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In other words, though even one
supernatural event undermines the philosophical
foundation of the whole modern scientific tradition,
the obvious existence of natural law in no way
undermines the supernatural.

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Unfortunately, for Clifford, they predict the future MUCH more often and MORE more precisely than the imprecise and unspecified hand-wave that is short age creationism.

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ROFL

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.” Newton told Bentley that “ye diurnal rotations of ye Sun & Planets as they could hardly arise from any cause purely mechanical . . . they seem to make up that harmony in ye systeme wch . . . was the effect of choice rather than of chance.” Newton later added a concluding General Scholium to the Principia in which he made the argument from design explicit, proclaiming that “This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” The final line of the theological portion of the General Scholium concludes: “And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy”.

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There could be no mistaking Newton’s commitment to the design argument when, in the second (1713) edition of Principia, he added the natural theological apologetics of the General Scholium. Not only does he assert that the finely-tuned solar system could only have come from “the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being,” and that the stellar systems were “constructed according to a similar design and subject to the dominion of One,” but he goes on to discuss the nature of God’s dominion of his creatures and creation, thus confirming that the study of nature was meant to teach us about God’s character and attributes.

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Secular huminists just cannot accept that religous people can actually be scientists

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Thus, while it is possible to be a Christian and believe in evolutionic creation, it is nearly impossible to be a Seventh-day Adventist and believe in the same.

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bevin said:

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Secular huminists just cannot accept that religous people can actually be scientists

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Science is a VERY vague term, covering everything from particle physics to geology. It is unified by the fundamental idea of trying to produce models that predict the future most of the time with a high degree of accuracy.

Certainly a person can do this, while also believing in God and miracles, because miracles that violate the models that have been developed so far don't happen frequently.

There is NOTHING in this fundamental idea that says God could not exist, Jesus could not exist, or Jesus could not be the Son of God. The models that science has developed so far allow all these to happen.

This is Clifford's first fundamental error. He does not realize that science does not preclude miracles.

Clifford's second fundamental error is to think that, to be religious, one has to accept a short-age recent creationism. This is simply not true - there are many sincere Christians who believe that the evolutionary model most accurately predicts what we find un the universe around us, and who understand that the short-age creation model as currently proposed usually can not predict what we find.

I know lots of them myself, and am in that group myself.

I know it is convenient for you to equate atheist and evolutionist but it is a false alignment.

/Bevin

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Approximately 50% of the science teachers in SDA colleges and universities disagree with you.

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I believe that our only model, when it comes to determining our doctrines and faith, has to be the Bible.

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science has shown a very poor power of predicting the future;

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I'd like to know which miracle science has ever accepted.

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There was an editorial of some controversy in my own denomination’s paper not so long ago, entitled “The Pythagoras Factor — Again,” by Clifford Goldstein. And he makes the observation that rank-and-file believers of a church have a right to expect that the pastors and the college professors in that church system hold to and support the core pillars of the faith. True, there must be academic freedom; there must be scholastic inquiry and spiritual humility as the quest for biblical knowledge continues. But it’s inappropriate, Goldstein writes, for a fictional dad named “George” to send his kid off to this Christian college, pay x dollars in tuition, and then later discover that teachers at the school, who inwardly don’t hold to the teachings of the denomination, have quietly subverted the educational process.

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Of course, once they agree that an atheist or a Satanist shouldn’t be an Adventist theology teacher or pastor, they agree that the church does have the
right to close its pulpits and classrooms to those it deems outside certain theological parameters.

Though Satanists and atheists are easy ones, what about someone who doesn’t accept a literal six-day Creation? Or who teaches that Daniel was written in the second century B.C. as opposed to the sixth? Should we have to allow someone on a theology faculty who accepts only 24 of the 27
fundamentals? Or maybe only 16 or 12 or 3? Where’s the cutoff point, because clearly there must be one somewhere (after all, one of the fundamentals deals with belief in God Himself)?

By defining the parameters of its faith, the church automatically excludes what doesn’t fit within them. To proclaim Jesus as Messiah is, by default, to place outside our parameters all stances that reject Jesus as the Messiah. To believe that God created the world in six literal 24-hour days means to reject all contradictory views (such as theistic evolution and so forth).

Again, what Adventist will tolerate an avowed Satanist in
one of our pulpits preaching nude moonlight dance rituals or
the use of black magic? But what about someone who rejects
the sixth-century date of Daniel, or a worldwide flood, or the pre-Advent judgment beginning in 1844? For me it’s hard to understand why one who rejects those teachings would even want to be an Adventist, much less teach or preach among us. But the issue isn’t if they want to; the issue is Should they even be allowed to (that is, teach or preach among us)?

Our leaders and administrators not only must define the
parameters of our faith; they have the right — even the obligation — to enforce them.

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Most columnists (I imagine) have faced this paradox: you pen (what you deem) a provocative, in-your-face piece that ultimately elicits only long dry yawns. In contrast, during an intellectual and creative torpor, you hack out what feels obvious, even bland, and you incite outrage. The latter depicts what happened with “The Pythagoras Factor” (July 26, 2001), in which I expressed a position whose
apparentness was (I thought) axiomatic to the point of boorishness: that a volunteer organization, such as our church, had the right, even the duty, to be sure that its teachers and preachers believed what we as a church claim to believe.

Hardly an epochal or pioneering notion, to be sure. However—judging by the cascade of angry letters, by the fulminations and diatribes against me on the Internet, by an article in an independent journal lambasting my position, and by a rancorous tongue-lashing in the hallowed halls of the General Conference—it’s obvious that some not only rejected my position (that our preachers and teachers should believe what we as a church believe), but thought it outrageous

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Shouldn’t George, who’s paying big bucks for his son’s education, have the assurance that those who teach his child Adventist beliefs actually believe them themselves, rather than just spouting the party line in order to keep their jobs?

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Clifford does not say it is okay to not believe some of the Fundamental Beliefs. He uses the word "or".
Then he says that the leadership has the obligation to to fire anyone who doesn't believe all of them.

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Bravus said:
Not sure that's actually a response, Shane. Does the laughter connote the idea that the laws of science *don't* predict our everyday experiences more often and more precisely than miracles? That is, are you claiming that miracles that break the laws of science occur more often than just the normal functioning of those laws?

By the way, Clifford is wrong because he claims a single miracle would call into question the whole of the scientific paradigm: but the scientific paradigm effectively is disconnected from the miraculous... that is, a miracle is by definition an event inaccessible to scientific study (yeah, I know, the residue is able to be studied).

Ah well...

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I think a miracle is only so becuase we have not developed to a point that we understand what God understands.

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But I don't believe that slavish toeing of the 'party line' is what God requires of believers - rather, he requires us to be enthusiastic, energetic and committed seekers of truth.

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bevin said:

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I believe that our only model, when it comes to determining our doctrines and faith, has to be the Bible.

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Where do you think Abraham, Daniel, or Paul got their ideas from? None of them had the Bible.

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Predicting the path of a thrown ball and what the result is of mixing two chemicals, is hardly my idea of "predicting the future."

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My idea is being able to predict the rise and fall of nations thousands of years in advance

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and being able to predict such exciting things as the place where the Messiah would be born and the very year in which He was to be anointed and then killed so we can have eternal life. Now THAT is predicting the future. Knowing where a ball is going to go is as nothing in comparison with it, wouldn't you agree?

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So wouldn't that lead you to believe that he was reading from the Bible of his day. Which we would call the Old Testament today.

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bevin said:
The Bible was selected out of a wide range of available books approximately 400AD. We have no evidence of the individual books existing prior to the Babylonian Captivity at approximately 500BC.

That means that all of God's people before 500 BC basically relied on oral histories, and from 500BC to 400AD choose for themselves which books to read and accept.

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The "I get all my ideas solely from my understanding of the Bible" concept is a reaction to people (specifically the Roman Catholics) writing books to support their organisation - it is a Protestant mechanism to counter this weapon. A better mechanism would have been to actually point out what the RC's were doing - but that is a poor sound bite and doesn't appeal to the ignorant masses.

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Predicting the path of a thrown ball and what the result is of mixing two chemicals, is hardly my idea of "predicting the future."

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