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.
Oooh!! I get it! "Communism Creationism is a red herring."
Nice bit of tap-dancing but the size of meteor craters does not make one macro and one micro in same context as micro and macro evolution. Nice try.
Fact is we can observe meteor craters on other planets of similar size.
How else do you know somebody else's debating tactic? I don't speculate on other people's positions so I am not going to try and give an account of what another person will or will not say. The only reason you pretend to know "the typical creationist approach to debate" is you were lobbing a preemptive strike to try and discredit the other side before the other side has said anything.
I am not a creationist - I just don't like the faultily logic of one person explaining to us what another person really thinks. You are better off defending YOUR position rather then pretending you know what other people think.
Now you are rambling. You claim to know what creationists will say - what gives you this magical power?
Why?
So you actually believe attacking creationism somehow supports the theory of evolution? You people are amazing.
Exactly! Creationism has nothing to do with accepting the fact there are weaknesses in the theory of evolution. Put another way: one can find weaknesses in one theory without having to provide an alternative theory. Just as finding weaknesses in one theory does provide supporting evidence to an opposing theory.
Based on my observations of debates on this matter as well as other peoples' descriptions of such debates. With this evidence, I'm comfortable saying that creationists who debate evolutionists in a public setting typically rely on a certain approach. Are there exceptions? Sure. Typically, though, the debating tactics described on this thread are the ones creationists use. No mind-reading required.
Sounds good. So why do evolutionists attack creationists since creationism addresses origin of life and evolution does not and can not?
Micro and macro evolution are two different processes. Micro being evolution within a species and macro being one species becoming another. Micro evolution is scientifically observable and macro evolution is pure theory.
The size of a meteor does not make it micro or macro in the same context as evolution (the only factor is the size of the meteor not the processes involved in a meteor hitting the Earth).
You may claim Micro and Macro evolution differ only in size but that would be hard to support.
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