Well, yeah, it does help a lot in understanding the church's official position (it doesn't really speak to the secondary question of young or old universe).

It also pretty clearly answers the question of this thread: since the SDA church has chosen to basically wrap up all of scripture, the gospel and its doctrines as a single package with recent creationism as the foundation, it is *not* possible to be an SDA without believing in literal recent creation.

Better crank up the evangelism, folks, because there'll be an increasing number of people who, like me, have found themselves 'included out' of the church they love.

Evangelism is in full gear and incorporating creation science into it. We don't have to prove the Bible through science. Our threshold is plausibility not probability. All we have to show is that the historical record of the Bible is plausible not that it is scientifically probable. We are not going to convince everyone. There is no one method that will convince everyone. However these methods are showing some success here in North America and Europe.

This and several similar sentiments in the aforementioned statements make me think of nothing so much as a tower of children's blocks. Pull one out, and all the rest come crashing down.

There has to be a better way.

Many people do not understand the fundamental importance of the creation doctrine when they make attempts to reinterpret the Bible to fit into an evolutionary framework. We must accept creation on faith. Creation is the basis of faith. It is the starting point in our relationship with God.

"By faith we understand the worlds were made by God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." (Hebrews 11:3)

I'd say so.

Will we conform to the Bible or expect it to conform to us? This fundamental question is confronting each one of us.

Once again, when you say 'The Bible' you mean 'my particular interpretation of the Bible', but that distinction is completely invisible to you.

Yes. You are right Bravus. It is a kind of spiritual arrogance that is out there. It is also a form of intolerance for anyone who would use their God given brains with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately some feel they have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit.

"In the Beginning"

Beginning of what?

We teach that God had no beginning

Therefore creation had no beginning

What I mean is Sola Scriptura. Again, show me another way of understanding creation using Sola Scriptura. I welcome that. I am more than willing to consider other ways of applying Sola Scriptura. That means we use the original language and other Bible texts to understand creation. We do not bring in extra-biblical evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_interpretation_(Genesis)

The point being that there are serious, sincere, highly qualified and thoughtful Christian scholars who interpret the text itself in a different way. You might say that they are led to that approach to the text by the science, but it's equally fair to say that those who interpret the text as 6 literal days are led to that approach by tradition. Only the text and its interpretation matter.

I think it's disastrous that the denomination has made this doubtful belief the foundation of everything. As more and more people come to ask questions about origins, they will find that the church has *told* them that if this falls, everything falls. People will lose their faith who, IMO, did not need to.

(I'll start a separate thread to discuss the Faith and Science conferences.)