Reality vs. Dogma: Adventist Education

Thanks to Tim for passing the latest on this story along to me. As I've become increasingly detached from my Adventist past I've failed to keep up with the controversy about evolution allegedly being taught at La Sierra University. I've also failed to devote much attention to the blog (probably also a result of my increased detachment).

Recently, however, there has been a little action involving the La Sierra biology curriculum. First, a pair of articles in the Adventist Review briefly covering the pro-evolution accusations and the resulting board action. Actual details are few though the school is careful to stress its young earth creationist position and distance itself from Professor Gary Bradley who bravely says "It's very, very clear that what I'm skeptical of is the absolute necessity of believing that the only way a creator God could do things is by speaking them into existence a few thousand years ago." That is the one bright spot in the entire affair. Things rapidly go downhill with Dr. Ricardo Graham, president of the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and chairman of the Board of Trustees at La Sierra University prioritizing Seventh-Day Adventism over education.

From there things get absurd and somewhat entertaining. As of 1 June 2010, the Michigan Conference will no longer provide employee subsidy for students attending La Sierra. Money quote from the memo released:

" Resolved: To encourage each Seventh-day Adventist college and university to continue to strengthen the principles of biblical authority and faith. In support of these principles we urge continued development of educational strategies and faculties which would move these institutions to becoming centers of excellence in promoting, cultivating and defending creation science. We define creation science in the context of the recent creation week of seven ordinary, literal, historical, consecutive, contiguous twenty-four hour days of divine creation and rest as described in Genesis ".

As I've said before, I feel like I got an excellent education (not in biology) at an Adventist school. And I'm sure that the Michigan Conference is not representative of all US Adventists. But I don't see how an Adventist education can continue to be relevant when dogma is given institutional support in the face of contradictory reality.

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.

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.

Even More SDA Creationism

I was poking around the internet to see if I could find some info on the new pastor here when I came an interesting group working hard to destroy good biology instruction in Adventist Schools. I always thought I got pretty good education in the SDA system, in every area but biology. Hopefully their little petition (which the new pastor here signed) doesn't get much attention.

Not that the general conference needs any help focusing on creationism. Two articles in the latest Adventist World are devoted to focusing on literal biblical creationism. In addition to the links I posted earlier. This one is especially disturbing. It encourages parents to confront teachers and report them to the administration if they disagree with the things they teach. This could be ugly.

SDAs: Creationism emphasized

It was my intent to post some links while they were relatively new, but I guess I've been too busy. Now I'm still to busy to write anything to go with them.

Nothing surprising just the usual anti-scientific creationist stuff of the literalist six day variety. This is of course the official position of the SDA church. It just seems like we'd be getting to the point where it would be considered wise to sort of stick that sort of thing in the back corner rather than emphasize it.

Reverted has a New Post

Okay, I'm a few weeks late noticing, but Reverted is always worth a look when he posts something new.

Some SDA Anti-Science

While I was flipping through the Gleaner (Feb. 2009) yesterday, looking to see if I knew anyone in the pictures or articles, I noticed an article about a Moscow, ID creationism series. The series was hosted by Stan Hudson, whose sole qualification is that he was briefly a geology major before switching to theology. He has hosted a program on LifeTalk Radio called Sink the Beagle. I wasn't able to find the program on the schedule currently, but it seems to be the typical creationist fare. Due to the utter lack of any positive evidence they are forced to flail futilely against legitimate threats to their emotionally help opinions. The creationist is left with nothing more than wishing that Charles Darwin had been lost at sea. However reliance on wishing rather than thinking frees them from having to understand any science. This is evidenced by the title of the first lecture in the series In the Beginning, God or Hydrogen which is purported to have "addressed the theory of evolution via natural selection." I'm uncertain what hydrogen has to do with natural selection specifically.

On a positive note, they gave out free dinosaur teeth at the second meeting, which has the potential to spur honest interest in science.

Shawn Boonstra is a Slimy Liar for Jesus

I confess. I couldn't leave well enough alone. The Out of Thin Air DVD was sitting on my TV and I watched the remaining 3 sessions during dinner last night. Not much to report. Just the expected quote-mining, logical fallacies and lies. And of course Goodwin's Law was confirmed. Dr. Timothy Standish was less slimy and more knowledgeable, but did nothing to stop Boonstra's lying. Nothing new was presented as I expected, and now I'm done with it.

Out of Thin Air [chapter 1]

I just watched the first sermon of the Out of Thin Air presentation. Not surprisingly, I was unimpressed and unsurprised at the content. There was actually very little content. The main points I was able to pick up are:
- life is meaningless without god to give us purpose.
- Darwin is wrong because evolution does not account for the origin of life.

There is nothing new to see here. We all know that life's purpose is what you choose for it to be. And the theory of evolution does not pretend to describe the origin of live. Not that the origin of life is a fruitless area of study. These standard talking points were accompanied by the usual anti-intellectual lies. As we learn more the theory of evolution is weakened. Louis Pasture proved that life cannot originate from non-life. These are either the result of willful ignorance or deliberate prevarication.

The thing that bothered me the most was a quote from George Wald. The only place I could find the quote online was from conservapedia. Which means authenticity is questionable.

When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility...Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion -- that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God...I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution." - Scientific American, August, 1954.

Assuming this is even an accurate quote, and I have my doubts since Wald has been quote mined in other fora. There are even several permutations of the quote sourced to the same article in Scientific American in on the conservapedia page. That is enough to convince me that some one has messed with Wald's words. This could ultimately be resolved by looking up the article. But as I said in my last post, one man's opinion is inconsequential to the theory of evolution. It doesn't matter if he won the 1967 Nobel Prize for Medicine. But just to give Wald the benefit of the doubt, the article he wrote for Scientific American in 1954 also includes this passage:

When one has no means of estimating the probability beforehand, it must be determined by counting the fraction of successes in a large number of trials.

Our everyday concept of what is impossible, possible or certain derives from our experience: the number of trials that may be encompassed within the space of a human lifetime, or at most within recorded human history. In this colloquial, practical sense I concede the spontaneous origin of life to be "impossible." It is impossible as we judge events in the scale of human experience.

We shall see that this is not a very meaningful concession; For one thing, the time with which our problem is concerned is geological time, and the whole extent of human history is trivial in the balance.

In other words the common conception of what is impossible is different from what can be understood scientifically. Based on this quote it would seem that Wald is not arguing for life originating spontaneously despite the evidence, but that the fact that there is life means that it must have happened at least once.

Here I Go Again

I think I managed to start myself out on an intellectually frustrating path again this week. I apparently didn't suffer enough when reading those books on biblical astronomy. Anyway, here is the story.

An Adventist co-worker and Walla Walla classmate, sent around a snarky email comment on a recent news article regarding the recent sequencing of the kangaroo genome. He is aware of my pro-science and pro-reality worldview, but copied me because he thought it would be hypocritical not to which I appreciate. I briefly replied, to question him on a few of the more egregious distortions. I was curious to see what he really thought and what was for the sake of humor. Turns out he has just watched a presentation by Shawn Boonstra called Out of Thin Air. I remember hearing about this when it came out as a satellite broadcast last fall. I remember wanting to avoid it then because I knew I'd get too riled up. I'd don't care for Boonstra's style and I was quite certain that the content would be hopelessly twisted if it even bothered to contain anything factual. Now my friend has kindly offered me the opportunity to borrow the video. I've accepted the offer because, I'd hope for similar open-mindedness should the opportunity arise to suggest some source of information to him. If not I at least have the high ground of looking at the opposite position, and knowing the dissenters will refuse to do so honestly.

From the little bit of a description I have of the program, it seems that one of the main points will be quotes from

early evolution scientists where they blatantly stated that the facts didn't support evolution, but the were choosing to not believe in God and thus had to come up with something else.

I'm not sure who this is attributed to and am skeptical about the authenticity. Fortunately, the who and what is completely irrelevant. The alleged "early evolution scientists" are not prophets. The theory of evolution stands on its own merits based on hard evidence. Science has moved on and improved on the research of the "early evolution scientists." Finding a few quotes that make creationists feel good won't change reality.

Anyway, that is the preview. Look for a report coming in next week or two.

Expelled Still Giving Me a Headache

I thought that I'd probably heard that last of Expelled. The DVD release was nothing more than a rumor, and I'd pretty much decided that I wouldn't have to watch it. Then one of Lori's old teachers saw it and put up a blog. Now I'm all worked up about it again.

I don't mind people having their opinions, but the ignorance and arrogance is disturbing. I have to say that Lori has been very cool in attempting to have a rational discussion with this guy. She sent him a link to expelled exposed. To his credit he at least clicked the link. He even seemingly read as far as the first half of the first paragraph. At that point he seemed unable to deal with the term 'anti-science propaganda' and gave up.

This is someone form Lori's past, so I don't feel like getting directly involved in the discussion. It has been amazing to see Lori exposing the errors in his thinking though. She isn't putting up with any of his distortions. Sadly, this guy is a text book true believer, so I doubt rational discussion will last too long.