Bible-quoting science students on rise (USA spreads 'infectious diesease to UK)

Sidney Morning Herald ^ | 22 Feb 2006 | Duncan Campbell

[gobucks]

A GROWING number of science students on British university campuses are challenging the theory of evolution, saying that Darwin was wrong.

Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Koran as scientific fact and at one college in London, most biology students are now thought to be creationists.

Earlier this month, Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin's theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution.

In the US, there is growing pressure to teach creationism or "intelligent design" in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Similar trends in Britain have prompted the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head-on with a talk next month entitled "Why Creationism is wrong", when the award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally.

"There is an insidious and growing problem," said Professor Jones, of University College London. "It's a step back from rationality. They [the creationists] don't have a problem with science, they have a problem with argument. And irrationality is a very infectious disease, as we see from the US."

Leaflets that question Darwinism were circulated among students at the Guys Hospital site of King's College London this month as part of the Islam Awareness Week, organised by the college's Islamic Society. One member of staff at Guys said that he found it deeply worrying that Darwin was being dismissed by people who would soon be practising as doctors.

The leaflets are produced by the Al-Nasr Trust, a charity based in Slough, west of London, set up in 1992 with the aim of improving the understanding of Islam.

The passage quoted from the Koran says: "And God has created every animal from water. Of them there are some that creep on their bellies, some that walk on two legs and some that walk on four. God creates what he wills for verily God has power over all things."

A 21-year-old medical student and member of the Islamic Society, who asked not to be named, said the Koran was clear that man had been created and had not evolved as Darwin says. "There is no scientific evidence for it [Darwin's Origin of Species]. It's only a theory. Man is the wonder of God's creation."

He did not feel that a belief in evolution was necessary to study medicine, although he added that, if writing about it was necessary for passing an exam, he would do so. At another London campus, some students have been failed because they have presented creationism as fact. They have been told by their examiners that, while they are entitled to explain both sides of the debate, they cannot present the Bible or Koran as scientifically factual if they want to pass exams. David Rosevear, of the Britain-based Creation Science Movement, which supports the idea of creationism, said that there was an increasing interest in the subject among students.

"I've got no problem with an all-powerful God producing everything in six days," he said, calling it an early example of the six-day week. Most of the next generation of medical and science students could be creationists, according to a biology teacher at a leading London college. "The vast majority of my students now believe in creationism," she said, "and these are thinking young people who are able and articulate and not at the dim end at all."

[curiosity]

You can replicate the observations done to establish it.

Same thing with evolution. You can go to a natural history museum and see some transitional fossils for yourself. Or go dig. Paleantologists find scores of such fossils every year. You can replicate all the genetic studies that demonstrate common descent.

Allegedly, dinosaurs evolved into birds.

Yes, and there are scores of dinosaur-like birds and bird-like dinsaurs that back up this allegation.

But it's not like a dinosaur one day gave birth to a bird. Some dinosuars gave birth to other dinosaurs that had a few bird-like characteristics. Some of those, in turn, gave birth to others that had a few more, and so on of a couple million years, until finally a population of birds was born. The line between dinosaur and bird is very blurry with all the creatures that came inbetween the endpoints.

primates evolved into humans.

Humans are primates.

Allegedly, evolution is still going on today, but no one has ever observed it

Sure we have. Evolution is observarable. And yes, the formation of new species has been observed many times within the last 100 years.

and all attempts at cuasing it by crossing species result in sterile animals like mules.

Ugh, that's the very definition of seperate species: the inability to produce fertile crosses. This has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.

BTW, there are some groups of animals in which it is unclear whether they are a seperate species or not. Google "ring species."

Evolution is a particularly unconvincing theory that critters fossilized in some rocks turned into critters fossilized in other rocks, and then eventually into modern animals.

It's only unconvincing to those who willfully blind themselves to the evidence.

But it all must be taken on faith - no one saw it happen, and no one has observed it occurring today.

Wrong on both counts.