Posted on 11/19/2003 10:15:28 AM PST by yonif
Medical student John David Johannessen and the leader of the Christian Medical Students Circle have petitioned the medical faculty at the University of Oslo for lectures "that not only argue the cause for evolution, but also the evidence against", student newspaper Universitas reports.
"The theory of evolution doesn't stand up and does not present enough convincing facts. It is one theory among many, but in education it is discussed as if it is accepted by everyone," Johannessen said.
Johannessen is a believer in creationism, based on the biblical account.
"Of course one has to know the theory of evolution, it is after all part of the curriculum. But certain lecturers demand that one believe it as well. Then it becomes a question of faith and not subject," Johannessen said.
Johannessen told the newspaper that he and his fellows are often compared to American extremists. Besides not being taken seriously or being able to debate the topic relevantly, Johannessen said that 'evolutionists' practically harass those who do not agree with them.
Dean Per Brodal said it was regrettable if any university staff were disparaging to creationists, but that there was no reason to complain about a lack of relevant evidence. Brodal also felt that evolution had a rather minor spot in medical education.
Biology professor Nils Christian Stenseth argued that instead of indulging an 'off-topic' debate the medical faculty should offer a course in fundamental evolutionary biology, saying that nothing in biology could be understood out of an evolutionary context.
The Christian Medical Students Circle want three basic points to be included in the curriculum:
1 According to the theory of evolution a mutation must be immediately beneficial to survive through selection. But many phenomena explained by evolution (for example the eye) involve so many, small immediately detrimental mutations that only give a long-term beneficial effect.
2 There is no fossil evidence to indicate transitional forms between, for example, fish and land animals or apes and humans.
3 Evolution assumes too many extremely improbably events occurring over too short a span of time.
Good lord, they never were that big on Daktari!!!
The science could conceivably be incorrect, but your statement is utterly absurd.
Evolution attempts to explain speciation.That is what is taught in Biology 101. Discussion of the Big Bang and other epistomological ideas are better left to the physicists.
Still bitter over losing the gig with Dave Garroway back in the fifties, aren't you?
My condolences upon being so old. ;)
I won a puppy in a parish raffle when I was (4? 5? a loooong time ago). But we had already left the fair when they held the raffle, and when they called our house to let us know, my older sister answered, was dubious, and refused the prize! I'm still mad at her.
"Take the condition of sickle cell anemia."My favorite example of a beneficial mutation nowadays is the Apo-AI Milano mutation. This is found in a few people in a village outside of Milano, Italy. These people make a super-HDL cholesterol which scrubs their arteries free of plaques even when they have high cholesterol numbers. A synthesized form of this new, improved HDL recently went thru Stage II tests and stunned everybody. You can find links to news items regarding it here.You're using a genetic mutation that has negative consequences as an example to bolster an argument of evolution? Evolution by natural selection requires BENEFICIAL mutations. Find a clear case of actual genetic mutation (not the emergence or suppression of pre-existing genetic traits) that has a beneficial effect.
Another beneficial mutation (for which I am personally thankful) is lactose tolerance. Everybody assumes that lactose intolerance is the mutation, but the evidence strongly points to lactose intolerance being our default condition, and lactose tolerance being the more recent mutation.
Utterly false. Consider hat would happen if modified Earth life were introduced on Mars. It would evolve, yet would not be derived from abiogenesis.
Or consider th 'panspermia' hyothesis, that life from outer space seeded the Earth. Evolution still happened.
Or consider if some diety or demon or whatever simply willed life on Earth into existence. We know, from the fossil record, that this was in the form of bacteria. Evolution, of course, would still happen.
In fact, as long as you have imperfect replication and differential reproduction, evolution is inevitable.
What's Christian have to do with it? AFAIK, there are more Muslim creationists than those of any other faith (teaching evo is illegal in Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.). The objection isn't to Christians, it's to creaetionists. *Big* difference.
1 According to the theory of evolution a mutation must be immediately beneficial to survive through selection. But many phenomena explained by evolution (for example the eye) involve so many, small immediately detrimental mutations that only give a long-term beneficial effect.
2 There is no fossil evidence to indicate transitional forms between, for example, fish and land animals or apes and humans.
3 Evolution assumes too many extremely improbably events occurring over too short a span of time.
If the Dean had a backbone he'd say let there be debate. Actually I like and agree with his claim that "evolution had a rather minor spot in medical education."
Evolutionary theory proposes no such thing. Perhaps people decline to debate with people who continually misstate what evolutionary theory actually proposes. Creationists often do not have the courtesy to state evolutionary theory correctly.
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