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.

[metacognative]

Still waiting for first hand descriptions of actual bones showing transition species.

[whattajoke]

start with your jaw and ear bones. You can learn a ton of stuff from them alone... it's really rather fascinating.

[Abe Froman]

"if that were all that there is to creationism, then I would support your contention 100%. Unfortunately, creationism as well as it's new form under the guise of ID, does not stop at, "God created the world."

Neither does evolution simply attempt to explain speciation. It neccessitates a philosophical question that must be answered. Hence the reason true evolutionists (meaning actual scientists, not brainless laymen that believe in evolution but say "it was how God did it") largely adhere to the secular humanist/atheist worldview. If random processes CAN produce life and humanity it removes the need for a "God" and that has philosophical implications that reach far beyond the sphere of science.

[Abe Froman]

start with your jaw and ear bones. You can learn a ton of stuff from them alone... it's really rather fascinating.

I think we are looking forward to testable, verifiable, and repeatable proof, not baseless and unexplained claims.

[Last Visible Dog]

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.

So if a group of Irish-Americans say something on a subject would you claim you know what all Irish-Americans will say related to that subject?

I don't want to beat this to death. Maybe you are correct and you know what somebody else will say. I just think you serve your position better if you support YOUR position rather than explain what the opposition is going to say.

[Last Visible Dog]

PRESS RELEASE -- Two members of the Irony Awards Committee were hospitalized today for "near-cranial-explosion" syndrome when the irony in the committee room reached critical mass. The remaining members of the committee are under quarantine at "Paddy's Pub," reportedly receiving emergency alcohol treatments.

Dude, stop Bogarting that joint.

[PatrickHenry]

No one has ever seen a meteor crator of that size suddenly happen. No one has ever seen a flat plain suddenly transformed by one of these imagainary macro meteors into a crater. This nonsensical theory that one minute there's no crater and the next moment there is one is purest garbage. Science is repeatable! Reproducable in the lab! Observable! So-called crater science is rubbish! Liberal rubbish! Stalin believed in meteor craters. He murdered millions!

[Last Visible Dog]

Of course, we have observed speciation, but we have never observed a large meteor crater being formed.

But we have observed craters of that size on other planets and we can duplication the crater creation process so all that needs to be done is extrapolation of size and not process (unlike micro and macro evolution).

[Last Visible Dog]

No one has ever seen a meteor crator of that size suddenly happen. No one has ever seen a flat plain suddenly transformed by one of these imagainary macro meteors into a crater.

But we have observed the crater creation process so all the extrapolation needed is that of size and not process (unlike evolution). Science often does small scale lab work to explain larger scale processes in the real world.

Science is repeatable! Reproducable in the lab! Observable!

And science can and does reproduce the crater creation process – just on a smaller scale. Are you arguing the scale has to be identical or the scientific findings can not be trusted? We have empirical evidence of crater creation, we can duplicate it in the lab, and we have evidence of other occurrences of giant craters of other planets. We have no such evidence for many aspects of evolution (and that is the purpose of your analogy – no?)

[Doctor Stochastic]

You keep claiming that there is somehow a difference between "micro" and "macro" evolution. What is the barrier? What experiments shows that this exists? Explain your answere with respect to the references in post 240.

[bluejay]

Pig valves, not the entire heart -- and then it takes loads of drugs to keep the thing going.

From http://healthandage.com/Home/gm=20!gid1=4806:

Pig hearts could solve many problems for those waiting for a transplant, but the prospect raises many ethical problems. Transplantation has proved highly successful as a way of treating heart failure. The major limitation now is the shortage of donor organs available. At present, five heart transplants are performed per million of the population. In reality, perhaps 20 to 60 per million could benefit. ...

And, the doctor in question specifically mentioned the evolution angle when asked why he didn't pick something closer, evolutionarily, to humans.

I would be curious about the evolutionary angle on heart transplants. It is not, typically, what is considered.

[Last Visible Dog]

You have said this time and time again, and I used to believe you. In light of your more recent posts over the last month or so, I must admit I'm finding it harder and harder to believe. But then again, as we've also been told, we are just dopey rubes that can't possibly come to grips with your intellect.

whatajoke, do you have to turn every debate personal? This crap in unnecessary. Stop trying to read my mind or claim you know what I REALLY think. Maybe you should spend more time supporting YOUR position and less time worrying about me personally. My personal beliefs have no direct connection to what I am saying and if you are trying to attack my position by attacking me personally you are using very faulty logic.

[PatrickHenry]

But we have observed the crater creation process ...

There is no macro crater-creation evidence. None. Name one observed event of macro crater creation. There isn't any. Crater science is all bogus. Crater scientists are in it for the money! Ever since this crater science began, we've had socialism, communism, nazism, teen pregnancy, and rap music. Conservatives must oppose this craterist filth!

[Last Visible Dog]

However, to your point that evolution is evolution and creationism simply addresses the moment of creation...

I never made that point.

if that were all that there is to creationism, then I would support your contention 100%. Unfortunately, creationism as well as it's new form under the guise of ID, does not stop at, "God created the world." If it did, there wouldn't be much to these crevo threads at all, especially since many here believe "God created the world," yet still accept evolutionary facts.

Once again, you are telling us what all Creationist think.

Many different theories fall under the heading “Creationist” - Creationist is anything position that involves creation rather than evolution or “always existed”.

My point was Creationism addresses the origin of life and Evolution does not and can not yet Evolutionists endlessly argue with Creationists about the origin of life (except when they are called on it or asked to explain how they believe life originated – usually they retreat to “evolution does not address the origin of life” - but alas now I am doing what I just negatively comment about – telling you what other people think and/or will say. I guess it is a very easy trap to fall into.

[longshadow]

macro placemarker

[Abe Froman]

This will probably be my last crevo discussion as responding to legitimate arguments in an intelligent way quickly becomes a second job. The evidence appears to reveal several fatal flaws in evolutionary theory that, each taken alone, are enough to bury it. They are simply insurmountable. The biggest of which being spontaneous generation, which not a single person here has attempted to tackle (irrelevant virus modification articles notwithstanding.)

here you go:

"The main problem with such phyletic gradualism is that the fossil record provides so little evidence for it. Very rarely can we trace the gradual transformation of one entire species into another through a finely graded sequence of intermediary forms."----S. J. Gould, S. E. Luria & S. Singer, 'A View of Life', 1981

"We now come to perhaps the most serious of defects in the evolutionary theory (belief) - the complete absence of transitional forms. If life has always been in a continual stream of transmutation from one form to another, as evolutionists insist, then we should certainly expect to find as many fossils of the intermediate stages between different forms as of the distinct kinds themselves.

Yet, no fossils have been found that can be considered transitional between the major groups or phyla! From the beginning, these organisms were just clearly and distinctly set apart from each other as they are today. Instead of finding a record of fine graduations preserved in the fossil record, we invariably find large gaps. This fact is absolutely FATAL to the general theory (belief) of evolution."----Scott M. Huges. PH.D

"Biologists would dearly like to know how modern apes, modern humans and the various ancestral hominids have evolved from a common ancestor. Unfortunately, the fossil record is somewhat incomplete as far as the hominids are concerned, and it is all but blank for the apes.
The best we can hope for is that more fossils will be found over the next few years which will fill the present gaps in the evidence.
David Pilbeam [a well-known expert in human evolution] comments wryly, 'If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, "forget it: there isn't enough to go on".'"---Richard E. Leakey

"It is not even possible to make a caricature of evolution out of palaeobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that the lack of transitional series cannot be explained by the scarcity of the material.
The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."----N. Heiribert-Nilsson

"Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution.
The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution)."----Stephen J. Gould

"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism...and the actual findings of paleontology.
Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty.
Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record."----E. Mayr

"The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs."----Stephen J. Gould

"The fossil record doesn't even provide any evidence in support of Darwinian theory except in the weak sense that the fossil record is compatible with it, just as it is compatible with other evolutionary theories, and revolutionary theories and special creationist theories and even historical theories."----David B. Kitts

"If man evolved from an apelike creature he did so without leaving a trace of that evolution in the fossil record."----Lord Solly Zuckerman, MA, MD, DSc (Anatomy), Prof. of anatomy, University of Birmingham, Chief scientific advisor, United Kingdom 'Beyond the Ivory Tower' Taplinger Publishing Company, 1970

"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants.
In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."--S. M. Stanley, 'The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species', 1981

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.
You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?"----Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History

"We do not have any available fossil group which can categorically be claimed to be the ancestor of any other group.

We do not have in the fossil record any specific point of divergence of one life form for another, and generally each of the major life groups has retained its fundamental structural and physiological characteristics throughout its life history and has been conservative in habitat." G. S. Carter, Professor & Author. Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Cambridge, England. Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution

"The scientific establishment's acceptance of worldwide catastrophism and mass extinction does not signify their abandonment of materialistic evolution.

Neither has their grudging acquiescence to the fact that great catastrophes caused the deposition of many of the fossils forced them to consider that virtually no fossils are in the process of forming on the bottom of any lake or sea today. This is a verboten subject. When I asked the editors of several of the most prestigious scientific journals the reasons for this silence, I was met with more silence."----Luther D. Sunderland

[Junior]

During an interview, a reporter asked the doctor why he chose a baboon heart rather than the heart of an animal more closely related to humanity. He said he didn't believe such relationships existed as all animals were created in their present form, and therefore no animal was any more related to humans than any other.

[Last Visible Dog]

You keep claiming that there is somehow a difference between "micro" and "macro" evolution. What is the barrier? What experiments shows that this exists? Explain your answere with respect to the references in post 240.

The difference is one is a theory and the other is observable – a fairly major difference. Basically macro evolution was extrapolated from micro evolution with very little supporting evidence. Macro evolution is not just a “bigger” evolution – it is a different process (one species becoming another – we have very little idea how that is supposed to take place). The observable evolution (micro) does not support evolution between species (macro) unlike observing the creation of a small crater and extrapolating it only in size to a very large crater.

[Abe Froman]

It would be physically possible to reproduce these crater effects given enough money, technology, resources, and time. All that is required is to hurl a large object into the ground at high speed. Furthermore, it is possible right now to reproduce these effects on a smaller scale. In fact you can do it yourself. Find a rock, go to the beach, and throw it as hard as you can into the sand. See what happens.

[Last Visible Dog]

There is no macro crater-creation evidence. None. Name one observed event of macro crater creation.

That is not true. There are large craters on this planet and other planets. HINT: that is evidence.

Second we can duplication the creation of a crater in the lab and extrapolitic to a very large size and the findings are identical to the evidence (the actual crater). That, my friend, is scientific evidence.

There isn't any. Crater science is all bogus. Crater scientists are in it for the money! Ever since this crater science began, we've had socialism, communism, nazism, teen pregnancy, and rap music. Conservatives must oppose this craterist filth!

Comments like that do not support your position in any way.