Professor Rigid on Evolution (must "believe" to get med school rec)

Micah Spradling was OK with learning about evolution in college, but his family drew the line when his belief in the theory became a prerequisite for continuing his education.

Tim Spradling said his son left Texas Tech this semester and enrolled in Lubbock Christian University after en countering the policy of one associate professor in biological sciences.

Professor Michael Dini's Web site states that a student must "truthfully and forthrightly" believe in human evolution to receive a letter of recommendation from him.

"How can someone who does not accept the most important theory in biology expect to properly practice in a field that is so heavily based on biology?" Dini's site reads.

Dini says on the site that it is easy to imagine how physicians who ignore or neglect the "evolutionary origin of humans can make bad clinical decisions."

He declined to speak with The Avalanche-Journal. His response to an e-mail from The A-J said: "This semester, I have 500 students to contend with, and my schedule in no way permits me to participate in such a debate."

A Tech spokeswoman said Chancellor David Smith and other Tech officials also did not want to comment on the story.

At least two Lubbock doctors and a medical ethicist said they have a problem with the criterion, and the ethicist said Dini "could be a real ingrate."

Tim Spradling, who owns The Brace Place, said his son wanted to follow in his footsteps and needed a letter from a biology professor to apply for a program at Southwestern University's medical school.

Spradling is not the only medical professional in Lub bock shocked by Dini's policy. Doctors Patrick Edwards and Gaylon Seay said they learned evolution in college but were never forced to believe it.

"I learned what they taught," Edwards said. "I had to. I wanted to make good grades, but it didn't change my basic beliefs."

Seay said his primary problem is Dini "trying to force someone to pledge allegiance to his way of thinking."

Seay, a Tech graduate who has practiced medicine since 1977, said a large amount of literature exists against the theory.

"He is asking people to compromise their religious be liefs," Seay said. "It is a shame for a professor to use that as a criteria."

Dini's site also states: "So much physical evidence supports" evolution that it can be referred to as fact even if all the details are not known.

"One can deny this evidence only at the risk of calling into question one's understanding of science and of the method of science," Dini states on the Web site.

Dini is in a position of authority and "can injure someone's career," and the criteria is the "most prejudice thing I have ever read," Seay said.

Both doctors said their beliefs in creationism have never negatively affected their practices, and Seay said he is a more compassionate doctor because of his beliefs.

"I do not believe evolution has anything to do with the ability to make clinical decisions — pro or con," Seay said.

"A student may learn about a subject, but that does not mean that everything must be accepted as fact, just because the professor or an incomplete body of evidence says so," Edwards said.

The letter of recommendation should not be contingent on Dini's beliefs, Edwards said.

"That would be like Texas Tech telling him he had to be a Christian to teach biology," Edwards said.

Harold Vanderpool, professor in history and philosophy of medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said he has a problem with Dini's policy.

"I think this professor could be a real ingrate," Vanderpool said. "I have a problem with a colleague who has enjoyed all the academic freedoms we have, which are extensive, and yet denies that to our students."

Vanderpool, who has served on, advised or chaired committees for the National Institute of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, said the situation would be like a government professor requiring a student to be "sufficiently patriotic" to receive a letter.

"It seems to me that this professor is walking a pretty thin line between the protection of his right to do what he wants to do, his own academic freedom, and a level of discrimination toward a student," he said.

"It is reaching into an area of discrimination. That could be a legal problem. If not, it is a moral problem," Vanderpool said.

Instead of a recommendation resting on character and academic performance, "you've got this ideological litmus test you are using," he said. "To me, that is problematic, if not outright wrong."

William F. May, a medical ethicist who was appointed to President Bush's Council on Bioethics, said he cannot remember establishing a criterion on the question of belief with a student on exams or with letters of recommendation.

"I taught at five institutions and have always felt you should grade papers and offer judgments on the quality of arguments rather than a position on which they arrived."

Professors "enjoy the protection of academic freedom" and Dini "seems to be profoundly ungrateful" for the freedom, Vanderpool said.

He said a teacher cannot be forced to write a letter of recommendation for a student, which he believes is good because the letters are personal and have "to do with the professor's assessment of students' work habits, character, grades, persistence and so on."

A policy such as Dini's needs to be in the written materials and should be stated in front of the class so the student is not surprised by the policy and can drop the class, Vanderpool said.

Dini's site states that an individual who denies the evidence commits malpractice in the method of science because "good scientists would never throw out data that do not conform to their expectations or beliefs."

People throw out information be cause "it seems to contradict his/her cherished beliefs," Dini's site reads. A physician who ignores data cannot remain a physician for long, it states.

Dini's site lists him as an exceptional faculty member at Texas Tech in 1995 and says he was named "Teacher of the Year" in 1998-99 by the Honors College at Texas Tech.

Edwards said he does not see any evidence on Dini's vita that he attended medical school or treated patients.

"Dr. Dini is a nonmedical person trying to impose his ideas on medicine," Edwards said. "There is little in common between teaching biology classes and treating sick people. ... How dare someone who has never treated a sick person purport to impose his feelings about evolution on someone who aspires to treat such people?"

On his Web site, Dini questions how someone who does not believe in the theory of evolution can ask to be recommended into a scientific profession by a professional scientist.

May, who taught at multiple prestigious universities, including Yale, during his 50 years in academia, said he did not want to judge Dini and qualified his statements because he did not know all of the specifics.

He said the doctors may be viewing Dini's policy as a roadblock, but the professor may be warning them in advance of his policy so students are not dismayed later.

"I have never seen it done and am surprised to hear it, but he may find creationist aggressive in the class and does not want to have to cope with that," May said. "He is at least giving people the courtesy of warning them in advance."

The policy seems unusual, May said, but Dini should not be "gang-tackled and punished for his policy."

The criterion may have been viewed as a roadblock for Micah Spradling at Tech, but it opened a door for him at LCU.

Classes at LCU were full, Tim Spradling said, but school officials made room for his son after he showed them Dini's policy.

RMMC DANIEL, Would that be Radioman Master Chief? I was a radioman in Taiwan and in the San Diego founding CREDO program. Someone told me recently Radiomen got merged with something else. What?

No its actually just my last name after my first and middle intial. A few months ago I tried to change over to a more Anonymous screen name. However that other name was banned because your not allowed to have duplicate registrations. So it looks like I'm stuck with this one.

Ok, so what are you trying to say. I give an affirmative reply acknoweleging, but not agreeing with, your puerile complaint against my somewhat sarcastically humorous posting (which was not, obviously, a challenge to debate an undebatable position). Now you seem to be replying to that affirmative reply negatively. Perhaps you're too sensitive? Not satisfied without some kind of big debate? Well, these debates go nowhere since both sides are from a point of belief, not debatable fact or factual reasoning. I won't be sucked into that.

I'm not being sensitive at all. I interpreted your "gotcha" comment as though you thought that my response proved the point you were trying to make. In future posts you should be more explanitory. A single word can be misinterpreted as anything.

Posted by PatrickHenry to f.Christian; Admin Moderator
On News/Activism Oct 6 12:35 PM #91 of 302

This same exact spam essay has been posted several times before by this person. Here are a few places where it can be found:
[In this thread:]
Professor Rigid on Evolution (must "believe" to get med school rec) -- post 58.

[In prior threads:]
Living dinosaurs -- post 389.
Ga. school board OKs teaching creationism -- post 44.
Evolution Coverage Missed Real Story -- post 67.
Study: Humans, Chimps More Different -- post 30.
Earth's magnetic field 'boosts gravity' -- Post 99.

Your post is one of those funny "Where to begin?" things. The true evidence for miracles is that you managed to find any gold, ever, given your state of geological knowledge.

Gold is redistributed on the earth's surface by erosion, yes. You can say the same thing about any other common earth's crust material. There are sedimentary rocks and fossils in the Himalayas, thousands of feet above sea level.

Those strata were not formed in place, by deposition. I live among mountains made entirely of folded, warped, sedimentary rock. The sediments very clearly did not form as they are lying now unless gravity used to act very oddly. Never mind that. It didn't happen that way. The sediment layers are older than the mountains they form. Sediments are formed laying flat, then tectonic forces warp them high and curvy.

Here's an example:

Soft mud won't pile up that way. Already-formed sediments being crumpled like automobile fenders in a collision will. And it's not like we don't see tectonic forces operating today. We can measure the spreading of sea floors and the raising of the Himalayas today. When you can account for what you can see today with forces and effects that you can see today, you don't need a big flood story.

In fact, flood geology has many, many problems. Why do the Himalayas contain mammal fossils including extinct transitional whale species when the Appalachians don't even have dinosaurs? Why are some mountains so obviously much older than others? Mainstream science has real answers. Flood geology shrugs.

The personal faith-healing testimony part of your post is an interesting anecdote. If the child who prayed for you can repeatably change leg lengths without resort to surgery, he/she should be more famous than appears the case. Certainly, I can't tell whom you describe here. It's no one of whom I've heard. I'm left to wonder why. Your performance in the geological part of your post does not help you at all here.

Where are all the useless appendages that evolutionary experimentation would have generated?

Your understanding of evolution seems to come from Duane Gish or another strawman generator. That is, you don't understand it.

The no-longer useful ideas, the failed products of evolutionary experimentation, are in the fossil record. They're extinct now. The thing is, even those creatures were fit for a time or we wouldn't be able to find fossils of them at all.

Also, you can't always be sure that something no longer around now is a dead end. Its progeny may be still around, looking very different now. You may be looking at a great, great, great, great, ... grandaddy.

You see, evolution isn't some random experimentation. What's less fit dies, or fails to reproduce. The net effect of evolution is a convergence toward some kind of fitness for the current environment. When conditions change, the pressures change. Species are changed as a result. "Useless" limbs are not predicted. You just don't understand evolution and are bludgeoning with your ignorance.

What good has evolution ever been used for? Let's see ONE (1) example. There are 100 million examples of its being used for evil, and their bodies are all in graves left unmarked by the followers of Darwinism.

Do you want to play "Count the Bodies" or are you actually interested in the answer?

Wait for it.....

P
a
u
s
e

BWAAAAhahahahahahahaha!!!

Your gold-digging experiences are interesting, as is your leg. Have you found the citation yet for this ludicrous claim, which I had asked you for earlier?

Simple, the same guy that made giraffes made people using the same system, carbon based organic-chemistry controlled by dna. I point that giraffes have the same number of vertebra in their necks as you, yet the DNA of a green tree frog is numerically closer that that of a chimpanzee to human. By judging from the outside evolutionists thought the warm blooded chimpanzee is closer to humans genetically than the cold blooded frog. Since their entire belief structure is being shaken by modern science they are left with faith in the face of reality, and their arguments are getting more shrill than real, unlike creation science which is being augmented by science more in these modern times.

When you uncritically accept obviously false whoppers such as this, it really hurts your credibility on the subject.

God's Traveler, who satteth at the right hand of God but gotteth banned anyway

I was unaware God's Traveler was banned. He seemed to mellow within hours of what I thought was his first post and didn't think of him as a disrupter.

Well, this time was more like a reminder to the ever-forgetful but even-tempered scripter

Hmm. I guess I forgot what I forgot! :-) What have I forgotten? FWIW, I don't read every post in every thread and probably not every crevo thread. That's the first time someone described me as even-tempered. Of course all you see is my writing style. If we were to grab a couple bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale... but I digress. Are you ever in central California? :-)

I suggest the next time you're in a library you read an article in Scientific American's May 2002 issue, The Mammals that Conquered the Sea. Unfortunately, that one's not on their web site. It gives you a somewhat less skewed version than you get from asking the slimy lawyer for one side.

Would that be the same article AndrewC posted in 204? Andrew's comments in 241 give that impression. If it is the same, I find it a little weird AndrewC would post the article if it didn't bolster his position on this issue.

That's about all I could put together from you guys on this thread while at work.

BTW, it doesn't really matter to me what Andrew's worldview is on crevo issues as long as he disagrees with you. :-) Seriously, I look at the data myself and draw my own conclusions, giving little credit and taking very little into account what others say. I see that as the best way to remain objective.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.