Posted on 04/29/2003 10:43:39 AM PDT by Remedy
Texas Tech University biology professor Michael Dini recently came under fire for refusing to write letters of recommendation for students unable to "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to the following question: "How do you think the human species originated?"
For asking this question, Professor Dini was accused of engaging in overt religious discrimination. As a result, a legal complaint was filed against Dini by the Liberty Legal Institute. Supporters of the complaint feared that consequences of the widespread adoption of Dini’s requirement would include a virtual ban of Christians from the practice of medicine and other related fields.
In an effort to defend his criteria for recommendation, Dini claimed that medicine was first rooted in the practice of magic. Dini said that religion then became the basis of medicine until it was replaced by science. After positing biology as the science most important to the study of medicine, he also posited evolution as the "central, unifying principle of biology" which includes both micro- and macro-evolution, which applies to all species.
In addition to claiming that someone who rejects the most important theory in biology cannot properly practice medicine, Dini suggested that physicians who ignore or neglect Darwinism are prone to making bad clinical decisions. He cautioned that a physician who ignores data concerning the scientific origins of the species cannot expect to remain a physician for long. He then rhetorically asked the following question: "If modern medicine is based on the method of science, then how can someone who denies the theory of evolution -- the very pinnacle of modern biological science -- ask to be recommended into a scientific profession by a professional scientist?"
In an apparent preemptive strike against those who would expose the weaknesses of macro-evolution, Dini claimed that "one can validly refer to the ‘fact’ of human evolution, even if all of the details are not yet known." Finally, he cautioned that a good scientist "would never throw out data that do not conform to their expectations or beliefs."
The legal aspect of this controversy ended this week with Dini finally deciding to change his recommendation requirements. But that does not mean it is time for Christians to declare victory and move on. In fact, Christians should be demanding that Dini’s question be asked more often in the court of public opinion. If it is, the scientific community will eventually be indicted for its persistent failure to address this very question in scientific terms.
Christians reading this article are already familiar with the creation stories found in the initial chapters of Genesis and the Gospel of John. But the story proffered by evolutionists to explain the origin of the species receives too little attention and scrutiny. In his two most recent books on evolution, Phillip Johnson gives an account of evolutionists’ story of the origin of the human species which is similar to the one below:In the beginning there was the unholy trinity of the particles, the unthinking and unfeeling laws of physics, and chance. Together they accidentally made the amino acids which later began to live and to breathe. Then the living, breathing entities began to imagine. And they imagined God. But then they discovered science and then science produced Darwin. Later Darwin discovered evolution and the scientists discarded God.
Darwinists, who proclaim themselves to be scientists, are certainly entitled to hold this view of the origin of the species. But that doesn’t mean that their view is, therefore, scientific. They must be held to scientific standards requiring proof as long as they insist on asking students to recite these verses as a rite of passage into their "scientific" discipline.
It, therefore, follows that the appropriate way to handle professors like Michael Dini is not to sue them but, instead, to demand that they provide specific proof of their assertion that the origin of all species can be traced to primordial soup. In other words, we should pose Dr. Dini’s question to all evolutionists. And we should do so in an open public forum whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Recently, I asked Dr. Dini for that proof. He didn’t respond.
Dini’s silence as well as the silence of other evolutionists speaks volumes about the current status of the discipline of biology. It is worth asking ourselves whether the study of biology has been hampered by the widespread and uncritical acceptance of Darwinian principles. To some observers, its study has largely become a hollow exercise whereby atheists teach other atheists to blindly follow Darwin without asking any difficult questions.
At least that seems to be the way things have evolved.
I entertain the possibility that the universe is the unspooling of something like a computer program, with ititial conditions set by something we are incapable of understanding. It looks to me, however like the program includes indeterminancy, and that selection is the specific cause of life's variety.
Evolution makes no statements regarding whether or not our existence has a purpose. Your constant rewording of the same thing over and over again does not change this fact.
The National Association of Biology Teachers [NABT] in their 1995 Official Statement on Teaching Evolution stated the following:
"The diversity of life [all life] on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."
Now, why did they change the statement?
Permit me to butt in here. I freely admit that I've never sat a doctor down and interrogated him about his basic knowledge of biology, including evolution. Nor have I asked if he believes that bacteria and viruses can cause disease, etc. I don't ask because I assume that if he's been through med school, he knows this stuff. In my mind, that's what it means to be a physician these days. I'd be quite surprised if a doctor didn't meet my expectations.
Now if I found myself face-to-face with a doctor whose education was in the Congo, or Borneo, or Haiti, I just might wonder if he had received a modern (by US standards) education. I don't want my doctor jumping up and down and going into a chant to drive the evil spirits out of my body.
But with a US born and trained physician, I think we all assume that he's had a good education, so of course we don't ask. That doesn't mean, however, that it's not important. If I were to somehow learn that my doctor rejected evolution, I would then be concerned about his ability to diagnose a complicated matter.
It is not a question I would ask under thiose circumstances. I personally think the whole arena of personal recommendations reeks of corruption.But those with good recommendations are likely to be suck-ups, and those without might just be the creative ones. If I were forced to choose among a class of cookie cutter 4.0 pre-med students I would go mad. Perhaps a lottery would work.
Actually, IIRC, Pythagoras came up with that argument.
It was a bit of a surprise to me when I read Archimedes' On floating bodies, the first hypothesis is "the surface of a body of water at rest is part of the surface of a sphere centered at the center of the earth".
And if you heard your doctor discussing the possibilities of a miracle, I suspect you would want a second opinion. ;^)
"I think it is a possibility that SARS came from space. It is a very strong possibility," Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told Reuters.
"I think it is completely nuts," said Dr Anne Bridgen, a molecular virologist at the University of Ulster.
It was a bit of a surprise to me when I read Archimedes' On floating bodies, the first hypothesis is "the surface of a body of water at rest is part of the surface of a sphere centered at the center of the earth".
Coulda been Pythagoras. I really don't know. But the Greeks had the shape of the earth figured out, and its size. As for Archimedes, it always amazes me how sharp he was.
(for discussion only)
Yes. Unless I had deliberately consulted a Christian Science practitioner, in which case I'd be quite pleased.
Imagine what would happen to a D.A. who held a press conference and said, "Everyone who had the opportunity to commit the murder denies it, so it must have been Satan."
I think jennyp knows this stuff, so I'm giving her a ping. We discussed it a couple of years ago. All that I remember is that it's supposed to be a bit of evidence that we're related to some other hominids with the same genetic defect, presumably a non-fatal inheritance from a long-ago ancestor of us all.
We refer, of course, to the "multi-spectral misfit".....
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