Christian medical students want anti-evolution lectures

Aftenposten (Norway News) ^ | 19 Nov 2003 | Jonathan Tisdall

[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.

[Modernman]

That's one of the funniest lines to come along in years! Could be right out of Orwell.

How so? My point is that creationists are only willing to debate using a certain debating format that is highly disadvantageous to evolution. Like I said, creationists rely on easy soundbites to make their arguments, while evolutionists have to rely on long explanations of biology, chemistry, genetics etc.

When I debated in high school, you would lose major points for raising too many issues in your opening arguments because doing so made it impossible for your opponent to respond.

[Abe Froman]

Evolutionary theory *used* to state this orthodoxy.

Apparently nothing is more responsive to evolutionary forces than the theory itself.

In evolutionary theory the normal rules of science are thrown out. When a fatal flaw shows up, the theory isn't abandoned, instead the theory is altered to more and more preposterous lengths in an attempt to square it with the evidence.

This is precisely what happened with the lack of fossil evidence. For those that insist on transitional forms, don't bother arguing with me, take it up with Gould, Dr. Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History, or your nearest preferred paleontologist.

What is interesting is that the intellectually honest evolutionists recognize that the fossil record does not support the natural selection mechanism----so the theory was altered to explain why there is no apparent gradual line of speciation in the record. The altered theory states that changes in speciation happen not in gradual changes, but in large jumps. This makes sense according to the (lack of) evidence, however we have never observed such a change in any of the hundreds of millions of species existing on earth today.

[Gunslingr3]

Whereas Darwinites believe matter whipped up out of nowhere for no reason and magically became hgighley organized biology.

Actually, they beleive there is a reason, and they're trying to find it. Just as we no longer hold Zues or Thor as the cause for lightning and thunder, we will continue to examine the cause and effect nature of the universe. Saying, 'god did it,' is insufficient understanding for some.

[Abe Froman]

When did this mutation occur? Can you prove it ever didn't exist?

[Abe Froman]

Is humor lost on all evolutionists or is it just you?

[Doctor Stochastic]

At not time did evolutionary theory state: "According to the theory of evolution a mutation must be immediately beneficial to survive through selection." The adverb is the enemy of the verb.

When a fatal flaw shows up, the theory isn't abandoned, instead the theory is altered...

This is normal scientific progress. New data modifies theories. You are criticizing science for acting like science.

[js1138]

Humor requires communication between intellectual equals. The jokes you thought were funny in the third grade just aren't getting belly laughs among adults these days.

[whattajoke]

Is humor lost on all evolutionists or is it just you?

In Vade's defense (not that he needs me), there is nothing funny about willful ignorance.

[cookcounty]

"[Dean] Brodal also felt that evolution had a rather minor spot in medical education. "

How could that be? We've been told repeatedly, "without evulution, biology makes no sense!"

[Salgak]

More like "He brought up sickle-cell anemia, it's HIS job to look it up. .

[cookcounty]

"These are the future doctors I would not want treating me."

Some of them probably have treated you.

[Salgak]

Exactly when did a mutation occur ? No clue, I'm not a geneticist. However, we DO know that it did not exist in samples of Cro-magnon and Neanderthal DNA that has been recovered, so that puts a far end on the mutation of roughly 50K years ago.

We know the gene exists now, but only in humans of African Origin, and does NOT occur in the Caucasian or Mongoloid varieties of Homo sapiens. That too puts the mutation sometime AFTER the migrations from Africa that ended up differentiating humans into three major varieties. More than that, would take some forensic DNA analysis which is nowhere CLOSE to my specialty. . .

[atlaw]

"This is precisely what happened with the lack of fossil evidence. For those that insist on transitional forms, don't bother arguing with me, take it up with Gould, Dr. Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History, or your nearest preferred paleontologist."

Well, I guess that settles it. And all this time I thought transitionals in the fossil record were the subject of considerable study. Turns out those transitionals aren't transitional at all, just a bunch of slightly different specially created critters off the special creation assembly line. Science, schmience, let's go play some golf.

[VadeRetro]

That's one of the funniest lines ["The debating context does not lend itself well to evolutionists trying to explain complex scientific issues"] to come along in years! Could be right out of Orwell.

Tends to be true, though. Imagine someone is telling people you weren't born of your father and mother, but were zapped into existence by evil elves a few years ago. A one hour debate is arranged. You prepare large transparency copies of your birth certificate, baby pictures, school photos, military records, etc. This is going to be a slam dunk, with all the positive evidence you have.

You present first. You give the broad outline of your family background and your own life. You use all your slides. Fifteen minutes gone.

Your designated opponent presents. He rambles about suspicious gaps in your records, supposed contradictions in your story contacts with mysterious entities, and unnatural occurrences associated with you. Your "documentary" evidence is all forged, he says.

Everything he says is a lie, but you can't even remember it all, it's flying so fast. You frantically write down a few points. You never met a mysterious Colonel Mustard. Your father was never a Freemason. Panicked, you realize that you have no proof that you have never met the people you haven't or what your father wasn't. Worse, your oppenent is prattling on at a machine-gun pace. You won't even be able to address most of his points. Your audience won't remember it all either, but it will be obvious that you left much of what he said unaddressed.

You realize that perhaps a third of the audience is merely amused, scoffing, laughing to each other. Others, it's hard to tell what they think. Perhaps forty percent seems mesmerized by the assured, rapid-fired stream of lies. In their minds, it's your word against his. Lying his butt off, your opponent has already wrapped up no worse than a near-draw, far from the total refutation you had imagined to be trivially easy.

[skraeling]

The debating context does not lend itself well to evolutionists trying to explain complex scientific issues.

"The dog ate my homework" is another good one. When losing, it's always someone or something elses fault. It cannot be the "argument" which is defective.

[VadeRetro]

This is precisely what happened with the lack of fossil evidence. For those that insist on transitional forms, don't bother arguing with me, take it up with Gould, Dr. Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History, or your nearest preferred paleontologist.

I answered you back in post 72 with hard evidence, a lot lot lot of it. You answer, not to me but to someone else, by simply repeating the quote-mined mischaracterizations of the words of a few scientists. You clearly at some level know you don't have the goods.

My hard evidence is real data. Your quote-mined fabrications are just creationists painting a lying picture with more-or-less true quotes.

[whattajoke]

"The dog ate my homework" is another good one. When losing, it's always someone or something elses fault. It cannot be the "argument" which is defective.

Losing? To whom? Where? On what point? When did this happen? How?

When making bold statements which equate to "Science has been turned on it's head recently," please do provide a bit more than just the bold statement, thanks.

[Abe Froman]

Here's a sample of what's out there. I understand, having often witnessed the performance, that there are loads of people who will dismiss any pile of paleontological evidence--piece by piece if necessary--while continuing to chant that there is no evidence. Nevertheless, "I can pretend to dismiss all the evidence" does not equate to "There is no fossil evidence to indicate transitional forms between, for example, fish and land animals or apes and humans." The second statement, a quote from the main article, is flat-out false. Absurdly, ridiculously, delusionally so.

I have seen this kind of evidence. Drawings and lineups of partial skulls finished off with plaster of paris masquerading as the "missing link" may look good but it doesn't prove anything. This is all speculation in its highest form. There is not a single fossil for which there is PROOF that *this* species gradually changed into *that* species. If gradual change through natural selection is true, then the speciation that we see today would be but a snapshot in an infinite sea of change both prior to present day and in the future. In fact transitional forms, as we would expect to see them according to theory, would grossly outnumber existing forms. The hundreds of millions of years and hundreds of billions of mutations and selections that needed to take place to reach our current speciation would, going by the odds, produce such an incredibly vast array of fossils such that the branching of speciation could be laid out on an immense surface containing fossils lined up from virtually beginning to end. Instead we have pathetic plaster of paris skulls and drawings that purport to show "transitional forms". We have hoaxes played on paleontologists hoping to find the supposed transitional forms, and textbook examples of same based on alleged, but now lost, shoeboxes full of bones. With what one might expect to see, given the theory, the presented evidence is highly speculatory at best. Give me the mountain of skeletons that should be available to be lined up to show the origin of the whale, the elephant, the ostrich, the anteater. You can't. You can tell me where they *think* they came from, perhaps provide some cartoonish skeleton drawings of a half-whale half-cow, perhaps a leg bone fossil that a paleontologist would claim to be from a species somewhere in between, but this is not proof.

[Modernman]

The dog ate my homework" is another good one. When losing, it's always someone or something elses fault. It cannot be the "argument" which is defective.

It's nobody's fault. The point you seem to refuse to address is that a carnivalesque huckster who is not bound by any debating rules has an advantage. I'd be happy to debate ANY so-called creationism expert in a format that allowed me to do research in response to his assertions and that didn't impose a short time limit on my responses (this is why scientists rely on peer review in journals, rather than sound-bite debates). Or, do you think throwing out 50 assertions in 10 minutes and then claiming your opponent failed to respond to them in the alloted timeframe is a legitimate debating tactic?

[whattajoke]

goalposts... moved.

If gradual change through natural selection is true, then the speciation that we see today would be but a snapshot in an infinite sea of change both prior to present day and in the future.

Um, well... yeah. Excepting your incorrect use of "infinite," If you had only posted this sentence, I might believe you've actually learned something.