AToday Probation Closes

I give Adventist Today a lot of grief because they can't seem to separate religion from their preferred leftist political views. It has hurt their mission a lot but I have to compliment them when they actually do a good job on an article. In the article Is Probation About to Close? by Loren Seibold we have an important issue discussed that is very much part of Adventism even though it is only occasionally spoken of in Adventist churches. The article begins with the peculiar Adventist belief that at some point Probation closes even though no one on earth would know that point has been reached. After that, you are either saved or lost and this probation is tied into what God does with the Investigative Judgment and whether the Christian has forsaken their sins and in some way perfected their character. He notes well that this is not a Biblical idea but a product of Ellen G. White. Seibold writes:

...They will say it is what the Bible says (it doesn’t) and that the whole of Adventist doctrine stands or falls by it. They will say that it is actually at the heart of the gospel, that in some twisted way it shows God’s love for us.

But just remember this: they are not defending the close of probation. Nor are they defending God. They are defending the notion that every word, every idea, that Ellen White expressed is straight from the mind of God. They are willing to toss God’s good character over the balcony if they can continue to say that a 19th century mystic was sketching out a precise plan for the Seventh-day Adventist “tribe.” 

I have defended Ellen White as a strong woman and church leader. I have great appreciation for what she accomplished. But I cannot defend some of the things she taught. It’s not just that many were copied from other writers. It’s not just that some of them were ridiculous, like seeing Enoch on Saturn. Or unscientific, like the earth being a mere 6000 years old, or masturbation making children into twisted, malformed monsters. Or racist, such as that black people are amalgamations. Or contemptuous of grace, as demonstrated by her repeated forays into perfectionism.

There was a time when the rejection of Ellen White as a prophet of God was, I thought the central need of Progressive Adventism. I still think that and mourn for the loss of Progressive Adventism into left-wing politics. But as I have said many times most all of the problems in the Adventist church can be laid upon the belief that Ellen White was a prophet of God. It has for a long time been my belief that a prophet cannot possibly be wrong and destructive as Ellen White has been to truly be from God. From the time when she was alive, her teachings could not be accepted by those who really thought about their religion and what she was saying. With repeated similar events marking the Adventist church about every 20 years or so. Along with the continual loss of members throughout the years who realized the problem.

Seibold gives a few quotes from Ellen White on the subject but considering what the defenders of Probation close have to contribute in the way of theology with their belief; from an article on SDANET entitled; The Judgment of the Living & the Close of Probation

"All Christians believe there is a close of probation, even though they don’t use the phrase. This might be at the Second Coming or after the millennium, but all Christians believe that there is a point when people can no longer switch sides. 

Unlike other Christians however, Seventh-day Adventists believe this event happens a short time before the Second Coming. And, many Adventists think this means that there will come a day when God will close the door of mercy and, even if they want to repent, God will no longer forgive them."

..."Probation closes before the Second Coming and not at the Second Coming because God wants to allow time to pass so that it is evident to angels and unfallen beings that people have made up their minds and are no longer going to change. Some period of time passes where, as much reason as God gives people to repent, no one does any more. And then, heavenly beings all agree that there is no point in waiting any further, and it’s time for Jesus to return to take His people home."

So what does that add to your religion? Really nothing. That God comes and His reward is with Him I can accept. The whole purpose of the Probation close to Adventist theology is built on supporting Ellen White. If what Ellen White really said was good it would not need any support but because it is built upon her and her view of the Investigative Judgment, the coming Sunday law, and having developed Christ's character perfectly reproduced in His followers, Probation closing becomes important. Adventist doctrine most definitely stands on that! It should not! That it does is the problem. 

Until progressive Adventism returns to its central focus of removing the damaging theology of the past, Adventism has no future. It will simply work to protect its traditions. It is nice that many of our retired Pastors and scholars repudiate the errors of our past with Ellen White. What it, however, calls for is for leaders who are still in the church to change things, not waiting until they retire but pursuing the truth even if it costs their jobs. The time for hinting to their churches that we have to make some changes in our theology without coming out directly like Seibold has done sends the wrong message. So many defend Ellen White and ignore that she needs to be criticized and that the evaluation of her as a prophet cannot stand. (I am not making any judgments about her as a person or a Christian, none of us get it all right)

Honestly, does it really matter if women can be ordained as Pastors if our church continues with damaging theology about God? I don't think so!

The Pope is a climate change covid-19 alarmist

Around a month or 2 ago I mentioned on Faceback to my Brother-in-Law that pretty soon someone would tell us the Covid-19 Chinese virus was the result of Global Climate Change. Surprisingly it took until now for my prediction to come true. And true in a big way as It was the Pope himself that put forth that idea. As MSN reported:

In an email interview published Wednesday in The Tablet and Commonwealth magazines, the pontiff said the outbreak offered an opportunity to slow down the rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world.
"We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?" the Pope said.
"I don't know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature's responses," he added.

The Pope seems to also think the Glaciers of the North Pole have melted. They have not though we do find that predicted to occur in 2040

Climate Change Could Allow Ships to Cross the North Pole by 2040

"Melting sea ice will open up shipping lanes across the Arctic, potentially making the Northwest Passage and North Pole navigable during summer"

Or by 2050 According to the Guardian. "

Ships to sail directly over the north pole by 2050, scientists say

As with most Climate Change Alarmists, the Pope does not work with facts!

Adventist Today calls people racists for Chinese virus

So once again the political left declares their stupidity on Adventist Today. In the article The End of the World as We Know It by Vinnie MacIsaac the pastor of Solid Rock Seventh-day Adventist Church in Arlington, Virginia we read this bit of foolishness:

"Others dove off the stupid and reckless cliff of believing it is all a conspiracy, or some kind of political trick one side is playing on the other. This line of reason perhaps bothers me the most, because it is careless, and people buying into this point of view are putting real lives at risk. I just want to scream at them to shut up before they get someone they know killed! (Here’s a clue: if your political bias starts putting people at risk, it is not your political party but you who are unhinged!) 

Lastly, there are those who use this as an excuse to be a racist. (The crisis didn’t make them racists. Such people were always racist but this was their chance to do it without being called out.) No, this is not a Chinese or Asian disease; it is a human global disease. One on-air TV morning news show actually had the gall to demand an apology from China! "

Someone they know killed...oh please. But notice this about the political bias. Clearly, there is a very political leftist bias by the author as he goes on to talk about people who say the Chinese virus or Wuhan virus are racists. Even though that is just a description which all the news used until they decided they could attack Trump on his use of "Chinese virus". This is a big issue to Democrats and the democrat media.  You can read some of those quotes here. Watch the clips here. 

As for the gall to demand an apology from China. Well, there is going to be a lot more than that as There are a number of congresspersons introducing assorted Bills dealing with Chinese actions. Such https://news.yahoo.com/hawley-stefanik-introduce-bill-investigate-150928064.html

Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) on Tuesday introduced a bicameral resolution to condemn the Chinese Communist Party for its initial handling of the coronavirus outbreak, and called for an international investigation to determine how the coverup hastened the emergence of a global pandemic.

“Since day one, the Chinese Communist Party intentionally lied to the world about the origin of this pandemic. The CCP was aware of the reality of the virus as early as December but ordered laboratories to destroy samples and forced doctors to keep silent,” Hawley, who first called for an investigation last week, said in a press release.

“There is no doubt that China’s unconscionable decision to orchestrate an elaborate coverup of the wide-ranging and deadly implications of coronavirus led to the death of thousands of people, including hundreds of Americans and climbing,” Stefanik added. “This Resolution calls for China to provide compensation for the harm, loss, and destruction their arrogance brought upon the rest of the world. Simply put China must, and will, be held accountable.”

That is not racist and that is not a racist reaction but to the above author and numerous leftists, it must be racist even if they can't articulate how it is racist. I suppose we better stop saying Spanish Flu also, because you know...racist! Why Adventist Today publishes this garbage I don't know. I think it is because they have such a one-sided view and they have no one to tell them to look at facts they simply assume that their leftist political bias is the facts. I checked their Facebook comments page and saw nothing pointing out their silly bias. But like me, if you object to their propaganda they block people from commenting. So not a big surprise that there is nothing there, as they don't like to offer other opinions.

UPDATE 3-26-2020

I will add this as of Today from the US Secretary of State:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that the other member nations of the G7 fully understood that China was launching a categorically false propaganda campaign claiming that the U.S. Military was responsible for bringing the coronavirus to China.

“We’ve wanted to work with the Chinese Communist Party throughout this crisis – this crisis that began in Wuhan, China,” Pompeo said. “We tried – you’ll remember – from the opening days to get our scientists, our experts on the ground there so that we could begin to assist in the global response to what began there in China, but we weren’t able to do that. The Chinese Communist Party wouldn’t permit that to happen.”

“You’ll recall, too, at the beginning of this, when it was clear that this was an issue, China knew about it, they were the first country to know about the risk to the world from this virus, and they repeatedly delayed sharing that information with the globe,” Pompeo continued, later adding, “There was a lot of discussion today amongst the G7 about the intentional disinformation campaign that China has been and continues to be engaged in. You see it. You see it in the social media. You see it in remarks from senior people inside the Chinese Communist Party talking about whether this was a U.S. – U.S. brought to China. I mean, this is crazy talk. And every member of the G7 today saw that – this disinformation campaign. China now making small sales of product around the world and claiming that they are now the white hat in what has taken place here.”

One more article which is filled with links and very helpful to see just why China was at fault in all this despite the above author's ignorance at the gall of someone at Fox News for thinking China owed us an apology.  

U.S. Naval College Professor: China Should Make Full Reparations For Damage To U.S.

Update 3-30-2020

• From the Business Insider
• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government is said to be furious with China, accusing it of spreading disinformation and lying about the number of coronavirus cases it has.
• "Some of the reporting from China was not clear about the scale, the nature, the infectiousness of this," Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove told the BBC.
• Scientists have reportedly told Johnson that China could have up to 40 times the number of cases it says.
• Estimates from Radio Free Asia show that up to 42,000 bodies have been cremated in Wuhan since the crisis.
• It could prompt the prime minister to abandon his deal with the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

Adventist Today Strikes out again

  Adventist Today once again enters the world of pseudo science with their article Hermetically Sealed: Conspiracy Theories and Special Knowledge. Sadly this article is written by David Geelan an Associate Professor of Science Education at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, Australia. I say sadly because in the Big Ag section it is completely wrong. But it does not start out that well either!

 

After the article’s introduction about conspiracy theories, the article states under the bold header the following:

 

         “Climate and Chemtrails

Loren Seibold’s recent piece in Adventist Today on how Adventists talk about climate change, and my own piece about the evidence and the responses to climate change, along with the ensuing discussions of both, have probably sufficiently explored the ground around that issue, so I’ll leave it for the moment. It’s a crucial issue on which a concerted and well-funded campaign of misinformation has been dismayingly successful, but it shares many commonalities with the issues discussed below. The notion that climate change is a conspiracy by globalists, socialists or the Pope is one example.”

The purpose of saying Climate is simply to equate so called Climate Change Deniers with the conspiracy theory of Chemtrails. The only reference in the section to climate is a couple of Adventist Today articles (I did not read Geelans other article as after reading this one I am not too impressed with his science abilities). The one by Loren Seibold gives no evidence for climate change other than:

         “To be a climate change denier, you have to be as conspiratorial about a minority scientific                   opinion…”

Shades of the often times used statement that 97 percent of scientists agree with man-made global warming/ climate change. As the very good Forbes article begins:

“If you've ever expressed the least bit of skepticism about environmentalist calls for making the vast majority of fossil fuel use illegal, you've probably heard the smug response: “97% of climate scientists agree with climate change” — which always carries the implication: Who are you to challenge them?The answer is: you are a thinking, independent individual--and you don’t go by polls, let alone second-hand accounts of polls; you go by facts, logic and explanation.Here are two questions to ask anyone who pulls the 97% trick.”

What often happens today as with Loren Seibold’s article is the elusive scientists say, the scientific consensus that you conspiracy nuts go against with the other minority of scientists. When it became know that the 97% figure was a fiction it moved to the consensus of science, even though science does not really work with consensus, they try to deal with facts. Interestingly if the Climate Change Alarmists really cared about science they would say go for it disprove our theories! Because that is how science works, gather the data make a hypothesis and then try to test with experiments the hypothesis This is called the scientific method which does not seem at all to require consensus.. So the actual science part becomes the conspiracy theory part to the Climate Change Alarmists.

It is rather peculiar that the so called Climate Change Deniers don’t have to keep changing their story while the Climate Change Alarmists continually change theirs. Remember those sad video’s of Polar Bears who were starving a few years ago. Not true, Polar bears are greatly increasing in numbers. What about Al Gore’s famous use of Mann’s so called hockey stick graph. And the climategate emails as one Forbes article states:

         “The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and                    advance predetermined outcomes.”

So at least the Adventist Today article with its attempt to tie climage change denial to chemtrails is working within the climategate method of disinformation.

Now to the main reason I decided to bring up this Adventist Today article. I have used bold type to point out the completely wrong section about GMO seeds:

         “Big Ag and GMOs

The same applies to genetically modified organisms, particularly plants used in food crops. While the genetic modifications themselves are shown to be benign in terms of human health effects, there are real issues. One is that the corporations that make the seeds want to earn higher profits. One way to do this is to engineer the plants so that the seeds they bear are infertile. Instead of saving some seed from last year’s crop to plant next year’s crop, poor farmers must buy seed anew each year. Another is that plants can be genetically modified, for example, to be tolerant to RoundUp (glyphosate) pesticides, but this can mean excessive application of pesticides to fields, with attendant risks to both farm workers and consumers.”

First I can agree with him that the corporation is trying to earn higher profits. That is pretty much the way all business works. Sadly and this is really bad for someone that is supposedly involved with science education he says that the seeds are infertile. Here is a good quote from NPR on this myth from their article Top Five Myths Of Genetically Modified Seeds, Busted

:

         “Myth 1: Seeds from GMOs are sterile.

No, they'll germinate and grow just like any other plant. This idea presumably has its roots in a real genetic modification (dubbed the Terminator Gene by anti-biotech activists) that can make a plant produce sterile seeds. Monsanto owns the patent on this technique, but has promised not to use it.Now, biotech companies — and Monsanto in particular — do seem to wish that this idea were true. They do their best to keep farmers from replanting the offspring from GMOs. But they do this because, in fact, those seeds will multiply.”

It seems that this professor of science education accepted this myth because he heard it from anti biotech people. I suppose I could just say it was part of a conspiracy theory but I rather think like most of the Climate Change Alarmists it is more to do with hearing some so called authority say it and just accepting it as truth without bothering to do some investigation into the subject.

While the whole idea is wrong and untrue it is true that if it was hybrid seed, it would not breed true and should not be used in the next years planting. The seed manufacturers do require those buying their patented seeds to sign a contract where they do not plant the seeds from the crops harvested seeds, example Roundup Ready crop seeds. If you are interested in knowing the reasons why this is done there is a good article from a farmer called What’s in a Monsanto Contract?

Since there are hybrid and non hybrid seeds used depending on the crop most commonly corn and soybeans I will let the author of the above article explain as he does well. The Adventist Today article continues with an assumption of the excessive use of herbicides which may also not be true. However there does appear to be some Roundup resistant weeds called superweeds which could need more herbicides. There are simply too many factors to make the statement that Geelan makes however.

I read through the comments section on Facebook for the Adventist Today article. They mostly seem to love it and no one pointed out the problems with it. One person said that the people who really need to read the article won’t because it is on Adventist Today. That is probably true as Adventist Today has become so one sided and fact challenged that I am quite sure a lot of people don’t bother with it or the Spectrum website anymore. Which is rather sad but I don’t see either website changing from their political progressivism and neither seems to like to hear that their articles have problems either.

 

 

Spectrum presents pseudo science on Intersex.

In a recent article on Spectrum Is There A Place For Bob and Others Like Her in the Adventist Church?

We read the following:

 In one major study of this particular population I found this conclusion:“In cases where the presentation of a child that is born with so noticeably atypical genitalia that a specialist in sexual differentiation is called in, the number comes to between 1 in 1,500 to 1 in 2,000 births.”1

I will try to give some perspective on the actual number of births that physically (externally) present as gender ambiguous, having minimally, both male and female genitalia. I will use the most conservative estimates of this population. This, by no means, covers the entire intersex community. It doesn’t even touch upon those who have internal differentiations such as in the case of Bob. In the world as a whole, the number would be approximately 9,000,000 births. That is greater than the entire population of many countries. Bringing it closer to home, there are between 450,000 to 500,000 births in the United States alone which are alive today. That would equate to approximately the entire population of Long Beach, California, a city that ranks #43 in population within the U.S. This simply is not a small segment of our population. These statistics only became available within the past two to three decades. 1. Dreger, Alice Domuret. 1998. “Ambiguous Sex — or Ambivalent Medicine? Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Intersexuality.” Hastings Center Report. 28, 3. 24-35.

The use of such a study does not give you the number of intersex individuals because there are a far wider spectrum of conditions which may cause atypical genitalia and not all of them are classed as intersex.

The intersex rate is far lower then the 1.7% rate that some use.

For more information please take the time to read this article. 

Here is just one quote on the intersex rate.

HOW COMMON IS INTERSEX?
Subtracting these five categories–LOCAH, vaginal agenesis, Turner’s syndrome, Klinefelter’s syndrome, and other non-XX and non-XY aneuploldies–the incidence of intersex drops to 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than the estimate provided by Fausto-Sterling. This figure of 0.018% suggests that there are currently about 50,000 true intersexuals living in the United States. These individuals are of course entitled to the same expert care and consideration that all patients deserve. Nothing is gained, however,, by pretending that there are 5,000,000 such individuals.

Adventist Today Proves my point

So last Nov 30 2019 I posted a brief article on Adventist Today and Global Warming. I questioned would they print an article going against the current political views of Adventist Today, Progressive Democrat. Today we have a good answer as their own Loren Seibold writes an article supporting manmade global warming. So the answer is; No they will not print anything against their political beliefs. He writes:

“It isn’t happening.” This response hardly needs an explanation if you live in the United States, where denial of human-caused climate change is a journalistic industry. There’s no point in my offering another rebuttal: I will just say that though there have been times in history when the conventional wisdom has been wrong, the preponderance of evidence from reputable sources argues it isn’t wrong this time. To be a climate change denier, you have to be as conspiratorial about a minority scientific opinion as Adventists are about believing that the pope is about to persecute us—and indeed, some say the two are related. 

Clearly, he has no need to deal with the numerous facts that man-made Global Warming skeptics use. They are of course as any good political progressive would say "climate change denier[[s]". Of course, no one denies climate change, clearly, we are not in the ice age or in the medieval warm period. We actually use those things in our analysis of climate. But as with all propagandists changing the language is crucial to their so-called debate. So global warming became climate change. It was once global warming denier and now it is climate change denier (I will note here that they are not the same in meaning, global warming is the more restrictive term just dealing with global temperature, climate change deals with all the other integrated parts of climate like weather patterns precipitation, etc. But in the past Global Warming was the term the alarmists used). But if you disagree with the political left's view of climate change then you disagree with science, even though there is precious little science that they use and a whole lot of computer climate models. But as he says it is the reputable stuff and it is not wrong. Good job in proving your point there Loren! 

He also tells us that there is a journalistic industry that denies human-caused climate change. Now that is interesting a whole industry that has no facts or science or reputable information. Well maybe, in fact, there are facts and science and the industry puts it forward but Adventist Today must conform to their political views and so, all of that is of no consequence. You are just a conspiracy person. Even though there may well be a conspiracy going on as Greta Thunberg the teenage poster child for climate change says: 

"That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities."

Now you can see why Adventist Today must follow the political ideology they have accepted. Why this is not really even about climate change it is about establishing a socialist utopia here on earth. Adventist Today has forgotten about the Kingdom of God and is trying for a kingdom on earth, eventually I predict it will be a kingdom without God, but the Adventist Today folks don't go that far yet. However, socialism ultimately will deny God. This is why a nation founded upon God-given rights will always be attacked by the socialist agenda. The two simply cannot coexist.

This is all about the same thing as the so-called Green New Deal that progressives have embraced.
You will see more about this as well as the support of political Progressive democrats in the future at Adventist Today no doubt.

It is honestly a silly proposition that C02; the molecule we breath out and plants take in and a very small part of the so-called Greenhouse gases (water being the largest), the thing we generate in greenhouses to make the plants grow larger and faster is really going to end life on the planet is amazingly stupid. The idea that the present climate is the ideal climate for the earth is equally foolish. And the biggest problem with global warming is the very imprecise science of computer modeling.

You will notice if you click on the link above for C02 that I don't use the Scientific American article on C02 which is somewhat the same but instead of remaining with the science they also resort to using unknown fears to mitigate what are facts. For example, they say after acknowledging the benefits of C02:

" climate change itself. Its negative consequences—such as drought and heat stress—would likely overwhelm any direct benefits that rising CO₂ might offer plant life." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-rising-co2-benefit-plants1/

The problem with this line of thinking is that it looks at exceptions. In vast quantities of land, a rise in temperature may be helpful for plant growth. But since they don't have the science they go back to their computer models and man-made predictions, because the model is only as good as the data given for the calculations. After all, man-made Global warming or Climate Change is all about scaring people into giving over their rights to the government.

And don't get me started on why Political Progressives think the government will solve anything! Talk about foolishness!

Atoday and Global Warming

Adventist Today posted another leftist article. Once again following the party line of acceptance of Global Warming. Which of course is termed Climate Change to hide the fact that Global Warming and cooling is not really something new or different for the earth. But instead of dealing with the article I was intrigued by the challenge that was given in the comments section on Facebook. Here are the two posts I am referring to:

Stewart Pepper I don't believe global warming due to CO2 is possible for a very different set of reasons than is postulated here. I do believe the driver of what I genuinely believe to be a hoax is a move to one world government. Having said that, I am NOT a fan of Stephen Bohr. I'd like to write my own article as to why I don't believe.

7

• 7h

• 

  Top Fan

  David Geelan I can't speak for the editors of the page, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they'd be willing to publish a well-written piece with a different view, and I for one would be delighted if you wrote it and they shared it.

So here is my wager. AToday will not publish an article of a different view because they have no interest in different views. They have sold their souls to the Progressive Political world of the Democrats and that is why they never post anything other than Progressive Political material with an Adventist tilt. Though admittedly sometimes the Adventist part is hard to determine.

Ryan Bell, case study of Political Progressivism to the religion of Progressivism.

Ryan Bell is back in the news as he was recently interviewed by the Christian Post. In the article entitled: Former pastor Ryan Bell on why he abandoned his Christian faith: I gave it my best shot Bell gives us some clues about how his politics became his religion and the new Progressivism displaced his Chrisitan faith. I doubt he understands how this really happened to him but it is something many of us have warned against for the last several years.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all profess an all-knowing and all-powerful supernatural being: God.  Progressives may say they do not belong to a religion because they do not believe in God.  But Progressivism professes an all-powerful State.  The State is Progressives' god and determines what is moral and immoral and has the power to destroy whom it wants. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/08/progressivism_takes_its_place_among_the_major_religions.html

Toward the beginning of his interview Ryan Bell says:

" Another way to think about this is that conservative Christianity is a very bounded community. There are clear markers of who is in and who is out. Part of the theological and ministry project I found myself a part of was widening that community to include more people and a broader analysis of politics. Eventually, it widens so far that it includes everyone and at that point, I didn't feel the need for Christianity, per se. It was just the human family.

Notice how his supposed broader analysis of politics led him to feel no need of Christianity. Progressives often feel that they have the truth on politics, that truth becomes their truth and their believe in their political views is their new religion. Bell continues:

CP: How do you describe yourself now? Would you call yourself an atheist?Bell: There's no one identity that perfectly captures how I think of myself today. I am an atheist, for sure, but there's so much more to me than that. I'm a humanist in the sense that I don't believe anyone is coming to save us. We are the ones we're waiting for. I'm also a democratic socialist, which describes how I understand politics. My humanism and my democratic socialism go hand in hand. I can't separate existential questions about meaning and value from political questions about who has access to a materially good life.

Bell's Progressivism led him to socialism and socialism to humanism which is actually a religion

Roy Wood Sellars, who drafted Humanist Manifesto I, wrote in The Humanist (Vol. I, 1941, p. 5), an article “Humanism as a Religion,” in which he stated:Undeniably there is something imaginative and daring in bringing together in one phrase two such profoundly symbolic words as humanism and religion. An intimate union is foreshadowed in which religion will become humanistic and humanism religious. And I believe that such a synthesis is imperative if humanity is ever to achieve a firm and adequate understanding of itself and its cosmic situation….
Religious humanism rests upon the bedrock of a decision that it is, in the long run, saner and wiser to face facts than to live in a world of fable. https://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/10697-is-humanism-a-religion

With Bell's new Progressive religion it is the way of integrity:

...Do you think this trend is being driven by the current secularization of American culture?Bell: The short answer is, yes, I think there is probably a positive feedback loop of some sort at work here. Secularization is driven by people determined to live their lives out from under old norms that turned out to be very exclusive and harmful to large swaths of the population. That secularization, in turn, encourages others to step out and live their lives with integrity and authenticity. If we take secularization to mean the de-religionization of America, then I think this means people are increasingly comfortable re-evaluating their ethics without reference to religion. People like Joshua Harris have done incredible harm to people by telling them that who they are isn't trustworthy or good. When you start to see the falsehood of that narrative come to life in the lives of the people you've influenced then yeah, that's either going to force you to question the foundations of your belief system or it will force you deeper into denial. Thankfully (from my perspective), Mr. Harris has chosen the path of integrity.

In an article in the Atlantic entitled: "Politics as the New Religion for Progressive Democrats" We read this:

Democrats have traditionally had a strong base of religious voters. A decade ago, more than 80 percent of self-identified Democrats were affiliated with some sort of religion, according to the Pew Research Center. The party was nearly one-quarter Catholic and nearly one-half Protestant, including mainline, evangelical, and historically black denominations. By 2014, those numbers had shifted significantly: Pew found that 28 percent of Democrats identified as religiously unaffiliated.

One of the closing paragraphs of the Atlantic article sums it up:

"Perhaps the takeaway from this data, then, is that the Democratic Party is going through a transformative moment of both sentiment and identity. Many liberals are feeling anger, and finding ways to express that. The elite part of the party, especially those who are well educated, is most engaged. And for these people, progressive politics may offer a form of meaning making, especially if they are disconnected from other forms of ethnic or religious identity."

It is pretty clear that Progressivism will lead to two things. 1. the removal of Christianity and 2. Progression toward socialism. As Bell says. "My humanism and my democratic socialism go hand in hand."  We always have to remember that in socialism the democratic part is just window dressing. 

"But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the course of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to Communism. Vladimir LeninThe goal of socialism is communism.Vladimir Lenin

Bell is on the path to the more Perfect savior of humanity via socialism and communism. We all know the old Soviet Union and its attitude of Atheism the political progressivism of Ryan Bell and frankly, many of the writers at Adventist Today and Spectrum are on that same path.

For Further reading consider this article from Discover the Networks:

Marxist doctrine holds that just as society evolved from feudalism to capitalism, it will inexorably progress still further to socialism and eventually communism. Communists consider socialism to be an intermediary step between capitalism (out of which socialism is said to grow) and communism. That is, communism (whose motto is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”) is deemed a further development, or “higher stage,” of socialism (whose motto is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his deeds”). Communism, in other words, is viewed as the more “perfect” of two systems that both advocate public ownership of the means of production, centralized economic planning, and the widespread redistribution of wealth.

The socialist principle of distribution according to deeds, or the quality and quantity of work that people perform, stands in marked contrast to the communist principle of distribution according to people’s needs. The former, because it accepts deed-based distribution of wealth, is considered easier to implement in a capitalist society without large-scale overhauls of existing political and economic structures. In essence, socialists view capitalism as a viable economic mechanism whose reins must simply be transferred from the currently dominant “oppressor class” that misuses capitalism to exploit workers, into the hands of the “worker class” which could use the system for laudable ends. http://archive.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=115&type=issue

Response to Karisma1980

This is the response to the comment made on this blog post

It is nice that Andrew Dykstra has a friend to stand up for him. The verse is most notable by its absence, also I did not claim he ignored it he did ignore it. But you would have to talk with him as to why it was not mentioned. I could give a theory but as you noticed I did not. Nor did I mention anything about equal marriage whatever that is

I can see very well you are not using the rule of gracious interpretation for my article. There is no such thing as implied ad hominem. It is either stated or it is not stated. You don't have implied attacks against a person, it happened or it did not happen. As for a strawman how can there be a straw man argument by including non-normative sexual desires in the category of "all non-normative". To be "a straw man argument someone attacks a position the opponent doesn’t really hold. Instead of contending with the actual argument". If he says "all non-normative people" and I argue that that category holds a whole lot of unpleasant things, I am arguing against his stated position. You are simply claiming what he says is not what he really thinks. Maybe it is not what he thinks but it is what he wrote!

The title of my article is also addressed to the editors of the article. A decent editor would have told Andrew that his use of "all" as in "all non-normative" is a huge mistake as is the use of "all" in most generalizations (hasty generalization), any argument that uses all can be defeated if one exception can be found. If you logic fails your position fails. In this case, a good editor could have fixed the problem by simply striking "all" and saying many non-normative. Now, that would be the easiest method but the article does not even define non-normative so the reader has to define it for themselves and the dictionary definition is: "not normative, not based on norms" Kind of a huge category there!

Did I attempt to clarify what Andrew meant by "all non-normative" No as if he was not going to define non-normative in his article why should I expect him to define it for me? So I took his words at face value. I did not assume that he did not say what he wanted to say.

Now that you think that "informed consent" is the norm for "all non-normative" people I would have to ask you why you think that. I would say rape is non-normative, necrophilia is non-normative, pedophilia is non-normative, none of those seem to require consent. The idea that there is one norm of informed consent found in all non-normative people is kind of silly. However, you did not say all non-normative people feel the need for informed consent you said Andrew and other LBGT Christians feel that way. Is that your definition of non-normative, or the more problematic "all non-normative" people. Further, you say bestiality is out at the start...so you feel it should not be included in the non-normative category? Are you saying that Children rapists do not fit into the non-normative category? I sincerely doubt any Psychologist would exclude them from being non-normative, why or what gives you the credibility to tell us that those things are normal contrary to medical and societal opinion.

The only way you have a case is if you defined non-normative other than meaning what the definition is, not defined by having a norm. However, you are correct Andrew did not imply "that these three further states were part of his insight" He specifically stated it using his logical fallacy of "all non-normative people" as he said: "represent all sexually non-normative people"

Of course, all this ignores that his insight is developed using eisegesis rather than exegesis and it ignores that the texts were referencing people without sexual capacity through mutilation or the supreme will power (or the rare born that way). At least for LGBT that is rarely the case and not even close to applicable to the context.

Now if Marygrace would like to tell me the specific absurdity in my article, I wait eagerly...oh and if she does maybe tell me how I am a hater and how she can feel so free to use real ad hominem attacks.

AToday's false premise

I know there seems to be no end to the absurdities on the Adventist Today website, but it is hard to believe what kind of fictions they try to pass. They must be taking their cue from the leftist media who so often distort the news. This time it is so obvious that it destroys the whole point of the AToday article. Here is the first paragraph from  Loren Seibold  |  20 September 2019  |  

Elder Wilson’s first sermon to the world church in 2010 was predictive of the kind of leadership he would practice. Beyond a few manufactured trivialities (reading non-Adventist authors, meditation) he showed that his leadership style would involve enforcing upon the church his personal understanding of Adventist orthodoxy. This sense of himself as “the first minister” (his father’s description of himself when GC president) came through when he began to call himself “President of the World Church of Seventh-day Adventists” instead of “President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists,” which may seem a small difference, but is actually quite revelatory of who he is. 

He links to an AToday article by Ervin Taylor which does not tell us that Wilson ever calls himself the "President of the World Church of Seventh-day Adventists" but it could be from some copy editor, the article says: 

To be honest, I’m not sure, as yet, what to make of this. In the case of the article, perhaps this is just some copy editor forgetting to put “world” in front of “Church” so that what should have appeared was “Ted N. C. Wilson is president of the Seventh-day Adventist world church.” But is that true? To be specific, should not the byline have read: “Ted N. C. Wilson is the current president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists”? But what difference does it make?    

He does not give an answer to what difference does it make and Loren Seibold offers no real reason for why it is revelatory of who Wilson is, assuming Wilson actually ever said it. I did an internet search and found no evidence that Wilson ever called himself “President of the World Church of Seventh-day Adventists”. So the article Siebold linked to does not say Wilson called himself that and it does not appear on the internet somewhere at least readily apparent that he said it but on AToday it is just stated that Wilson began to call himself President of the World Church of Seventh-day Adventists. Funny how that works.

But will anyone else notice this? Nope. Watch the facebook comments and see if I am right!