Posted on 04/29/2003 10:43:39 AM PDT by Remedy
Texas Tech University biology professor Michael Dini recently came under fire for refusing to write letters of recommendation for students unable to "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to the following question: "How do you think the human species originated?"
For asking this question, Professor Dini was accused of engaging in overt religious discrimination. As a result, a legal complaint was filed against Dini by the Liberty Legal Institute. Supporters of the complaint feared that consequences of the widespread adoption of Dini’s requirement would include a virtual ban of Christians from the practice of medicine and other related fields.
In an effort to defend his criteria for recommendation, Dini claimed that medicine was first rooted in the practice of magic. Dini said that religion then became the basis of medicine until it was replaced by science. After positing biology as the science most important to the study of medicine, he also posited evolution as the "central, unifying principle of biology" which includes both micro- and macro-evolution, which applies to all species.
In addition to claiming that someone who rejects the most important theory in biology cannot properly practice medicine, Dini suggested that physicians who ignore or neglect Darwinism are prone to making bad clinical decisions. He cautioned that a physician who ignores data concerning the scientific origins of the species cannot expect to remain a physician for long. He then rhetorically asked the following question: "If modern medicine is based on the method of science, then how can someone who denies the theory of evolution -- the very pinnacle of modern biological science -- ask to be recommended into a scientific profession by a professional scientist?"
In an apparent preemptive strike against those who would expose the weaknesses of macro-evolution, Dini claimed that "one can validly refer to the ‘fact’ of human evolution, even if all of the details are not yet known." Finally, he cautioned that a good scientist "would never throw out data that do not conform to their expectations or beliefs."
The legal aspect of this controversy ended this week with Dini finally deciding to change his recommendation requirements. But that does not mean it is time for Christians to declare victory and move on. In fact, Christians should be demanding that Dini’s question be asked more often in the court of public opinion. If it is, the scientific community will eventually be indicted for its persistent failure to address this very question in scientific terms.
Christians reading this article are already familiar with the creation stories found in the initial chapters of Genesis and the Gospel of John. But the story proffered by evolutionists to explain the origin of the species receives too little attention and scrutiny. In his two most recent books on evolution, Phillip Johnson gives an account of evolutionists’ story of the origin of the human species which is similar to the one below:In the beginning there was the unholy trinity of the particles, the unthinking and unfeeling laws of physics, and chance. Together they accidentally made the amino acids which later began to live and to breathe. Then the living, breathing entities began to imagine. And they imagined God. But then they discovered science and then science produced Darwin. Later Darwin discovered evolution and the scientists discarded God.
Darwinists, who proclaim themselves to be scientists, are certainly entitled to hold this view of the origin of the species. But that doesn’t mean that their view is, therefore, scientific. They must be held to scientific standards requiring proof as long as they insist on asking students to recite these verses as a rite of passage into their "scientific" discipline.
It, therefore, follows that the appropriate way to handle professors like Michael Dini is not to sue them but, instead, to demand that they provide specific proof of their assertion that the origin of all species can be traced to primordial soup. In other words, we should pose Dr. Dini’s question to all evolutionists. And we should do so in an open public forum whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Recently, I asked Dr. Dini for that proof. He didn’t respond.
Dini’s silence as well as the silence of other evolutionists speaks volumes about the current status of the discipline of biology. It is worth asking ourselves whether the study of biology has been hampered by the widespread and uncritical acceptance of Darwinian principles. To some observers, its study has largely become a hollow exercise whereby atheists teach other atheists to blindly follow Darwin without asking any difficult questions.
At least that seems to be the way things have evolved.
Source? I am interested… (and how they reconcile morphogens)
With excellent reason.
Of course, many of the dissimilar cars made by GM have common parts under the skin. They're all MADE by the same company. It's not evolution, allthough it may appear to be by some.
No, actually, even a cursory examination would make clear that the very nature of the differences and similarities between different lines of cars would *preclude* an evolutionary explanation, even leaving aside the clear lack of transitional forms and a reproductive mechanism by which those objects could have come about via an evolutionary process.
For example, the electronic ignition on the 1999 model would be found to be an entirely de novo structure which shared no similarities (other than function) with the 1998 model. This would preclude an evolutionary transition.
There would, in fact, be *hundreds* of such "deal breakers" if you took a look at any two similar car models, even those made by the same manufacturer. And yet, biological systems do *not* show any such "would violate evolution" features, in either their structural makeup or at their molecular DNA level.
In other words, all known biological systems and DNA sequences are so far consistent with an evolutionary origin.
Gosh, food for thought, eh?
The rest of your post could just as easily be someone from another planet explaining all the working parts of a buick, a 747 and a windmill - all things that were designed for a specific function.
Again, absolutely not. See above.
Anyway, have you actually got anything to offer on the topic at hand? You know, that big article up at the top, the one you scrolled right past in your haste to start whacking other posters?
You mean like evoloonists?
Support this slur or retract it.
Or let it lie and demonstrate to all that you have no honor. All the same to me.
That's not correct. In your message to me you referred, without ennumeration, to "proven reasons" that a naturalistic theory for the origin of life "will remain unknown," but this thing about the myelin sheath was the only thing you mentioned.
That's because you don't understand it.
Quick, now, do you fault rocket scientists for the fact that trajectories and velocities can't explain how gravity "came to be"? Does this disprove their field of science? Of course not.
Do you "get a laugh" out of chemists who "leap their way to the imagined comfort" of their theory of valences and ions and binding energies, when chemical recombinations can't be used to explain how atoms "came to be"?
Get a clue, child.
Evolution is the study of how replicating systems (biological or otherwise) change across generations and why. It quite simply doesn't matter how/where the replicating systems under study came from, since the rules of evolution work the same no matter *what* the origin.
Nor was evolution at work in whatever process brought about the first replicator (pretty much by defintion), so it's hardly any surprise that evolution "can't explain how it came to be" -- that's another process entirely.
If these obvious, basic concepts are too hard for you to grasp, you really, really ought to find some easier topic to spend your time debating. I'm serious.
If you can't get the easy stuff right, even after it's been explained to you in Science For Dummies terms over and over again, you really never *will* get it and be able to move on to the harder issues.
It's from the definition that YOU YOURSELF provided, you goof. And it specifically mentioned that it was the definition to be used in a *scientific* context.
Was that really so hard?
No, wait, no one can really be that dense. You're just trolling in an immature manner. I won't be fooled again.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
That should keep you busy for a while. Let us know if you need help with some of the big words.
Shh... Don't confuse ALS with facts.
Is this statement true?
Why not? In your list-o-quotes you quoted a guy who believes that exact thing (Sir Fred Hoyle), and then you subsequently declared that we should accept what they had to say about evolution because they were "plenty of far more learned people than you".
So by your own "reasoning" (*cough*), we all (including you) should *also* accept Hoyle's "life came from outer space and insects are possibly as intelligent as human beings" beliefs about biology, too, since he was one of your hand-picked "experts" who are "far more learned" than any of us FreeRepublic peons.
Right bunky?
(Hmm, is ALS now going to grasp what's wrong with the "mass o' quotes" technique? Naaahhhh.....)
Upon what possible basis can you reject Fred Hoyle's theories about life coming from outer space, and still accept what he says about evolution? He's your "expert" - looks to me like you're the one stuck with life-from-outer-space...
btw - do you believe aliens populated earth too?
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