Should you send that wild ivy to obedience school, or scold the unpleasant weeds growing in your lawn? It probably won’t do much good. Still, although plants often seem passive and uninvolved, there may be more to their humble lives than we first think.
It’s a struggle for the survival of the fittest — the fittest science for Seventh-day Adventist education, that is. Most SDA educational institutions (K–university) have taught, and presumably still teach, a literal six-day creation of life as taught in Genesis 1. However, over the last couple decades or so, some teachers at SDA universities have allegedly endorsed the historical interpretations of mainstream science, but while retaining some measure of divine oversight. This view is sometimes called theistic evolution.
Over the years I’ve heard reports of problems in our school science departments, but had always assumed it was a single rogue teacher here and there. From all that I’ve personally seen, the church leadership and its official publications have remained firm on the traditional Adventist view of origins.
The January 2009 issue of Acts & Facts had an intriguing article on human reproduction. I’m sure you heard the basics in elementary school biology class: sperm meets egg, egg is fertilized, cellular multiplication begins. However, this article deals with the topic in far greater detail, and the process is much more complicated and intricate than you might imagine.
This video, Unlocking the Mystery of Life, explores some of the reasons why science itself lends credibility to non-naturalistic explanations for the origin of life. In particular, it focuses on the ideas of irreducible complexity (organs that have value only in their complex, complete forms) and DNA as information (the nature of genetic code as both irregular and highly specific—markers of intelligent design). It also looks at some of the known problems with alternate explanations for how life might have begun from non-life, as well as clarifying the intelligent design view of evolutionary theory.
Anyone who has an interest in the creationism-evolution conflict, or who enjoys creationist writings in general, should request a free subscription to Acts & Facts. I just received my first issue, and it was really interesting. There was a short biography on a Bible-believing scientist, an insightful look at Hyracotherium (whom you may remember from biology textbooks as the “little horse” that predated modern horses), a well-thought article on whether science is the only path to real knowledge, and quite a bit more. It’s an attractive full-color publication, and the articles are easy to read. This publication is produced by the Institute for Creation Research, a very well known creation-science organization.
