Wednesday, November 25, 2009

They Never Give Up

Just for fun, pharyngula poll crashes Educate Truth. That was the group I wrote about earlier regarding the biology department at La Sierra University teaching evolution.

Fear of the Beast

Despite their claims to have the 'truth', confidence of salvation and hope in the soon return of Jesus, Adventists are still terrified of the Catholic Church and end time events. This is of course a puzzling contradiction. Are you looking forward to the end of the earth or not? I don't really expect it to make sense, nor do I feel like dwelling on it. I was forwarded an email with the latest chapter that is fueling the conspiracy fears. Of course President Obama is involved.

Apparently when President Obama met with the Pope at the time of the G-8 summit he mentioned his latest encyclical which is was summarized by Hope TV as follows:

1. A Global Government. The pope is calling for a "true world political authority" to fix the problems that plague the world. (page 67)

2. Church and State. The pope says this new political authority will make its decisions based on spiritual values. (Chapter 5)

3. The Papacy at the Head. These spiritual values cannot be derived from just any religion, since not "all religions are equal." (p 55)

4. Religion, Politics and the Economy. The church must influence all areas of society since God must have "a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions." (56)

5. Power to Enforce Law. This "political authority" must have real teeth" and "be vested with the effective power" to enforce its laws around the world. (67)

6. Control Buying and Selling. The new world governing power will institute socialistic policies for government to redistribute wealth. (chapter 3)

7. Resurgence of Labor Unions. Labor Unions are to be empowered to "play a decisive role" in the new world order. (23)

8. The Church's Goal. Pope Benedict says that this encyclical is to help achieve "The goal of the history of the human family" - to build "the universal city of God ." (7)

9. Redefining Religious Liberty. While claiming not "to interfere in any way in the politics of States," the pope redefined "liberty" as happening when the world obeys laws shaped by the Roman Church's spiritual values. According to the pope, as the church influences states to enforce its view of "truth" on others, people are set "free." "This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce." (9)

10. Immortal Souls. The non-biblical belief that man has an immortal soul helps to insure the pope's global agenda. "Man is ... God's creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul." (29)
Better start stockpiling your food and guns now. This is clearly a more dire warning of the end times than all the previous 'sure' signs /end snark/.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

SDA Creationism: The Origin of Young Earth Creationism in the USA.

Last weekend there was a big Evolutionary Biology conference at the University of Chicago. Among the speakers was Ron Numbers a former Seventh-Day Adventist. (Summary of his talk on Pharyngula) He mentioned something I had not known before. According to the talk the old earth creationism ideas of day/age and gap theory were the standard positions in the United States outside of Adventism until the 1960's. At the time there was a book written called The Genesis Flood which borrowed the SDA idea developed by Ellen White follower George MacReady Price - the Noah's flood was responsible for the entire geologic column. Since most of Christianity regarded Adventism as a cult, the SDA notion of a young earth wasn't widely accepted until introduced to mainstream Christianity by the non-Adventist who wrote The Genesis Flood.

Maybe this is common knowledge and I wasn't aware due to the fact that I was on the inside of the Adventist system. I just had know idea that the SDA church was the lone reservoir of special pseudo-science for so long.
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On a related note there was a special Creation Sabbath sermon here on October, 24. I didn't get to stay and listen, but I was hoping the audio would get posted. Looks like maybe I'll never get to see what I missed.