Evolution AS FAITH

Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

A 1981 lecture presented at New York City's American Museum of Natural History

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Colin PATTERSON:

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view,well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

Patterson - again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'" Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...

"...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge [u], apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

No Christian denomination that embraces Darwinism "as a group" - has done so without first downsizing and then denying the 7th day Sabbath as literally true and binding.

No Christian denomination that has embraced the gay agenda or abortion on demand "as a group" has done so without first embracing evolutionism.

Ellen White stood up politically for moral issue of prohibition in spite of the right to privacy that it invovled.

Ellen White stood up politically for value of human life issue abolishing slavery.

What if the SDA church decided to do something different?

Taylor's Comment: If we as a church would embrace ANYTHING that goes against the clear Bible teaching, it would be a real pity and a real loss. I know that people think that the Bible isn't a science text book, and that is fine, but it was inspired by a God who knows more than any scientist on the earth and he wouldn't have said "the evening and the morning were the first day" etc if he meant "the evening and the morning were the first 1,000 years". To me it is simple, it doens't matter how much "evidence" evolution comes up with for it being the truth, it flies into the face of God's word and has to be flawed. Oh there can be truth in some of what they say, but the Word of God says that this world was created in 7 days. I would far rather trust God than any brilliant, kind-hearted, wonderful scientist.


And she did that without any clear Biblical directive.