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.

[VadeRetro]

hmmm, that's funny.....not a single one of these quotes mentioned creation, merely a lack of evolutionary evidence......still no comment on it from you, naturally.....

Been there, done that enough times.

I'll give the Gould quotes a little extra attention. Here's the "For Dummies" version of what punctuated equilibrium really is. You'd better start with that one. A more detailed treatment here.

[general_re]

Praise be!

[whattajoke]

God created the craters as is to provide water dishes for the behemoths, which are commonly known as dinosaurs.

Job 40:15

[Abe Froman]

Any possible credibility you may have had with this crater un-analogy is now gone.

[Junior]

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.

Ahem.  Wrong.  Ring species are observable transitions between species.

[Last Visible Dog]

No, what's funny is that you think we haven't seen those quotes 200x times here already. We've simply grown tired of doing the legwork in hopes to explain to you the context and actual content of them.

This is the evolution-debate version of PeeWee Herman's "I know you are, but what am I"

[Dimensio]

No, we're just sick of dishonest creationists presenting these quotes as though they mean anything even though they've been completely stripped of any meaningful context.

[VadeRetro]

Did all of these ancestors verifiably live within their presumed time periods with no overlaps?

Did you overlap with your father?

Not only do you need to string together a speculatory train of various anatomies that could be interpreted to have gradually morphed from fish to elephant, but they need to appear in the correct geological strata to ensure that said evolutionary chain actually did happen and that some of these animals did not in fact co-exist, eliminating them from the chain...

You have no idea what evolution actually allows and disallows. We still have bacteria, archaebacteria, fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Nothing is required to go extinct just because some isolated population somewhere in the world speciated into something which is now rather different.

Moreover, the geological strata and the fossils contained within have evidence for a catastrophic worldwide flood ...

Here's another point. You screech about something you call "evolution" as being your only problem with modern science, but your difficulties really extend to such geological--not biological--matters as the age of the Earth and the universe. Rather than being limited to the kinds of "origin of species" questions that Darwin addressed, your reservations extend through geology (no global flood, old earth), astronomy (old universe), nuclear chemistry (consistent evidence for old earth), physics (supports inflationary big bang cosmology) and so forth.

A lot of detail is not needed here. You have it all wrong and thoroughly intend to stay wrong. That's fine, but you should not be presenting to the kids in science classes.

[whattajoke]

Please suggest a better way of responding to the same old dishonest, out of context, absurd quotes lifted from the same old dishonest websites for the 200th time?

Abe should understand his is only serving as a gullible pawn of the creationist movement, and posting those tired old quotes does not further his "cause" in the least.

[general_re]

Any possible credibility you may have had with this crater un-analogy is now gone.

I'm gonna hold you to that, you understand, the next time I see someone posting that exact same argument about something other than craters... ;)

[Modernman]

Are you channelling exmarine?

[Junior]

Gobbledy gook. Creationists define "macro" evolution as evolution between species and "micro" evolution as evolution within a species. However, creationists refuse to posit the magical cut-off switch that prevents an accumulation of micro changes from becoming a macro change.

[Last Visible Dog]

No, we're just sick of dishonest creationists presenting these quotes as though they mean anything even though they've been completely stripped of any meaningful context.

If you are sick of these debates - why do you always hang around them? Looks more like you are sick of trying to defend your positions and prefer to move directly to the strawmen and personal attacks.

[general_re]

It is, shall we say, a generic rendering of some common arguments. ;)

[Junior]

Not a single one of your quotes was from the last decade, and several are cut-and-paste jobs, sans elipses. There are numerous websites showing the provenance, or lack thereof, of your quote salad. You really can't believe you are the first person to post this in the five years I've been on these threads, can you?

[PatrickHenry]

Praise be!

Verily! If our children learn in school that random rocks fall from the sky and cause craters, then how can they have any faith in an orderly society? Why wouldn't they behave like animals and start having sex whenever they feel like it? Or drugs? Why not? Nothing has any meaning in a craterite universe! If a meteor is going to wipe out the earth, why not run around killing people? Life has no meaning in a craterite worldview.

[Abe Froman]

You are truly incapable of discussion.

Everything in that article does not apply to me. I am aware that Gould holds to the theory in spite of what he says.

I do not claim that there are not other authorities that disagree.

I do not deny that some quotes were made 50 years ago (but the assertion that some unbelievable paleontologic discovery unlocking the secrets of evolution has been made in the last 50 years is nonsense.)

I merely attempt to show that there is significant dissention in the field and that regarding any of the theory of evolution as a settled scientific topic is disingenuous at best and ignorance at worst.


Commenting on every example of intellectual arrogance on your page would become a second job, but allow me to mention one example:

The page mentions this quote from Gould where he comments on his quotations about the fossil record as used by creationists:

"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists--whether through design or stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled 'Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax' states: 'The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge...are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible.'"


This bit of "paleobabble" (to quote another on the page) is a bare admittance that the fossil record does not support the idea of transitional forms as proposed by you and others in this thread. He is directly admitting that the idea that speciation as we know it as a snapshot of constant variation is not supported. Instead the theory is bent to mean that "transitional forms" are creatures that vaugely fit somewhere in between two others in terms of similarity, though they are not nearly as similar as the theory originally predicted, and this reduced requirement of evidence is now sufficient to prove the theory.

[Abe Froman]

If there were any examples of accumulation of micro-evolution that resulted in an actual genetic change, I would would certainly stipulate.

[VadeRetro]

I gave you two other links on exactly what he meant and what evolution says about the speciation process and you're still dumb-dumbing away making up your own version.

[VadeRetro]

Everything in that article does not apply to me.

You're just another seminar output with the same old mantras and the same old quote salads. Change the name and I've seen your posts already fifty times apiece.