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.

Thank you so much for your post!

My mother had a scare, lately, too. A spot on her lungs turned out to be enlarged blood vessels, maybe a relic of surgery she had 5 years ago.

Not to be a scoffer, but she's as agnostic as I am. Some alarms are false. Then you die.

I'm so very glad for your mother and was also very glad for you that your surgery went well last year! I was praying for you, Vade, because I care for you.

I've been privileged to know four former agnostics, I would that you will make it five. But it may not be possible, because not everyone has "ears to hear" the Spirit calling. But in any case, I continue to pray for your health and the health of those you hold dear.

Is ID science?

Of course not. ID is the idea that original life was created. Science is a method. Ideas, including ID, can investigated using the methods proscribed by science.

ID is premised on the existence of a mysterious, unidentified designer that no one has seen, touched, tasted or otherwise observed. The only evidence for ID that I have seen is a poorly organized compendium of arguments against evolution.

Without specifics regarding the designer, predictions about that designer's creation are necessarily vague and not particularly useful. ID proponents must allow all facets of ID to be investigated scientifically before it becomes a scientific theory.

Thank you for sharing your views!

Here is more from Life after death debate rises again

Near-death experiences have been reported for centuries, but in Parnia’s study none of the patients were found to have received low oxygen levels, which some skeptics believe may contribute to the phenomenon.
When the brain is deprived of oxygen people become confused, thrash around and usually have no memories at all, Parnia said. "Here you have a severe insult to the brain, but perfect memory."
Skeptics have also suggested that patients’ memories occurred in the moments they were leaving or returning to consciousness. But Parnia said when a brain is traumatized by a seizure or car wreck, a patient generally does not remember moments just before or after losing consciousness. Rather, there is usually a memory lapse of hours or days. "Talk to them. They’ll tell you something like: ‘I just remember seeing the car and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital,’" he said.
"With cardiac arrest, the insult to the brain is so severe it stops the brain completely. Therefore, I would expect profound memory loss before and after the incident," he added....
Parnia speculated that human consciousness may work independently of the brain, using the gray matter as a mechanism to manifest the thoughts, just as a television set translates waves in the air into picture and sound. "When you damage the brain or lose some of the aspects of mind or personality, that doesn’t necessarily mean the mind is being produced by the brain. All it shows is that the apparatus is damaged," Parnia said, adding that further research might reveal the existence of a soul.
"When these people are having experiences they say, ‘I had this intense pain in my chest and suddenly I was drifting in the corner of my room and I was so happy, so comfortable. I looked down and realized I was seeing my body and doctors all around me trying to save me and I didn’t want to go back.’
"The point is they are describing seeing this thing in the room, which is their body. Nobody ever says, ‘I had this pain and the next thing I knew my soul left me.’"

Of course not. ID is the idea that original life was created. Science is a method. Ideas, including ID, can investigated using the methods proscribed by science.

And now you show your prejudice, because you know nothing of ID. You say it is not science, then prohibit it from being included in science by bringing in the word theory again.---ID proponents must allow all facets of ID to be investigated scientifically before it becomes a scientific theory. James Shapiro thinks it is science.

A Third Way

James A. Shapiro

What significance does an emerging interface between biology and information science hold for thinking about evolution? It opens up the possibility of addressing scientifically rather than ideologically the central issue so hotly contested by fundamentalists on both sides of the Creationist-Darwinist debate: Is there any guiding intelligence at work in the origin of species displaying exquisite adaptations that range from lambda prophage repression and the Krebs cycle through the mitotic apparatus and the eye to the immune system, mimicry, and social organization? Borrowing concepts from information science, new schools of evolutionists can begin to rephrase virtually intractable global questions in terms amenable to computer modelling and experimentation. We can speculate what some of these more manageable questions might be: How can molecular control circuits be combined to direct the expression of novel traits? Do genomes display characteristic system architectures that allow us to predict phenotypic consequences when we rearrange DNA sequence components? Do signal transduction networks contribute functional information as they regulate the action of natural genetic engineering hardware?

Questions like those above will certainly prove to be naive because we are just on the threshold of a new way of thinking about living organisms and their variations. Nonetheless, these questions serve to illustrate the potential for addressing the deep issues of evolution from a radically different scientific perspective. Novel ways of looking at longstanding problems have historically been the chief motors of scientific progress. However, the potential for new science is hard to find in the Creationist-Darwinist debate. Both sides appear to have a common interest in presenting a static view of the scientific enterprise. This is to be expected from the Creationists, who naturally refuse to recognize science's remarkable record of making more and more seemingly miraculous aspects of our world comprehensible to our understanding and accessible to our technology. But the neo-Darwinian advocates claim to be scientists, and we can legitimately expect of them a more open spirit of inquiry. Instead, they assume a defensive posture of outraged orthodoxy and assert an unassailable claim to truth, which only serves to validate the Creationists' criticism that Darwinism has become more of a faith than a science.

Man evolutionists never cease to amaze me, They can ignore simple fact like I walk, in fear of fact. The placement of gold example is empirical evidence of the flood. The gold is there, no other way can it be distributed that way. If it was erosion the gold would only be found in streaks leading to the original vein. That is NOT the way placer gold is distributed. Simple geology that proves there was a flood, in direct refutation of the thesis of the author. I chose it because it was "original research" that I knew of by the "creationists who never research". I also used my examples because they were first person and impossible for you to refute with some other third person perspective, an argument method that boils down to faith. Faith in which books you base your belief in.

Get angry, question authority. How many dimensions of math does it take for gravity to work? Is time a constant? For the big bang to start everything, how much mass is critical and how did it get there? A moon can remain in equilibrium for millions of years with random bombardment by asteroids? It does not take a PHD to realize silly science.

Give me a break... If randomness is designing creation, show me the random errors. There should be about a billion false starts for every random correct design. Find a couple. I can point to a billion bugs, where are the ugs or the bu's or the BS's? A fly has more design than a race car, lets see you take one apart, put it together and start it up...

You guys have to have a whole lot more faith than any Christian I have ever seen.

But of course you will take your life for granted, and take your useless tail (which I will donate to have removed for you if you think it is so useless) and drive your car on compressed dinosaur grease, to some PhD who will stuff you full of anti-biotic for your cancer and wonder why you waste away and die. (cancer is randomness, entropy, you know the second LAW of thermodynamics that refutes evolution) Ignore the poor foolish Christian who is walking next to you with a smile and joy. After all Joy and peace are not necessary for evolution.

Now you can ridicule me all you wish, but I walk, and geological science proves creation far better than I ever could. But ignore and ridicule all you wish, for there is a creation and a CREATOR. Think on that, and cower behind your textbooks written by the priests of your faith. Just for the sake of your “head in the sand defense”, never, never wander into nature yourself or for hells sake look up from your books. It tends to be unsettling of all that you have read. ROTFLMAO

Conversely, there is no Medical Explanation for near death experiences or the power of prayer.

Ah, that's not true! There's good evidence that NDEs are induced by blocking of the PCP receptor in the brain: Taking ketamine will induce a near-death experience. This passage from the article hypothesizes about the precise mechanism & why it happens:

Most large neurones in the cerebral cortex use glutamate as their neurotransmitter. Glutamate, an excitatory amino acid, is central to the function of the hippocampus, temporal and frontal lobes and plays a vital role in all cognitive processes involving the cerebral cortex, including thinking, memory and perception.
The major neuronal binding site for ketamine is called the PCP receptor, which is itself attached to the NMDA receptor. As they are part of the same macromolecular complex, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. ...
There was initially some debate as to whether the hallucinogenic properties of ketamine were due to NMDA or sigma receptors. These effects are now largely attributed to NMDA receptor blockade. Sigma ligands with a high degree of specificity (e.g. (+)pentazocine) do not produce NDE's at doses where most of the binding is to sigma rather than NMDA and/or kappa opioid receptors (sigma receptor ligands frequently have affinity for NMDA and/or kappa opioid receptors at higher doses).
When glutamate is present in excess, neurones die via a process called excitotoxicity. Conditions which have been proven to lead to excessive release of glutamate include hypoxia/ischaemia, epilepsy and hypoglycaemia. Blockade of PCP receptors prevents cell death from excitotoxicity. The brain may thus have a protective mechanism against a glutamate flood: release of a counter-flood of substances which block PCP receptors, preventing neuronal death. Considering the sophistication of the brain's many known defences, and the vulnerability of neurones to hypoxia, a protective mechanism against excitotoxicity seems very likely. This is the only speculation in the process outlined above: the other statements are strongly supported by experimental evidence. A peptide called a-endopsychosin, which binds to the PCP receptor, has been found in the brain. Certain ions such as magnesium and zinc also act as endogenous PCP channel blockers, and it is possible that these ions are centrally involved in producing NDE's.

Thank you so much for the link and the excerpt!

There are, of course, other views. Here is a link to an organization doing scientific research on NDE's: Horizon Research Foundation

From the conclusion on the article you linked:

NDE's can be safely induced by ketamine, and the glutamate theory of the NDE can thus be investigated by experiment. Discoveries in neuroscience suggest a common origin for ketamine experiences and the NDE in events occuring at glutamatergic synapses, mediated by NMDA receptors via their PCP channel component. This hypothesis links most of the neurobiological and psychological theories (hypoxia, a peptide flood, temporal lobe electrical abnormalities, regression in the service of the ego, reactivation of birth memories, sensory deprivation etc.) rather than being an alternative to them. Most of the tenets of the hypothesis are strongly supported by experimental evidence which implicates glutamate and NMDA receptors in the processes which precipitate NDE's. The postulate that anti-excitotoxic agents can flood the brain remains to be clearly established.

IMHO, that hypothesis does not resolve NDE phenomenon, especially this: Children's Drawings of NDE's.

The point of the studies I've linked above is that the researchers found there was no physical brain functioning to record new memories in third person of actual events that happened after death.

AiI, a fascinating pattern is developing here. Your personal evidence from gold prospecting is interesting, although I have several questions about that. You also have a significant personal medical recovery after a child prayed for you. Fine. Those are probably significant events for you, but I suspect you're throwing out a lot of contrary facts in your rush to assign significance to them.

But that's fine. What totally blows your general credibility with me is how you throw in all these other patently false and easily refuted canards into the mix: Frog DNA being closer to human than is chimp DNA. Cancer caused by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which by the way refutes evolution. Doctors prescribe antibiotics for cancer. I suspect that these statements are there to rationally support your conviction that supernatural intervention exists.

I'm psychologizing, I know. I probably shouldn't do that. Instead I should methodically discuss your DNA/cancer/2LoT claims one by one and hope that you'll see why they're false. But I really do suspect that they're there only for their assistance in rationalizing your belief in the supernatural.

OK, a couple questions re the gold: I have never prospected, though I've read a little about it and I've always thought it'd be a gas to try.

I assume you know that the Placerita area was already mined of placer gold in the 1840's. What makes you think the 2 canyons you found had not already been gone over back then? IOW, can you tell how old a placer deposit is just by looking at it? How do you know the deposits in those 2 canyons weren't actually laid down after the 1840's?
How old were the layers the gold was deposited into? I know you can't date sedimentary deposits directly, but what do mainstream, godless, hurtlin-down-the-road-to-perdition geologists say about when the placer deposits were laid down?
When you say, in #299, "a high concentration on the upward side of the entire canyon walls and NOTHING on the down ward side", what do you mean by "upward side" and "downward side"?
Do you have any training in geology or hydrodynamics? I.e. what background knowledge leads you to conclude that a 3500' high flood is a good explanation for the deposits? (i.e. is it something more than the feeling that "it looks like a sluicebox"?)

As for your leg...

How much shorter was your shorter leg?
How long was it from the last measurement (say, by an MD) that showed the original difference in length, to the first measurement that verified that they were the same length? IOW how long did it take for the shorter one to grow? The reason I ask for time between measurements is, I just recently bought reading glasses for the first time, and I thought my reading problems came at me suddenly, like over 6 months. Yet when I use the glasses I can see the kind of details of close-up things that I could only see when I was a girl. In retrospect, I suspect that my near-eyesight had been deteriorating so slowly over the years that I just never noticed it.
Have you ever done any kind of exercises/therapy on your shorter leg to lengthen it? Were you doing it at the time it got longer?
Had other people prayed for your leg to get longer at other times, when your leg stayed short?
What exactly did your MD say was making your leg shorter? Were your bones shorter, or did you have shorter tendons or muscles, or what?
Was this a congenital defect or did it show up later in life?

Uh-oh, it seems that mainstream geology has an explanation for why it looks like the gold was laid down by water that was much higher than the surrounding canyon walls:

Brief Explanation of the Geology of the Santa Clarita Valley
The Santa Clarita Valley has a very diverse geologic history and makeup. Fossils abound here, as well as gold, howlite, and oil. During the mid to late 1800's, there was gold fever here. Acton, Soledad City (now Ravenna), and Placerita Canyon were the hubs of the mining activities. Only Acton remains as a gold producing area today. There was an actual gold rush in Placerita Canyon starting in 1842 - six years before the discovery at Sutter's Mill. Oil was also discovered here during the same time period. During the 1870's and 1880's, oil was king here. Mentryville, a town about 3 miles west of Newhall, was an oil boom town. It was founded in the mid 1870's. Oil is still being pumped from the ground around here, only now the main operations are in Placerita Canyon and near Castaic.
Most of the valley is composed of sedimentary rocks ranging from 30 million years old to about 1.8 million years old. The valley floor is composed of alluvium from rivers and streams. Some of the oldest rocks in Southern California are located just five miles from here. They are a part of the San Gabriel Basement Complex and have been dated to about 1.7 billion years old. However, the last five million years here are the ones I will concentrate on, as this is when this valley began to take its present form.
During the Pliocene Epoch, much of this area was covered by the Pacific Ocean. It was shallow and was teeming with life. The life that once was here has left numerous fossils. These fossils include gastropods, clams, oysters, plants, and even fish. The waters that were here were warm but not warm enough to support more tropical forms of life such as coral. This whole area underwent drastic changes starting at around 1.5-2 million years ago. All the way up the coast, mountains were forming. These mountains exist today as the Coast Ranges. The sea receded and the land rose from below sea level to over 5000 feet in some places. This valley also took on a very different appearance. During the early Pleistocene, the Santa Clarita Valley was a much broader and shallower valley. The uplift that help to create the Coast Ranges also caused the dissection of the older valley floor creating the many stream terraces visible today along the sides of the canyons. Not all the mountains were formed around this time, however. The San Gabriel Mountains started forming 60 million years earlier during the Paleocene Epoch. Most of their uplift has occurred only in the last three million years.

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.