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.
http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/falsify.htm
... less *
... hot link !
Can't do that sorta thing in COBOL
Well, Galatians513 wasn't entirely clear, simply referring to "contradictory" morphological and genetic "trees". I've clarified in the angle brackets above, but a couple things might be meant. For instance one might also refer to what might be called "typological" classifications of organisms. These would group organisms according to "type," without regard to evolutionary relationships. Contrasting would be "evolutionary" classifications, which group organisms according to the inferred typology of evolutionary relationships.
Conventional taxonomy tends to conform to patterns of evolutionary relationships, just because it was originally oriented (under the guidance of Linneaus in the 17th Century) to the pattern of "groups within groups" that is a relect of evolution. Of course a creationist might argue that God simply decided to create according to a pattern of groups within groups.
Therefore the most interesting cases are those were "typological" and "evolutionary" classifications do NOT agree. In these instances creationists would expect new lines of comparative data (discovered subsequent to the gross morphological criteria on which classifications were initially based) should conform with typological rather than evolutionary schemes. Evolutionists would expect the opposite.
A couple concrete instances come to mind. (I'm sure that many more would occur to a trained biologist.) For instance (as I mentioned in another context recently) even though crocodiles are classified as "reptiles" along with snakes and lizards, they actually share a more recent common ancestor with birds. This kind of situation can arise whenever a particular lineages "diverges" sufficiently in a particular direction -- as birds did in adapting to their peculiar form of locomotion -- that we decide it should have a new name.
Not surprisingly (to the evolutionists) the proteins and DNA of crocodiles are more similar to those of birds than they are to those of snakes or lizards.
Another example concerns humans. Genetically, chimpanzees are actually more similar to humans than they are to their fellow pongids (great apes) gorillas.
In these crucial cases, the evidence conforms with common ancestry rather than typology, contrary to what would be expected if God created "types within types" (by non-evolutionary means).
Nicely done. Unfortunately, I pointed out exactly the same fallacy to that same poster a few days ago, and it bounced off without a dent. Expect a long-winded, yet surprisingly empty response...
In a colloquial sense, it usually does. In the realm of philosophy, a fallacy of equivocation is when you rely on an inherent ambiguity in the definition of a word to "shade" the meaning and draw a conclusion that is probably suspect. If I were writing a textbook, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a better example of the fallacy of equivocation than that particular example. One might expect that a self-avowed phil-os-o-pher would avoid such elementary errors of logic, but there you go...
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