[stanz]

We have never observed life springing from non-life in the natural world nor the laboratory.

Evolution speaks to how life has changed and adapted over geologic time. Species either survive or go extinct. That is an observable phenomenon and doesn't require any faith on the part of the student.
Biologists (and medical students) need to study evolution which focuses on comparative anatomy and functional morphology to gain insight into the workings of how, developmentally, we are related to other species and how this may affect our own evolutionary destiny.
Tempering one's biology curriculum by favoring the Big Etch-A-Sketch in the sky story to explain phenomena over tenets tested on the basis of observable evidence requires nothing more than faith and that is bad science.

[Abe Froman]

"Tempering one's biology curriculum by favoring the Big Etch-A-Sketch in the sky story to explain phenomena over tenets tested on the basis of observable evidence requires nothing more than faith and that is bad science."

Evolution does far more than that, if you are not aware. Evolution attempts to explain origins by stipulating a method by which the extravaganza of life on earth could come into being without a need for a supernatural act of a Creator. However, those methods remain unexplained at all the key moments, the most important of which being the actual origin of life itself. If you are concerned with the "observable evidence" then you should probably go out and find some to contradict what is otherwise completely and utterly fatal to the entire theory of evolution. Without a method for random natural processes to circumvent the as-yet observedly unbroken Law of Biogenesis, the theory of evolution is a mountain of speculation built on a sand castle to a degree that makes securities trading look like hard science.

To believe in spontaneous generation requires, in my opinion, far more faith than the creationist, for the creationist stipulates that forces were in action that cannot be explained or understood. The evolutionist asserts that the laws governing matter, energy, thermodynamics, and biology as we know them all today, were at multiple points apparently violated, yet not by a being that had the ability to do so (a Creator.) We are to believe they were simply violated in spite of all known observations to the contrary. That is not science. That is faith.

[MEGoody]

"Species either survive or go extinct."

We've observed observation. We've observed extinction. We've observed what is often called "adaptation" (e.g. changes in beak size). What hasn't been observed is one type of creature turning into another. That is presumed to happen and takes a huge leap of faith.

"to gain insight into the workings of how, developmentally, we are related to other species and how this may affect our own evolutionary destiny."

And exactly why is that important for a doctor to 'know' and believe? I don't see it as relevant to the skills/knowledge a doctor needs to treat human beings.