July 1, 2003 - 12:00pm - John McLarty

Ervin Taylor

What follows are edited extracts from reports filed from the conference by these AT editors. The abrupt changes in perspective from section to section reflect the reality of the conference. The reports in their entirety were e-mailed to all AT subscribers who had given us their e-mail addresses. If you are a subscriber and did not get the full reports but wish to see them, we invite you to send us your e-mail address at atoday@atoday.com with "e-mail reports" in the subject line.

 

The 2003 Faith and Science Conference was the second in a series of three annual Seventh-day Adventist conferences called to address questions surrounding our understanding of Creation. The first conference, which brought together representatives from around the world, was held in Ogden, Utah in 2002. The second series of conference(s) were organized by many of the world divisions in their own territory and have occurred or will occur in 2003 and early 2004. The final conference will again bring together representatives from the world church and will be held in Denver, Colorado, in August 2004.

 

Historically Seventh-day Adventists have been the leading champions of a short chronology for life on this planet. Citing the Bible, Ellen White and science, we have taught that terrestrial life first appeared in a singular Creation Week a few thousand years ago and that there has been no special creation since that week. The fossil and geological record has been believed to be created largely by global disturbances during Noah's flood. The vast majority of Adventist members still have unquestioning confidence in the continuing validity of our traditional view on earth history. They believe the Bible supports it and that science offers credible corroborative support.

 

However, two polls of faculty in Adventist colleges and universities in North America have indicated that less than 50 percent of the science teachers believe the traditional view of origins. Among theology faculty, a growing minority question the validity of traditional Adventist interpretations of Genesis 1-11. Faculty in Adventist institutions cannot openly espouse these views and remain employed, but there is a growing underground network of Adventists who believe that the church's historic position is scientifically, rationally and even biblically untenable.

 

To put the issue very bluntly: On one hand, the vast majority of Adventist church members see nothing wrong with our traditional views. On the other hand, a growing number of Adventist scientists and theologians are convinced that tradition must yield to the best evidence from science. The social divide is reminiscent of other arguments: vaccination, fluoridation, the use of anesthesia, earth's place in the solar system. But the questions at hand-remote prehistory and origins-are much less tractable than the disputes over cycles of cause and effect that are completed in less than a human life span. And the spiritual, scientific, philosophical, epistemological and theological connections in this case are labyrinthine beyond imagination.

 

* * *

We arrived at the Glacier View Camp outside Boulder, Colorado, late in the afternoon, Wednesday, August 13, in time for the first event of the conference: supper. It was like a family reunion. Many of these people have known each other for decades. They went to school together. They were students and teachers of each other. They've attended professional conventions together and even participated in church-sponsored discussions of this nature for years. The debates at this conference are truly "within the family." About 130 people gathered for the conference.

 

The first formal presentation Wednesday following supper was by Angel Rodriguez, Director of the Biblical Research Institute (BRI). BRI serves as the theological counsel and watchdog for the General Conference. In his paper, Dr. Rodriguez set an anchor point for the traditional view. He emphatically declared that in any area where it speaks, the Bible holds absolute priority as an authority. Biblical statements regarding history or science as well as theology are infallible and cannot be corrected or meaningfully challenged by science. "Adventists find certainty only in the message of the Scripture, and that determines the way they read and interpret all other experiences."

 

* * *

Several teachers talked about the challenges of teaching origins to academy and college students. All of them talked about the importance of exposing their students to the best of evolutionary thought so that they would not be overwhelmed when they first encountered these ideas in a secular setting where there would be no support for their faith. The need for this kind of preparation, especially in academy, was highlighted by a report that indicated that two-thirds of Adventist college students are in non-Adventist schools.

 

* * *

A geologist told his personal story. He grew up Adventist, attended Adventist academy and college and remained a committed "young creationist" through his graduate work and for a decade or so of his career as a working geologist. But the more he looked at the rocks, the more he found himself compelled to acknowledge their age. He finally reached the point where he simply accepted what he saw. The rocks were old. He could not fit the geological features he studied into a 6,000 year chronology. But he treasured the Bible, the Adventist church and God. He remains an active church member even though he accepts conventional geologic ages for fossils and rocks.

 

* * *

Adventists have always viewed the Bible as a blend of human and divine. But there is increasing debate over just how those elements interact. On the second full day of the conference, the formal work began with a paper which vigorously reiterated an essentially fundamentalist position. The most arresting statement in this presentation was the assertion that Adventist believers in the 21st century should adopt the worldview of the Old Testament writers in their understanding of how and when God created the world. However, a second paper observed that conservative Adventists scholars have long understood Genesis 1 to be a polemic against various aspects of ancient Near Eastern mythology. In light of its highly complex literary structure and polemical intent, we were advised to be "more cautious . . . about assuming that a narrative is meant to be seen as a straightforward chronological history of events." This paper was surprising because its author is widely known as a conservative. We learn that labels, while useful, are slippery.

 

A third paper argued strongly against reading any of the putatively historical parts of the Bible as anything other than literal history. This presenter devoted most of his time to a critique of a paper by another presenter. (Many of the papers were circulated to the participants before the conference began.) The paper being critiqued stated that we should begin our approach to the Bible by asking, "What is the purpose of Scripture?" or more specifically, Tto what extent does Scripture give us scientifically useful information as well as theological meaning?" Although the author made it clear that he believes the Genesis creation narratives represent the results of divine initiative and revelation, he proposed that (1) "the purpose and function of Scripture are theological, not scientific," (2) "the portrayals of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 show that they are theological rather than scientific explanations," (3) "the assumption that Scripture provides scientific information about creation is a result of a theological tradition and the empirical bias of modern Western thought," and (4) "we should focus our attention on identifying, understanding, applying, and communicating the profound theological truths of Genesis 1 and 2."

 

A paper titled, "Back to the Bible: Trying to Hear All the Voices," began with the assumption that all human knowledge is partial and limited, especially our knowledge of God. He quoted the words of Ellen White: "God and heaven alone are infallible." The presenter then commented, "We humans are easily tempted to obscure the diverse perspectives in Scripture by privileging the elements congenial to our particular preferences and biases. Thus we risk putting God on trial by our preferred words, logic and rhetoric. And by being selective rather than comprehensive, the diverse perspectives in Scripture can easily appear contradictory, rather than complementary." His thesis is: "The recognition of the diversity within Scripture should move us to seek a) the common ground shared by all the biblical perspectives and b) ways of seeing these perspectives as complementary." In attempting to deal with the diversity he sees in Scripture and in the views being expressed in the Adventist church, he pointed to insights that can be gained by reflecting on the Myers-Briggs temperament profile, which "offers very helpful possibilities for understanding our differences." Interestingly, one of the conference attendees, a prominent member of the medical profession, held a Saturday evening workshop on Myers-Briggs.

 

In considering what some view as the "problem" of the great diversity of Adventist views on origins, one theologian reminded us that the Adventist divisions are reflected in the wider contemporary Christian community. His paper offered several suggestions for how the Adventist church might address the challenge of interfacing science and faith. The first is to consider the role of doctrine in the life of the church community. On one hand, he suggested, there is the view that a believing member is one who comprehends and assents to a list of propositions. The "community of faith comprises those who have come to similar doctrinal conclusions through personal investigation." On the other hand, he writes, "While a concern for propositional expressions of the faith will always be important, it is a mistake to make it the one essential quality of the Christian community. Other expressions of truth are even more important and other qualities account for the corporate life of the community." He points out that "according to one of the most famous passages in Paul's writings, the Christian community lives by faith, hope, and love, rather than by knowledge-one of the things that 'pass away.' Moreover, the life of faith is a life of community, a life in which learning from, caring for, and growing with one another are essential . . . The most important question before us as members of a community we care about is, not who's right about origins and why, but, how can we affirm our collective confidence in God's sovereign love in ways that include and encourage all of us? In other words, whatever we say about creation should ultimately strengthen our faith, hope and love."

 

* * *

Friday evening the group assembled for worship, then Sabbath morning there was a worship service in a beautiful outdoor setting. A few of the participants (including McLarty) climbed Long's Peak. The hike was richly symbolic. It included five young adults who were at the camp only because they were related to conference participants. It also included vocal proponents of the divergent interpretive positions present at the conference. Praying together, hiking, taking care of group members who suffered from altitude sickness or were nearly stymied by the thinness of the air at 14,000 feet, and finally sitting on a mountaintop gazing in rapt wonder at the surrounding glory superseded our propositional differences. It gave us a special sample of the family connections God gives us in his church.

 

* * *

One presentation featured an account of one of Ellen White's visions. Joseph Bates, among others, was present when she had the vision, and while she was in vision, she spoke of seeing several planets. When questioned on how many moons she saw around these planets, she said she saw four moons around one of them and eight moons around another. Bates was an avid amateur astronomer and knew that recent discoveries had found four moons orbiting Jupiter and eight circling Uranus. When Bates asked White if she had been reading about astronomy, she indicated she knew nothing about it. This gave Bates great confidence in White's status as a prophetess. The question posed to us was: what do we do with the fact that astronomers have found 39 moons orbiting Jupiter and 21 around Uranus? (A fuller account of the vision can be read in Ellen G.White: The Early Years by Arthur White, p. 113-114.)

 

One of the deans of Adventist creation science and a forceful expositor of traditional Adventist short-age and worldwide flood views is Ariel Roth, now retired, formerly director of the Geoscience Research Institute. The title of his presentations was "Some Persistent Scientific Evidence that Affirms a Recent Creation." Roth devoted most of his presentation to paraconformities. If one looks at the walls of the Grand Canyon, you will see very flat layers of rock piled up. The various layers have been carefully dated. The fossils in the rocks fit the ordinary pattern of progression as you move from the bottom to the top. But between a number of layers that lie smoothly on top of each other there are gaps (paraconformities) of millions of years. According to Roth, paraconformities are very difficult to account for in conventional geologic time and they are found all over the world. Roth believes such paraconformities are best explained by a world-wide flood. Another problem that he addressed was rates of erosion in the geologic record: According to present rates of erosion, the continents should have been eroded flat a hundred times over in geologic time. This would mean there would be no geologic column. All of the fossils would have been eroded away. Roth also mentioned some of the very widespread formations in the American West. The Morrison formation, for example, stretches from Canada to Arizona. It is very difficult to account for these formations with conventional geologic processes, Roth said. They are best explained by a catastrophic event like the flood.

 

Interestingly, in conventional geology researchers are turning more and more catastrophic explanations of various features in the geologic record. However, these catastrophic explanations apply to very restricted localized contexts scattered throughout the geologic column and do not work as an explanation for the thousands of feet of sedimentary record characteristic of most sections of the geologic record.

 

For many years Adventists have explained the geologic column by the Ecological Zonation Theory (EZT) first propounded by Harold Clark. Now this theory was examined in a paper titled: "Biome Succession: A Theory in Crisis." Biome Succession is a new name for EZT. The paper noted that Adventists have done very little research on it, and what research has been done yielded more questions than answers. He outlined some research that Adventist scientists could engage in to strengthen or overturn the theory.

 

A well-known leader in Adventist creation science presented a tentative theory for a new flood model called, "The Extended Flood." This theory assumes a literal creation week that resulted in a balanced ecosystem. But in a departure from tradition, it also assumes that fossil-bearing strata began forming shortly after the fall. At the time of the flood, there would have been very dramatic sedimentation and fossilization, processes that would have continued at an accelerated rate for awhile after the flood as well. This model was proposed to help explain some of aspects of the fossil record which do not fit with the idea of the flood creating nearly all the geologic record.

 

* * *

One topic that received a lot of attention was the extent of the flood, according to the Bible. The lead-off paper forcefully argued for a literal interpretation of the Bible words about the universality of the flood. We should interpret the words of Genesis 6-9 in the light of their connection with the same words in the creation story. The whole world was created in Genesis 1-2; the whole world was inundated in Genesis 6-9. The paper included several additional textual arguments in favor of a global flood.

 

A later paper stated that according to the Hebrew language there were categories of animals that did not enter the ark. The flood could not have literally covered the entire earth because reptiles and carnivorous animals were not transported on the ark, yet they appear on the earth after the flood.

 

Another paper by an archaeologist argued that the author's use of "worldwide" language had to be understood within the context of the author's worldview and not in the context of our understanding of similar language.

 

He pointed out that there is no archaeological evidence anywhere (in wells, caves or tells) for a Noachian flood in the Middle East. Outside of Genesis, the Bible uses global language to describe less than global realities. For example, Nebuchadnezzar is said to have ruled over the whole earth, but he actually ruled only Mesopotamia. Paul said the gospel had been preached to the whole world, but we don't believe early Christian preachers reached the Solomon Islands or Australia. In this view, the Bible itself does not teach a flood that actually covered the entire globe in Noah's time. One participant wondered if the linkage of language between the flood and creation stories might not mean that we should localize the creation story instead of globalizing the flood.

 

The author of a paper on the role of Ellen White in shaping Adventist thinking on earth history affirmed that she could and did make errors in small details. The author even acknowledged that her many statements attributing 6,000 years to earth history might be an accommodation to the popular chronology of Bishop Ussher. Conservative Bible believers in her day believed in Ussher, and she would not have been credible to them if she had written about a different time scale. But, the author insisted, the six-day creation and the global flood are not small details. These cannot be surrendered without fatally undermining her entire theological structure.

 

* * *

An Adventist geologist presented his well-known work on paleocurrents in a presentation titled, "Paleocurrents as Tools: What they can tell us about the history of the earth." Paleocurrents are flow structures in sedimentary rocks which reveal the direction of the wind or water which worked the material before they indurated. In North America, in Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks, the paleocurrents are highly directive on a continental scale. These trends are inconsistent with standard geological models. The presenter sees them as best explained by a flood. In the upper Cenozoic periods, the paleocurrents no longer exhibit the patterns. The author believes this indicates the end of the flood.

 

There was a report by a scientist on his research on fossil whales in Peru. These whales are found in sediments which, at conventional rates of deposition, would take from 500 to 4,000 years to bury a whale. However, the whales are beautifully preserved, with even their baleen intact. They had to be buried in a matter of days or a few weeks at the very most. The difference between the time indicated by the state of preservation of the whales and the time given for the formation by radiometric dating raises interesting questions about the reliability of conventional dating.

 

There was an unscheduled presentation on ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. Ice cores reveal the record of annual deposits of snow. Several lines of evidence indicate that the individual layers do, in fact, reflect annual events. Contained in these layers are many types of organic products such as pollen and spores and inorganic particulates such as lead and volcanic ash. Correlations between these annual layers and various historical events and processes can be documented. For example, the ice cores give a precise date for the eruption of Mt. Mazama, which created Crater Lake at about 7686 B.P. The ice cores also map the beginning of copper smelting about 500 years ago and the beginning of the use of lead in gasoline and the subsequent elimination of leaded gasoline. The total length of time recorded in the Greenland ice cores is about 110,000 years. In Antarctica, cores have been drilled to 12,000 feet deep, and standard calculations give a maximum age of 420,000 years.

 

An entire day of the conference was devoted to the problem of "Time" (11 papers) and another day to "The Flood" (10 papers). One historical reason for Adventist attention to these topics is the influence of George McCready Price (1870-1963). Price accepted at face value Ellen G. White's descriptions of an Edenic, antediluvian Earth created about 6,000 years ago and its destruction by a global flood 1500 years later.

 

One paper titled "George McCready Price: Grandfather of Modern Creationist Geology," was based on a recent M.A. thesis completed at California State University, Fullerton. Price was self-taught in geology. He insisted that the geologic column was a fiction invented by geologists to support evolution. He believed the only alternative to evolution was Biblical creationism and a recent, worldwide, catastrophic, flood which created the geologic column. When a young protege of Price, Harold Clark, insisted that there was indeed order in the geologic column, Price wrote "Theories of Satanic Origin," in which he claimed that Clark's views were of the devil. Price tried to have Clark fired for heresy.

 

* * *

One theologian began his discourse with the question "Isn't it about time? Well, yes and no . . . and maybe only time will tell." He concluded that the modern Western quest to quantify time was not within the purview of the Biblical writers. A "holistic, practical, communal, dynamic of time began with God and creation, whenever that happened . . ." He agreed with a comment made by the late Raymond Cottrell, founding editor of Adventist Today, some years ago: "The Bible does not clearly indicate the interval of time since creation, and we are without any biblical basis for making an issue of time."

 

A scientist reviewed the standard interpretation of the geological history of southern California and some of his original research on that history. His review and research led him to conclude, "a one-year flood a few thousand years ago does not provide the best logical and useful scientific explanatory model for southern California geology." On the other hand, he stated he is "willing to accept the biblical record even if I don't understand it."

 

A University of California anthropologist and archaeologist outlined the scientific evidence for the view that modern humans have been on this planet for at least 100,000 years. He noted that the scientific basis on which both recent geological and prehistoric archaeological chronology is based has little, if anything, to do with the "biological evolutionary time scale." The overwhelming weight of prehistoric archaeological evidence argues for a human chronology in excess of 100,000 years and for a geologic column of tens of millions of years. He also stated that the prehistoric archaeological record lacks any evidence of a recent, worldwide flood.

 

A physicist presented a paper on "The Clocks in the Rocks" in which he explained why, "as an Adventist and a believer in a Creator God" he believes that "God is actually telling us that the earth has a long history." He argues that the current view in some parts of the Adventist church that "if we do not support a young-earth-deluge model we cannot be Christians" borders on "pathological theology."

 

Another paper attempted to demonstrate how the major radioactive isotope dating methods other than radiocarbon could be made compatible with a short-age view. "Creationists should not quit believing in a short time for life on earth . . . Now is not the time for us to throw in the towel."

 

* * *

The Human Face of the Conference

 

A non-North American visitor began his presentation by remarking that the audience did not fit his expectations. He had read that 40 percent of Americans were obese, but he didn't see many fat people. The group was mostly middle-aged, white males, but they were uncharacteristically thin for an American group. There were others--women, including a young woman still in grad school. Dr. and Mrs. Richard Ritland attended. He was an early director of the Geoscience Research Institute. There were scientists and theologians from South America, two or three African-Americans, a geologist from Germany.

 

The scientists included a fair number of people not employed by the church. Among the theologians, I believe only one was not church employed. Several of the clergy were practicing pastors; two or three scientists were physicians. Most of the theologians were faculty in Adventist schools. The editors of five Adventist journals (denominational and independent) attended at least part of the conference, and several denominational executives attended the entire conference.

 

What did the participants think about the age of the earth and life upon it? The range of views included:

 

(1) The entire universe is 6,000 years old.

 

(2) The sun and moon are 6,000 years old, but the inorganic substance of the earth is billions of years old.

 

(3) The universe and the solar system (including the inorganic earth matter) is billions of years old, but terrestrial life is 6,000-10,000 years old.

 

(4) The universe, solar system, inorganic earth material and terrestrial life all have the ages assigned to them by conventional science, i.e, millions and billions of years.

 

There were scientists who believed in a young earth (and universe) and scientists who accepted conventional geochronology. There were clergy who believed the sun is younger than the earth and clergy who accepted conventional geochronology. Some of the theologians had been trained in science. Some of the scientists had trained as clergy. We heard personal testimonies from scientists who began their higher education as "long-agers" and felt compelled by the scientific and biblical evidence to embrace a short chronology. Other geologists told of studying in Adventist schools and accepting a short chronology only to be gradually forced by continued study of the rocks during their post-Ph.D. careers to accept a long chronology.

 

We heard vigorous speeches insisting that a belief in a recent creation is absolutely essential and central to Adventism. If you don't believe it, you don't belong. There were counter speeches arguing that the fact of creation (all that is ultimately comes from God) was the bedrock and we can safely allow scientists and others to follow their own research on the time and method of God's activity and to reach their own conclusions.

 

A daunting difficulty surrounding questions of origins is that everyone is working outside their areas of expertise because the subject crosses several discipline boundaries. We heard highly competent scientists make rather naive statements about exegesis. We talked with theologians who had not even heard of some of the physical phenomena being discussed by scientists. Systematic theologians had to deal with exegetical questions far removed from their theological competence and biblical scholars were forced to relate ancient words (which was their specialty) to scientific and postmodern philosophical constructs. Within the sciences you have very divergent areas of expertise: chemistry, nuclear physics, paleontology, sedimentology, genetics, geomorphology, and archaeology.

 

The welter of voices and disciplines means that no matter what you believe you can find persons and evidence to support it. And the natural human tendency is to stick with what we already "know." In a classic exchange between two scientists, one challenged the other: "Is there any conceivable evidence that would compel you to change your mind?" The second scientist retorted, "Is there any evidence that would lead you to change yours?"

 

We have received a couple of e-mails asking why we do not identify conference participants by name. The answer is twofold. First, it would hardly be fair for us, as participants in the debate, to describe the positions of others and attach their names to those views. We aim at accuracy in reporting, but we would be superhuman if we were able to escape all bias.

 

Second, the purpose of this conference was the fullest possible airing of Adventist views on the topic of origins. Participants were encouraged to explore the edges, extremes and problems. The views expressed at this conference were not polished devotional gems. Instead many of the papers focused on problems--problems with conventional geology, problems with conventional Adventist hermeneutics. The specialists could not have been nearly as free if they had to worry about having to answer to a global gallery for every infelicitous statement.

 

At the conference people on both the right and the left told of being blacklisted and shut out of areas of ministry because of their views. Some of the stories were comical, some were heartbreaking, but they all highlighted the need for a protected arena in which devout Adventists with divergent views could process with all possible vigor the issues surrounding origins. If Adventist employees are going to have their employment questioned because of their ideas, that questioning should arise from their public writing and speaking, not from the thirdhand report of a dinner conversation which has been circulated over the web.

 

A final remark about the human face of the conference. A couple of conservative theologians talked to us personally, strongly protesting against incorrect interpretations of their papers which they had heard from other conference participants. They wanted to make sure that we did not misrepresent their positions. None of us likes to be misquoted or misinterpreted, especially when our words can sink our careers or block us from ministry. We personally thought the "incorrect interpretations" these theologians protested were simply logical implications of their plain statements. But every author should be granted the privilege of explaining him/herself.

 

One of the most valuable questions raised at this conference was "What did you mean?" The issues raised in this conference remain intense and significant, but repeatedly, asking that question face-to-face led to clarification that reduced our distance from each other. As we continue to wrestle with theological and scientific questions, perhaps the greatest gift we can give each other is to surrender our penchant for telling and learn to ask, "What did you mean?" and "Why do you think that?"