Why I Became SDA

This essay will be in a couple of parts. It is not intended to be a heavily theological or apologetic work, just an outline of how I became a Seventh-day Adventist. Let me introduce myself by telling you a bit of my history. I recently earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA. I have a B.S. in Chemistry from Fresno State University. I became a Seventh-Day Adventist after converting to Christianity in college. Before that, I was a Chan (a.k.a. Zen) Buddhist for about a decade. I became a Chan Buddhist (a religion I now respect, but disagree with) after spending a number of years studying Hung Gar Kung Fu under Sifu Mel S., who was (if I understand correctly, a student of Bucksam Kong. (I owe Sifu a great deal and hope some day I can regain contact and thank him profusely.) Hung Gar is a great martial art that does wonders for developing confidence, character, self-defense skills and is an art that can be studied for a life-time. If any of you have seen the Once Upon a Time In China movies (of Jet Lee fame), the movies are about the great Chinese physician and martial artist Sifu Wong Fei Hung. (For some basic info about Hung Gar, see http://www.kungfucinema.com/articles/2001-04-08-01.htm and http://www.wle.com/thePen/iskf.html). However, while in college at Fresno State University (studying Chemistry) I became convinced that there was some sort of God after learning about hemoglobin in my biochemistry class. I guess it was the teleological argument that hit me. But hemoglobin seemed so well designed that I just figured it could not have been the result of natural selection. Oddly, when I asked my professor, "You mean to tell me that that [hemoglobin] just happened by accident?" my professor essentially yelled at me. He said, "Evolution is the only way we could have gotten here. We are obviously here. Therefore evolution must be true." Ignoring the circular reasoning for a minute, and ignoring the merits of the various arguments for and against biological evolution, there is something else this event taught me. I realized that, if what I had said I implied I believed in the existence of the Easter Bunny or Santa Clause, the professor would have politely ignored me, thought I was strange, and changed the subject. He would not have yelled at me. I learned that, for that professor, he had an underlying emotional reason for responding as he did. This was not dispassionate scientific reasoning, but emotionalism. In any event, I digress. Hemoglobin started me down the path to believing there was a God of some sort. Exactly what this meant, I did not know at the time. I was not sure what kind of God there was. I had already left the Eastern religions (i.e., Chan Buddhism) because I no longer accepted a dualistic view of the universe where good and evil was just a matter of perception. (The thought that Hitler and his victims might have the same ultimate fate disturbs me morally.) So I was left with the so-called western religions. I began studying the reasons for believing whether Islam or Christianity were true. Notice that I was not just studying the particular doctrines of Islam and Christianity and then picking the one I felt I liked the most, or made me feel the best, but I was trying to pick the one that was true. (Part II later.)