6. The earth is plagued by sin and its author--No one this side of heaven knows the degrees of freedom allowed in biology because of sin--besides entropy and death.

7. Dating Creation is as fool hardy as geological markings of pre-history biology.

8. Variation, within boundaries, is a design element: some as simple as finger prints.

9. The exceptions to the uniformity hypothesis discedit its
"onion skin" analogies.

10. Science is a tool limited to testable hypotheses.

11. The writings of E.G. White are limited to a 19th Century World View.

Finally, man has more questions than answers this side of eternity.

Tom

Tom,

I like your point 9. It's a point that I have been wondering about the best way to say it. "onion skin" yes, the anologies and inferences become lesser and lesser layers of the onion. I still don't know exactly how to put it in my own words. You words captured exactly what I was thinking at the moment I was thinking it.

I have mentioned before the impact of Cliff Goldstein's column's and their apparent support by the global church on my decision to resign from, and not fellowship with, the SDA church I belonged to.

The other big push was the head elder. He would openly say things like "Lord, there are people in this church who don't believe Your Word is true", in the prayer, during the communion service, praying over the bread.

I have recently met and spent several hours 1-on-1 with two pastors of two other Christian denominations. It was amazing to me that (a) neither of them even asked what denomination I was, and (b) their christianity was about service and love and walking the life God guides one to walk.

Unfortunately, having been raised an SDA, knowing what I do about "the Sabbath", "the state of the dead", "the health message", and many other of the 28 Fundamentals, I do not feel at home in ANY Christian church. This is why there are "Seventh Day Darwinians" - they agree with a lot more of the 28 Fundamentals than most other Christian groups.

Fortunately, I do feel at home in the back of a 911 ambulance with a critically ill patient on board. I would much rather be there on a sabbath morning than sitting in pew listening to an ignorant fundamentalist tell me the evolution is obviously wrong and that I am akin to a satanist because I don't agree with him.

/Bevin

"It is a HUGE statement to say that this is all about David's ego. What a completely unwarranted comment to make. I can appreciate much of your balanced approach to many of these things, but by making such a claim you seem to be just as guilty as others in your judgmental perspective."

Shawn, you're right, it was an overstatement, and surely not as kind as I wish to be.

However, I still want to call attention to the fact that David could have 1. sought the truth while he was on campus when he saw the offending text, 2. called the professor of the class, 3. written his letter to the professor first, or Dr. Wisbey, 4. at the very least send his letter to the people involved without making it public and putting a lot of people on the defensive. (Sorry, I don't accept the explanation that "I really didn't want it to be public but my friends betrayed me." That's too easy to avoid to be an effective excuse. If my friends did that I would be embarrassed and furious, which I haven't heard from David, either.)

A logical reason for not doing that is that one wants to inflate in importance a possible problem before the truth about it can be ascertained. My experience it that there is always a group of people ready and waiting to pick up a criticism without regard to its truth, who love to be its champion. They're happy to leave a person's or an institution's reputation damaged, as long as they can be the heroes who can supposedly tear things open and expose the truth.

So far, the indications seems to be that La Sierra has taught evolution to its science students as something they need to know to survive out in the scientific world and even have the tools to fight against evolution, but has not advocated it as the truth—which David admits in his letter is probably necessary. Let's see if David initiates another open letter saying, "I was wrong." And if he did, would we see it retracted by those who leaked it to the world? Bet not. The accusation/criticism will remain long after the problem is cleared up.

Loren

Bevin,

I agree it is wrong for us creation believers to say that evolution is 'obviously wrong'. Because when we say that, we are admitting that our religious belief is not based on faith. And we are showing ignorance to the amount of scientific validation that evolution has.

BUT, I also think that evolution believers are wrong to say that creation has been proven impossible.

I really think that both statements are equally fundamentalistic.

I think that creation believers need to accept that evolution is a valid scientific model. Just like when someone dies, we accept the scientific model that they will stay dead. We don't normally question the science when we have a religious belief.

I think that evolution believers need to accept that science does not prove everything. The scientific method uses inference. It relies on human wisdom and judgement, it is not perfect. It does not disprove religious beliefs.

Chris, you are creating then destroying straw horses.

"I think that evolution believers need to accept that science does not prove everything."

I don't know any evolutionist who thinks that it does.

"BUT, I also think that evolution believers are wrong to say that creation has been proven impossible".

I don't known any evolutionist that says that. What they say is that

(a) the evidence is compatible with life existing on earth for millions of years, and

(b) no-one has proposed a plausible detailed scientific explanation for how the evidence we see could come from less than 100,000 years of life and a universal flood, and

(c) that the God most Christians believe in would not create a world that fits the theory of evolution, but which is the result of incredibly arcane changes in natural law - and hence (b) needs to be proposed within the general range of the laws of nature which we know about, or plausible slight variations of them

Creation is possible, but none of the currently proposed short age models are.

/Bevin

A young earth/sudden life/world wide flood scenario is not impossible if you change laws and throw in miracles. Just like it is not impossible that the sun actually did go around the earth in Bible times and then the laws of physics were altered and now the earth goes around the sun. And it isn't impossible that the earth really was flat and had four corners with a half dome over it back in Bible times and then some miracles happened and now it is a slightly flattened sphere.

Nothing is impossible when you throw in miracles but there are some ideas that are more reasonable than others.

Bevin,

a) and b), I can accept

But, then you say the following:
(c) that the God most Christians believe in would not create a world that fits the theory of evolution.

This is where I have difficulty understanding you. God also created a world that fits the theory of the spaghetti space monster. So what?

He also created a world that fits Gnostic view of creation. So what?

He also created a world that appears resurrection is impossible. So what?

Just because the evidence can be fit into a theory, it does not mean that we have to accept that theory as the only correct theory. It does not have to mean that other theories are disproven. Please explain why God would not create a world as you describe.

Beth,

I didn't know you took the Bible that literally? I enjoy the humour.

I understand that some ideas are more reasonable than others. Resurrection is an absurd proposition. But, that is religious faith.

Actually, believing in God is considered unreasonable too. Tell me when the reasonable argument line should be drawn against religious faith?

What do you mean 'around' the earth? I thought it was reborn every morning.

"Homeopathy is false." I believe that because the evidence is not for it, and the science is against it.

"Astrology is wrong." I accept that statement because it disagrees with science, and evidence is against it.

"Mormonism is incorrect." That I trust because it has no evidence for it, and it goes against what we know about science and causality.

"The Greek myths are great little tales, but not factual." This I know to be so because humans don't turn into birds, science has shown us what echoes are, and again, science shows the ancient claims to be false.

"The Babylonian creation story is wrong." After all, who would believe that a god mixed blood with dirt to create humans? Such a claim lacks evidence, and is contrary to science.

"Genesis is only a myth." How bigoted do scientists have to be to insist that the same processes occurred in the past as in the present, unless there is evidence that these processes have changed, denying the literal truth of ancient texts, and claiming that I have to provide evidence for my claims? That's simply atheism, naturalism, and materialism wrapped up into one large falsehood, and I have no reason to accept scientific assumptions.

Anyone who believes in a religion or magical claim that I don't, however, and who denies science and its working assumptions, is a bigot who hates the truth.

Glen Davidson

"Astrology is wrong." I accept that statement because it disagrees with science, and evidence is against it.

"it" is supposed to be "astrology," of course, not the statement in quotes. But I realized when I read the two sentences that "it" was particularly ambiguous.

Glen Davidson

Glen,

Big challenge. But I reject that I call anyone a bigot. I have never said that anyone who disagrees with me hates the truth. You are wrong to suggest that.

Sorry if I have intruded on the sanctity of the revered scientific assumptions. How dare I question the establishment.

Unless I have completely misunderstood you?

Big challenge. But I reject that I call anyone a bigot.

Did I credit it to you?

The fact is that it was a generic comment, which fairly accidentally (possibly not totally so) came after your comments. If I were thinking of anyone in particular, which I wasn't, it wouldn't have been you.

I have never said that anyone who disagrees with me hates the truth. You are wrong to suggest that.

You are wrong to suggest that it was aimed at you.

Sorry if I have intruded on the sanctity of the revered scientific assumptions. How dare I question the establishment.

Since you do so in such a biased manner, and without adequate or consistent (with your acceptance of much science) evidence, yes, how dare you? Again, I wasn't specifically aiming at you, but sure, you're wholly without reason or cause to doubt the kinds of assumptions that courts and science alike use successfully to get at the truth, rather you do so only in certain areas which you do not wish to question--unlike how you'd portray the Babylonian creation account.

Unless I have completely misunderstood you?

These are the kinds of jibes that I aim at creationists as a whole, not often at an individual (sometimes when someone asks for it, yes), since it is a whole collection of inconsistent ideas and claims that I oppose, not a single instantiation of them. That's how I've generally (not exclusively) acted on the Spectrum blog, in particular.

Hence, I am not sure why you thought I was targeting yourself, other than the (basically) accidental placement. Especially, I would not wish to be limited to what you have written, which is why it was, and was intended to be, generic. I wanted hyperbole, which would only sometimes be fair with an individual, and I would not include yourself there.

Glen

Glen,

I appreciate the engagement. Question for you. Is belief in God irrational?

Question for you. Is belief in God irrational?

No, but I don't find it to be a justified belief.

Then too, I don't find many of the common secular beliefs to be much more than a kind of herd prejudice. Science cuts across secular and religious divides for many, however.

Glen Davidson

Loren wrote:

--
Shawn, you're right, it was an overstatement, and surely not as kind as I wish to be.

However, I still want to call attention to the fact that David could have 1. sought the truth while he was on campus when he saw the offending text, 2. called the professor of the class, 3. written his letter to the professor first, or Dr. Wisbey, 4. at the very least send his letter to the people involved without making it public and putting a lot of people on the defensive. (Sorry, I don't accept the explanation that "I really didn't want it to be public but my friends betrayed me." That's too easy to avoid to be an effective excuse. If my friends did that I would be embarrassed and furious, which I haven't heard from David, either.)

--

I think you should just leave it at you made an overstatement. As David stated on my blog he had no intention of the letter going public.

He stated:
--
While I did write the letter it was not originally written or sent as an open, public letter. I sent it to a few colleagues for review. From there it was passed on to a few others, and the rest is history. Bad news travels fast. If only we could get our people this excited about sharing the Good News…

I have mixed feelings about the wide circulation my letter has received. I am happy to see this serious issue receive the attention it needs and deserves, but I could wish that it wouldn’t have happened with a personal letter being made exceedingly public. I have already been in touch with one of the individuals to whom the letter was written. I explained to him that it was not my intent to undercut him by broadcasting a private letter. He was very gracious and understanding. I would’ve expected nothing less, after all he is a fine Christian and a friend.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10270506&postID=434092431422991...
--

I think that the simple fact that the letter went viral indicates that the Adventist public is/was very concerned with the issue, on both sides of the question. Letting these things simmer is not what I expect from an open minded church. And an open minded church is why I stay as an Adventist.

We need to deal with the issue and not on the how of something going public.

Ron

Food for thought. . . See the back cover ad in the June 6, 2009 WORLD magazine -

Cedarville University is home to 3,000 Christian students, Cedarville is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist university of arts, sciences, professional, and graduate programs. Cedarville is located in southwestern Ohio on a beautiful 400-acre campus.

Cedarville is Christ-Centered

Our faith is not a label or a surface treatment, it is our lifeblood and permeates all aspects of the university, its programs and its people. Missions and ministry are integrated into every facet of the Cedarville experience.

* Unwavering commitment to the inerrancy and authority of Scripture
* Creationist approach to scientific research and study
* Required Bible minor a part of all academic programs
* Daily chapels with relevant biblical teaching and authentic praise
* Discipleship groups that provide opportunities for Bible study, mentoring, accountability, prayer, and open discussion
* Missions and study abroad opportunities that reach nearly every corner of the world

We are committed to maintaining complex balances without compromising our doctrinal or philosophical distinctives. We produce graduates who are trained to be "in the world, but not of it." We are ambitious, but not elitist. We are conservative, but not old-fashioned. We are relevant, but not relativistic

February 9, 2009

Cedarville, Ohio—Cedarville University’s Board of Trustees recently approved the formation of the Bachelor of Science in geology degree, set to begin in fall 2009.

Faculty will equip students for lifelong scientific leadership in career fields such as hydrogeology, environmental geology, petroleum geology and numerous other areas of expertise.

“The degree will offer a whole host of new opportunities for graduates,” shares Dr. John Whitmore, associate professor of geology. “Geologists help us find clean drinking water, petroleum, natural gas, coal and valuable minerals.”

The program will be unique in that no other Christian school, that holds to a literal six-day account of Genesis offers geology as a major for undergraduates. The course of study will be taught from both naturalistic and young-earth paradigms of earth history.

“It is extremely important to develop critical thinking skills within the minds of young scientists,” describes Whitmore. “We believe that using a two-model approach of earth history will be advantageous to our students, since others are only taught a one-model, naturalistic approach. Geologists are important when it comes to thinking about earth history, especially within a biblical context.”

Coursework will be rigorous and emphasize hands-on experience along with required field work. The geology major will include a wide range of liberal arts classes along with calculus, physics, chemistry, biology, physical geology, historical geology, mineralogy, petrology, structural geology, stratigraphy, sedimentology, geomorphology, invertebrate paleontology, and environmental geology among other upper-level areas of study. The major will prepare students for both graduate school and industry.
More Information

Learn more: www.cedarville.edu/scienceandmath, 1-800-CEDARVILLE (233-2784)

Having been reared Adventist I can understand the perspective of wishing to reject anything that goes against Biblical teaching. However, I also know that in this world being a scientist requires a working knowledge of things we don't necessarily agree with. Evolution falls into that category. It is impossible to have an intelligent conversation/debate about many scientific topics without having to address the theory of evolution. If you automatically dismiss it without any understanding of it whatsoever this will automatically disqualify you in the eyes of most scientists in the world. That said I still disagree with having Evolution taught as fact to anyone anywhere. While it may be difficult to allow these things into an Adventist classroom we must keep in mind that we are preparing these students for the world outside the classroom and for those in the field of science that does include an understanding of things we as Adventists would normally reject.

Hello,
I'm not a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist church but I've been studying and attending one for over 4 months.
I've been studying the 28 doctrines and baptismal vows.
I love many of the doctrines, beliefs, and theology, but there are some things that I cannot reconcile.

I should also mention I'm not a Biblical literalist, so I believe some things are symbolic and some things could not be properly expressed in the language of the day, and thus when the Word of God was put to paper by men, some of the context may be missing. In addition, as an English speaker I have to trust the Bible translators to accurately interpret the original Hebrew and Greek.

So a person like me ends up accepting many of the beliefs, but then has a more progressive view towards things like evolution vs. creationism. It's hard to overcome 40 years of secular education, Nova, and the Discovery Channel.
Here is a giggle for you all - would the theory of special relativity describe God as accomplishing in 6 real days to Him, what would be many millions of years to the Earth.

For me evolution does not annihilate the institution of Sabbath. This was a gift given to our earliest parents, Adam and Eve, which was important enough to be reiterated in the Ten Commandments.

What other things make SDA special and distinctive?
* An understanding of a larger context of the universe. God versus Satan - the Great Controversy.
* An appreciation of the wisdom of the full Bible - Old and New Testament.
* The Prophetic Gift - Mrs. White was not infallible, but some of her writing was God inspired at times.
* An understanding of death and resurrection - soul sleep.
* An understanding of Revelations. Our Father is a loving God who annihilates the wicked but does not eternally torment them.
* Believer's Baptism.
* The Health Message.
* Peaceful non-combatants.

I wonder if this church is just a subculture that you are born into or whether folks are sincerely searching and seeking Truth.
Like Bevin, I struggle being something less than SDA and not really fitting in other Christian communities.
Is this appropriate language for members, "I believe xyz, but as an Adventist I recognize this is contrary to my church's doctrines, which are abc" ?

I will pray.

RC,
Your last post is absolutely right.
Its a poor argument when one doesn't debate the issue itself but instead how it was delivered, done or brought to light especially when said accusations were guilty of the same faux pas as the origional accusation ie, not going to the person personally first, ala Matt 18 ect.

A though airing of issues is the only way everything is brought into the light for everyone. I'm sure that if things were done as Loren prescribed and the leadership made changes as a result, an equal amount of angst would result from the horrible "back room" secret meetings and the University "caving in" to the "pressure" from a few "zealots".

Bevin and Paul H:

I have many friends in Adventism who would welcome you into the community. I wish very much that you do, or could, feel at home with us.

But I know that in some, perhaps in many, congregations, it's hard. Against every sign of pointless rigidity, I pray for new openness and empathy. The Adventist identity does NOT consist in embrace of one reading of Genesis 1, and Paul, you see that very clearly. I suppose, Bevin, that you do, too.

The God of Jesus Christ is our Maker. THAT'S what really matters. (We live with mystery--and challenges to faith--no matter what reading of Genesis 1 we embrace.)

Chuck

Loren Seibold, my e-mail address is davidasscherick@mac.com. Would you be so kind as to contact me?

Thank you,

David

Chris:

I'm enjoying your dialogue with Bevin. You're catching on fast how to argue the choice of paradigms model. There's no question that Darwinism is a very well developed paradigm, and that many good scientists have worked within it for a long time. It would be foolish to deny that, and there's no reason to insult the intelligence of people like Bevin by arguing otherwise.

You're absolutely right to point out that God seems to have given us a world that requires faith to believe in any model of origins. I think he did this on purpose, because he wants us to have to exercise faith to believe in Him and His word. Recall that the antediluvians had Adam, a first-hand witness to the events of the fall, with them for over half of the antediluvian time span. They also had the Garden of Eden with them on earth, guarded by cherubim with flaming swords, until just before the Flood, when it was taken up to heaven. But these proofs of God's creation of the world in a sinless condition did not prevent the antediluvians from falling into extreme rebellion and sinfulness. Evidently, it didn't help to have vitually irrefutable proof of our true origins; we still rebelled in a most extreme and frightful way.

Now we have a world where anyone inclined toward atheism will find plenty of arguments to rely upon, and anyone inclined toward faith, while also finding plenty of arguments to rely upon, will ultimately have to exercise faith in the Bible's view of origins.

Jag,
You also have overlooked some things in your statements. I was talking about the underlying creed every possible application of each of the belief systems (let's go ahead and admit that we are talking world views).

The belief system as set forth by Christ is love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you. Others first and self is last.

The system of evolution that was set forth by Darwin that is still in place today is natural selection. This plainly states that the fittest will survive or the fittest group. While your point is well taken that there are good examples of cooperation thought to work for the group, it still boils down to survival of one population or group over another.

Stepping back, I hope you can see the difference. I can understand that many people are happy to accept evolution and in fact, I have not problem with other Christians believing it on their own but I would like to think that I would know what their teachers will be teaching them. I'm sure we both would have a problem with a teacher teaching bigotry--wouldn't we? I just don't think that it is a valid argument to say that everyone is doing it.

A point on the holocaust, the gas chambers were initially developed and used for culling out mentally handicapped and clinically insane individuals and later generalized in use to the Jews. The initial reasoning was specifically to clean the gene pool. The anti-semetism only came in after Hitler started the holocaust but it was truly founded in genetic cleansing.

That aside though--I will give you. There have been many things bad things done for many reasons that could be blamed on Christians, Muslims, Race, Even certain Nationalism issues--Holocaust, Crusades, Trade Center, Viet Nam, and more and more. I don't think that you can characterize a religion or creed just by one bad outcome or individuals in it. You do need to look at the underlying beliefs of that group. What do they believe. Just because a Muslim bombed the Trade Center, does that mean that Muslims believe in religious suppression and killing your enemies or were these men outliers?

I think that is the point about Adventism. What do we believe? Should we teach it and if it has opposing world views, should we promote them?

If you do write back, just saying how many people embrace something doesn't explain how it is like something else. Please explain how evolution and natural selection can contribute to self sacrifice. I tend to say that in the end they contribute to the statement of the Jews, "Better one man perish than a whole nation." And a whole nation was lost. The paradigm of salvation is against that of natural selection.

Sincerely,
Shannon

Chuck:

I just wanted to respond to your "three brief points" since they seem largely directed at me.

1. You state that "Jesus kept the Sabbath" as though that were decisive on whether we should keep it. But Jesus was a Jew, and did all sorts of things--e.g., attended synagogue, went to temple, kept the passover and other Jewish feast days, was circumcised on the 8th day--that I wouldn't feel bound to do. How do we know Sabbath-keeping has universal application, rather than just being something Jesus did because he was Jewish? Well, we know because the Sabbath relates back to God's resting on the Sabbath day, after having created the world in six days, which obviously applies to all nations and cultures, not just Judaism. In other words, that the gentile David Read should keep the Sabbath absolutely depends on a straightforward, as opposed to poetic, reading of Genesis.

I'm also curious as to why you don't consider the Pentateuch authoritative, and hence need a post-Pentateuchal quote regarding the doctrine of creation. Jesus said, "If you don't believe Moses' writings, how will you believe my words?" (Mark 5:47) But the Sabbath is still important after the Pentateuch (Isaiah 56:1-8), and there isn't a hint in subsequent Scripture that Geneis is to be read poetically rather than literally. To the contrary, Jesus, Peter, and the author of Hebrews all assume the literal truth of the Genesis account of creation and flood. (Mat. 24:37-39; Luke 17:26, 27; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:3-7; Hebrews 11:7)

The "preoccupation" with times, dates and sequences comes from Scripture. Obviously, the weekly cycle of six days of work followed by a day of rest flows from the creation week. But consider the geneologies of Matthew 1, Luke 3, Genesis 5 and 11, which limit the amount of time between the creation week and the present to not much more than 6 or 7 thousand years. How many of us can trace our ancestry back more than 4, 5, or 6 generations? Chuck, I assume that somewhere in your ancestry was a man who worked copying legal documents by hand, a "scrivener." Do you know who that was? Probably not, because we aren't "preoccupied" with sequences like the Bible writers were.

2. There's a difference between a solved problem and a problem with no solution; between an answered question and a question without an answer. To say that nature is still a problem even if the world is only 10 minutes old trivializes both the serious theodical problems created by long ages geology and theistic evolution (discussed in one of previous posts) and the solution to those problems presented by the proposition that natural evil and death are a result of the fall, and not part of God's creative purpose and original will. One of the greatest strengths of Adventist doctrine, particularly on the state of the dead and the ultimate annihilation of the unsaved, is to vindicate both God's justice and mercy in the way He wraps up the great controversy. Why would we want to undo those achievements on the front end of the controversy? Faith may not be a walk in the park, but why make it a walk through a minefield?

3. The evidence isn't "startling difficult to deal with." The evidence for Darwinism is actually pretty weak, if you quit viewing it through Darwinian glasses and start viewing it through the eyes of biblical faith. And I'm all for celebrating the gospel, but creationists and Darwninians have a very different gospel. The creationist gospel celebrates the fact that, although we were created perfect and fell into sin, and hence are subject to disease and death, Christ came to prevail where the first Adam failed, to redeem us from the results of that fall, and to triumph over death and the grave and give us life everlasting. The Darwinian gospel is (I suppose) that even though death is a natural and unavoidable part of life, we can face it with dignity because Jesus showed us how.

David Read wrote:

--
...Jesus said, "If you don't believe Moses' writings, how will you believe my words?" (Mark 5:47) But the Sabbath is still important after the Pentateuch (Isaiah 56:1-8), and there isn't a hint in subsequent Scripture that Geneis is to be read poetically rather than literally. To the contrary, Jesus, Peter, and the author of Hebrews all assume the literal truth of the Genesis account of creation and flood. (Mat. 24:37-39; Luke 17:26, 27; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:3-7; Hebrews 11:7)
--

That should be John 5:47 and I have no idea what version says it that way:
(John 5:45 NIV) "But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. (John 5:46 NIV) If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. (John 5:47 NIV) But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"

The idea that Genesis is to read literally is actually pretty funny. Consider the material in Chapter 2 where Adam names the animals.

From my article http://cafesda.blogspot.com/2006/10/adams-busy-day.html
==

Thursday, October 12, 2006
Adam's Busy Day

Have you ever had a really busy day? Few of us would ever experience the busyness of Adam on the first day of his creation as he named the animals. For those like our Lesson Study guide for this quarter who take the account of the first chapters of Genesis literally, consider Adam's first day as according to our lesson study guide Genesis chapter 2 expands upon the events of chapter 1.

(Gen 2:18-22 NIV) The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Remember the Lesson Study guide said:

October 7:
The Bible, of course—particularly the first two chapters of Genesis—gives a completely different account of our origins: We're here only because a loving, benevolent Creator-God purposely created life on earth in a process that took six literal contiguous 24-hour days.

There are about 4260 species of mammals known on this planet at the moment, though taxonomists are still arguing. Mammals are not the most speciose animal group on the planet, three other groups of vertebrates out-number them at the moment, Reptiles 6787 species, Birds 9703 species and Fishes with approximately 28000 species. Invertebrates, of course, have groups with huge numbers of species that outnumber all the vertebrates put together; Molluscs 80 000 and Insects 1 000 000; while Arachnids with a mere 44 000 species still outnumber any 3 groups of vertebrates put together. Mammals however are big. You can see them easily, and perhaps most importantly you are one.-- http://www.earthlife.net/mammals/welcome.html

4,629 Mammals according to Earthrends.wri.org http://earthtrends.

Lets use the lower number for our purposes today. 4260 separate species of mammals to name in one day. Since the Lesson guide has told us that this was accomplished in a 24 hour day. 1 day = 1,440 minutes, so if Adam was to name all the mammals he could get through about ¼ of them in a 24 hour period if he named each one in one minute. In a 24 hour day if he spent 15 seconds per animal he could just get through the day without taking any breaks.

However since we are literalists according to our lesson study guide he also had to name the birds. 9703 species of birds are still left to be named. Now there are twice as many birds as there are mammals so together they equal 13,963 which gives Adam about 6 seconds per animal and bird using his entire 24 hour day.

Now that is a busy day. But wait most scientists think that only 10% of the animals that have lived are still in existence. 90% of all animals are extinct. Which gives us a theoretical number of 139,630, Adam would have less then one second per name 1 day = 86,400 seconds. No doubt he would be ready for a rest after that. But of course now he has to meet the first woman. A big job for anyone's first day on the job, even bigger if it is your very first day of life!
==

Ron

A statement worth considering in the light of this discussion:

"....Today’s fundamentalists posit a doctrinal truth rooted in the past, in a moment of revelation we are always trying to capture, to nail down in a literal phrase. But what if the final word is not in the human past but in the human future — as we assimilate our global experiences of the divine and try to make sense of all of them? What if we are travelling towards our deepest moment of religious truth rather than away from it? God, after all, is definitionally eternal and humans are definitionally temporal. Why should divine truth, however once revealed, be immune to human misunderstanding? Why shouldn’t time and thought and experience help us uncover the truth rather then taking us further away from it? In earlier eras, theologians were eager to see how new discoveries in human knowledge could inform their faith. Now such discoveries are seen as threats. That’s a function of insecurity, not faith. And why should we see ourselves as believers constantly trying to recover a pristine past instead of struggling towards a truer future?....."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/arti...

David,

It is an interesting discussion.

I just want to clarify my position on something that you said to me:

You're absolutely right to point out that God seems to have given us a world that requires faith to believe in any model of origins. I think he did this on purpose, because he wants us to have to exercise faith to believe in Him and His word

Thank you for acknowledging the faith component, I think it is overlooked in this whole debate. It is really misunderstood.

God hid the Garden of Eden for a reason. I don't think it was for the reason you are suggesting. The conclusions that you are using, can be turned around by some who say that this means God must be deceiving us.

The reason that the Garden of Eden was hidden, and that the Earth has the mark of sin now, was a result of our sin. Our whole reality and existence was altered because of that sin - and we were kicked out from that existence.

It was man who hid from God. Man hid because of shame. We can not see God, because of our shame, and not because God does not want us to. This is true of all parts of reality. I have no problem believing that this is true wherever, and whenever we look in our current reality.

The starting point of this thread recognizes the millions-of-years-if-life science viewpoint is not easily dismissed, and asks how the SDA church can cope with that reality.

A few ardent opposers basically say that, in their opinion, the viewpoint is easily dismissed. Unfortunately it is much easier to say than it is to do.

So there is a second reality that the SDA church needs to face - it has a handful of vocal members that are not going to tolerate tolerance in this area!

The first step is to declare a truce. To announce in the SS Lesson and the Adventist Review that the leadership does not want these publications, or the pulpits, used for claims that evolution is easily disproved or that SDA can not be evolutionists.

The second step is to measure - to survey - how many SDA churches have members who think that life has been on earth for millions of years. This statistic will really clarify whether the SDA are already tolerant, with just a vocal intolerant group, or whether tolerance is a minority position.

The third step is to interpret/reword the fundamental beliefs to make it clear which way the wind blows

Chris:".....God hid the Garden of Eden for a reason. ...The reason that the Garden of Eden was hidden, and that the Earth has the mark of sin now, was a result of our sin. Our whole reality and existence was altered because of that sin - and we were kicked out from that existence. It was man who hid from God. Man hid because of shame. We can not see God, because of our shame, and not because God does not want us to. This is true of all parts of reality. I have no problem believing that this is true wherever, and whenever we look in our current reality...."

...Now, in above statement, we have an example of belief based on intelligent but obviously quite speculative thinking...And, let's be clear, I see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

But then, when we have 'belief' system based on, by now, thousands of doctoral thesis, countless scientific research, methods and material findings and when tens of thousand scientists of often quite different cultures, religious/ non-religious, political persuasions can see, often independently of each other, some logical patterns that tells them something about the evolution of life- somehow we still find it so incredibly easy to ridicule it, blame it on conspiracy theory or just happily declare it wrong, incomplete, weak and devoid of hard evidence.
Guys, don't you see that you have some problem here??

I am a born and bred Seventh-day Adventist and I love the church, I truly love the Sabbath as a special gift from God, but I am not fully convinced that God created the world exactly in accordance with the description given in Genesis.

Despite arguments to the contrary I believe that even those who claim to believe exactly what the Bible says are willing to believe that some aspects of the account must be “interpreted”, i.e. we need to exercise judgment to understand what the Bible is saying.

We are told that on the first day God created light but that the sun was only created on the fourth day. Here already we have a need to “interpret” what the bible is saying. What was this light that God created that existed without the sun? When did God un-create this light because it surely does not exist today? I have heard the explanation that this light was the presence of God, but then why did God have to create the light on the first day, as we are told in Genesis? Did the Glory of his presence not surround him before? Is this light of God’s Gory only 6,000 years old? Which ever way we explain this light we are “interpreting” and deviating from a strict reading of the Genesis account.

Most of the people that I have spoken too, who accept a literal interpretation of the Genesis account of creation are prepared to concede that the entire universe is not just 6,000 years old, but that many of the stars and galaxies are much older and that Genesis is only referring to our solar system; but that is not what the Genesis account says. In coming to this conclusion we are going beyond a strict reading of the Bible.

If we accept that some aspects of the Biblical account may not be exactly what happened, then why is it so difficult to accept that the Genesis account might have been God’s way of explaining to a primitive people the fact that He created; not exactly how he created.

I fully understand all the challenges that deviating from our traditional understanding bring; the fall being just one example. I don’t pretend to have all the answers to these questions.

My acceptance that creation might not have happened exactly in accordance with the Genesis account happened fairly recently. All of my life I fully accepted the Genesis account then a few years ago, in an effort to convince my son-in-law of the fallacy of evolution, I engaged him in a debate.

Having attended Walter Vieth’s lectures I believed that proving the fallacy of evolution would be easy. As I began to honestly investigate the matter I found that there was good evidence supporting deep time and of life having existed on this earth for a very long time. Sadly, I found that there seemed to be many more honest scientists than there were honest theologians; I cannot believe that God created the world with an appearance of great age, thereby deliberately setting out to mislead honest scientists. I found that many of the so called holes in the theory of evolution were distractions and easily explained to anyone willing to honestly confront the data.

Today I am happy to accept that I don’t know exactly how God created this world. I have eternity for him to explain this to me. Despite the hysterical outbursts of Cliff Goldstein and his elk I remain a member of the SDA Church. I thank God that our church was built by those who were willing to question what had “already been settled” end especially the “pillars of the truth”. I thank God that there are teachers who honestly confront the data and honestly present this to there students.

Courtenay
Excellent heartfelt post. You like others on this post appear to have the true intent of the Bible in mind as a story about how God has dealt with fellow humans. your attitudes about some of the posts also appears to see the "big" picture of what Christians should be known for--I have always appreciated hearing the thoughtful responses of Chuck Scriven, when I was a student at Columbia Union College and he was at Sligo.

"Sadly, I found that there seemed to be many more honest scientists than there were honest theologians; I cannot believe that God created the world with an appearance of great age, thereby deliberately setting out to mislead honest scientists."

I really like the statement above--even though I am a preachers kids and have a lot of other relatives still involved with church ministry. Sometimes though it is the pastors, like my father, that have a better glimpse of what to emphasize since they have to deal with people on a reality basis versus just stating their absolute views in an ivory tower. There are other theologians/posts though that do appear to focus on the right stuff.

I also have been bothered by seeing the posts of Cliff Goldstein. I personally hope that he is better in person than what I have seen of him here--he would be a great lawyer and has the writing ability for that but does not come across in this venue sadly as someone I can respect which makes his other writing very suspect. Its too bad he is the voice of SDA administration here but having others in higher positions of the church that post differently than he does is refreshing--and perhaps the measured response of the administration is a good sign. Although having been involved with the church over the years, and seeing previous responses, it remains to be seen how ultimately this will end.

Dalmation,

...Now, in above statement, we have an example of belief based on intelligent but obviously quite speculative thinking...And, let's be clear, I see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I think I'm just saying what the Bible says. It certainly does talk about a kind of reality that is very different to what we see now. It doesn't go into much detail how different that reality was, we know that Angels prevented us from going back into that existence known as the Garden of Eden. And that there were trees of life, and all sorts of fantastic things there. I don't really believe that is speculation, I read that straight from the Bible. The Bible talks about eternal life, and things that we in this current existence can't grasp.

Chris,

you and I know a lot about each other's positions on the topic of evolution and creation.

What I don't know about you is whether you would stay in an SDA church where 90% of the congregation thought that life on earth has gone through millions of years of evolution, and that we need to understand Genesis and the Fall differently to accomodate this. Say, for example, the idea that

(a) Eden was real, and existed approximate 20,000 years ago
(b) Outside Eden the world was as the standard evolutionary model's say it was
(c) The Flood was the filling in of a huge basin near Eden with sea water

In short, I am not asking you to defend your views. I'm asking you how tolerant you are of the views of other members of your congregation.

/Bevin

Courtnay, your description of...

"Having attended Walter Vieth’s lectures I believed that proving the fallacy of evolution would be easy. As I began to honestly investigate the matter I found that there was good evidence supporting deep time and of life having existed on this earth for a very long time. Sadly, I found that there seemed to be many more honest scientists than there were honest theologians; I cannot believe that God created the world with an appearance of great age, thereby deliberately setting out to mislead honest scientists. I found that many of the so called holes in the theory of evolution were distractions and easily explained to anyone willing to honestly confront the data."

exactly matches mine, except that I went to a seminar by a different pseudo-science creationist group and discovered how dishonest they were.

I enjoyed being in the SDA from 1976-2000 without problems after this. And then, starting about then, the SDA church suddenly got very gung-ho about the short age of the Earth again.

I was the Sabbath School superintendent in 1999, and church treasurer. The 1999 Q3 Sabbath School lessons were an utter disaster (http://ssnet.org/qrtrly/eng/99c/ ) - starting with the Introduction with its

"Seventh-day Adventists take Genesis 1-11 as an accurate historical account of the origins of life on earth. We accept the biblical account's straightforward testimony that the creation of life on this planet and its various habitats occurred in six literal, 24-hour days. Based on the available biblical data, we also believe that the period of time since the Creation has been a short chronology of a few thousand years, as opposed to millions of years required by the general theory of evolution. Further, we accept the account of the Fall, which brought a radical change to life on this planet, as well as the world-wide Flood, which destroyed that life and dramatically altered the physical face of the planet."

For 25+ years the SDA church had left this issue largely alone, and suddenly this happened - and Cliff Goldstein and others started firmly stating their intolerant positions in the Review. Once I saw that the leadership was not prepared to resist such nonsense, I quit.

I held some hope for the Faith and Science Conferences and thought that the new broom, Paulson, was doing the right thing. Then the leadership used the Adventist Review to give an extremely dishonest and status-quo interpretation of the meetings.

Maybe the La Sierra outbreak will backfire on the intolerants and result in the whole area being thought through again.

This column is an okay start - but I would be much more convinced if Charles Scriven could get something published in the Review, as a competing voice to Cliff's "the evolutionists should get out and let me play with my toys in peace".

/Bevin

Bevin,

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this.

I did once believe in evolution only, and thought creation to be untenable. I didn't kick myself out of the church! A lot of my friends still believe in evolution, and not believe in creation. We still praise God together.

I still think evolution is an excellent scientific model. It does explain well this sinful reality that we see all around us. I was taught it at a Christian high-school - non-SDA, there was never any tension there. My wife did environmental biology at uni - and has been able to teach me a lot. I have been able to learn a lot direct from other biology students as well. A lot of them were atheists - I really appreciated their patience and understanding - and their willingness to share and explain why a lot of the arguments are ridiculous. Some of my most cherished conversations have been with atheists. Our collection of biology textbooks at home is not bad. I have never rejected evolution outright.

Don't know if you had a chance to see what I wrote near the end of this other thread. http://spectrummagazine.org/blog/2009/05/19/unveiling_missing_link_fossi...

If you could read what I wrote about how sin affected our reality, then you will see why I insist that evolution can be respected, but it can never falsify creation. Have a look at the model I proposed there, its just an example, and then see if you really understand my position. I'm not yet sure that you do really understand my position.

I really appreciate you reaching out like this. You and I have been frustrated with each other at times. But I hope you never take it personally. And I believe you to be a good sincere man.

Loren,

Thanks for clarifying that it was a bit of an overstatement. Let me just respond to a couple of other things you mentioned.

1. We don't know all the steps David took before sending his letter to Paulsen, et al. Many have assumed that he did not contact the professors personally, etc. But it is just that: an assumption. If you want to be consistent, maybe you should talk with him first before you make claims about what he did or did not do. Otherwise, you are just as guilty of doing what you are accusing him of doing.

2. I am taking a little less cynical attitude to David's motivation. I don't think he simply wants to be a "hero" (though none of us is immune from having subconsciously selfish motives). I think he just has a burden for truth. Now, maybe in his burden he did not follow the correct steps. Then again, maybe he did. But I just choose to interpret his motives as being zealous about the uplifting of truth.

3. I don't think he has to write an "I was wrong" letter at all. That would imply that he was wrong about what is going on. And, quite frankly, I have not seen anything to convince me that Darwinian evolution is not being promoted at LSU. I would say that they are doing more than simply "exposing" their students to the theory, and then giving them the tools to counter it. Thus far, I have not seen anything that indicates the professors are disputing the theory of evolution.

Admittedly, I have not sat in the classes. But, folks, this is not earth-shattering news that Darwinism is being promoted by a biologist at an Adventist institution. I am not sure why so many people are surprised by it or are downright denying that it is going on.

"Thus far, I have not seen anything that indicates the professors are disputing the theory of evolution."

The problem with this is, THERE ARE NO DISPUTES OF THE UNDERLYING IDEAS OF EVOLUTION THAT HOLD UP IN A UNIVERSITY SETTING.

Lacking any credible material with which to dispute it, a professor will simply look incompetent if they try.

You have already seen the effect incompetent and dishonest creationists had on myself and Courtenay. Do you really want that effect in an LSU classroom...

Do you want the students walking away saying "I'm spending $xx,xxx/year to listen to a fool/liar?"

/Bevin

I'm sorry, Bevin. I have not read your previous comments, but the theory of evolution is the greatest hoax perpetrated against humankind. It's a joke. The presuppositions that are necessary to buy into Darwinian evolution are numerous, and the same evidence that allegedly proves "macroevolution" can be interpreted to support Intelligent Design as well.

Shawn,

as an SDA pastor, you have once again validated my decision to leave the SDA church

Thank you

/Bevin

Bevin, sorry to add fuel to your fire, but what was it about my comments that "validates" your decision to leave the church? That I would actually question the merits of the theory of evolution?

Bevin:

Christianity is a community of believers: That belief begins with: "In the beginning God" not "In the beginning a loud noise!"

Leaving the SDA Church is one thing but denying the foundational premise of the Creative Word of God from the beginning is quite another. I suggest that you read John R. W. Stotts Basic Christianity as a necessary remedy for your growing disallusion with Christianity and its most basic tenet. From Genesis through Revelation God in Christ is presented as both Creator and Redeemer.

The point is clear; Without a perfect creation by fiat there would be no need for a Redeemer. Hence no valid reason for a Christian ethic, ethos, or Lord and Savior. Denial of creation by fiat is a denial of the Christian faith.

Tom

Remember, though, that The Big Bang and Evolution are not part of the same theory. One has to do with something coming from nothing, and the other has to do with how live adapted and changed over time.

Shawn:

You reminded me how fundamentally ignorant and inept some SDA pastors are.

Here, in the middle of a discussion of tolerance and respect, you blasted the research of over 200 years (yes, well before Darwin), thousands of honest open peer-reviewed thoroughly critiqued PhD theses as "the greatest hoax perpetrated against humankind".

You reminded me of another SDA pastor who assured me that there was a date in the New Testament given as "xx AD", and was certain of it when I questioned him - thereby revealing his ignorance of the most basic information about calendars.

Now, if it was just a few pastors, that would not be a big deal.

But that remark says a lot about the formal education, culture, and focus of the SDA ministry.

Many ID'ers, including Behe, are LONG AGE ID'ers. They understand that the evidence in the rocks strongly suggests millions of years of life. ID v natural mutation/selection is not the issue - the issue is a few thousand years v. millions of years. That, many years into the debate, most SDA pastors don't understand this is another indication of the education they are receiving.

Why would I possibly want to contribute time and money to supporting such ineptness?

What hope is there for an organisation that produces such inept leaders?

/Bevin

"why is it so difficult to accept that the Genesis account might have been God’s way of explaining to a primitive people the fact that He created; not exactly how he created."

And why is it even more difficult to accept that God wrote not a single account in the Bible. Where is the evidence? Man wrote every single word in the Bible; after much editing, redacting, and having heard it for thousands of years before putting into writing. Unless one believes that man makes no errors, no contradictions, and writes exactly in a manner consitent with the reader--although spanning thousands of years, then it is based on faith in entirety: faith that men wrote of things, not in their system, but for timeless understanding.

No other such ancient literature has been put under the microscope of study for a similar amount of time. Those that have, reveal that human perceptions several millenia in the past are not, nor could they ever be identical to modern man's perceptions. We judge
by our perceptions today: the ancient writers of all cultures, could write only of their world and their understanding was far more limited than ours today; which should be obvious from their descriptions of the heavens as a dome, with three divisions; that
there were talking serpents; that at one time there was no death (how could they possibly have thought otherwise until death was experienced?)

In contemporary literature: there were gods and virginal births,
monsters and giants, just as are described in the Bible. Yet, we
accept the Bible stories as true in every literal detail, but dismiss all the other literature as only being "myths." ALL are myths: the stories and legends a people recall about their origins and world as they experience it.

If we only allowed ourselves to place the Bible in its proper place alongside literature contemporary with its contents, there would be no problem whatsoever with evolution or origins that have
the potential to split the Adventist church. The reason: too many
public voices have refused to admit that science has much more validity than creationism. It makes no difference what membership polls might reveal, as long as the church is intolerant of such differences there will, eventually, be a separation between the knowledgable and educated and those who remain fundamentalists.

Tom wrote:

--
The point is clear; Without a perfect creation by fiat there would be no need for a Redeemer. Hence no valid reason for a Christian ethic, ethos, or Lord and Savior. Denial of creation by fiat is a denial of the Christian faith.

--

Is that really true? Say for instance you did not have the Genesis story, you did not have a story that said how man became so self centered and cruel. Would that mean that you would not be able to recognize those things we call sin? Of course you would still be able to recognize them and from there we look for a cure to the problem. Which could also be revealed in God who appeared in human form as Jesus Christ.

Denial of God in Christ is the denial of the Christian faith not the denial of supposed origins which really never added up well as the reason for sin anyway. Someone ate forbidden fruit and thus God condemned the whole world to death.

Funny thing is we often use the phrase "forbidden fruit" today, rarely ever is it meant literally. We can see that it is an analogy of something, a metaphor but when it comes to the story in Genesis we seem to lose the ability to look deeper in the story and instead pretend it is literal.

Ron

RC

Please read Revelation 4 and 5. and then get back to me. Tom

Chris:

It does seem to me that God has intentionally left the fossil record in an ambiguous condition. I don't think he did it to fool us, because the fossil record does not support Darwinism better than the Creation/Flood model. People who argue that way are papering over some very grave problems (like the Cambrian explosion) with the Darwinian view of the fossil record, problems that Darwin himself was honest enough to acknowledge (to wit, Darwin admitted that the pre-Cambrian fossil record should be at least as long and as full of fossils as the post-Cambrian.) But creationists have a similar problem in the lack of antediluvian human remains.

Re: the Garden of Eden, that isn't quite the same issue. Obviously, Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and prevented from returning, because of sin. I think the Garden was taken up to heaven to prevent its destruction in the Flood, not because God wanted to hide the evidence of its existence.

The point I was trying to make is that compelling, unanswerable proof of our Divine origins was not sufficient to prevent the extreme rebellion and lawless of the antediluvians. This time around, God appears to be taking a different approach; there is no unanswerable proof of biblical creation as opposed to Darwinism. Everyone, both Darwinist and Christian, must exercise faith in his origins model.

I know that George McCready Price is much reviled among Spectrum readers, but he has a quote on this topic that I find quite interesting:

"It requires no faith to believe in a mathematical demonstration or to believe in the existence of Tibet or Kabul, though few of us have been to either place. In such instances, the mind is coerced; it cannot refuse assent. Evidently God does not want to deal with us in this way regarding the great moral truths and the truths of religion. All these are of such a nature that we can refuse to believe them if we wish to do so or if we decide to do so. At the same time, ample evidence is granted to all those who are willing to examine the evidence with an absolutely candid mind." Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism (Pacific Press, 1926) pp. 342, 343.

Ellen White has also stated that we're never going to reach a place where there is no room for doubt. We will always have to exercise faith:

"While God has given ample evidence for faith, He will never remove all excuse for unbelief. All who look for hooks to hang their doubts upon will find them. And those who refuse to accept and obey God’s word until every objection has been removed, and there is no longer an opportunity for doubt, will never come to the light." GC p. 548.

Ron:

Re: "Adam's busy day," surely you know that current creationist thinking is that there are many more "species" in existence today than there were originally created "kinds," or baramin, before the Flood.

Today, across several different scientific disciplines there are several different definitions of what constitutes a species. Often very slight differences are used to deem an animal a different species from other very similar animals with which it is interfertile. The lay public has the idea that every other animal with which an animal may breed and have fertile offspring is of its same species, but this is typically not how species are defined for most biological disciplines, or for purposes of numbering the species.

No creationist argues that every one of the modern "species" was originally created by God in its present form and brought aboard Noah’s ark. There was a period of rapid speciation immediately following the Flood. (See, e.g., Wise, Kurt P., Faith, Form, and Time (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2002), pp. 216-220 (“In perhaps as few as three centuries, scores of new species arose within most mammal baramins, and thousands of species arose within many of the insect and plant baramins.”); Wise “Australopithecus ramidus and the fossil record,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 8:160-165 (1994); Wise, “North American Paleontology Convention ’96,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 10:315-321 (1996); Brand, Leonard, Faith, Reason, & Earth History (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1997), pp. 198, 199 (“According to the theory presented here, much of our current taxonomic diversity has been the result of limited evolutionary change after a worldwide catastrophe. The original groups of plants and animals have diversified into multitudes of species as they adapted to fill specific niches in the changed conditions after the catastrophe.”) Rapid post-Flood speciation has long been a belief of creationists. In his first book, Back to Creationism, published in 1929, Harold Clark had advocated rapid post-Flood speciation. See Back to Creationism, pp. 99-110, in Creationism in Twentieth Century America, Vol. 8: The Early Writings of Harold W. Clark and Frank Lewis Marsh, ed. Ronald L. Numbers (New York & London: Garland Publishers, 1995). In a letter to Clark praising him for his book, George McCready Price wrote, “If the Seventh-day Adventist people will all get behind these two ideas, Flood geology and plenty of species-making since the Flood, . . . I believe it would not be long before the scientific world would sit up and take notice.” Numbers, at p. 124.

Some creationists believe that as few as 1,000 pairs of animals were brought on board the ark and that all modern land animals and birds descended from these. See, e.g., Wood, Todd Charles, “The AGEing process: rapid Post-Flood Intrabaraminic Diversification caused by Altruistic Genetic Elements (AGEs),” Origins, No. 54 (2003), p. 6, citing, A. J. Jones, “How many Animals in the Ark?” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 19:13-18 (1973).

The ratio of living animals to extinct ones that you site is not based upon a count, but upon an estimate that includes mostly theoretical transitional forms and "missing links" that have never been found in the fossil record. The total number of extint animals represented in the fossil record doesn't approach the number of living species.

I understand the impulse to ridicule Scripture, and laugh at what a simpleton Moses was, and how silly it is to take any of that Genesis nonsense literally, but before we do that, we ought at least to familiarize ourselves with and acknowledge the work of those who have thought and written seriously about the issues within a creationist paradigm. I think if I ridiculed the Darwinist paradigm without trying to find out what the brightest Darwinist minds thought about a topic, I'd be taken to task by the Spectrum bloggers, and rightly so.

"While God has given ample evidence for faith, He will never remove all excuse for unbelief."

David,
I don't know if you have kids. If you do/did, would you deliberately leave misleading information for your child to discover when it came to life and death issues? What is that about?

The truth is, the rocks and the forces of nature, not to mention the laws that govern nature, were present long before men began to speak for God. You might say, nature is the primary source, while the Biblical explanations are secondary sources. Even the Bible tells us that it may come to the point where the "rocks will cry out" truths about God when men politicize His word. If you tell me that nature needs interpretation, I would have to say that so does the Bible.

So David Read, if you believe there were only 1000 pairs of animals taken onto the ark how can you possibly criticize evolutionary theory. You sound like you are a strong supporter of evolutionary theory include one species changing into another species. In fact you sound to me like a theistic evolutionist. Well at least in this post.

As far as the Adam story of naming the animals in a search to find a mate...well I think that genuinely is silly. Whether you think Moses wrote that or not. I doubt he wrote that but he did write some strangle things such as they way to tell if a women who is pregnant was adulterous or not in the book of numbers.

Ron

Bevin, I will humbly take your criticism and apologize for my ignorance. I am sorry that I have reviewed the data that purports to recommend evolution as a fact and have been left unconvinced. What do you want someone to do who has heard all the arguments but has found them wanting? Pretend that there aren't any problems?

That a person would be so offended by someone who calls a scientific theory bunk tells me that it is more religion than it is science. After all, I am not sure how many people would be up in arms if I called the theory of gravity a "hoax," or if I made light of the idea of a world earth.

David Read said:

"I think if I ridiculed the Darwinist paradigm without trying to find out what the brightest Darwinist minds thought about a topic, I'd be taken to task by the Spectrum bloggers, and rightly so."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I think instead I'll go to bed.

"Bevin, I will humbly take your criticism and apologize for my ignorance. I am sorry that I have reviewed the data that purports to recommend evolution as a fact and have been left unconvinced. What do you want someone to do who has heard all the arguments but has found them wanting? Pretend that there aren't any problems?"

There are the following possible reasons that you are unconvinced

(a) You did not read enough material
(b) You did not accept the facts in the material
(c) You did not understand the analysis of those facts
(d) You did not like the outcome, but can't put your finger on why

I think it is perfectly valid to say "(I) have been left unconvinced" - because it does not identify which of the above is the issue.

To claim it is a hoax (a) slanders many people, and (b) suggests you don't understand the variety of possible reasons why you might not be convinced - raising more doubts about your psyche than about evolution.

This is why I said "The problem with this is, THERE ARE NO DISPUTES OF THE UNDERLYING IDEAS OF EVOLUTION THAT HOLD UP IN A UNIVERSITY SETTING." It is easy to befuddle a bunch of ignorant non-scientists in a sermon. It isn't particularly hard to befuddle a class of theology majors on a science topic. It is much harder to befuddle a group of well-educated critical 18-22 year old's in a university biology/geology program - especially if the material is subject to peer review.

/Bevin

I put up on my blog an article inspired by David Read's recent comments.
http://cafesda.blogspot.com/

Ron

This dialogue, debate, et al I find truly breathtaking. I suppose I was fortunate that, in my many offline discussions with certain of the GRI staff while I was attending seminary at Andrews, leveled with me, admitting, for instance, that the young earth hypothesis had some serious evidentiary shortcomings. I subsequently invested a couple of decades doing my own personal field research rather than confine myself to what I was reading/hearing in SDA church sanctioned explanations of evolution and creationism. That made all the difference.

Among many of the arguments for the Sabbath, I remember I used to hear the one that the seven day week came about solely as a consequence of the creation story in Genesis 1. Only much later did I realize that an older cosmological ordering of the seven day cycle was possible: namely the sun, moon and the five wandering stars (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn), which can be inferred from the days of the week in Spanish or French.

Of course, growing up SDA it was assumed that one either believed or denied God, Jesus, evolution/creation, Ellen White and so on. Thus, when questioning things within a system as tightly bound as Adventism where judgmentalism seemed to be a family value, one was presented with the stark alternatives of embracing it all or being shown to the door. Only after I reached my forties and further broadened my perspectives did I realize there was a middle path.

Long story short, I am affiliated with a mainline Protestant denomination, serve as elder and have taught a Sunday School Class since 2000 called, "Coffee and Conversation." It's rather like an "All Things Considered" approach to things spiritual. We follow no curricula; I select the topics, do the research, start the ball rolling and we dialog. People love it!

Last year, for this class, I dug out from my archives the splendid Spectrum issue on Genesis from January 1979 (V9 N4), using the Herold Weiss article "Genesis Chapter 1: A Theological Statement" to great effect. I commend this brilliant piece to you, the readers of this thread, to review it anew. I learned a lot from it and the class appreciated it.

For me, it's perfectly compatible to embrace Christianity and evolution. It need not be an either/or situation. Yes, I do not take it all literally, yet there's more than enough in the Bible to warrant my attentiveness and interest.

Were the culture of the SDA Church truly accepting of diverse experience while going about its work with the eyes on the proverbial prize--heaven--I think these otherwise toxic and irreconcilable issues would melt away. I feel life is short enough without being deadlocked in minutiae and proof texting.

It's sad for me that whenever I attend SDA collegiate class reunions there can be no true dialogue unless it's funneled to "safe" subjects. One cannot share the wonderful dimensions of one's own spiritual odyssey unless it adheres to the narrow theology of the church. Thus, one is limited in sharing one's personal growth in the faith experience if it may be at variance with SDA orthodoxy.

Please, let’s drop the judgmental pronouncements. Rather than getting into tussles over evolution/creationism, why not seek out common ground for each and come to grips with how each side’s research findings can be blended into a composite that may be a “win-win?”

Yes, the church stays pure by rooting this stuff out but I do venture that it also tends towards staleness and bitterness, hopelessly deadlocked in passionate debates, diatribes and pontifical statements such as some of what can be read within this thread.

David,

You said: "It does seem to me that God has intentionally left the fossil record in an ambiguous condition. "

OK, I don't like the word 'intentional' attributed to God, when describing sinful condition. I can acknowledge God 'allowed' it. I guess this goes to the paradox of free choice vs an omnipotent and omniscient God. But, the word 'intentional' leads to taking that God wanted to deceive us.

You clarified a bit by saying that "I don't think he did it to fool us." To me, I hear you are now saying in this sentence, that the ambiguity was not intentional. So, to my mind, it appears a little unclear of where you are coming from with this.

The Cambrian explosion is not sufficient to falsify evolution. It's just another question to be answered along the naturalistic paradigm. It is discussed freely by biology students at university. But there are some evangelists would have us believe that there is some sort of conspiratorial cover up going on. This is not true. There are different ways to interpret it. Of course us creationists like to interpret it our way. But to suggest that it is a 'problem' for evolutionists, is stretching it a bit.

I have no claim of discussing this with the greatest evolutionist minds. My understanding comes mostly from discussing this with students studying it at secular universities. They are very free and open to discuss all sorts of things. They are not scared of heresies - which can be challenging for us at times.

What I find very fascinating, is that the ones with atheistic backgrounds to be more open minded about all sorts of things, they are happy to discuss the merits of different paradigms. Some of them see that creation can not be falsified. However, the ones with strict fundamentalist Christian backgrounds, who have lost their faith in creation, are the ones who are stubborn about the idea that creation has been falsified. The problem is that their specific model of creation has been falsified, rather than a very simple faith view of creation - which can't be falsified.

Our SDA dogma and tradition has constructed a very elaborate model of the mechanisms of creation and the fall. E. G. White added a lot of details, like Adam being 14ft tall etc.

But, I don't think this type of elaborate rigid model of creation is necessary if we take sola scriptura. It might fit, but I don't know if it is necessarily correct.

For example, when we say that we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and that there were angles guarding the way, what does this really mean? Was there only one entrance to the garden of Eden, was there a fence going around the perimeter, preventing our entry as well? Couldn't we just jump over the fence, when the angels weren't looking?

When it was taken before the flood, was there like a giant spacegarden, moving a physical piece of real-estate into Orion? Or, can we align this with the more complete hiding of God's original creation from our perspective? Perhaps the global cataclysm was more of reality changing than we can imagine, especially if it included the Garden of Eden being removed from our view - even the entrance to this existence no longer visible to us humans.

Were the laws of nature different inside the garden of Eden? How different, different enough for 3D spatial understanding to be questioned. Does 'inside' and 'outside' even make any sense in that case? What about different enough for temporal understanding to be questioned?

If you assess what I am questioning, it is not the biblical understanding, which I think already describes a reality that does not fit our spatial or temporal understanding, but it is the dogmatic extras that we add to the model that causes all of the controversy.

Also, I want to clarify, that I am not challenging that sister White was an inspired prophet of God, I am challenging what we think that means. The spiritual truths she revealed do not rely on her every single word being historically correct. She admitted this much herself.

Sirje:

God has not left us with misleading information. He has left us with ambiguous data that can be interpeted in different ways. How you choose to interpet it is your faith choice. In the words of LLU professor Kenneth Hart, "We all have the same data. How we interpret that data is our religion."

The idea that God has given us a world "with the appearance of great age" is a fallacy. What we have is a world with thick deposits of sedimentary rocks, said rocks being full of fossils. If those strata were deposited at current rates of sedimentation, they would have taken millions of years to form. But they could also have been formed during the Genesis Flood. I discuss this in Marcel Schwantes' interview with me at Atoday.com, 3rd to the last question:

http://www.atoday.com/dinosaurs-adventist-view-interview-author.

The Readers' Digest version is that (1) many naturalists thought that the geological column, or much of it, could be explained by reference to the Genesis Flood, but(2) science made a philosophical choice in favor of naturalism, and the Genesis Flood fell out of favor as an interpretive tool, (3) but even after that, many, including the extremely brilliant French paleontologist Georges Cuvier, still thought that the geological column showed more evidence of catastrophe than of slow, steady accumulation of sediment, but (4) a lawyer named Charles Lyell convinced the scientific world that it was methodologically illegitimate to use catastrophe as an interpretive tool, and that the geologic column could only be interpreted with reference to current processes operating at current rates. This was, again, a philosophical decision, not something dictated by fieldwork or by the raw geological data. (I have a long chapter on this in my book "Dinosaurs - An Adventist View" available at Amazon.com or your local ABC, but if you don't want to take my word for it, please read Stephen Jay Gould's "Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle" and Derek Ager's "The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record".)

Hence, it is far from self-evident from the thick deposits of seidmentary strata that the world is very old. It requires interpetation and assumption.

The same thing goes for the fossil record. Yes, you can view it as a record of evolution, but that view has problems, including the scarcity of fossil forms that can be called "transitional"; most fossil animals appear in the record with little hint of an evolutionary ancestry, they change litte or not at all during a tenure of millions of years, then they disappear from the record, but they do not evolve into something else. Then there is the fact that a whole bunch of complex, extremely varied animals all appear at once in the "Cambrian Explosion." Or you can view the fossil record as evidence for the truth of Peter's statement that "by water also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed" (2 Peter 3:5) This is how I express the latter view in my book:

"First, if the fossiliferous layers were formed during the Flood, we would expect that the plants and animals then existing would have been buried and preserved as fossils, and that is exactly what we find.
Second, a biblical creationist who believes that the Genesis Flood began in the oceans with the bursting forth of the “great fountains of the deep” would expect to find a great variety of sea creatures buried by turbidity currents during the early stages of the flood. He would not expect to find intermediate fossil forms leading up to those sea floor creatures; rather, they would all appear suddenly in the fossil record, an “explosion” of diversity and variety at the lowest fossiliferous level. This is exactly what we see in the Cambrian explosion.
Third, instead of the “branching tree” pattern predicted by Darwin, the biblical creationist would expect to find a tremendous range and diversity of life at the very lowest fossiliferous levels. In fact, we find that the “tree” of life is upside down, with almost all the modern phyla and many extinct phyla appearing in the lower Cambrian. This aspect of the “Cambrian explosion” is well illustrated by the Burgess Shale fauna.
Fourth, a biblical creationist would not expect to find fossil evidence of any species changing into a different species. Rather, as each ecological zone was overtaken by the floodwaters, the flora and fauna of that zone were drowned and buried in sediment. After each zone was overtaken, the flora and fauna of that zone were eradicated, and not buried again in higher strata. This is why forms come into the fossil record, they do not change during their tenure of “geological time,” and then they disappear from the fossil record, but yield no evidence of having evolved into something else. This pattern of abrupt appearance, stasis, and disappearance is puzzling to Darwinists, but it is exactly what biblical creationists would expect, and exactly what we find."

What I'm telling you is true, and has been known to be true since long before Darwin published his tome in 1859. Some folks (Bevin appears to be among them) are so deeply immersed in the Lyellian/Darwinian paradigm they believe that anyone who does not view the evidence in that way is either ignorant or dishonest. But that is only a failure of imagination on their part.

God is not trying to mislead us; He is asking us, but not forcing us, to have faith in what He tells us in His word.

Chris:

I don't think of "ambiguous" as a sinful condition. Maybe you were thinking of "ambidextrous"; those people really are going to hell.

As to how the Garden of Eden was taken back to heaven, have you ever seen the old Bruce Dern movie called "Silent Running"? There was a spacecraft with a garden in big plastic bubble. That's kind of what I have in mind.

I meant that the cause of the ambiguity is because of sinful reality. Ambiguity itself is a consequence of our fallen nature based on a fallen existence that we see around us.

You suggest that the paradigms compete. I suggest the possibility that they don't necessarily have to. Perhaps I am opening up a heresy?

Chris:

The two paradigms necessarily must compete. It isn't a matter of heresy but of logic. On the other hand, one of the previous bloggers, Paul H. said:

"For me evolution does not annihilate the institution of Sabbath. This was a gift given to our earliest parents, Adam and Eve, which was important enough to be reiterated in the Ten Commandments."

If you can believe in the reality of both (1) the thesis that we evolved from lower primates and (2) Adam and Eve without your brain exploding, well, as the Aussies say, "good on ya." I can't.

David,
You said, "God is asking us to have faith in what He tells us in His word." ... and in His word, God asks us to "reason together".

It's not reasonable that God created Niagara Falls to appear as having chewed its way up the Niagara River; it's not reasonable that the Bible begins counting days and nights before the sun is placed in the sky; it's not reasonable (by scientific standards today) that the earth ever stopped or reversed its rotation even for a minute ... . I could go on with this list. God is not asking us to believe the unbelievable as a test for admittance to "heaven".

The various disciplines involved in these discussions are so focused on their own agendas that they fail to see the larger picture, which maybe only the non-specialist is able to glimpse.

Gerald Schroeder, in discussing "The Science of God", concludes that "we see what we expect to see" (on the quantum level) when we look at anything - (referring to light appearing to be both a particle and a wave). This is, of course, obvious in discussions like this.

David,

Have you seen the movies Back to the Future? Or better yet, the new Start Trek movie. I don't want to give the plot away. Some people can imagine that stuff.

They explore the possibility of different timelines - but they make the assumption that those timelines intersect and at the same time somehow share a common history - which to me is 'illogical' as the Vulcan's say. If they are different realities, then the intersection is the only common part - not the whole history. If that makes any sense?

So shifting from one reality to the other, means that you are exchanging history as well. So the creation history was real for us, but our creation started to become different after we sinned. Which effectively means that sin caused our history to change.

So the extra thing in my model, instead of the way the movies portraying that they coexist in parallel. My new idea says that plan B was more like generated on the fly, because of sin! Yes, it does my head in a bit. But we do not need to draw unnecessary contradictions from such a view.

This does not mean that the original creation is invalidated in any way. It requires that the original creation occurred - as stated in the bible. It requires that we were originally created in a better reality. It requires that sin changed our reality. But it would mean that we have to believe in it based on religious faith!

It puts recent 6 day creation in an untouchable position from any science (just like belief in God is) and it also allows for the idea that our sin caused our now existing past to be from evolution. God's presence in this nature, only detectable as the BioLogos type of idea.

Truth is stranger than fiction!

I hear what you are saying, and I suspect most people would think the same. Someone mentioned Descartes duality before. But I don't like Descartes duality arguments when applied to coexisting realities of mind/spirit and brain. That is a separate issue though. The form of duality I am proposing is more subtle.

Anyway, my brain explodes just trying to understand how it is possible that Jesus can raise from the dead, and then later descend into Heaven, and then one day will come back again in clouds of angels from space. I accept that resurrection and the second advent are real based on religious faith, not on my ability to understand how they work. Same for creation, I accept it is real based on religious faith. I don't need to falsify evolution to maintain my religious faith.

Perhaps this position has retreated too far? But apart from the difficulty in understanding it, do you see other problems. Or are the problems all because of the difficulty understanding it? I'm still making it up a I go!

Do you think there are any negative spiritual implications with this model?

Hi Sirje,

I like the light wave/particle duality thing.

Bevin: or could it simply be (e) None of the above - the facts just don't support the claim. Last week, I had someone share this ingenious explanation with me: "Taking a small thing and multiplying it by vast amounts of time or mass can produce surprising changes. Large-scale changes, by definition, take more time than you or I can observe personally." Evolution allows itself privileges that no other theory is allowed. Something that has never been observed is passed off as "fact," and those who question something that has never been seen are labeled as ignorant and "inept."

But you have every right to simply pass off people like me as "ignorant" and unenlightened.

Shawn,

You came in here and attacked a position, without explaining your reasons. You have not yet presented why evolution is a joke.

You have presented some mild challenges to evolution, which have already been answered by evolutionists - many times. You have not falsified the mechanisms of evolution, you have only pointed out that there are other possibilities. But those other possibilities are not necessary either - at least from a scientific point of view. And so these challenges do not mean it is a joke, let alone a hoax.

I feel the same towards people who come and say that creation is a joke, or a hoax. I really do believe that evolution is an honest attempt at offering an explanation that does not require God - at least it is for all the scientists that I know. Not one of them who believes in evolution, does so as a joke or a hoax. You demean them unfairly.

You and I can only question why someone would want an explanation that doesn't need God, but that is not a scientific challenge - it's a religious one.

David,
If, after all, this is about having faith in the Bible, then why are people here trying to PROVE scientifically, that the Bible is correct? It seems to me that if faith is the issue, it takes more faith to say that science and the Bible appear to be in conflict on this issue, but "I believe the Bible" when it says God is responsible for this universe being here." None of us are qualified to know what processes God used or how long it took when time was being created as well.

Chris P.,
If you like the quantum aspects of these issues, you would like Gerald Schroeder's book THE SCIENCE OF GOD and his other books - GENESIS AND THE BIG BANG and THE HIDDEN FACE OF GOD.
The book that will really set your mind reeling would be THE FIRE IN THE EQUATIONS - Science, Religion and the Search for God by Kitty Ferguson, who picks up on Stephen Hawking's question at the end of his book (A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME): "Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"

The common thread for all these books is that our perception of reality, and the "real" is as different as the Newtonian world is from the world Einstein glimpsed, which leads me to suggest that to argue about how long creation took and how God "did it" is futile.

Chris, thank you for the critique. I sincerely appreciate it. I will admit that my language was a little strong when claiming that evolution is a hoax. The bulk of that comes out of a sense of complete frustration. Frustration that stems from the fact that so many people seem to be intoxicated with a theory that is fraught with presuppositions (philosophical, theological, and scientific presuppotions, by the way) and makes claims that contradict their own "rules" of science.

I am not necessarily saying that the "other" explanations are air-tight, either. No one is saying that ID doesn't have its challenges. But at least let it have its place at the table.

On the other hand, I am not at all questioning a theory simply because it "doesn't need God." This is not a religious question. It is a scientific one. As you say, evolutionists have plenty of explanations for these alleged problems. But, in complete honesty, I have not come across explanations that seem to fit the facts. And just because a biologist comes up with a hypothesis, doesn't make it true. Richard Dawkins has come up with plenty of models that, in theory, explain away apparent design. But such theories are just that: theories. And until these theories can be demonstrated (free from any intelligent agent influencing the results, by the way - see this article for an example: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t/ I hope you can appreciate the irony of this experiment) empirically, they are no more valid than theories of intelligent design. That's all we're saying.

Shawn,

I don't limit my belief to the ID or theistic evolution approach of Behe et al. God was responsible in both our original creation (Plan A), and in our fallen nature reality as well (Plan B) - so if there is evidence of God's influence in evolution, I would not be surprised.

ID stuff supports plan B - and that is fine. But it can only be validated on the experience of current observable reality. It is not useful in supporting Plan A.

The frustration that you are feeling is understandable to me.

Sirje,

It's funny that people recommend books to me. I haven't sat down and read a book for maybe 10-15 years. So I can't promise that I will. The idea is nice though. It might be good for me :)

Chris wrote: "I haven't sat down and read a book for maybe 10-15 years."

It shows.

Shawn wrote: "Perhaps you can explain to me, Bevin, how the fact that humans and apes share 96% of their gene pool, must lead to the idea that we evolved from a common ancestor? Why is evolution the only answer? "

It is not, and no one says that it is.

David wrote: "What we have is a world with thick deposits of sedimentary rocks, said rocks being full of fossils. If those strata were deposited at current rates of sedimentation, they would have taken millions of years to form. But they could also have been formed during the Genesis Flood."

We have a LOT more than that. That is like saying "a car is something with four wheels".

Chris wrote: "I suppose I was fortunate that, in my many offline discussions with certain of the GRI staff while I was attending seminary at Andrews, leveled with me, admitting, for instance, that the young earth hypothesis had some serious evidentiary shortcomings."

Stepping back and looking at the situation we see

(a) people claiming that theology and their view of the origin of the Bible require Gen 1 to be literal and recent, and hence evolution is wrong

(b) people claiming that evolution has serious holes, or is impossible

(c) people claiming that evolution is possible and fits the evidence, but that short age creation is also possible and fits the evidence

(d) people claiming that theology and their view of the origin of the Bible allow Gen 1 to be mythic, and hence evolution is possible

No-one here is denying a Creator.

The discussion started about whether the SDA denomination will allow all these people in the denomination and in its employ, and (if so) how to get along in a desirable manner.

Two things are obvious to me as I listen to the ardent creationists such as David and Shawn

(a) They simply don't know their facts - they ask me to explain all kinds of things that are fully explained in the books one can buy at the bookshop if one really wanted the answer

(b) They are absolutely motivated by their theology. Their theology drives their science, not the other way round.

I can live with that - and coexist with such people - up until the point they start making claims about evolution being disproven, being a hoax, being an attack on christianity, ... At that point they have brought up the topic for debate - except the way things are now the Adventist Review, the SS Lesson, and the pulpit are used by them but denied to their opposers - and things get bitter.

/Bevin

"Something that has never been observed is passed off as "fact," and those who question something that has never been seen are labeled as ignorant and "inept."

Wow...that exactly describes the opinion of many people who believe the bible to be inerrant, infallible, and the direct word of God. I've seen it time and again. Ironic that the description is used to describe evolutionists.

Shawn, I think it would behoove you to study and understand the word "theory" as it is used in the scientific community. "It's only a theory" doesn't really work the way you are meaning it once you understand the word. In informal conversation, we use the word much differently than the scientific community does. Maybe google "what is a theory?" and go from there.

Good luck!

I've believed a bit in evolution through the years what with science being something I was taught to respect. I was smug in by belief until I realized that believing in evolution would mean that God uses death to accomplish ever-evolving life.

I guess I can't fully believe in six literal days of creation either although if God had wanted to he, no doubt, could very well have created our world in six days. He can certainly destroy it in less time if he wanted to.

So I don't know what to believe regardig how we all came to be, but I, nevertheless, hang onto my belief in God because it makes me a better person than a life without God. I don't know the mysteries of life and its beginnings, but somehow that's not so important to me.

I will continue searchig for an answer, but will not dispair if I never find one. I ask God to sustain me as I continue my search for an answer to this vexing question. Perhaps I'll find that the answer will be the simplest one of all.

If 100 university science professors could read what has been written here, they would find it both laughable as well as ludicrous.

Theology has driven some people mad: mad with the idea that their particular concepts of God is the only right one; that everything possible to be known can be learned from the Bible; and that the Bible is the answer to all of life's questions.

Which then raises the question: Why higher education? Why not adopt the principle that for thousands of years was the source of all learning? Simply limit your knowledge to the Bible and never
read books because they will both pollute the mind and raise unanswerable questions. Better to remain ignorant and have faith than to read and understand and have to defend that faith.

Let's all go back to the Bible and forget formal education. Let the pastors simply read the Bible and do his own Midrashic interpretation. After all, he is God's elect, and can do no wrong,
and everyone knows that the only truely literate individual in the community is the ordained clergy.

Bevin, let me first just say that I want to apologize for the flippant attitude that I have displayed thus far. Nothing is ever gained by sarcasm or a condescending attitude. In no way do I want to diminish your viewpoint. As you are well aware, when we talk about some of these highly contested issues, a person can get a little heated. And that is not my intention.

But let me respond to something you wrote: "They simply don't know their facts - they ask me to explain all kinds of things that are fully explained in the books one can buy at the bookshop if one really wanted the answer."

Allow me to use that same method. You raise points to all kinds of things that are fully explained in books one can buy at the bookstore. Because, this may come as a surprise to many people, but there is a lot of good literature and a lot of good research that is produced by people with real PhD's from real universities that supports the idea of intelligent design. Being intellectual, educated, and holding a doctorate doesn't equate to believing in evolution.

But what I really want to know is: do YOU know the facts, or do you just put your blind trust in scientists whose books you may or may not have read? This happens to me over and over again. I ask individuals to present compelling reasons for evolution, and they refer me to someone else.

Now, there is nothing wrong with deferring to someone who can explain things better, but what I am also interested in figuring out is if certain people ACTUALLY know the data themselves, or whether they have formulated an opinion a long time ago that prevents them from being open to new discoveries and data. I have no doubt that, in the past, you have interacted deeply with this subject. But perhaps you were so overwhelmed with the purported evidence for evolution years ago, that you have totally shut the door to contrary evidence or viable explanations. I don't know if this is the case with you, but it the case with a lot of people (myself included in many instances - something I have to guard against).

Now, I am not saying that I have it all figured out, or that I have read everything, but I have read plenty of first-hand explanations of evolutionary theory and find them surprisingly lacking.

And those questions I've asked you, the ones which are allegedly answered by the scientists whose books are on the shelves at bookstores, don't seem to meet with satisfying answers. Stephen Jay Gould points to a panda's "thumb" and says this lends itself to the theory of evolution. His reason is that the thumb is suboptimal. When an IDer presses him on how he knows it is suboptimal, he simply says, "Just look at it." This doesn't sound like a good reason to me - especially after people who did actual research found that this thumb is actually optimally functional and brilliantly designed.

I could go on and on with examples . . . but you get the point.

Shawn wrote:
--
Because, this may come as a surprise to many people, but there is a lot of good literature and a lot of good research that is produced by people with real PhD's from real universities that supports the idea of intelligent design. Being intellectual, educated, and holding a doctorate doesn't equate to believing in evolution.
--

Many of those intelligent design people also accept evolution. They are the same kind of people you are arguing against here.

By the way when your TV stops working do you fix it yourself or find someone who knows more about the subject?

Ron

I have read some, but not a lot, of the original papers. I have read a lot of the immediately derived reports, New Scientist, the text books, the for-the-laity journals such as Scientific American and New Scientist, and the science-writer summaries.

As Ron points out, the Intelligent Design school is not a branch of short-age creationism, it is a branch of evolution.

Gould did not argue that the Panda's thumb was awkward. When he first heard that Panda's had thumbs, his first reaction was "how can that be - they are bears - they don't have the bone structure that apes evolved into the thumb?" Sure enough, when he looked into it further, a different bone had been adapted to serve...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesamoid_bone

That is the point - a different EXISTING bone - the panda's thumb is not an addition, it is a mutation of an existing structure.

Why do whales and humans have such a similar bone structure? Why do whales tails lie horizontal while sharks tails stand vertical?

Evolution - via geology and biology - has been one of the fastest growing sciences in my lifetime. For most practical purposes the physics and chemistry of my youth are still good enough. But keeping up with geology and biology has been fun - and, more to the point, that incredible growth has produced more and more pro-evolution evidence, more and more things that the short-age creationists can't explain.

That alone is amazing - if it was wrong, you would expect sooner or later that something would turn up that pointed to unambiguously the Flood - but it hasn't. Nothing even vaguely like it has turned up - instead all the evidence says that the world was NOT covered in water 4000 years ago.

/Bevin

By the way, that "thumb" has an interesting possible history

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/2/379.abstract

This is the stuff that makes evolution fun - and testable - and it passes the tests...

/Bevin

Sirje:

I wouldn't be so quick to say, "God is not asking us to believe the unbelievable as a test for admittance to 'heaven'." (Why the quotes around Heaven?) It appears to me He is. The Bible is full of miracles, and predicted future miracles (the resurrection of the dead, the earth made new, etc.) none of which are any less incredible than a special creation in six days. If you're not willing to take anything on faith, you're not a believer. And, according to the Bible, you won't be admitted to "heaven."

Regarding your comment that people are immersed in their own specialties, and see what they expect to see, I could not agree more. That's part of what I've been trying to say.

Chris:

I think your alternative realities model does go too far. I do not think it necessary to posit alternative realities, just alternative ways of viewing the one reality.

Homology is good example: Darwinists view homologous structures as evidence of common descent, creationists typically view them as evidence of common design. It isn't as though there is one universe in which homology is due to evolution and another universe in which it is due to design. There are simply two different paradigms or models through which we can view the data of our universe.

Sirje:

The fact that we must exercise faith doesn't mean we must exercise blind faith, or that we must abandon the world of reason and evidence. There are good reasons to support our faith. There are good arguments to surpport our view that the biblical paradigm is ultimately the right one and the Darwinian model the wrong one, and we should make those arguments. Obviously I have made those arguments, and I will continue to do so.

David wrote:

"The fact that we must exercise faith doesn't mean we must exercise blind faith, or that we must abandon the world of reason and evidence. There are good reasons to support our faith. There are good arguments to surpport our view that the biblical paradigm is ultimately the right one and the Darwinian model the wrong one, and we should make those arguments. Obviously I have made those arguments, and I will continue to do so."

Please explain the difference between "blind faith" and faith that we should exercise. Evidently, you have been satisfied with the biblical paradigm and the errors in the Darwinian model.

Is it possible that others may not agree or be able to accept the arguments you make? Each of us, introduced to a new paradigm, must always recognize that our life's training and early beliefs contribute to our acceptance or rejection when confronted with an
idea that is either in agreement with former beliefs, or in disagreement. Every new idea that we meet in our life, is sifted through those paradigms, paradigms that are different for others.

Students throughout their formal education will constantly be confronted with new information: some will appear at first to contradict earlier beliefs, and others may be accepted more readily. If one is unprepared to listen to an possibly accept ideas previously not known, he is not a true student. We should all be lifelong students: ready to reject or accept new ideas, rather than being satisfied with the status quo.

That could easily explain the ease or reluctance to accept and adopt new ideas. Especially when they are contradictory to our previous ones, the personality makes much of the difference: some people are very reluctant to accept change; others are willing to consider it before taking a position either for or against.

The real question: Is the SDA church willing to accept those who don't always agree on every concept? Are there only a few essentials, and many others are optional?

David,
First, heaven in quotes - I don't believe in a "happy ever-after heaven" somewhere through a hole in Orion's belt. God, living anywhere within this universe is like expecting to find an artist walking around in his own painting. We anthropomorphize God too much and it gets us into trouble interpreting the Bible.

Secondly, I take it from your second post that you have made up your mind as to how God made this universe and are looking for corroboration for your faith. That is how a lot of Bible study is done, I suppose. After all, that's how we got to all those charts and dates in SDA eschatology.

Tom:

Re: Indention comparisons you found between Chinese & certain Native Americans

Maybe in 1982 or 1983 I read about a fascinating study of something similar to what you discovered, this in "Natural History" magazine, perhaps it was written by the late Stephen Jay Gould. There is a rare effect of a fifth molar root that seems to have only occurred in certain Native Americans and certain Chinese. The article went on to report that it could be traced geographically as people relocated southward all the way to near the tip of South America after having crossed the land bridge over the Bering Strait from 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Apparently it's become an interesting way to record how long it took for the descendants of these intrepid travelers of Chinese descent to migrate further onwards.

Thanks for sharing your observations with us.

Bruce

Sirje:

"God, living anywhere within this universe is like expecting to find an artist walking around in his own painting." Might it not be more like expecting to find a builder in a house he built? Or perhaps like expecting to find Alfred Hitchock walking around in each of his movies? Or a captain on the bridge of his own ship?

The Bible teaches of a God who is constantly "walking around in His own painting," talking to Adam & Eve, sending angels and prophets to His people with His messages, appearing incarnate as Jesus Christ, etc. And after your admission that you don't believe in this kind of God, I'm supposed to take seriously your criticism of "how Bible study is done"??

It occurs to me that, when dialoging with someone like Sirje and many others who have posted in this thread, argument over Darwinism vs. creationism is premature. I should be focusing on arguments for the existence of God and for the proposition that He has revealed Himself to us in His word and in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Much of the debate over Darwinism seems just a stalking horse for debate over liberal/higher critical approaches to Scripture vs. "fundamentalism," or taking seriously the Bible's propositional truth claims. The issue is not so much creationism v. Darwinism, as it is whether anything in Scripture that smacks of the supernatural is to be taken at all seriously.

Which brings me to your question, Elaine, about how much room for diversity of opinion there is in the SDA church. There is a reason why our fundamental belief about Scripture is the first one listed among the 28, namely, because the remaining 27 are determined by and contingent upon the truth that the Scriptures are "the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God's acts in history." Agreement on all the other doctrines, including agreement on origins, rests on agreement as to the truth of that statement.

There are many who approach Scripture with the idea that most, if not all, of its assertions with regard to supernatural acts or events are not "a trustworthy record of God's acts in history" but reflect the primitive, pre-scientific understandings of the Bible writers, and need to be re-interpreted according to more modern notions. It is that attitude of radical skepticism that is a very poor fit with Seventh-day Adventism. Personally, if I were surrounded with people, say in a Sabbath School class, who took that view of Scripture, I would look for another fellowship.

"if I were surrounded with people, say in a Sabbath School class, who took that view of Scripture, I would look for another fellowship."

It shouldn't be too difficult. The official SS quarterly fits the description you prefer, and likely represents the larger group of Adventists. It is only in the churches with a high level of educated individuals, such as in many of the educational institutions, that are unafraid of questions. Questioning is not an "attitude of radical skepticism," but an honest desire to search for answers, not repeat those that have been around for thousands of years.

It is so amazing that those who would never turn to the Bible for the latest medical science for treating a difficult disease diagnosis, but nevertheless, are content to rely on an ancient text, thousands of years old, to accurately describe the world they occupy. When did the Bible become a scientific textbook? Did
the writers ever intend or presume to be writing such a scientific
treatise?

"When did the Bible become a scientific textbook? Did
the writers ever intend or presume to be writing such a scientific treatise?"

1. Never.

2. No.

Dear Shannon,

You say that "The system of evolution that was set forth by Darwin that is still in place today is natural selection. This plainly states that the fittest will survive or the fittest group. While your point is well taken that there are good examples of cooperation thought to work for the group, it still boils down to survival of one population or group over another." Well - being the fittest to survive is a natural instinct of everyone. I'm sure you want to live as long and as heatlhy as you can. Even Jesus in the gospels is said to have prayed to be spared his fate. He wanted to survive as the fittest! But this does not mean we will survive if we kill off everyone else. This is best exemplified what the human race has done to our planet. We have conquered many perceived "evils" - drove lions, elephants and bison to near extinction, for example. But in the process we have endangered ourselves. The universe is a system of balance. So is our planet. Humans are part of biosphere as much as ants or crabs are. That's why - in our care - to be the fittest and to survive is not to compete but to protect other beings. Ever heard about symbiosis? Where does natural selection fit into this? No more or less than this: if you inherited better genes from your parents than I from mine, you are likely to live longer and healthier than me. You should not read too much into the concept.

Are you familiar with Nazism? Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf" long before he took power. And the book was antisemitic already. In fact, his eugenics plans had to be hidden from the general population, as they included killing ethnic German disabled and mentally ill. Antisemitism was right there in the party manifesto straight from the beginning. But it was only in general terms, as no-one really knew what to do with the undesirables. There was a plan to re-settle the Jews to Madagascar. War provided a smokescreen and allowed Hitler to murder the Jews instead. Andentists sttod by and watched. E G White had never warned of what was going to happen - though a great many people could have been saved and converted to Adventism.

Of course you are right that many worldviews - religious or not - have led to tragedies. Which is precisely why blaming Darwin for all the wrongs of the modern world is dangerous, misleading - and double-edged.

I simply object to people arguing that evolution is incompatible with Christianity. That's a big lie, since most Christians have long ago accepted evolution. Maybe it's incompatible with a narrow-minded view of Adventism, but this would reduce Adventism to an exclusivist, fanatic sect. Thank God for Seventh-day Darwinians!

Take care,

David,
Remember sitting in you American or English Lit class and mumbling something like, "What do we have to know this stuff for?" Well, this is where "that stuff" would come in handy. You would have learned there is something called metaphor; and when you read "Adam walked with God" it didn't necessarily mean one foot in front of the other kind of walk. I'm also guessing you never took a Biblical Literature class on your way either. It may be time to crack a few books, after 10 or 15 years of drought.

Did you know that science has since discovered that Newton might have been wrong - that what goes up may not come down? ...that maybe there is no up or down - that gravity is only the curvature of space - that time on earth is not necessarily time in space; and thunder is not about angels bowling with meteors in heaven.

God is no Alfred Hitchcock. Logic tells us that when God created the universe He had to be somewhere outside of it in order to do that (speaking anthropomorphically).

Bevin,

I show a bit of support for your position, and then in response to a statement that I made, you turn around and say the following:

Chris wrote: "I haven't sat down and read a book for maybe 10-15 years."
It shows.

Would you do the courtesy of at least substantiating why I appear so ignorant to you? Any reasons perhaps?

PS. Bruce made one of those comments, not me. But thanks for thinking of me any way.

OK, my mistake. I apologize to Dave for inferring that he hasn't read a book in 15-20 years. It was Chris with that problem.

Sirje

David,

Of course when I say two realities, I do mean two perspectives of a larger reality. I take you to mean that two possible timelines is completely unacceptable. I think most people would be too engrained in the current paradigm (that there is only one possible history) to even consider the possibility. And you might be right, it might be too far. But I think too far only because people can't understand it.

What is actually wrong with the idea, apart from the difficulty in us understanding it? Is evolution so evil even if we can still maintain biblical creation in our belief system?

I've been thinking more about it. You know when we look forward, we see multiple existing timelines, which vary only because of one thing, and that is free choice. If there was no free choice, then there is only one future timeline.

How will God wipe away our sins when we are resurrected? Forgiveness alters the past, relative to our experience. What if it happened in reverse? When we sinned, and fell from God's grace, what if a sinful past became attributed to us?

Don't get me wrong, I understand another reason that it might be too far, is because it is not necessary for us to develop models like that.

Just cos I haven't read a book for like 20 or 30 years! so much commotion. I promise I will read a book in the next 40 years.

"It is only in the churches with a high level of educated individuals, such as in many of the educational institutions, that are unafraid of questions. Questioning is not an "attitude of radical skepticism," but an honest desire to search for answers, not repeat those that have been around for thousands of years."

Jesus came to take away our sins...not our minds.

I guess the term "radical skepticism" is supposed to be pejorative. I don't find it to be so. To stop questioning, to stop being "radical skeptics" is to begin to slowly die. Without a little radical skepticism, we turn into puppets who only recite what our theological betters tell us.

"I should be focusing on arguments for the existence of God and for the proposition that He has revealed Himself to us in His word and in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ."

You may have something there, David. I can't say for sure that God exists, or that if he does, He revealed himself to us in the Bible. To me the evidence suggests that people wrote those ancient pieces in order to further their own understanding and idea of God. I shake my head at those who say it is a unified document from Genesis to Revelation and marvel at the miracle that it could be so when it was written by so many people over so many years. I'm sorry, I just don't see that. I see just what you would expect from so many writers, and that is a whole bunch of different views of God that are sometimes incompatible with each other. People trying to explain that what 'appears' incompatible is really unified always seems like they are doing mental gymnastics that I can't seem to be able to do.

Chris wrote: "Would you do the courtesy of at least substantiating why I appear so ignorant to you? Any reasons perhaps?"

Your position, as I understand it, is

(a) evolution does fit the facts

(b) if the laws of nature have changed, it is possible that a short-age creation could also fit the facts.

You also, as I understand it, are prepared to accept that evolutionism and SDA'ism are compatible - you would accept someone who thinks life evolved as a SDA church member. I am assuming here that you are an SDA church member, but I don't know that.

There are three problems with (b)

1 - the laws of nature that we measure - gravity, thermal conductivity, stress coefficients, chemical reaction rates - are derived from much deeper laws and can not be changed without changing those deeper laws. And the deeper laws are what we use to study star light. And much of the star light has been in transit for millions of years. And what we see of it mostly makes sense with current natural laws that you wish to change.

2 - the facts are growing by leaps and bounds ever year, and so the short-age creation model has to be incredibly weird to fit them, and no-one has provided such a model that fits almost any large fraction of the facts.

3 - In my opinion, a God who would create a universe where the laws of nature produce facts that fit two such wildly disparate models, and especially one who would then require belief in the weirder model, is not likely to exist.

By not reading books, you are missing out of

(a) information and discussion of the origins of the Bible

(b) information and discussion of the ongoing discovery of more and more facts that your weird changed-laws concept has to work with

/Bevin

Of course Chris's hypothesis is not fleshed out yet but I see it as a way to allow both paradigms to work.

Chris has shared some of the theological problems evolution presents to traditional Christianity. It's not just about a couple of chapters in Genesis and I tend to agree with him. There is a pressing theological need among many to have creationism be true.

However, there is also very clear evidence that evolution happened - Chris probably wouldn't state it that strongly but I'm writing here :) I would also personally say that there is very clear evidence that YEC and a world wide flood did not happen on our earth according to the laws that our universe follows (again my words, not his).

Those who believe in the concept of heaven surely must recognize that it is so completely different from our experience that it must be a totally different reality. Death pervades every single aspect of our world from our cells constantly dying, to our food, to the billions of organisms we crush every time we take a step. There is no way we can be death and sin free and be anything close to what we are experiencing now. If one is a believer, one already accepts the possibility of different realities.

Now of course Chris's idea is not a scientific one, it is a theological one. And, to me anyway, it ends up being a kind of Rube Goldberg hypothesis of life. I personally don't see the need for such complications because I don't feel the need to accommodate a strict creationists view. But it does at least begin to recognize that we evolutionists aren't just making stuff up because we are deluded by Satan - that the evidence for evolution needs to be accounted for, not just denied. And it provides a way for those who do see a theological need for a more strict creationism to also be included and not just dismissed out right.

Bevin,

Is that how you justify a personal attack on me?

I do believe you to be a sincere man. But, you have misunderstood me very much. And you have constructed criticisms based on your misunderstandings of me.

You are not truly describing my position, you are only describing a model that I posed, as way of intellectual exploration. I need to make this distinction very clear, because you use my simple proposal to challenge my entire education and intelligence. You go way too far in your attack.

There are some who don't mind exploring the model, if you don't want to, that is all you have to say. You can say what you think is wrong with the model, you don't need to go on to attack me personally.

I will address your points.

1) "deeper laws and can not be changed without changing those deeper laws." Hello!!!! What laws do you think my model says have changed? I am questioning the possibility of causality being different to what we understand - you can't use causal logic to challenge that idea!!! You need a different paradigm to base your argument on.

You certainly can't use evidence based on those laws to prove that those laws could never change. The evidence is confined within our understanding of how those laws work. That is part of the model.

2) This argument conflates evidence that fits a model, with evidence that shows the competing model to be wrong. This is bad logic. The mounting evidence does not show either to be wrong.

It doesn't matter how many elephants you have in your fridge, I still like cornflakes. But honesty, I prefer weet-bix.

3) You challenge on the weirdness of the model. And say that because it is too weird, therefore it must be wrong. Hmm. OK, I understand you are saying that it means that you don't want to accept it, rather than it being wrong. But I don't know the actual reasons why you think it is wrong.

In this, you are also challenging that God could not possibly ask us to believe something that we can not understand. Well, guess what, if you believe in God, and understand God, then what is this argument really about?

I do not believe that God asks more of us than we can give. If you can not give that much, then I understand that He is not asking you to believe it. I certainly don't believe any cognitive decision is a requirement for salvation.

But, you can't deny that other people choose to believe it. And you need to be careful about rejecting their beliefs so easily. You need to be more tolerant.

a) You have absolutely no idea what I believe regards the origins of the Bible. Your Weltanschauung obviously predicates that certain aspects of the Bible are untenable. You have no idea how much about this I have really read. You assumption is purely based on my disagreement with you!

b) The model I proposed does not 'need' to work with anything. You are the one continually insisting that it does. You still don't get what I have said a few times. Creation is a religious faith. You keep challenging it on scientific grounds. Get over it.

You are not satisfied that I have stopped attacking evolution on scientific grounds, you insist on going further, you insist that creation has been falsified.

Now to the point of my question. I expect better logic from someone who did maths and comp sci. How hard is it to question your logic?

I know people who read a couple books every week. They do not come to the same conclusions that you do! But you suggest that I must? Why is that? Therefore, reading books will not necessarily bring me to your conclusions.

I said a flippant remark to Sirje about books, and you had to take the opportunity to demean me. Well done.

Beth,

Appreciate your support. It's a little too weird for many.

"Questioning is not an "attitude of radical skepticism," but an honest desire to search for answers, not repeat those that have been around for thousands of years."

Elaine,

Most of the questions have been around a long time as well. Few are sincere. Most are thinly disguised cavils.

The atheistic, self interested, unbelieving Jews were "questioning" Jesus in the face of incontrovertible miracles.

There was no possible answer to their questions. No matter what happened, they would not believe. Lazarus? Plan to kill him. Jesus resurrected? Pay the guards to lie. There was nothing to which they would not stoop - murder deception, obfuscation - all was fare as long as it advanced their own interests, which, incidentally, were purely selfish ones. They were interested in preserving their place, nothing more.

You may believe the lies you tell yourself in your "quest." Don't expect me to.

There's another dynamic at work, a rather primal one: PAYBACK.

A lot of people in the pews, who are often derided as conservatives or traditionalists, perceive LLU and LSU as polluting streams within the denomination. Both institutions employ professors who appear to be hired guns and partisans for the gay interests.

Southeastern is also, in the minds of many, at odds with the world church on the role of women.

Atoday, with a militant pro evolution editor, is also perceived to be the unofficial voice of many scientists and LLU types.

In light of the forgoing, when the word on the street is that LSU professore are now betraying the denomination by teaching evolution, people are inclined to believe it because the people feel that it has already betrayed conservative/traditional Adventism in the ways mentioned.

Geologists I can understand: The rocks are very very old. Far older than the biology they enshroud.

Biologists, i can't understand. With the power of magnification available--the finer and finer one examines biology the more exotic and complex it becomes which man made objects become more crude and unrefined. The human eye is just one example of complexity that gives the lie to trial and error and external stimulii no matter the time frame. I certainly admit that the dogma of Churchmen set independent minds adrift--but Darwin only saw variations on a theme with finiches etc. No one since has breached that barrier. There is no change, just a very broad range of diversity and a great deal more time than the typical theologian is willing to accept. Beyond those limits: It is still up for grabs.

It talk of not getting a job in science as a creationist is a lot of bunk. The questions asked are: Where did you train? Who was your mentor? What was you doctoral thesis? What laboratory skills do you possess? Are you interesting in such and such studies? Tom

I commented earlier that this issue is simply going to die out - both as SDA members die off, and as the issue causes the evolutionists to leave the denomination.

I am curious - in those contributing to this thread

(a) is there anyone <40 years old?

(b) is there anyone <40 years old who thinks short-age creation is the likely origin of life on Earth? Shawn Brace - an SDA minister - is probably one. Any others?

/Bevin

Chris asked: In this, you are also challenging that God could not possibly ask us to believe something that we can not understand. Well, guess what, if you believe in God, and understand God, then what is this argument really about?

No, I am saying that the same God that wrote

"Thou shalt not bear a false witness against thy neighbor"

would not do a 6 day creation of a world that did not have any death of large animals on it, but that looked (down to molecular level minutia and up to continent-sized geological formations) like life and death had been on it for millions of years.

Clearly it is incompatible in the standard SDA/EGW Eden for Adam and Eve to be wandering through it on that first sabbath and find T.Rex skulls protruding out of sandstone, hundreds of feet thick limestone deposits replete with fossilized marine life, and lions eating lambs.

The idea that all we see was formed in the Genesis Flood has NEVER gained significant traction in main stream geology, and has become increasingly implausible as we understand continental drift, and radiological and magnetic properties of the rocks.

For the world to look the way it does, and yet come from the standard SDA model, is to have God bearing a false witness against us.

The evidence is so solid that, in order to preserve your belief in Genesis, you are prepared to throw out causality itself - as you wrote above "I am questioning the possibility of causality being different to what we understand - you can't use causal logic to challenge that idea!!!"

In short, your investigation has shown you that the only way it can be true is if we can't trust our instruments or our logic.

Good luck with that.

/Bevin

Chris:

If you are going to read a book in the next 50 to 60 years, it should be mine. I am tentatively planning a book signing at the Loma Linda ABC for June 21st, if you or anyone else happens to be in the neighborhood.

Continued silence from church administrators causes me to maybe think that they believe what the LSU teachers are teaching.

Loren the fact that you don't believe Genesis or the importance of believing as God has spoken it just shows how far you have drifted from Christianity. David Assherrick, whom I have met a few times, is not an attention seeker. However people like you are attention seekers, that is obvious.

I know people who have gone to La Sierra and they have told me without a doubt that La Sierra teaches and encourages students to believe in naturalistic evolution. Praise the Lord I went to Arizona State University where they were straight forward about what they believed. My wife went to LSU seeking a greater revival in her life and left with her faith almost but lost. I went to ASU an Agnostic and found God and the Adventist message and have put those things behind. What a wonderful education our institutions provide.

Congratulations on making the next generation of Atheist LSU. Could you please return my wifes tuition. Your education was nothing but a bunch of trash.

David

Bevin,

"we can't trust our instruments or our logic"

You still don't get my model. it would meand that it is all correct within its own logic.

Bevin,

"I am questioning the possibility of causality being different to what we understand - you can't use causal logic to challenge that idea!!!"

In short I believe God caused.

Do you believe that God created? Show me the instruments that leads to your belief that God created!

David,

Unfortunately, my neighbourhood is a bit far from the Americas. But I would be honoured to read your book.

Maybe we should NOT only be asking "who/what are Adventist but the even larger question "Who/What are Christains"?

RE: David Salem ET AL. David I have heard that truth will withstand any investigation. Are we truthseekers or truth keepers.

It it our perception of God that makes us Savable ( healable safe to next door to )or is it our trust in HIM to do all that he promises HE can and will do.

Are the 28 more important than Getting to know HIM. Wasn't it Paul who said " I keep asking that the God of our fathers will give us the spirit of knowledge and revalation that we might know him better"

Didn't John say that "Eternal life is to know God and that that is what Jesus came to do to reveal HIM?

Truth is progressive!

Life is an experience to be lived and in the living comes the revalation.

RE: David Reed what is the name and topic of your book?

Hi!

I've just finished reading a paper titled "Can We Save Our Selves? Neuroscience, Philosophy and Human Freedom" that Richard Rice presented the end of May at an international conference at Venice, Italy on "Evolution & Human Uniqueness."

This conference was presented by "The Venice Summer School on Science and Religion" at the Istituo Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti with the financial help of the Templeton Foundation.

The URL for the conference as a whole is
www.vssr.info.

The one for Rice's paper is http://vssr.info/docs/2009_participants/Rice-Can%20We%20Save%20Ourselves....

Rice's engagement with evolutionary psychology is precisely the kind of thing that I think we should expect from teachers on SDA campuses.

Read, enjoy and happy Sabbath!

Dave

@Bevin:

I'm under 40 and believe in the 7-literal-day creation. And I'm not planning on "dying off" anytime soon. (Tongue firmly in cheek).

I also don't fit into the stereotypical "conservative Adventist" category either as I think we have a long way to grow in our understanding and promoting of "by grace through faith, not of works," and I think we (the church as a whole) often do more harm than good with our methods of witnessing and evangelism (beast flyers, "bold" techniques, and hammering the point that we have the "truth"). But that's just my humble opinion on things--on the issue of a literal creation that is specifically spelled-out in the Bible; and then linked over and over again with our worship being to Him who CREATED--that's an issue on which I'm willing to take a stand.

I'm under 35 and believe in a 6-day creation.

David Larson,

Thanks for the paper on soul and dualism.

Albert Einstein, "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

Amongst Christianity, SDAs have a pretty unique understanding of soul/spirit - one that accepts the soul as both physical and functional, and does not need to be external mystical spirit, while leaving room for mystery.

Reductionism, follow it through, we are all just particles of energy floating in the universe, there is no reason for meaning. Abussos.

My favourite bit of that paper, the author demolished one position that I understand was something like: only deluded people can derive reason! Hilarious.

The distinction between software and hardware becomes useful, I think. The "supervenience" idea can be demonstrated by way of a computer program.

A computer running a program, consists of the following;
a) a mechanism to hold state,
b) the state is alterable,
c) rules and instructions can be stored and altered within that state space,
d) a comparator that operates with the rules and instructions from the state space,
e) the comparator receives inputs from both external stimuli and existing state, and runs instructions which equate to higher level functions based on the outcomes of those comparisons,
f) the instructions are also able to alter the rules and state, and even alter it's own instructions, which all in turn change the outcome the next time the same stimuli is applied.

voi·là, all the prerequisites for learning and free will. It determines itself, based on it's own unique history and rules, which path to follow.

A software program is more than the sum of it's components. When they all interact together, it operates as a unique entity. We give it an identity because ... that makes sense!

The human can look at all of this, and even describe it's own program (to a limited degree), and further, it is doing this inside its own program! Amazing level of complexity. Zen like somehow.

The amazing part is how all of this can be encoded into our DNA, that is truly remarkable.

The remaining questions are about magnitude of complexity. My question is, why are human minds orders of magnitude more complex than our closest so called 'cousins'?

If this was attained by evolutionary mechanisms, then why only one species to attain this level so far? It doesn't seem very favoured really by natural selection. I'm not saying it's impossible, but at first look, it does not fit what I see. Perhaps someone can offer me a weird explanation to make it fit!

The conclusion of the article is great. Me thinking that I have free choice, is enough evidence for me that I really do.

Chris

Thank you for your comments on dualism as discussed in Richard Rice's paper!

I wholly agree with you that insofar as evolutionary thought entails atheism, materialism, determinism, relativism and militarism, it ought to be deconstructed by every thoughtful person.

Any teacher on any SDA campus who affirms any form of ET must clearly, repeatedly and persuasively distinguish his or her views from these, according to my way of thinking. Not to do this is to invite massive misunderstanding and discord.

You are way, way ahead of me on computer science; however, I have longed wondered at what point we would be able to say that these machines have enough self-determining freedom to hold them morally responsible for what they do!

I really warm up to the idea that in the human brain the integrated functioning of every "component" is more than the sum of its parts. So, perhaps, the humam "mind" is not a "substance" or "thing" but every aspect of the mature and healthy brain working harmoniously and effectively.

This is why I toy with the idea of speaking of "minding" rather than "the mind," perhaps analagous to "seeing" rather than "sight" as the proper functioning of the eye and all of its neurological resources.

But back to your main point. If some form of evolutionary thought cannot offer a plausible account of our own self-determining freedom, and if in everyday life it is impossible for us to doubt that we and others possess enough of it to hold ourselves ethically accountable, then there is something seriously wrong--hugely mistaken--about that form of evolutionary thought and we should not flinch from saying so.

And, as you note, Richard Rice's paper indicates that this is indeed the case in a number of important instances.

One other thing: In my view Rice's paper rightly points out that the most provocative and controversial edges of evolutionary thought today do not concern the history of the universe and life in it but neuropsychology and the like. In my view we should shift much of our attention to these other issues because what we conclude about them relates to our everyday lives more directly and intensely than do debates about origins.

Again, as you've indicated, because of our rejection of dualilsm, we SDAs could make a positive contribution at this point.

If you know of anyone who would like to help us establish a "Center for Religion and the Human Sciences" at LLU, please let us know. But let's first invite that person to help support AF/Spectrum!

Many thanks!'

Dave

Dave--

Thanks for your recent inspired posts in both of the creation/evolution threads.

Rice's paper that you recommended was very helpful to refocus my mind on where Christian scholars may have the most influence in this day and age.

Where would you point a generalist like me to go to become more informed about the field of "minding," and neuropsychology? Are there any good sources of responsible apologetics?

Thanks again.

-- Tim

Tim

Wish I could say that I read this by Martha J. Farah and Nancey Murphy when it first came out. I didn't, finding it only after your question prompted me to look around. If I can stay half a step ahead of the questions, I'm doing very well! More on books later!

Science 27 February 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5918, p. 1168

Letters
Neuroscience and the Soul

Science and religion have had a long relationship, by turns collegial and adversarial. In the 17th century Galileo ran afoul of the Church's geocentrism, and in the 19th century Darwin challenged the biblical account of creation. The breaches that open at such times often close again, as religions determine that the doctrine in question is not an essential part of faith. This is precisely what happened with geocentrism and, outside of certain American fundamentalist Christian sects, evolution.

A new challenge to the science-religion relationship is currently at hand. We hope that, with careful consideration by scientists and theologians, it will not become the latest front in what some have called the "culture war" between science and religion. The challenge comes from neuroscience and concerns our understanding of human nature.

Most religions endorse the idea of a soul (or spirit) that is distinct from the physical body. Yet as neuroscience advances, it increasingly seems that all aspects of a person can be explained by the functioning of a material system. This first became clear in the realms of motor control and perception (1, 2). Yet, models of perceptual and motor capacities such as color vision and gait do not directly threaten the idea of the soul. You can still believe in what Gilbert Ryle called "the ghost in the machine" (3) and simply conclude that color vision and gait are features of the machine rather than the ghost.

However, as neuroscience begins to reveal the mechanisms underlying personality, love, morality, and spirituality, the idea of a ghost in the machine becomes strained. Brain imaging indicates that all of these traits have physical correlates in brain function. Furthermore, pharmacologic influences on these traits, as well as the effects of localized stimulation or damage, demonstrate that the brain processes in question are not mere correlates but are the physical bases of these central aspects of our personhood. If these aspects of the person are all features of the machine, why have a ghost at all?

By raising questions like this, it seems likely that neuroscience will pose a far more fundamental challenge than evolutionary biology to many religions. Predictably, then, some theologians and even neuroscientists are resisting the implications of modern cognitive and affective neuroscience. "Nonmaterialist neuroscience" has joined "intelligent design" as an alternative interpretation of scientific data (4).

This work is counterproductive, however, in that it ignores what most scholars of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures now understand about biblical views of human nature. These views were physicalist, and body-soul dualism entered Christian thought around a century after Jesus' day (5, 6).

To be sure, dualism is intuitively compelling. Yet science often requires us to reject otherwise plausible beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary. A full understanding of why Earth orbits the Sun (as a consequence of the way the solar system was formed) took another century after Galileo's time to develop. It may take even longer to understand why certain material systems give rise to consciousness. In the meantime, just as Galileo's view of Earth in the heavens did not render our world any less precious or beautiful, neither does the physicalism of neuroscience detract from the value or meaning of human life.

Martha J. Farah*
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
Department of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

Nancey Murphy
School of Theology
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, CA 91182, USA

References

M. Jeannerod, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Action (Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 1997).

M. J. Farah, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision (Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 2000).

G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1949).

M. Beauregard, D. O'Leary, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul (HarperCollins, New York, 2007).

N. Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2006).

J. B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life (Baker, Grand Rapids, MI, 2008).

Thanks, Dave. A good read. I will definitely think more about this.

Some years ago a woman began attending our church with her Adventist work mate. She did become a devoted bible-literate follower of Jesus, even requesting baptism into His body, the church. She never did accept, as it turned out, the fundamental belief about a literal 6~day creation. But she was a follower of Christ for sure.

While I understand those among us who expect us to hold to a literal reading of genesis (I really do!) I also wonder whether we might need a Jerusalem Council to re-think what we are to do with honest people who receive the Spirit but not a literalist reading of Genesis. Are we as open as the early church in Acts 15?

By this question I am not pointing fingers, just asking a practical question.

I have long wondered at what point we would be able to say that these machines have enough self-determining freedom to hold them morally responsible for what they do!

Good question, I think both the programmer and the program are responsible - already!

When a program makes a 'mistake' - it is performing a function different to the requirements of what it is supposed to perform. It is acting contra to its purpose. Sometimes the program can be corrected to perform it's function properly, occasionally it might have the smarts inbuilt to be self correcting, for example an algorithm inside it designed to recognise and adjust to some types of mistakes, at other times the programmer has to intervene, while at other times still it is sent to the abyss, never to be seen from or heard again!

The final outcome for the program is either correction or destruction.

The programmer is the one who was meant to understand the requirements in the first place. The level of accountability is greater, because often the program does not usually 'know' it's own requirements, if it hasn't been designed to know about it's 'law' of operation. The programmer is also responsible for correction when intervention is required.

Ultimately the programmer does takes responsibility for the actions of the program. The programmer could theoretically save all programs from oblivion, if the programmer was emotionally invested in the program, which is usually the case. The programmer doesn't like to see their hard work go to waste. Deletion is a last resort.

I've enjoyed thinking about your question.

Something else I wanted to add. How about showing some credit to the pioneers of this theology of the human soul. Over a century ago, the SDA pioneers made a decision on this, and finally our technology is catching up. That has gotta impress us a bit. That must be worth reflecting on.

Whether one believes in a literal 6-day creation, or not, should not be a deterrent to judging his qualifications to be accepted into the fellowship of believers. If Adventists ever make this a
formal requisite of membership, it will most certainly deter many prospective converts as understanding of our universe explodes. Do we want to imitate the Catholic church and its attitude toward Galileo? If so, we will have moved even closer to a creed that is mandated for membership. It all comes down to control, and
there is a movement throughout this country for allowing more individual freedom, which also influences religion.

This is why I toy with the idea of speaking of "minding" rather than "the mind," perhaps analagous to "seeing" rather than "sight" as the proper functioning of the eye and all of its neurological resources

Why do we need new words. Maybe an overall name for what the mind does. There are already names for sub-functions - thinking, feeling etc. Also, seeing is actually done in the mind as well - it is a function of both the eye and the brain, working together! This adds to the idea of components working together to achieve function. The whole human soul is an interconnected machine.

E,

It's already a fundamental belief. It has been for some time. Weather or not this means it is a 'formal requisite for membership', seems to be debatable.

The control issue will be transient, I think. The final result will be how people in my generation, like Bevin and I learn to relate to each other about this.

Tim
I think Jesus would have baptized her, giving her as much time as she needed to think things through as she responsibly participated in the congretation's life. These decisions are best made by those closest to the situation, as SDA policy mandates. This calls for some local discretion!
Dave

And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Gen.1:27.

But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment “But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. 7 “FOR THIS CAUSE A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, 8 AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Mk.10:5-9.

Why be baptized into Jesus who believed in creation week? But... then perhaps He did not have the benefit of modern evolutionary science and "higher criticism" to assist His comments.

regards,
pat

Jay Rasco:

My book is called, "Dinosaurs - An Adventist View". I will be doing a book signing at the Loma Linda ABC on June 21 (two weeks). Hope to see you there.

Chris:

Thanks for your kind sentiment. If you're within Amazon's delivery area, you can still order the book online. Just search for "Dinosaurs an Adventist View"

David - interesting title

half way between "one Adventist's view" and "the A v"

ambiguous in that it may be claiming to be the A v in contrast to the various non-A v's

/bevin

Charles Scriven stated the issue in muted tones. But what the Church is facing is a monumental challenge that rivals any recorded in the history of man.

The question isn't simply about when, and how. It is a challenge to the very existance of God. A Being with the power to still the waves, raise the death, change water into wine, feed 5 thousand with a few loaves and fishes. A Being who predates Adam, Abraham, Moses, Daniel, A Being that can lay down His life and take it up again at the call of His Father. A Being that has vanquished the devil at every turn.

We face an issue that would make of none effect: At least 27 of the 28 Funadmental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. And rock the very foundation of any Christian belief system.

It is the Omega of apostasy--the making of none effect the Spirit of Prophecy but more important it makes the Christ event irrelvant.

To imagine, that learned men have put their faith and careers of the age of stones and turn their backs on the Rock of Ages!

To be sure, churchmen of all ages have cherished doubt and dogma with equal reverence. Building and rebuilding their own Tower of Babal again and again. Now post-modernism, the king of doubt enters the Holy of Holies and calls it the imagination of man.

From the simple Psalm: "The Heavens declare the glory of God" We have come to believe that the rocks cry out! We were here first! So we turn our stoney hearts away from the Lamb of God and embrace some tired old bones and fossils of antiquity and worship them as our forefathers. Then we look for a chain of time and chance to verify our conjectures of how they bridge the gulf between a cell and man. There is only one word that fits: Ichabod!

Science has been diverted from testable hypothesis to immaginations as flighty as dreams. If it has destroyed Christianity it has also made its own cause mute. There is no there there! If one were to lay out all the fossils end to end in any order of form or time they would never reach a conclusion. Except they represent at life form that once was and They resemble at times existing forms to variable degrees.

If God hadn't revealed Himself in Jesus Christ,we would all be in doubt. praise be to God who gave us the power of reason and choice. As for me and my house we have chosen the Lord. That includes seven doctorates from Class A Universities in which evolution dominates. Three of those degrees with honors. Three of those doctorates enjoy or enjoyed life long tenured careers in evolutionary dominate class A institutions. Evolution, contrary to current opinion, is a diversion of science not its focus. Furtheromre, the fruits of science has very little or anything to do with one's belief system. Finaly to sell one's soul for a career is a very poor bargain. Tom

Tom,
Thanks for your focused comments...and I agree.

Some, I suggest, simply do not see (or perhaps care)of the end effect and outcome of their "unproven" proposition on "the faith" once delivered to the saints.

regards,
pat

To believe in God as Creator should not demand specifics, should it? When specificity is demanded, who can possibly give the needed
evidence?

It is no different than belief in love. But how it is demonstrated, and by whom, is not the same for every individual. To define either "Creation" or "Love" to a detailed description is to destroy the word. Specifics cannot be given to concepts; that is for chemical formulas or math equations. Surely, faith is not
dependent on such formulas.

Elaine,

I suggest that while scripture does not say all that "love" implies or is, it does say what it is not. It is not love to break God's law says Paul in Rom.13:8-10. That, I suggest finds us all incomplete "lovers" or as Luther pointed out in response to the Sophist that since we are all sinners it is also impossible to be justified by "our love."

Likewise when Scripture in the OT and then ratified by Christ in the NT states that God created humanity male and female, I have to take that seriously.

Granted,it isn't a chemical "formula." It is simple Hebrew and Greek, translated for us today, in simple understandable words.Dt.4:12;30:11-14.Rom.3:2.

regards,
pat

Tim

I think these three books are good places to start:

Barbour, Ian. "Nature, Human Nature and God."
Augsburg Fortress, 2002.

Jeeves, Malcolm and Brown, Warren S. "Neuroscience, Psychology and Religion: Illustions, Delusions and Realities About Human Nature."
Templeton Press, 2009.

Murphy, Nancey. "Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?" Intervarsity, 2007.

I have read the first and third of these but not the second. It came out earlier this year.

Thank you!

Dave

I have no doubt Tom feels that way

I suspect the conservatives during the reformation felt that way - the certainty of The Church was being destroyed

I suspect the conservatives in Galileo's time felt that way - the certainty of the Bible was being destroyed

I suspect the Sanhedrin felt that way - God's people were being destroyed

I suspect Saul's court felt that way - God's chosen was being overthrown

/Bevin

bevin

Jesus said, I have come to filfill the Law not to destroy it.

The very proposition of evolution is an attack on a Creator God who fillfilled the law.

Your analogies are strawmen.

Tom

Right,

and right there in the Law, at the same level of importance as the rest, is

"Thou shalt not bear a false witness against thy neighbor"

/Bevin

Pat, while you say:

"It is not love to break God's law" neither does the Law mention love to man, which is the absolutely only way that love can be truly represented.

Many men have proclaimed to love God while killing their fellowman.
So, only when love for ones' neighbor is shown, can others believe that you truly love the highest of God's creation--which is man.

Tom wrote:
--
Jesus said, I have come to filfill the Law not to destroy it.

The very proposition of evolution is an attack on a Creator God who fillfilled the law.
--

Remember in one of these threads where David Read the author of the book Dinosaurs an Adventist view said that there was a large increase in the number of animal species following the flood. I am surprised how little attention that got on the thread but since you wrote the above I am wondering just what level of evolution does it take to make it an attack on the Creator. Is David Read's assertion an attack on God also?

Ron

"Your analogies are strawmen."....

so true...ideas put up in order to be beaten down.

however, all the foregoing discussion presumes that one believe (or not)in a "loving, heavenly Father" who created us and loves us, as told by a literal reading of the inerrant scriptures.

The real question we need to address is exemplified in Numb 30-31. How can we take literally all those ancient stories of the hebrew God's anger, wrath, and vengeance of Mosesianity... and still believe in the love, joy and peace of Christianity?

Quote from the Contemporary English Version of Numb 31:7

The Israelites fought against the Midianites, just as the LORD had commanded Moses. They killed all the men, 8 including Balaam son of Beor and the five Midianite kings, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba. 9 The Israelites captured every woman and child, then led away the Midianites' cattle and sheep, and took everything else that belonged to them. 10 They also burned down the Midianite towns and villages. 11 Israel's soldiers gathered together everything they had taken from the Midianites, including the captives and the animals. 12 13 Then they returned to their own camp in the hills of Moab across the Jordan River from Jericho, where Moses, Eleazar, and the other Israelite leaders met the troops outside camp.

14 Moses became angry with the army commanders 15 and said,

....."I can't believe you let the women live!

16 They are the ones who followed Balaam's advice and invited our people to worship the god Baal-Peor. That's why the LORD punished us by..... killing so many of our people.

17 You must put to death every boy and all the women who have ever had sex.

18 But do not kill the young women who have never had sex.

You may keep them for yourselves."
end quote
begin wondering
... how a loving God could command the hebrews to
inspect the women like Dr Mengele at Auschwitz and only save the virgins... to keep and presumably "use", thereby unknowingly diluting the uniqueness of God's favorite tribe of nomads.

and if we need to "reinterpret" the above story of massacre and sexual slavery apparently commanded by God, why should we not "reinterpret" the Hebrews plagiarized Babylonian myths about creation and flood?

If you tell your kids to believe literally that what Genesis 1 says is true, inerrant, and necessary for salvation, should you not also warn your kids about how God deliberately massacred Egyptian kids (and their firstborn pets) in a mistaken effort to influence the Pharaoh to let God's favorite tribe of nomads "go", when God could easily just have waterboarded the Pharaoh himself?

which parts of these ancient stories are we to believe literally? and which parts were campfire stories told by scientifically ignorant, superstitious nomads to their kids in an effort to explain their primitive existence and poorly understood surroundings which were so often bringing them drought, pestilence, war, and even snakes sent by their very own God to punish them!!!

that is the real problem with accepting evolution: the extensive education which will probably motivate any one who sincerely studies the evidence to understand the science (knowledge) behind the "theory", may cause them to accept the ancient age of the life on earth (EG: http://www.atomorrow.com/discus/messages/8/243.html?1013224404)

This education may raise unanswerable questions about blind faith based on ancient misunderstandings and moralities which we need to move beyond today, and diminish the tithe receipts to the church as those with education move out the back door, as commanded by Goldstein, and only the elderly, un(der)educated and third-world converts remain, the later hoping more to better their economic status than religious understanding.

Question: if my salvation depends on a literal belief in a collection of ancient stories which describes a literal 144 hr creation only 6kyo, is it alright if I sell my daughter into slavery if I can get a good price for her?

Is it ok for me to insist my wife leave camp for a week every month when she is unclean?

is it ok for me to bring my unruly son to the city gates and there have him stoned to death?

if my neighbor comes down with mold or leprosy, should I tell him to go kill a coupla birds, dip one in hyssop and blood, then sprinkle it about his house? and call in his priest/pastor/witchdoctor to do the same with the other bird?

how were the sloths notified by God or Noah in Central America to climb down from their trees, and learn to swim, in order to dogpaddle across the Pacific Ocean with no food and no fresh water to arrive in the Middle East in time to stumble on their curved talons up the gangplank into the ark? and after the waters receded (which all current evidence shows that the waters have come up in the last 20,000 yrs, due to melting glaciers, EG: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/fr/archeosm/en/fr-cosqu1.htm ),
after the waters "receded", the surviving sloths all dogpaddled back to Central and South America, and no where else...successfully avoiding drowning, sharks and hypothermia, again with no food or fresh water.

do we have to believe that tale literally for our salvation?
along with the magical snake, presumably deceiving Eve in hebrew? or Baalams talking donkey? or Jonah holding his breath inside the belly of a giant fish for several days?

or newly frocked prophet Elisha worrying about his powers calling on God to punish some kids who made fun of his bald head? so our loving God sends she bears to "tear" up precisely 42 kids? is that right? our heavenly father killed 42 kids just to prove to Elisha that he had powers?

doesnt the very nature of the number 42 suggest that something quite figurative and therefore non literal is going on here? 7 is the perfect number, derived from ancient star gazers being able only see only 5 planets with the nakkid eye("planets" in Greek = wanderer) wandering in the night sky differently than the mass of stars in the skydome..beyond which was a 2nd ocean, but with windows to let in the rain....add in the sun and moon, and you have the 7 days of the week....

double 7 and you have the number of years jacob had to work for his wives.... triple that 14 and you have the symbolic 42... the same number of ancestors Matt tries to gerrymander in Christs genealogy despite Lukes listing of several more.
Then SDA's use the 42 "months" in making another big deal.

Only when we understand that much of the Old Test may be symbolic representations, interpretations and campfire stories can we graduate from the murder, mayhem, misogamy and misunderstanding of Mosesianity and get on with the positives of Christianity...

which, btw, should include the ability to accept others beliefs, no matter how badly mistaken!!!! (ggg!!!)

If all those who accept the literal 6-day creation story in Genesis, what do you with all the other stories told in the Pentateuch? Are they all to be accepted as literal and a guide for our living today? Why, or why not?

Unless you have the prescience and omniscience to determine beforehand what part of the Bible should be interpreted literally, and the rest, how can you decide for others the correct interpretation? Unless you are "certain" of your ability to do so, how can you possibly judge others who disagree?

An interesting quote from those who argue that geocentrism really is correct.

"The Copernican Revolution, as this change of view is called, was not just a revolution in astronomy, but it also spread into politics and theology. In particular, it set the stage for the development of Bible criticism. After all, if God cannot be taken literally when He writes of the "rising of the sun," then how can He be taken literally in writing of the "rising of the Son?""

Those interested might want to spend a few minutes perusing:

www.geocentricity.com

where one can find a guy with a PhD insisting that by doubting what the Bible says about the sun going around the earth, all of Christianity is threatened. How can we believe in a God who would lie to us about the sun going around the earth? Clearly heliocentrism is wrong because there is all sorts of science that supports the Biblical view of geocentrism and it's all discussed complete with charts and graphs and big numbers. There are conference proceedings and rebuttals to rebuttals and it's all utterly fascinating and perhaps even pertinent to our discussion.

Here's another quote:

"Despite the testimony of all the equations, and despite the published testimonies of top scientists to the viability of geocentricity as a model of the universe, and despite the inability of experiments to establish its truth or falsity; some will still scoff at geocentricity. How can one ever determine which is the truth? Only by going outside the universe and taking a look around can one ascertain the truth of the matter. Without that ability to "look around outside," physics cannot resolve the debate. However, since God does know what is beyond the universe, should His word not be taken as the final authority? It is the testimony of God as found in the Bible which constitutes the foundation of modern geocentricity. May it ever be so."

Unless you have the prescience and omniscience to determine beforehand what part of the Bible should be interpreted literally, and the rest, how can you decide for others the correct interpretation? Unless you are "certain" of your ability to do so, how can you possibly judge others who disagree?

Of course we allow people to disagree. We don't go around with the philosophy of kill or be converted.

Bevin,

"Thou shalt not bear a false witness against thy neighbor"
---
And what is that?
It is simply stating openly and truthfully what one has seen or heard so that a proper judgment of a case can be made so that a neighbor is not falsely charged.

If evolution is taught at LSU for academic purposes...fine. If it has been observed that it is taught as "fact" that natural selection created man...not so fine at an Adventist institution. A "false witness" would not declare the truth of how it is being taught so that a responsible administrative decision can be made.

regards,
pat

Beth,

Be sure that you never say that the sun is rising or setting again. :~)

Breathing into and creating male and female living beings out of the dust/rib is a different paradigm, I would suggest.

---------------------

Elaine,

"Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law."

This is a great saying but as the rich young ruler thought he had done all these things...neither have you or I.

regards,
pat

Beth,

I agree, there is no doubt an issue here. And it is at least as big as that was, probably with as many different ways to present and argue and convince.

I haven't looked at the heliocentrism vs geocentrism. But here is my first thought. They are BOTH wrong!

We have no known centre of the universe to lay a coordinate reference to. Our solar system may be revolving around in our home galaxy, the milky way. At the centre of this may or may not be a singularity. There are countless galaxies each with their own centres. A coordinate system can be placed anywhere we choose it to be a useful reference, relative to the topic of discussion. Is there any true centre to existence?

The true centre to my experience is here in Australia at the moment. If I said that the sun was up above me, you would disagree, because to you the sun must surely be down below you! Yet, we still say that the sun is up - knowing that up is relative to our perspective.

I know you know all this. I am just bringing it out because, I think that the possibility of a third perspective is useful. And the third perspective can say that the two apparently opposing perspective are both relatively correct within their own reference.

This third perspective allows us to maintain our faith in the Bible. That is why I am interested in fleshing out my idea about retrospective times.

The kinds of dogs and cats, and ducks, and horses, and birds, and fish, and and and is not evolution. It is when mice become men. Tom

Tom Wrote;

--
The kinds of dogs and cats, and ducks, and horses, and birds, and fish, and and and is not evolution. It is when mice become men. Tom
--
Yes I kind of figured you would have vague answer if you answered at all. From reading what David Read wrote it does appear he knows that species are not different kinds of dogs and cats. So I guess if I dared and tried to make some kind of sense of your answer it would be that you accept that there is indeed evolutionary affects upon animals seen in nature and that is fine with your understanding of gospel. The problem is that you cannot accept evolution in man, it is only present in animals. Do I understand you correctly?

Ron

RC

You confuse diversity with evolution. Reproduce after his kind is not the same as 21st century taxonomy. Now a man into a mouse that is devolution. It happens all the time. Tom

"I haven't looked at the heliocentrism vs geocentrism. But here is my first thought. They are BOTH wrong!"

At the time the astronomers were trying to come up with a good mathematical model that would predict when various things would happen in the heavens.

For almost all observations possible at the time, a mathematical model of the sun being still and the planets orbiting it, produces a usable mathematical model. The model with the earth being still and everything else going around it is unbelievable complex.

Some theologians wanted to insist on the earth being the one that stood still. They insisted on it because of tradition and because they took the Bible literally. Administrators also wanted to insist on it, because to say they had been wrong undermined their authority.

The resulting bitter humiliation has shaped the Roman Catholic attitude towards science ever since.

/Bevin

Alright Tom let me ask the question again since you seem to have got side tracked again.

Tom wrote:
--
Jesus said, I have come to filfill the Law not to destroy it.

The very proposition of evolution is an attack on a Creator God who fillfilled the law.
--

Remember in one of these threads where David Read the author of the book Dinosaurs an Adventist view said that there was a large increase in the number of animal species following the flood. I am surprised how little attention that got on the thread but since you wrote the above I am wondering just what level of evolution does it take to make it an attack on the Creator. Is David Read's assertion an attack on God also?

Here is what earlier in this thread David Read wrote:

-No creationist argues that every one of the modern "species" was originally created by God in its present form and brought aboard Noah’s ark. There was a period of rapid speciation immediately following the Flood. (See, e.g., Wise, Kurt P., Faith, Form, and Time (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2002), pp. 216-220 (“In perhaps as few as three centuries, scores of new species arose within most mammal baramins, and thousands of species arose within many of the insect and plant baramins.”); Wise “Australopithecus ramidus and the fossil record,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 8:160-165 (1994); Wise, “North American Paleontology Convention ’96,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 10:315-321 (1996); Brand, Leonard, Faith, Reason, & Earth History (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1997), pp. 198, 199 (“According to the theory presented here, much of our current taxonomic diversity has been the result of limited evolutionary change after a worldwide catastrophe. The original groups of plants and animals have diversified into multitudes of species as they adapted to fill specific niches in the changed conditions after the catastrophe.”) Rapid post-Flood speciation has long been a belief of creationists. In his first book, Back to Creationism, published in 1929, Harold Clark had advocated rapid post-Flood speciation. See Back to Creationism, pp. 99-110, in Creationism in Twentieth Century America, Vol. 8: The Early Writings of Harold W. Clark and Frank Lewis Marsh, ed. Ronald L. Numbers (New York & London: Garland Publishers, 1995). In a letter to Clark praising him for his book, George McCready Price wrote, “If the Seventh-day Adventist people will all get behind these two ideas, Flood geology and plenty of species-making since the Flood, . . . I believe it would not be long before the scientific world would sit up and take notice.” Numbers, at p. 124.

Some creationists believe that as few as 1,000 pairs of animals were brought on board the ark and that all modern land animals and birds descended from these. See, e.g., Wood, Todd Charles, “The AGEing process: rapid Post-Flood Intrabaraminic Diversification caused by Altruistic Genetic Elements (AGEs),” Origins, No. 54 (2003), p. 6, citing, A. J. Jones, “How many Animals in the Ark?” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 19:13-18 (1973).

--

It does you know good to say I don't know diversity from species, because that is not the question. It was a pretty simple question, it does amaze me how you waffle about with it.

Ron

RC

Continue to be amazed. Tom

Catholics struggle with this dichotomy also...
..should we believe the ancient shepherds stories handed down orally for thousands of years?
..or should we defer to the explanation which scientists offer, while bringing us vaccines, cell phones, sat-tv, and the HST?

but still smarting from the Gallileo affair, they are careful to stake out what they believe to be middle ground...

..evolution has happened, the evidence is there,

but...

it is how God chose to make life, into which He infuses the soul which is the important part according to their belief, a brand of Theistic Evolution.....

from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Roman_Catholic_Church

quote:
Catholic schools and evolution
As in other countries, in the United States, Catholic schools teach evolution, not theistic evolution, as part of their science curriculum.

They teach the ...FACT... that evolution occurs and the modern evolutionary synthesis, which is the scientific theory that explains why evolution occurs. This is the same evolution curriculum that secular schools teach. Catholic schools do teach theistic evolution in their religion classes though. Bishop DiLorenzo of Richmond, chair of the Committee on Science and Human Values in a December 2004 letter sent to all U.S. bishops: "...Catholic schools should continue teaching evolution as a scientific theory backed by convincing evidence.

At the same time, Catholic parents whose children are in public schools should ensure that their children are also receiving appropriate catechesis at home and in the parish on God as Creator. Students should be able to leave their biology classes, and their courses in religious instruction, with an integrated understanding of the means God chose to make us who we are."[40]
end quote

That is what is so amazing about all this. When pressed people like David Read admit evolution occurs. Others like Tom when pressed hide, they can't answer the questions. So how is it we allow those kind of people to dictate what is taught in Adventist colleges?

It explains why so many simply say you have to teach only things that align with the fundamental beliefs. Because they don't want to actually deal with the realities and instead want to live in a very insulated world.

Ron

RC

Hide nothing--why should two closed minds discuss anything?

Christianity has only one fundamental belief. That God exists from everlasting to everlasting as our Creator and Redeemer!

The process is of His origin not man's devising: period. Tom

Or more aptly Tom; Why try to discuss anything with a closed minded person. To say; why should two closed minds discuss anything, is to assume that the other person is as closed minded as yourself. That leads to the trouble where people won't discuss their beliefs or why they believe what they believe.

Ron

RC

To put it as simply as possible: "Thinking" Adventists, denominationally employed, are too afraid to directly challenge E.G. White so they pick an anti-hero to champion. Claiming, of course, they are within the fold but with a wider horizon--they merely want their students to see the "big picture" and decide for themselves--all the time attempting to skew the "data" to favor their "pet view." To see a relationship in form and function does not necessarily explain cause, process, or effect. I have no trouble with evolutionists just their proselytizing under the cover of open mindedness.

I can spot a praire style house blocks away. I know immediately it is of Frank L. Wright or one of his students.
I don't think the praire did it!

To see design and not a designer is to have a closed mind. Albeit--open to further fables.

To accept only one possible designer is a fullfilled mind: which to a sceptic is the same as a closed mind.

I am satisfied to wait for further revelation--in due time.
I just don't think looking under another rock will get me closer to the truth of beginnings.

Tom

"To see design and not a designer is to have a closed mind."

Except, which designer do we choose? When any suggested evidence of whatever version of God you choose (Jewish, Muslim, or Christian) is presented, it turns out to be untestable. It is belief, not knowledge, and as such has it's place in religion classes, not science classes.

If an Adventist prof teaches the mechanisms of evolution in science class, and then says "we believe that God created us", I have no problem with that. But since God's existence is not objectively testable, how can his creatorship be taught as fact, even if we believe in it?

quote: "I just don't think looking under another rock will get me closer to the truth of beginnings. "

but that's what life is all about...learning and education.
and looking at or under all the rocks!!!

What do you think the Rock of Golgatha is?

Its where the Holy Sepulchre is and where the story of Jesus crucifixion is said to have taken place

http://www.golgothacalvary.com/
quote:
Inside the church is a rock, about 7 m long by 3 m wide by 4.8 m high, that is believed to be what now remains visible of Calvary. During restoration works and excavations inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it was found that this place was originally a quarry from which white .....limestone..... was struck. end quote

the following book excerpt explains that Golgotha used to be a limestone quarry....

http://books.google.com/books?id=r9FKdUYk0r4C&pg=PA427&lpg=PA427&dq=lime...

so here's the question, and one more rock to look under or into:
What is Limestone?

quote from: http://geology.com/rocks/limestone.shtml

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed primarily of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the form of the mineral calcite. It most commonly forms in clear, warm, shallow marine waters. It is usually an... organic sedimentary rock that forms from the accumulation of shell, coral, algal and fecal debris....
It can also be a chemical sedimentary rock formed by the precipitation of calcium carbonate from lake or ocean water.

quote: from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite (calcium carbonate: CaCO3). The deposition of limestone strata is often a by-product and indicator of biological activity in the geologic record

The primary source of the calcite in limestone is most commonly .....marine organisms. .....These organisms secrete shells that settle out of the water column and are deposited on ocean floors as pelagic ooze or alternatively are conglomerated in a coral reef
end quote

so here's the problem:

the very rock formation upon which Jesus was crucified, and probably the Sepulchre in which He was placed, as well as the wailing walls of Jerusalem, are LIMESTONE.....

and LIMESTONE is a problem for a recent Creation....

it is formed in a shallow sea, from the long time accumulation of tiny marine organisms and their calcite shells....

so at one time, the location where Jerusalem is now, had to have been under a shallow sea mega years ago, and giga beyons and beyons of tiny animals were sacrificed to make rock.... and scientists tell us this happened millions of years ago.

how this could possibly square with a 144 hour instantaneous creation barely 6kyo is yet to be explained.

Niagara Falls cuts its way upstream by eroding limestone layers at the rate of about 2-3 feet per year.... since it now 7 miles upstream from the escarpment which created the falls in the first place, it would seem reasonable to calculate the age of the falls at around 12-15,000 yrs...

the real problem is that the falls cut their way thru LIMESTONE...which scientists say run into the hundreds of millions of years of age.

How all this squares with the question of "death before sin" is another problem which has never been explained from a recent creationist viewpoint.

Dear John Alfke,

It should be noted that there are actually two sources for limestone. Limestone can certainly be derived from the shells of marine organisms. However, it also has a non-biological source, as CaCO3 can be precipitated directly out of sea water. If one postulates a world-wide, hydrological-tectonic catastrophe (i.e. the Genesis Flood), the latter source may have been significant. Thus the uniformitarian paradigm may not be required for the deposition of limestone.

either way...the mega death of giga beyons and beyons of marine animals, or the precipitation of CaCO3 directly,
all the LIMESTONE in the Holy land seems to prove that the area was under water at one time.

The question is could a 150 day flood have given enuf time for all this to happen? collossal amounts of tiny marine animals grow, reproduce, flourish, die, and leave their shells to God to create limestone rock? Biblical literalists argue yes, having faith on their side, while scientists, having explored all the evidence, say no.

If you were to hike to the summit of the world up 29,000 ft Mt Everest, and dig down thru the snow, you would find the top of the world is LIMESTONE!!! littered with fossils which were once living creatures under a shallow sea....

scientists say this took millions of years of death and deposition, then the land was crunched up tectonically out of the sea as India ground into Asia ...proving the top of the world was once under water.... just like Jerusalem was once under a sea. Just like the salt mines of Saltzburg, Austria were once under the Med and later raised up by Africas move north. The largest salt mine in the world is actually under lake Erie!!!! Why would God create halite there, over a thousand feed below the surface!!! halite only occurs from the drying out of a salt sea...which musta been there a long time ago, and taken a long time to dry out leaving the halite....later, it gets covered with another sea which over a very long time bred the zillions of tiny animals which died, and left their shells to make up the hundreds of feet of "ooze" which later became compacted as limestone which later became raised out of the sea, and which Niagara Falls has cut its way thru for the last 12-15,000 yrs!!!

unfortunately for those with only faith to go by, none of the above events date to a 150 day period around 2348 BC.

most scientists agree a small amount of CaCO3 may have produced a bit of fine grained limestone around the world, but the overwhelming majority of this sedimentary rock came about from the giga death of tiny marine animals over huge time frames, and mega years ago. long before 4004 BC.

quote from :
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=3499

Everest is the tallest of many extraordinarily high peaks in the Himalayas, including neighboring Lhotse (27,890 feet, 8516 m) and Nuptse (25,790 feet, 7885 m). The mountain range was formed when a large land mass broke off from Africa roughly 200 million years ago and was carried by plate tectonics across what is now the Indian Ocean. When this land mass came close to Asia, it started to push up the land ahead of it, forming a large shallow ocean with rich ocean life. The bones and shells of the plants and animals in this shallow ocean formed limestone and left fossils. As the land mass continued to plow north and collide with Asia, the ocean was slowly raised up and drained, eventually being lifted up to form the Himalayan Mountains. The land mass, which is still moving north and forcing the land ahead of it upwards, is known as the Indian subcontinent. The presence of limestone and ocean marine fossils at the top of these mountains is one of the key pieces of evidence cited that advanced the idea of plate tectonics (large chunks of the Earth’s surface moving over molten rock in the Earth’s core) when it was first proposed as a theory in 1915. ) end quote

if you look at a relief map of the area, it appears that the Indian "subcontinent" in its plate tectonic move north has made a "bow wave" of mountains ..the Himal...as it slowly grinds its way into Asia...the area is still tectonically active, and Pakistan and Af-gun-istan are constantly plagued by earthquakes from the sometimes jerky plate movement. And Everest is still rising....

Ron:

I'm not sure why you're so shocked and surprised by the creationist model of rapid post-Flood speciation and diversification, especially since it has been the creationist model since the 1920s. Just to be clear, I don't think this process was significantly aided by random DNA copying errors, the only source of new genetic information posited by the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis. I think other, as yet undiscovered, genetic mechanisms must have been at work. I believe that there is (or was) an environmental feedback mechanism that triggers helpful genetic changes, and I also believe that lateral or horizontal gene transfer was vastly more important in the past than it appears to be today.

Also, to clear up any semantic confusion, when most posters say they don't believe in evolution, they mean that the don't believe in the Darwninian meta-narrative of molecules-to-man, not that they believe in fixity of the species, or that there cannot be speciation and diversification within the created "kinds" or baramin. I think you probably know this, but can't pass up the rhetorical opportunity to argue that if one doesn't believe in fixity of species, then one must concede the entire molecules-to-man Darwinian creation myth. But that simply does not follow. I think creationists can easily understand that God created the original kinds of animals with a good deal of potential for genetic diversity.

John Alfke:

No creationist I know denies plate tectonics, which was originally a creationist concept. You should look into "catastrophic plate tectonics."

Cudos to any who got their "Honors" in geology thru the Pathfinder Club,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Adventist_Youth_Honors_Answer_Book/Nature/G...

leading to this fair but potentially misleading conclusion:

"No creationist I know denies plate tectonics"

that is only the tip of the scientific iceberg of geology!!!

"Young Earth Creationists" have jumped at the rapid plate movement explanation, also called Catastrophic Plate Tectonics
(CPT).....in the hopes that this can support the literal interpretation of Genesis 5 and 10, condensing all of earths geological history to fit within Ussher's 6000 yr interpretation of what the hebrew texts claim, as brought to us by the KJV.

Why they don't refer to the LXX, the Greek version of the Old Test is interesting, since using greek manuscripts which are actually older than the hebrew ones used by the KJV, the LXX provides almost 2,000 additional years with which to try to bring Biblical history into line with actual known, documented archeological and geological history.

I guess YECs don't want to have to explain why one version of the Bible, (KJV) which has the problem of not explaining how a world wide flood starting in the Middle East did NOT destroy nearby Egyptian civilization, conflicts with a version of innerrant truth which is underrepresented in our churches (the LXX) but which does away with the Egyptian problem by making the earth 8,000 or so years old!!! In addition, there would be the problem of explaining why there are multiple versions of truth that we, as error prone humans, would have to choose between.

Old Earth Creationists agree with science about the long time it has taken the earth to evol...ah, have its surface features changed by natural processes. But nevertheless they justify their membership in Christianity, and often are the first to "liberally" point out the bad science used by YECs in support of their young earth "fundamental" efforts.

The following web site is a Christian apologistic effort,
but it agrees with the conclusions of science about the old age of the earth.

http://www.answersincreation.org/rebuttal/aig/Answers/2007/answers_v2_n2...

quote:
Creation Science Rebuttals
Answers Magazine
A Catastrophic Breakup: A Scientific Look at Catastrophic Plate Tectonics
Volume 2, Issue 2 (March 2007)
Review by Greg Neyman
© Answers In Creation

Young earth creationists have always had a problem with plate tectonics. In their latest effort to solve this thorn in their side, Andrew Snelling has provided an article for Answers Magazine that examines what he calls Catastrophic Plate Tectonics.1 This article was also the Daily Feature on the Answers in Genesis website on 21 March 2007.

For those who may not know what this is about, the earth’s crust is divided like a puzzle into many pieces that slide about on the earth’s surface. To learn more about this, I encourage you to read about plate tectonics in the Answers In Creation Online Geology Curriculum for home schoolers, Chapter 9, Plate Tectonics.

In short, plate tectonics is responsible for building mountains, such as the Himalaya Mountains. Whereas old earth believers agree with geologists that these mountains built up over millions of years, young earth creationists would say they formed rapidly through a catastrophic plate tectonic scenario.
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then the article goes on to list 9 major reasons WHY CPT DOES NOT WORK!!!!!!!! including the excess heat generated by the rapid radioactive decay of various heavy metals necessary to overcome their use in proving the long ages of the earth.

If all the uranium had to decay in a matter of days instead of millions of years, in order to allow radio dating to correlate with the short earth timeframe desired, the problem is this rapid decay would would give off so much heat, that it would boil the oceans as well as the rocks!!!....

God would not have had to massacre people and innocent animals with a flood!!! He simply could have parboiled them!!! and Noah's legendary ark would have burned up in the heat !!!

It is a small portion of this extra heat which Baumgartner posits could have melted the mantle to make it move quickly, mimicking what 99% of scientists believe is a well proven theory of long term gradual plate tectonics. But the CPT "theory" does not account for the excess heat.

Another problem is that CPT does not explain the evolu...ah, development of the hawaiian Islands, which according to the rate of their movement over the hotspot under the Big Island, and radio dating of their magmatic rocks gives a history of millions of years of age, increasing linearly with both age and distance from the hotspot under the Big Island out the archepelego toward the NNW.

as explained here:
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html

continue quote from way above:

Conclusion
Although there are other problems, these give you an idea of the ..........irreconcilable problems of the young earth catastrophic plate tectonics model.

Interestingly, in Snelling's conclusion, he states that this model is still new. In reality, young earth scientists have been playing with it for the last 45 years, as can be evidenced by Henry Morris mentioning tectonics in his 1961 book The Genesis Flood, although at the time he did not flesh out the idea. The model in its current form stems from at least 1994.

What is even more telling is that the problems mentioned above have been pointed out to young earth creationists in the past, yet they have failed to address these issues. Why would they ignore issues that completely invalidate their model?

The answer to this has to be the intended audience. Answers Magazine is written for young earth creationists. They know they cannot convince real scientists, so they don't need to address these issues. In other words, what their followers don't know, can't hurt them.
end quote.

If God gave us brains, didn't She intend for us to use them?
and if God's book of Words is seen to disagree with Her Book of Rocks, maybe we need to reinterpret our understanding of one or the other if they both have the same author.

instead of ignoring the problem. which would make us,
by definition, "ignorant"

John Alfke:

Thanks for another stimulating post. You'll be greatly relieved to know that my book "Dinosaurs - An Adventist View" (available on Amazon.com and at your local ABC) addresses the discrepant age data between the Masoretic and Septuagint versions (pp. 168-173). But I'm far from the first creationist to have done so. It was addressed in both the 1983 (p. 291) and 2005 editions (pp. 46-48) of Coffin's "Origin by Design." (Possibly he mentioned it in the 1969 version, but I don't have that one.)

You'll also be relieved to learn that in my book, I discuss the fact that the excessive heat generated by rapid ocean-floor plate creation (radiometric dating is a different issue) is a problem with the catastrophic plate tectonics model acknowledged by all. (You'll also learn that the resulting warm ocean water created the precipitation necessary to create the vast glaciers of the Ice Age.)

I also mention a fascinating fact about subducted ocean plate that has folded at the bottom of the mantle below the deep ocean trenches: It's still cool! As I write in my book:

"If slabs of ocean floor had been sinking into the mantle along subduction zones over the course of many millions of years at the current slow rate, these slabs should have warmed to the temperature of the semi-molten mantle long before they reached the mantle’s floor (which is over 1,700 miles below the surface). But if Baumgardner is correct in believing that large-scale, rapid subduction occurred just a few thousand years ago, there should be cooler, unincorporated ocean floor slab at the bottom of the mantle. Several studies have indicated that there are zones of cooler material reaching from the deep ocean trenches down to the bottom of the mantle. [FN: Wise, at 190, 191. See, also, Hutko, Lay, Garnero, and Revenaugh, "Seismic detection of folded, subducted lithosphere at the core-mantle boundary," Nature, 441, 333-336 (May 18, 2006); “Slab of sunken ocean floor found deep within Earth” Press release from Arizona State University, May 17, 2006: “Deep within Earth, halfway to its center in an area where Earth's core meets its mantle, lies a massive folded slab of rock that once was the ocean floor, reports a team of researchers . . . in the current issue of Nature. . . . The researchers were able to image the buckling and folding of the subducted oceanic slab at the base of the mantle because of the temperature difference between the relatively cool slab and the hotter mantle rock surrounding it. . . . Using the method, the researchers found the subducted slab is composed of essentially the same minerals as the surrounding mantle, but its temperature is about 700 degrees Celsius cooler.”; S.P. Grand, "Mantle Shear Structure Beneath the Americas and Surrounding Oceans," Journal of Geophysical Research, 1994, 99:11591-11621; J.E. Vidale, "A Snapshot of Whole Mantle Flow," Nature, 1994, 370:16-17; S. Vogel, "Anti-matters," Earth: The Science of Our Planet, August 1995, pp. 43-49.END FN] This is a remarkable confirmation of catastrophic expectations, and difficult for the conventional theory to explain."

If this ocean-floor slab was subducted millions of years ago, why is it still so much cooler than the rest of the mantle? It's like Mary Schweitzer's soft dinosaur tissues, just another one of those things a long ages/Lyellian geologist wouldn't expect to find.

Dear John Alfke,

Why is it that you proponents of Darwinian evolution repeatly use insulting language to try to bolster your claims? Please be aware that it adds nothing to your arguments! I'm not saying this in anger, but far more heat than light is generated by such language. We can discuss these issues and even disagree without being disagreeable!

In your posts, you make many assumptions about the views of creationists that are quite foreign to my way of thinking.
For example, you assume that all creationists believe that radioactive decay was much more rapid in the past. This is the position of some of the staff at the Institute for Creation Research, but it is certainly not the position of the Geoscience Research Institute or of most Adventist creationists. We generally believe in an old universe and an old earth (in terms of our planet). The GRI position is that the earth is old, but that our ordered world and living organisms are young. The only theories that the GRI questions are macro-evolution and geologic uniformitarianism. As far as astronomy, the big bang, and the 4.5 billion year history of our planet are concerned, there is no real conflict.

Secondly, you seem to assume that all of us promote the Ussher chronology. This is false! There are many creationists who favor a short chronology for life on earth without accepting Ussher's position. For example, it is my tentative view that the six day creation week (which brought forth our ordered world with its living organisms) should be dated 15-20 thousand years BP and the Genesis Flood 12-17 thousand years BP.

In regard to radioisotope data from the Hawaiian Islands, I suggest you read chapter 25 of the revised edition of "Origin By Design" by Harold G. Coffin, Robert H. Brown, and R. James Gibson, particularly pages 343-344. Although these pages deal with depth considerations and the radioisotope profile, they would also apply to the radioisotope profile as one moves in a NNW direction from the hot spot under the big island.

Lastly, it should be noted that a proponent of Flood Geology, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini, first proposed continental drift in 1859. But that was the year when the "Origin of Species" was published, and his catastrophist views were totally ignored. Later, Alfred Wegener recast continental drift in uniformitarian terms, but he too was ignored and even reviled. I mention this history as a friendly refutation of your assertion that creationists have always had a problem with plate tectonics. On the contrary, plate tectonic theory finds its origin in creationism and catastophic flood geology. It was the Lyellians and Darwinists who rejected it for a hundred years until the data in its favor became overwhelming. The Catastrophic Plate Tectonic theory (CPT) that has recently been proposed by creationists is simply a modern version of the original Snider-Pellegrini model. By the way, CPT does not imply the rapid decay of radioactive isotopes, as you suggest. These are two unrelated topics that you have conflated. And while considerable heat would be generated by catastrophic plate movements, these would have occurred under thousands of meters of ocean water. It would be well to attempt a mathematical calculation of how much heat could be absorbed by the ocean before you assert that "Noah's legendary ark would have burned up in the heat."

Dear Bob Helm,

I am sorry but I found your comment above to John Alfke, “Why is it that you proponents of Darwinian evolution repeatly use insulting language to try to bolster your claims?” to be one the most offensive and dishonest comments that I have read thus far in the debate!

It is not those of us who accept that God may have chosen to create in a manner different to that described in Genesis, that are calling for the expulsion of teachers from our schools. I have never heard a person who accepts that the evidence suggests that the earth may be billions of years old calling, on those who lack the honesty to accept this evidence to resign there membership of the church.

Despite my full acceptance that God is the creator of not only this earth but of the entire universe, and despite my full acceptance and love for the Sabbath as not only a symbol to remind us that God is the creator but to celebrate his wonderful ability to recreate us, I have regularly been told by literal 7 day creationists that there is no place in the church for me and that I should do the honourable thing and resign my membership.

The thing that most upsets me is the blatant dishonesty of people who claim to believe “exactly what the Bible says” who when presented with inconsistencies suddenly find new “interpretations” of what the Bible really means.

Despite my initial outburst, I would like to acknowledge your honesty in admitting that you are not one of those who claim to believe exactly what the Bible says as you say; “it is my tentative view that the six day creation week (which brought forth our ordered world with its living organisms) should be dated 15-20 thousand years BP and the Genesis Flood 12-17 thousand years BP”. Clearly that is a reading of scripture that requires a significant deviation of the biblical record. What I fail to understand is if it is possible for one to accept that the biblical record of the generations may in fact be out by at least 100%, then why is it so difficult to accept that the biblical account of creation might have been God’s way of explaining to a primitive people the fact that he created, not exactly how he created.

Bevin,

Yes, of course, I understood the scientific reasons why. I did not know much about the types of passions and arguments in the debate, except for the final outcome. My main reason for the post was pointing out that in hindsight, both those points of view were not necessarily in conflict.

This is proven by the fact that it is still useful for me to say that the sun comes up in the morning. Relative to my perspective it is still correct. And, for the astronomer's making their calculations, the sun as a reference point was a correct coordinate system for them.

There is lot more at stake here than simply an embarrassment to administrative authority. A complete theodicy system is being challenged.

"CaCO3 can be precipitated directly out of sea water"

Yes, but you can't precipitate out something that is not in the water to start with.

Now you have to explain the chemistry behind the precipitation - where did the Ca come from? Where did the CO2 come from? What quantities were needed? At what rate did they have to dissolve into the water?

One of the fundamental differences between the YEC and mainstream science is that YEC's are forced to see a problem and handwave an woefully incomplete answer, whereas mainstream science is seeking hard problems are pushing down into the smallest corners of an answer looking for more problems.

/Bevin

I would just like to add that I've always been confused by those who say the big bang and the universe can be very old but life can't be. Genesis is very clear that God created the sun, moon and stars during creation week and hung them in the firmament (whatever that was). I can see how one could wiggle around about the age of the earth but really, Genesis seems to indicate that the earth was just kind of there in something but there certainly weren't stars etc. around it.

Maybe, to be consistent, they could argue that all the stars except the ones around earth were created early and then God hung the sun and moon and visible stars around during creation week. But really, I don't get the motivation for acknowledging the science that brings us an old universe when it directly contradicts Genesis, and then tossing that science when it comes to life.

This info at
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html

about the "migration" of the Hawaiian Islands WNW is all the proof that an honest researcher should need to discard the
"theory" of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics.

Start with a visit to the Big Island... you can actually see Creation continuing as the Kiluea volcano spews forth new material creating new land right before your eyes.

so point #1...Creation was not finished in 6 daze 6kyo...
it is still going on.

point #2 is that once the magma hardens, it is rock so hard you cannot smash it with anything but the heaviest sledge hammer. It is new rock, has not been weathered.

however, defining point #3 shows upwhen you move a few miles to the WNW, and you have another collection of volcanos with their tops sticking out of the ocean...Maui, Molekai, and Lani.... and in between? an underwater depression between them which is a great place for whales to have their families in a relatively protected, shallow "caldera". These three islands were apparently part of a larger island at one time.

Now go and beat your hammer on a piece of rock on either of these three islands and you find that rock breaks easily, with a simple hammer, no sledge required.

Why? these three islands are millions of years older than the Big Island, and have been subjected to much more weathering, including rain, and the freeze thaw cycle of expansion/contraction at the extreme elevation the tallest mts reach, which breaks down the structure of the magmatic rocks.

The astronomical observatories on the summits of Haleakala and Mona Kea have such precise instruments (including enhanced GPS) that they have measured their own "continental drift" over the recent several years, and the distance these islands are from the hotspot under the NE corner of theBig Island, correlates in linear fashion with their radiometric dates, AND with the relative friability of their rocks.

Now visit Oahu...and climb up into the mts...you can break up the rock with a kitchen knife it is so soft and "decayed".....

Why? because this island is millions of years older again, and has been subject to much more weathering than the previous islands.....in addition, the mountains have been weathered and eroded down to much lower altitudes.

The last main tourist Island is Kauai, and here you can run your fingers thru the rock and break it down. The ease with which the rock turns to soil has made this the "garden Isle", with the most vegetaion of all the islands, and where the Dino movie was filmed....

Why? again, it is the farthest from the hotspot under the Big Island, and therefore is millions of years older, and after so many more years of weathering, it proves the standard theory of plate tectonics is gradual, slow, and the rate of movement can be measured both by the time distance computation as well as the simple weathering of the rocks!!!

Travel to the NW beyond Kauai out the archepelego and the volcanoes themselves have weathered down closer to ocean level, while the coral rings have grown with ocean levels, making for coral atols remaining as the proof that this string of islands results from the slow, gradual movement of the ocean floor over the hotspot.

Not that long ago, Robert Ballard in his Alvin sub discovered a new volcano being born deep in the ocean just east of the currently active Kiluea...named Loihi...it is growing by volcanic action underwater the same way it is presumed all the othter islands have done....as the oceanic crust slowly moves over the "hotspot"....

the same motion can be observed in the N. American continent, which itself is moving toward the West, causing the Pacific plate to be "subducted" under our WestCoast, and which causes the string of volcanos along the Pac NW....

again, there seems to have been a hotspot involved...as the continent moved westerly over it, it has burned its signature into the surface as volcanic activity in Wash state, across Idaho (craters of the Moon, and up the Snake River valley) and now seems to be located under Yellowstone.

The worry is that since radio dating of major eruptions along this chain of volcanic activity indicates a periodicity of 600,000+ yrs, and since the last time Yellowstone blew was well over 600 kyo, scientists are concerned that we might be in for another earth shattering event if, as, and as soon as the Yellowstone SuperVolcano blows again.

Neither Ussher, EGW, Marsh, Price, nor the writers of the ancient stories collected into the Old Test had access to the tools we have today to measure and understand all this. No need to blame them for their outdated "ignorance"...but how long must WE continue to "ignore" what is now so easy to understand?

where did the Ca come from?

Where does evolution say the crustaceans got it from? Same place I guess.

Dear Courtenay,

I'm sorry if I offended you, but if you will look at the language John used - "real scientists," etc., it is pejorative. People like Leonard Brand and Harold Coffin are "real scientists" who have published widely. Even if you don't agree with them, you ought to read their articles on the Coconino Sandstone and the Yellowstone Petrified Forest that have appeared in the journal "Geology." Apparently, the editors of "Geology" regard them as "real scientists" who have conducted valid research. I wish only the best for John,
but let's speak kindly to one another - without insults or pejorative language. Truth can afford to be fair!

Courtenay, it is well known that Biblical genealogies are often deliberately abbreviated. For example, the genealogy of Christ in Matt 1 omits four kings of Judah: Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, and Jehoiakim. The fact that the genealogies of Gen 5 and 11 each contain exactly ten names suggests that they have been similarly stylized. Their purpose is to trace a line of descent, not to provided us with a complete chronology or list of ancestors.

Please be aware that I am not a professional scientist. I am actually a pastor. But I have taken fairly extensive science courses in colllege, including a number of geology courses. I have also read widely in geology and done field work in this science. My point is that I am aware of the data and how geology operates. I am not trying to be dishonest, but I really do not find the uniformitarian paradigm all that convincing. As a matter of fact, I find significant evidence (e.g. paraconformities, extremely widespread deposits, etc.) that the Phanerozoic fossil record was laid down catastrophically. Are there difficulties with the Flood Geology paradigm? Sure there are! But there are also difficulties with the Uniformitarian paradigm that are often swept under the rug. Can a Biblical world view bias one's reading of the scientific data? Sure it can! But so can a humanistic world view. Although I am trying to deal honestly with the geologic data, I hold a different view of natural history than the mainstream one.

Do I think you should resign your SDA membership? No! I see no need for this, unless you are determined to force your views on the rest of us. Please be aware that I am not tring to force my views on you either. And if you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, I look forward to seeing you in heaven. Remember - we serve an extremely loving God, and His grace covers a multitude of errors - your errors and mine!

The situation with Adventist institutions of higher learning does seem different to me. The overwhelming assumption both within and without the SDA denomination is that they stand for creationism. So it seems dishonest when certain professors at these institutions try to sneak evolution in through the back door. If some of our institutions want to teach evolution, they should have the guts to say so publicly.
On the other hand, if a college or university publicly presents itself as creationist, professors who believe in evolution should seek employment elsewhere. That is only fair, and it is the honest thing to do.

Bob,

"The situation with Adventist institutions of higher learning does seem different to me. The overwhelming assumption both within and without the SDA denomination is that they stand for creationism. So it seems dishonest when certain professors at these institutions try to sneak evolution in through the back door. If some of our institutions want to teach evolution, they should have the guts to say so publicly.
On the other hand, if a college or university publicly presents itself as creationist, professors who believe in evolution should seek employment elsewhere. That is only fair, and it is the honest thing to do."

Bob, I concur. This however does not mean "evolution" can not be taught as an academic course. It does mean that profs won't say it is a "fact" that "human origins" occured by natural selection rather than by the direct creation of mankind approx. 7-10 K ago.( considering difficulties of genealogical dating) This should not in my view preclude the possibility of an old earth and "young creation."

regards,
pat

I would just like to add that I've always been confused by those who say the big bang and the universe can be very old but life can't be. Genesis is very clear that God created the sun, moon and stars during creation week and hung them in the firmament (whatever that was). I can see how one could wiggle around about the age of the earth but really, Genesis seems to indicate that the earth was just kind of there in something but there certainly weren't stars etc. around it.

Maybe, to be consistent, they could argue that all the stars except the ones around earth were created early and then God hung the sun and moon and visible stars around during creation week. But really, I don't get the motivation for acknowledging the science that brings us an old universe when it directly contradicts Genesis, and then tossing that science when it comes to life.
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Dear Beth,

Careful exegesis of Genesis 1 indicates the the events of the six days begin with the statement "And God said." We first find this statement in verse 3. Hence Gen 1:1-2 describe a chaotic situation which preceded creation week - for how long we are not told. The prepositional phrase "in the beginning" may be in the Hebrew construct state, in which case, the proper translation would be: "In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty . . ." If this is a construct state (which is by no means certain), the ex nihilo creation of the heavens and the earth is not even mentioned in Gen 1. But regardless of whether Gen 1:1 presents us with a construct or absolute state, the heavens and earth clearly precede creation week.

The situation with the firmament and the sun, moon, and stars also deserves careful scrutiny. The Hebrew term "raqia" is extremely fluid in meaning. It could connote a solid firament or dome, but the meaning can just as well be "expanse," with no implication of solidity.

It is true that most translators have Gen 1:16 saying that God "made" the two great luminaries of the fourth day, but once again, the Hebrew term "asah" is very fluid. It is just as acceptable to render "asah" as "established," and even "prepared" or "brought forth" would be OK. If you can get a copy of the Brown, Driver, Briggs "Hebrew And English Lexicon" and carefully read pages 793-795, you will see just how fluid "asah" really is. The Hebrew term "nathan" in verse 17 is also quite fluid in meaning. Most English translations of verse 17 have God "setting" the luminaries in the raqia, but the basic root meaning of "nathan" is "give."
So the translation "God presented them" would probably be slightly superior to "God set them."

Gen 1:14-19 seems to be addressing the establishment of the luminaries in the sky as time keepers on the fourth day. It could also imply their ex nihilo creation at that time, but that is not stated explicitly in the Hebrew. Please note that according to Job 38:9, the darkness that enshrouded the primordial earth was due to an extremely thick cloud cover, which was subsequently cleared away. This may have paved the way for the luminaries to appear in the sky in their role as time keepers on the fourth day. We simply are not told enough to determine this point with accuracy.

I actually believe this ambiguity of language in Gen 1 points to its inspiration by God. It was God's intention to present us with a sketch of His creative work in this chapter, not with a complete cosmology. And by utilizing terms that are fluid in meaning, the Holy Spirit has provided us with a creation account that accurately fits both ancient and modern cosmology. I believe it is likely that the ancient Israelites perceived the earth to be flat, with a solid dome for a sky and with the luminaries attached to this dome. And the language of Gen 1 fits this cosmology. But be aware that certain later Bible writers probably believed in a spherical earth. By observing the curved shadow that the earth casts on the moon during lunar eclipses, Greek astronomers proved conclusively that the earth is spherical about 300 BC. (The idea that everyone before Columbus believed in a flat earth is a modern myth.) And by the first century AD, this was common knowledge among educated Greeks and Romans. The Greeks even had a name for the supposed people who lived on the other side of the earth. They called them the "Antipodes." Now remember that Luke was a highly educated, Greek physician. He was immersed in this culture, and I have no doubt that he believed in a spherical earth. Paul probably did as well. But the language of Gen 1 is fluid enough to accomodate this. And it can even accomodate our modern cosmology. I really find this amazing, and I believe it points to divine inspiration.

pat

Thanks. It is obvious that a recent creation was effected on an old earth. Moreover, Adam lost not only his innocence but his dominion. That should explain a lot of anomolies and downward distorted diversity of original "kinds" including man. Some time ago I submitted the poem The Man with the Hoe that touched on man's own involvement in the decline of his fellow man.

I also agree that the prevailing views should be presented at a collegiate level. However, proeslytizing should not occur in an institution with a contrary mission or agenda. Christian Evolutionist is an oxymorom. Tom

Bob, I concur. This however does not mean "evolution" can not be taught as an academic course. It does mean that profs won't say it is a "fact" that "human origins" occured by natural selection rather than by the direct creation of mankind approx. 7-10 K ago.( considering difficulties of genealogical dating) This should not in my view preclude the possibility of an old earth and "young creation."
___________________________________________________
I also concur!

Dear John Alfke,

I am aware of the data you are presenting. But what you fail to realize is that most of this data can be incorporated just as easily into a fairly rapid, catastrophic paradigm. Even the weathering of the rocks would be predicted by catastrophism. My only real difference with you is your uniformitarian assumption that all this necessarily required millions of years. That the plates are currently moving slowly I don't dispute. But the present is not the key to the past! As David Read correctly points out above, there is significant evidence for faster plate movements in the past.
However, in order to accomodate the uniformitarian paradigm, this data is being ignored.

Your one error that I would gently point out involves the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate. This is a transform boundary, and no subduction is currently taking place here. The plates are sliding past one another. Hence there are frequent earthquakes, but no active volcanos.

The situation with the Cascade volcanos in the Pacific northwest is another matter. Here the small Juan De Fuca Plate is being subducted under the North American Plate, and this results in active volcanism.

"CaCO3 can be precipitated directly out of sea water"

Yes, but you can't precipitate out something that is not in the water to start with.

Now you have to explain the chemistry behind the precipitation - where did the Ca come from? Where did the CO2 come from? What quantities were needed? At what rate did they have to dissolve into the water?
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Dear Bevin,

You have raised some excellent questions that provide a plethora of geological research opportunities. Unfortunately, a short blog cannot deal with these issues in detail.

But are you aware that there are extensive Pre-Cambrian limestones? These limestones were laid down before the Cambrian Explosion, when shelled marine organisms first appear in the fossil record. Hence it would seem that the origin of these limestones is non-biological. And the erosion of Pre-Cambrian limestone could have provided the dissolved Calcium and Carbonate ions to precipitate later limestone. This would especially be the case in an enormous hyrological catastrophe, when extensive erosion of Pre-Cambrian limestone would be occurring.

"Precambrian limestone"...

its discovery and very existence seems to prove the evolutionist point, that life is very old!!! that limestone came from life processes, biological activity, mega years ago.

more evidence of death before sin? at least, the widespread, mega death of gazillions of tiny marine animals long before 4004 BC?

http://symposium.chem.upenn.edu/participants.html

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"Even the weathering of the rocks would be predicted by catastrophism. "

but not the linear progression of age, distance, weathering, and coral growth, all correlated in the hawaiian Archepelego...

go back and STUDY this link!!!!
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html

the farther away from the hotspot due to the plate movement, the older the island, the shorter the mountains (having been eroded), and the softer the rocks (having been weathered), and the more coral there is as ring-around-the-island (since it takes time for coral to grow).

Isn't it absurd to believe that this correlation would occur in a 150 day rapid plate movement?

the radio dates, and the time distance computations verified by GPS prove that the uniform rate has been maintained.... and the friability of the rock and the growth of the coral all confirm.

in addition, as the increasing age of the islands out the chain to where the volcanos themselves have been eroded down to water line, the coral remains, some 75 million years out, just to the "bend" in the archepelego. This shows that coral has been growing as a ring around the eroding islands possibly that long!!! there's another proof of multi-million year old life!!! coral.

in addition, coral grows in diurnal cycles...and ancient fossil corral shows that its growth hundreds of millions of years ago corresponds to a more rapid rotation of the earth, with shorter days, which is exactly what mathematical analysis of the moons earlier orbit nearer the earth would have caused way back then!!!

"the science that brings us an old universe when it directly contradicts Genesis, and then tossing that science when it comes to life."

What is meant by "contradicting Genesis"? There is the unstated assumption made that Genesis was written directly by God. To place Genesis equal to God is to asuume that God wrote Genesis and nothing could be further from the truth. It was all written by
humans and none were present at creation. They wrote of life only as they could perceive it, notwith 21st century knowledge. Why should that be so difficult to understand? Is the church moving faster toward Bibliolatry?

There are many other "origin" stories, of which the Hebrew version is only one. There are also several stories of a flood. What makes the Hebrew story the only true one? Genesis was related orally long before it was written, and not until at least 1,000 B.C. was anything written that we have in the Bible today. These stories predate the Hebrew one, so it is not unreal to believe that
these earlier stories were adopted and partially rewritten by the Hebrews. No one can identify the first or original one.

Why not believe all the answers and remedies for infidelity, leprosy, and other stories yet accept certain ones as being the only true ones? There is not one reading or contributing to this discussion who accepts all of the Bible literally, just as it was written: every one is selective in choosing what she feels is "true."

The question of our educators should be: Do we want them to teach "truth" as some individuals define that word? Do we want them to honestly explore science and the latest discoveries, or rely solely on Genesis for all their scientific studies? Why not
if one proclaims the Bible? There would be no use of scientific texts but simply use the Bible as the textbook for all study of life on this earth and in the universe. It would make a short course: accept that, and then go on to theology, or whatever is desired.

How is it recommended by those who rail at the present situation in teaching science to pursue these studies? Should they use only
ID or Creationist books? It would be no different than demanding the religious professors use only the Bible an expound on it with no other books used. Soon, one might do as they did several hundred years ago: teach from the only textbook: the Bible. Accreditation flies out the window and there goes the majority of the students and the revenue and tuition and teachers. Only a shell would be left. Literalists and fundamentalists would be satisfied?

"Precambrian limestone"...

its discovery and very existence seems to prove the evolutionist point, that life is very old!!! that limestone came from life processes, biological activity, mega years ago.
________________________________________________________
Quite impossible John. Evolutionists themselves admit that these limestones were deposited long before there were any shelled creatures in the oceans. Bacteria do not produce limestone! PEACE!

Dear Elaine,

The idea that nothing in the Bible was written prior to 1000 BC is sheer bias. There isn't one scintilla of evidence to back this statement up, and even proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis do not make such dogmatic claims. They admit that there were traditions even before J,E,D, and P.

In research, all of us come with presuppositions. You are opposed to Genesis influencing science in any way. But why should humanism influence science? We can argue this back and forth without solving it. And yes, some of us actually have the audacity to believe that God wrote Genesis - in the sense of inspiring its thoughts. Some of us also believe that science and theology should interact and influence one another, without being kept in airtight compartments.

Furthermore, accredited Adventist schools have taught creationism for years and continue to do so. When you raise the specter of losing accreditation, you are building a straw man. The dogmatic teaching of evolution is not a requirement for accreditation. All that is required is that students be exposed to the theory and understand it.

Bob Helm:

I am immensely enjoying your posts; you seem to really know your science and apologetics. I hope you will get a copy of my book, "Dinosaurs - An Adventist View," and share any feedback with me. Seems to me like you should write a book on this topic. It also seems that, with a handful of exceptions, Adventist science Ph.Ds are not participating in the defense of the Adventist view of origins, and it falls to people like us to do that work.

Bob wrote:

"The idea that nothing in the Bible was written prior to 1000 BC is sheer bias. There isn't one scintilla of evidence to back this statement up, and even proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis do not make such dogmatic claims. They admit that there were traditions even before J,E,D, and P."

No one can determine who or when the earliest parts of the Bible were written. Literary, textual and contextual analysis has given us probable dates, but no reputable scholar still maintains the long held belief that Moses wrote all the Torah.

Admittedly, there were traditions even in preliterate societies. That is indisputable. Since "nothing in the Bible was written prior to 1000 B.C., please substantiate that statement. Honesty demands that there is nothing other than the propensity of Bible scholars who have submitted claims based on time. Is there scholarly consensus that there was writing of the Bible prior to 1000 B.C.? Certainly, there were "traditions" as in all cultures, that predate written evidence.

Yes, there are no requirements that creationism be taught exclusively, only that the predominant theory of evolution be introduced to students. If creationism were to be taught exclusively (to satisfy the fundamentalists) it is doubtful that accreditation would continue.

Bob wrote: "Quite impossible John. Evolutionists themselves admit that these limestones were deposited long before there were any shelled creatures in the oceans. Bacteria do not produce limestone! PEACE!"

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V6X-3X6B677-3...

"Thus, apart from (probably mythical) purely evaporitic and autotrophic ones,

most limestones must be considered as principally of heterotrophic bacterial origin

. As the carbon of limestones is issued from organic matter, bacterial heterotrophic carbonatogenesis appears as a fundamental phenomenon in the relationships between atmosphere and lithosphere during the biogeological evolution of the Earth."

/Bevin

Furthermore, I doubt that these limestones to have been the origin of the material that precipitated out during the Flood fails for two reasons

(a) The limestone did NOT precipitate out - it is the crushed remains of shells, not precipitate

(b) There would not have been enough time to dissolve and precipitate the required volume of material

/Bevin

Dear Elaine,

I have never suggested that only creationism be taught in Adventist schools. The usual approach has been to teach both creation and evolution, and allow students to weigh the validity of both models. This is all I'm asking for. And this has never jeopardized accreditation.

As far as the authorship of the Pentateuch is concerned, it should be obvious that Moses did not write the final chapter of Deuteronomy, as it describes his death. I don't know if you remember the details of our earlier discussions about this issue, but I have long favored what has been called the Supplementary Hypothesis. I see Moses as the author of an underlying document that has been supplemented or redacted by later writers. Although this is a conservative position, it probably won't pass muster with true fundamentalists because it makes careful use of redaction criticism, which they reject.

Proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis usually argue that there were older traditions behind the four documents attributed to J,E,D, and P, but whether these were oral or written is left as a open question. Since even these liberal scholars regard the existence of older written traditions as an open question, I fail to understand your vehemence in asserting that nothing in the Bible was written prior to 1000 BC.

I really have to question David Read's observation about Bob Helm. Just reading the stuff on limestone I can't believe what he is saying. As if limestone needs shelled creatures to be produced. Zoo plankton is abundant source for calcium carbonate. Why just think of the white cliffs of Dover. I suppose someone who tries to say everything was caused by the flood may say that God rounded up all the diatoms and stuck them over in England in a couple hundred foot piles in the flood but it is still not very believable.

Ron

Dear Bevin,

Thank you for the article on the production of carbonate by bacteria. Clearly, this is a step in the production of limestone. However, limestone itself is composed of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Note that the carbonate ion, which can be produced by bacteria, unites with the calcium ion to form CaCO3. From what I have read calcium carbonate itself is not produced by bacteria. It has two common sources: the shells of marine organisms and chemical precipitation. Since marine organisms with shells are not present in Pre-Cambrian rocks (except possibly at the very top of the Pre-Cambrian), it would seem that Pre-Cambrian limestone is the result of chemical precipitation.

I agree with you that many limestones are composed of shells, which are often microscopic. However, many other limestones
may be chemical precipitates. It seems to me that the waters of the world-wide Flood would be filled with Ca and CO3 ions and that chemical precipitation of limestone would have occurred on a massive scale.

I admit that I have just made several assumptions, which appear to be logical to me, but which may be faulty. If you can show me clearly that I am in error, I'll be happy to retract what I have said. Thanks for your thoughtful dialogue.

Dear Ron,

Diatoms are not bacteria, and of course their microscopic skeletons can produce limestone. I have never questioned that. So what am I saying that you find so hard to believe?

Please at least consider the following statement from Dr. Ariel Roth: "Geologists often assume that the accumulation of thick layers of tiny microscopic organisms such as the White Cliffs of Dover in England required lengthy periods of time. But such accumulations can occur rapidly. Along the coast of Oregon, a three-day storm of high winds and rain deposited 10-15 centimeters of microscopic diatoms for a distance of 32 kilometers. I have seen a well-preserved fossil bird and many fish in thick beds of microscopic diatoms near Lompoc, California. A whale was also found in this deposit. Such preservation would require rapid burial before disarticulation of the organism would occur. Evidently microscopic organisms can be deposited rapidly."
("Origins: Linking Science and Scripture," p. 201)

I am immensely enjoying your posts; you seem to really know your science and apologetics. I hope you will get a copy of my book, "Dinosaurs - An Adventist View," and share any feedback with me. Seems to me like you should write a book on this topic. It also seems that, with a handful of exceptions, Adventist science Ph.Ds are not participating in the defense of the Adventist view of origins, and it falls to people like us to do that work.
_____________________________________________________________
Dear David,

Is your book available in the ABCs yet? I would be happy to share my feedback with you. Does the book provide any contact information for you? About writing a book myself - I am not a professional scientist, and there are certainly limits to my knowledge. It's one thing to make mistakes in blogs, but it's quite another to do so in print. I guess I hesitate because I have seen a number of books on these subjects that make serious errors, and I don't want to lead anyone astray.

from: http://www.geologyshop.co.uk/chalk.htm

quote:
the 'White Cliffs of Dover.' (are) comprised of a sequence of mainly soft, white, very fine-grained extremely pure limestones which are commonly 300-400 m thick. These rocks consist mainly of coccolith biomicrites formed from the skeletal elements of minute planktonic green algae, associated with varing proportions of larger microscopic fragments of bivalves, foraminifera and ostracods.

The planktonic coccoliths and many of the foraminifera (the planktonic species) lived floating in the upper levels of the oceans. When they died their skeletons sank to the bottom, combining with the remains of bottom living bivalves, foraminifera and ostracods, to form the main components of the Chalk.
end quote

interestingly, the chalk layers on both sides of the Channel, Dover in England, and Calais in France are identical.
Leading to a new geological hypothesis that at one time they were joined....all part of a much earlier deposit... but a melt water lake in the north sea basin overflowed from glacial melt, and broke thru an ice dam , and the 20 mile wide english channel was quickly gouged out in a catastrophe of Biblical proportions as the basin poured out.....

the reason there is oil in the N. Sea today is thought to date back to that early basin filled by the Rhine River with silt and sediment which interlaced with algal mats which, when "cooked" and Pressured under many overposed layers, over huge periods of time, (eons!!) became oil.

just a theory so far. but is it any harder to believe than
resorting to a miracle? such as: God spoke giga beyons and beyons of algae and phytoplankton into existance? then killed them and buried them and their oily bodies with sediments sometime between 4004 BC and 2348 BC... and in that short time, all those micro animals were sacrificed, heated, and compressed to make oil? under what is now the North Sea?

if SDA's are to limit their university students to theological explanations of how the world works, after firing all the bio profs and never even offering any geology courses, any graduates of SDA schools might make good pastors to lead the flock (of sheep?), but then we would all have to thank non SDA's who have studied geology at secular universities for their knowledge in searching for the oil we need to power our civilization.

an interesting aside: there are alternating layers of limestone, chalk marl, and impermeable clay marl under England running under France all the way up to the base of the Alps.... When snow melts in the Alps, some enters the limestone aquifer, becomes trapped underground between the impermeable layers under the French midlands.

When you drill a fairly shallow (under 75ft) well in the French town of "ARS", you break thru the upper layer of impermeable clay and reach into the limestone aqufer, the water bubbles out of the ground... under pressure and carbonated!!! from the higher aquifer all the way back to the Alps. This is called an "AR-tesian" well, and we have inherited the name for a very productive drilled well.

but those alternating layers of limestone and clay could not have been laid down during a churning 150 day flood!!!
they are too level and even.

I have a fossil bivalve shell from the 6000 ft level from up in the limestone French Alps!!! when I showed it to the SDA President of Collonges the day after I collected it, he admitted that it was probably deposited there millions of years ago, before tectonic forces raised up the mts.

When I asked him why it wasn't a result of Noah's flood, he wondered out loud if that flood wasn't just a local event in the Middle East....thereby setting me on my search for the truth, whether inside or OUTside the SDA system of beliefs.

for any who still hope/believe all the limestone in the world was created during the few days of Noah's flood...

check out Ruby Cave, and wonder how many tiny marine animals had to be sacrificed to make over a thousand vertical feet of rock!!!!

http://www.rubyfalls.com/geology.htm

if 1000 vertical feet is not enuf to convince you there are too many feet of limestone in the world to have been accumulated during the year long flood,
then take a dive over the edge of Swallow Cave in Mexico:
1,400 verts of limetone!!!

go ahead...take the leap of faith!!!!
http://www.aerialextreme.com/stock_video/

Dear John,

The last time I checked, Loma Linda University offers a geology major, so it's not really true to say that Adventist schools do not offer any geology courses.

One further point - I keep reading about a 150 day Flood in these posts. But Genesis 7 and 8 speak of a Flood that lasted for slightly over a year, with water "prevailing" or "increasing" on the earth for 150 days. Apparently, the Flood crested at the end of 150 days, but it certainly did not end then.

Bob:

My book isn't in all the ABCs yet, but is in most of them. If it isn't in yours, please ask them to order it. It is also available on Amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Adventist-David-C-Read/dp/0982030509/ref....

If you really wanted to write a book, it would be almost disqualifying. That you don't, and that you are modest and careful, and don't want to make any crass errors (as we've all seen in some creationist books) just makes you the right man to write such a book. As I said before, even the creationist scientists are not doing the job of apologetics in this area (and it has become obvious that the creationists Ph.Ds are outnumbered by the Darwinists even within the SDA college system). Some few of them are doing the research, which is helpful, but they aren't doing the writing (except Brand), and frankly they probably aren't the best writers. Non-scientists tend to be better writers, as Stephen Jay Gould admitted.

If you write it, I will seriously consider publishing it under the Clarion Call Books imprint, which is a company I formed to publish my dinosaur book.

John Alfke wrote that the president of the SDA school at Collonges confided to him a belief in long ages geology. This is the second such story to be posted in this thread, as one Bruce Weaver stated that when he was in college, one of the GRI staffers basically told him that a young earth model was indefensible. Weaver has since left the SDA church. I don't understand how men in positions of responsibility could be so spineless and weak. They have much to answer for.

The young earth model is defensible and there are all sorts of very grave problems with Darwinism and Lyellism (long ages geology). When mainstream scientists find something that doesn't seem to fit their model, they don't throw their model out. When Mary Schweitzer went to John Horner and said, "I've found soft dinosaur tissues, complete with blood vessels and red blood cells" do you think Horner said, "well, that's it, the creationists were right all along, these dinosaurs aren't anywhere near 65 million years old"?? Um, no, he didn't say that, but if he were made out of the same stuff as that college president and that GRI staffer, he would have. Why can't creationists have the same unshakable confidence in their model as the Darwinists do? Why can't we keep calmly building our model, making it more detailed and more rigorous? Its all a matter of argument anyway. Anyone who says he knows with certainty is delusional.

Dear David,

I think creationists become spineless because they are a minority that faces vigorous and often extremely caustic opposition. After a while, people get tired of being called names, and they give up. John Horner doesn't have to face that kind of pressure.

Nevertheless, Mary Schweitzer's discovery of soft T Rex tissue complete with with blood vessels and red blood cells has been widely reported in mainstream scientific literature.
It staggers my mind to think that this kind of stuff would survive for 70 million years. I will freely admit that the creationist model faces difficulty with certain scientific data, but the evolutionist model simply cannot deal with data like this. It has no explanation. So if people want to call us names, so be it. Those who really love truth and love science can afford to be fair.

I'm getting the feeling that you actually want me to write a book. But do you have any suggestions as to what I should write about? I ask this in sincerity because we have some excellent books already in this area, but I'm not sure how many people read them. Also remember that although I have done some study in natural sciences, my real training is in theology.

One more question - does Clarion Call Books imprint have a web site? Thanks again, David, for your encouraging words, and God bless you!
______________________________________________________

What is more, I wish the best for everyone else who has posted blogs on this web site, including those of you who don't agree with me. All of you make me think and examine my views more carefully. Thanks!

Dear David,

Every time I try to visit your sight I get the following warning that your site may be infected

WARNING: VISITING THIS SITE MAY HARM YOUR COMPUTER!
The website at www.clarioncallbooks.com appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that hosts malware can infect your computer.

For detailed information about the problems with this site, visit the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for www.clarioncallbooks.com.

Following the Link I get the below warning
What is the current listing status for clarioncallbooks.com?
Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 1 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-06-03, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-06-03

Please check your sight I would like to visit but don’t want to risk infecting my computer

Bob:

If you click on my name in red, it will take you to the clarioncallbooks.com site, BUT, as Courtenay just pointed out, the site is currently infected by a trojan horse. I've spoken to the hosting company, and the problem should be fixed within 24 hours. If you have good, up-to-date anti-virus software, it will block the trojan horse from downloading and you can go there wihout fear. This is the second time in 12 months the site has become infected, and I'm in the process of transitioning the domain to another webhost.

I was blogging on creation evolution issues sporadically from mid-2006 to late 2008, but haven't posted anything on origins issues in about 18 months. The site does have 3 sample chapters from the book, along with the cover, my picture and various other things.

Bob:

In my last post I got so caught up with the website issue, that I forgot to address your question of what you should write about. That's something no man can tell you; the Holy Spirit will lead you and impress you as to what you should write about.

I will give you some advice, however. First, I think there have been many creationists books that try to cover the whole waterfront, and we probably don't need another such book for a while. (I'm criticizing myself here, because even though my book is heavily focused on the dinosaurs, in retrospect I think I wasted too many pages on general creation/evolution issues. Clifford Goldstein stated this, as nicely as he could, in his review of my book at Adventist Today's website.)

Second, there have been many, very many, books critiquing Darwinism and arguing for biological design. As Adventists, we have many allies on this issue. Even an irreligious man can see design in the liviing world, and even the most hardened Darwinist will be forced to admit that science has no plausible "just so" story to explain abiogenesis, the origin of the first living cell.

We have many fewer allies on geological issues, i.e., a short age chronology vs. a Lyellian (long ages) chronology. I have a strong conviction that the real fight is over geology, and that that's where we should be focusing our efforts. Moreover, you seem to have a real affinity for this subject matter, e.g., your calm explanation of how limestone isn't necessarily formed of the achingly slow accumulation of the detritus of marine organisms.

So I guess I would say, write about geology, and keep it focused like a laser beam. If I had it to do over again, my book would be more focused, and would not cover as much as it did. This takes self-discipline (more than I had, unfortunately) but the end product will be better, and more useful to others.

Re: my website, I'll post when the coast is clear of all viral beasties. Reading over some of my blogging in 2006-08, it really is a worthwhile read, and I encourage everyone to visit.

There would not have been enough time to dissolve and precipitate the required volume of material

Based on what temperatures, saturations, turbulence, acidity...? So emphatic! No, no, no it must be impossible!

Chris, we are talking about precipitating hundreds of feet of limestone - maybe even thousands - out of water that (a) has a boat floating on it, (b) has people breathing the air that wafts over it, (c) has fish swimming in it, (d) produces limestone that looks like it has come out of an ocean rather like todays, and (e) the limestone has fossils in it.

Go do the chemistry. Find me a plausible temperature, etc. that could do this.

/Bevin

Bevin,

Throw in the Hand of God protecting the remnant of life on the planet, in a craft that I can only think of as like the TARDIS! How do you plan to falsify that? I don't know where to start to do the calculations, yet you claim it is impossible.

You are the one who corrected me, and rightly so, that science can not prove something impossible. i.e. when discussing resurrection, you still have faith, because science can not say that even resurrection is impossible. Proving something impossible is beyond the investigative reach of science.

Thanks David!

Go do the chemistry. Find me a plausible temperature, etc. that could do this.
______________________________________________________
Dear Bevin,

Doing the chemistry and the math can surely help, provided we get all the parameters right. And provided there aren't too many parameters to perform accurate calculations

But this is a far better suggestion that simply saying that it's impossible. For many years, the geological community told Harlen Bretz that the channeled scablands could not have formed catastrophically. Respected geologists said it was utterly impossible. And given their uniformitarian presuppositions, I can understand. I had the opportunity to camp in the Grand Coulee for two nights a few years ago, and this is an enormous canyon that is carved through solid basalt. But, as a matter of fact, it was formed catastrophically - in a regional ice age flood, not the Genesis Flood. This should be a lesson to us - that we should be cautious about making claims that events are impossible in catastrophes.

Chris.

You are requiring a God that

creates a world that looks like it has had life on it for millions of years, if the current rules have applied over that time

but

has changed the rules a few thousand years ago.

In short, your model requires God to be a liar. God is not a liar. Your model is broken. Science can't prove your model wrong, but your model is unacceptable to people who believe God does not create planet-sized deceptions.

/Bevin

Every so often a reply just gets lost....

We are talking about huge areas of hundreds of feet thick layers of limestone.

The Roth quote above about depositions on a beach after a storm describe what happens when many square miles of ocean has its contents dumped on a beach. What he does not mention is that this is MOVEMENT not CREATION of calcium carbonate. It is easy to create a layer in one place by moving it, without any additional chemical transform, from one place to another.

We all have some feel for the dissolve rates for CaCO3 - from the simple fact that there is megatons of it being rained on every day, and other megatons of it on the bottom of the ocean. The rain does not instantly dissolve it, nor does the sea.

It some change in ocean temperatures/acidity/... increased the dissolve rate, it would also dissolve the stuff that was being newly deposited. If the conditions were different at the dissolve site to the deposit site, then there can't have been a huge movement of water from one to the other - because that would have removed the difference.

Combine this with the info John Alfke cited above. The YEC have not provided a plausible explanation of the origin of the limestone.

You are back to Chris's "the laws have changed" => "God is a liar". God is not a liar. The laws have not changed. The limestone has been deposited over millions of years. There are fossils in the limestone. Life has been around on earth for millions of years.

Time for Nic to deploy his parachute.

/Bevin

ps: but he won't :-)

/Bevin

Chris

How many Tardis's do you know are made of Gopher Wood AND PITCH?

If it was going to be miraculously preserved by God's hand against truely extreme conditions, WHY THE PITCH?

/Bevin

WHY THE PITCH?

there might be a verrrry interesting reason....

a thousand or more years before the story of Moses was written down, an interesting tale was told and writ in cuneiform clay tablets about Sargon of Akkadia.

Impossible to know if it was true, or if he or one of his followers concocted the story to glorify Sargon's rise from lowly status to grand general and leader of his nation.....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=legend+of+sargon&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1

Born to lowly status, Sargons mother made a reed basket, and floated baby Sargon down the Great River (Euphrates)... where he was picked up by a member of the kings household, and raised as their own to become a great general and leader...untimately became the King of Akkadia.

Since this was situated in what is now SE Iraq, we know that the presense of underground oil might have allowed for surface "seeps", which in the sun, cook into "Bitumen", which is what Sargons mother is said to have used to waterproof his reed basket.

Over a thousand years later when the story of Moses was written, either:

A) the story miraculously happened again, as inspired by the hand of God,

or

B) the story was plaig...ah, er, "borrowed" from antiquity by the Hebrew writers of the story, and applied to Moses in order to also glorify him as the great leader of the hebrew nation....

only since the setting was along the Nile, which has no oil, and therefore no seeps of "bitumen", they had to modify the story to make it relevant and waterproof Moses reed basket with a local product, pine pitch.... which works as well and helps make the story believeable.

Since the story of Noah's flood may have come from the long ago Middle East legends, the writers of the Hebrew story maybe needed "PITCH" instead of "BITUMEN" to waterproof the gopherwood planking on the legendary ark.

the story of the "worldwide" flood is probably real, however... but may have resulted from Al Gore like global warming starting about 20,000 yrs before Al noticed it, and at least 19,900 yrs before the invention of the infernal combustion engine, as the earth wobbled into a warming tilt as explained by the Milankovitch Theory,

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=milankovitch+theory&btnG=Search&aq=...

This change in tilt, orbit, or eccentricity caused greater ensolation and consequently glaciers started melting, thereby raising ocean levels, and undoubtedly flooding inland estuaries, such as the Persian Gulf, at the head of which used to flow the 4 rivers of Eden!!!

The story of Eden may include a rapid flood up the Persian Gulf due to natural astronomical causes which today has filled in the Gulf by 2-300 feet deep....however, at the glacial maximum, 20kyo, the oceans were as much as 400 feet lower than today, check out the "warming" and rising sea levels which started about 19,000 yrs ago here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_level_temp_140ky.gif

Lowered ocean levels due to so much water locked up in glaciation would have left the Persian Gulf "valley" 10-20kyo as an inland, protected natural Eden, fresh watered by the confluence of 4 rivers, the Tigris, Euphrates, and two other rivers of which we only have dry wadis today, and which today angle to the Persian Gulf, and which were only found from the Space Shuttles orbiting radar in the late 80's.

check it out!!! the Garden of Eden has been found!!!
http://ldolphin.org/eden/

So, modern tools CAN be used to help "prove" stories in the Bible... tho we sometimes have to readjust our childlike, campfire-story understanding of them!