Tuesday, September 1, 2009

SDA Creationism gets Wider Notice

I've always believed that I got a quality science education at Walla Walla College, an Seventh-Day Adventist school. That is because I was fortunate to have some excellent professors that honestly thought science. Recently principled faculty members at some other SDA schools have been getting heat from the fundamentalist from their honesty. I stumbled across one of these crackpots awhile back.

Now, this little internal doctrinal squabble is getting some wider exposure. Since this whole thing was thoroughly covered on Pharyngula, I don't need to say more. I'm off to find that fresh topic I hope to write about someday.

4 comments:

tkh said...

If you want even more exhaustive coverage of the issue, check out the Spectrum Magazine blog. The controversy was at its hottest back in May/June, which is when Spectrum covered it. I don't know how much progress has been made since then.

Changing subjects: There is a new comic-book version of Genesis that I think you'd really like. It doesn't leave any of the stories out, and it actually has a warning on the cover about adult supervision. It's going on my list. Here's a review of it, though it is very slow since it was linked by aldaily.com.

perpetualstudent said...

Hey I ran across your comment on Pharyngula (one of my favorite blogs) and I had to check out your blog since I am an Engineer who also went to Walla Walla.

Hey Jeff! Michael Peterson here. I will admit that I haven't joined the "dark" side yet, although I may be only a few years behind you (only time will tell.) However if I listened to those on the educatetruth site, I guess I should become an athiest. According to them, you can't accept the conclusions of science and remain a Christian.

I find it interesting that every ten years or so the church has to have a witch hunt. We lived through it at Walla Walla and now it is La Sierra's turn. This is an issue that I have been monitoring closely. Is there room in the SDA church for people like me? I talked to my pastor about it once and he said there was room for diversity and then spent the next two weeks trying to convert me to YEC. I found it some what ironic and I got the same response from a post on the educatetruth site.

Anyway I hope all is well.

Reverted said...

Hi, Michael! This is Jim Edwards.

I was posting as "Be Honest" over on the educatetruth site. (I eventually decided it simply wasn't worth the wasted time and stopped.) I presume you were posting under the same name over there as you are here?

I'm delighted to hear that you, too, respect the scientific method and empirical evidence enough to accept the plain truth (rather than mere tradition)--i.e. that the Earth is clearly ancient, etc.

Atheist or not, I'm happy to see another (ex?)SDA see the scientific light.

perpetualstudent said...

Yeah I was perpetualstudent over there as well. I am still officially an Adventist, whatever that means. Ironically enough I went to an evangelistic meeting last night and I finally realized that I really don't believe much of what the church teaches anymore. I am not ready to call myself an athiest, although I love reading Pharyngula (PZ Myers) and Dawkins. I guess the best description is Thiest-Biased Seventh Day Agnostic.

The transition to accepting the scientific consensus happened later for me than some. It was a couple of years into grad school. I credit Jonathan Wells and his truly awful book, "Icons of Evolution" for my "conversion." I started to notice that all the creationist arguments were based on faulty assumptions and at least 30 years old. As you know, a lot can happen to a field in 30 years.

By the way, what are you up to now? I have been working at Intel for the last 3 years. I guess you used to work there.