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

The Lubbock Avalanche Journal ^ | 10/6/02 | Sebastian Kitchen

[hispanarepublicana]

Professor rigid on evolution </MCC HEAD>

By SEBASTIAN KITCHEN </MCC BYLINE1>

AVALANCHE-JOURNAL </MCC BYLINE2>

On the Net

• Criteria for letters of recommendation: http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/ letters.htm

• Michael Dini's Web page:

http://www2.tltc.ttu. edu/dini/

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.

Edwards said Dini admits in the statement that the details are not all known.

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.

"It is appalling," he 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.

Academic freedom should be extended to students, Edwards 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.

"Skepticism is also a very basic part of scientific study," he 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.

skitchen@lubbockonline.com 766-8753

[gore3000]

Genetic algorithms do work.

Never saw a rock write an algorithm.

[VadeRetro]

Ichthyolested

"I got Ichthyolested in Pakistan, but I got over it."

Ichthyolestes was meant.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post!

For all the above scientific reasons, this 98% concordance is absolute bunk and indeed just fairy tale made up by evolutionists.

That is basically the point being made in the article What It Really Means To Be 99% Chimpanzee

The author (geneticist and anthropologist) is not speaking against evolution per se, but rather the overstatement or misrepresentation of the facts. He observes that biological anthropology is much needed because pronouncements such as 99% Chimpanzee fail on closer inspection. For instance,

Once again, the DNA comparison requires context to be meaningful. Granted that a human and ape are over 98% genetically identical, a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. A human and a daffodil share common ancestry and their DNA is thus obliged to match more than 25% of the time.

[jennyp]

But the fossils also have obvious legs and lived in the sea. That doesn't jibe with the traditional view of ancestral asps, which are thought of as legless burrowing reptiles.

So in the April 17 issue of the Journal Nature, Caldwell and Lee advance the bold suggestion that snakes are most closely related to the mosasaurs, giant swimming reptiles that lived at the time of dinosaurs.

GOD SAID the serpent was cursed and it would crawl upon its belly.

Aha! Your own evidence betrays you! Snakes were previously sea-dwellers. And yet there was no sea near the Garden of Eden, and every picture I've ever seen of the Garden has the serpent up in the tree. QED.

Also notice that the serpent has already lost his legs. So the loss of legs obviously occurred pre-Fall. Double QED!

[Kevin Curry]

And Doctor Mumblypeg arrives to shake his stochastic voodoo doll at the critics of his extreme religious faith.

[Doctor Stochastic]

An atheist cannot heal the sick.

Can a Moslem? Can a Jew? Can a Hindu?

I know people from the Soviet Union who claimed to have been healed by atheist doctors.

[gore3000]

In labs, they stress bacteria and grow resistant strains all the time.

But the question is how they grow them. They grow resistant by changing a gene to be less specific than before. This hurts them in normal circumstances but helps them in the special circumstances of the experiments. The bacteria are less fit than normal ones as a result of the mutation.

More importantly though, no one has seen a bacteria or a virus or a fly change into another species with different more complex abilities ever, and that is what the theory of evolutin requires in order for it to be true.

[gore3000]

You have documentation that the attentions of an atheist doctor have never been successful?

A lot more than that Dr. Dini has that you need to be an atheist to be a scientist. There are far more Christian scientists than atheist ones for one thing. He is just a tyrant abusing his power to force his views on others. Indeed, he can be considered the modern epitome of those who told the early Christians to renounce their faith or die. That you and your fellow evolutionists can even try to condone such behavior shows how far you folk are from the bounds of common human decency.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Are you thus endorsing Boltzmann?

[gore3000]

How does crowing over remaining gaps and puzzles-

What do you mean gaps? There is an abyss that evolutionary theory cannot explain. Let's start with a single example of a single species evolving into a more complex one. Concrete example with how it happened. Concrete example showing the intervening steps. Concrete examples showing the whole species not a few bones.

[gore3000]

Posts of pictures of fossils (AC) or living creatures (g3k) are literally pointless.

Why because you say so? You and your fellow evolutionists keep coming up with excuses for not answering questions about problems with evolution. A theory has to answer to all the evidence - not just the evidence it wishes to discuss. Evolution cannot, it is therefore not a valid theory. That's science, not rhetoric and insults which is all that evolutionists know how to do. Explain how those creatures arose in an evolutionary way. You cannot. Therefore evolution is false, period.

[Heartlander]

An evolutionist might claim that, given enough time, words and sentences may form within a simple computer program. (and many claim the internet has proven this false – LOL!) What part of a 26 letter alphabet single language can be considered a mutation? I guess we need to include all known characters and, just to be fair, all languages. But now we still have a ‘closed system’ program that is designed by intelligence, studied by intelligence, and hoping for an intelligent outcome. Let’s try this with the Oscar Meyer Song.

How do we get a truly ‘open system’? Well, you take all of those ‘known characters’ and drop them in our physical world. Time? Well, that should be represented by the distance of the drop and not the amount of drops.

I know, I know… I’m talking about the origin of life more than evolution per se. But it seems scientists and journalists need to know about this so they can separate the two…

What if we are all space aliens ?

Evolved Alien Life Probably Watching Us from Afar

Meteorites may have transferred life between planets in the solar system

Odds on aliens

Director's Column: The Role of Imagination in Science

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE

Darwin Exploration

Tough Earth bug may be from Mars

No speculation going on here folks, move along now, this is just facts based on empirical data. LOL! No wait, this is not true science but ‘evolution’ specifically the ‘theory of common descent’ – yeah buddy! That’s science. Occam’s Razor need not apply.

What if a med student believed in alien life and attributed it to evolution? It seems the ‘scientific commune’ would agree.

Anyway, let’s go to ‘survival of the fittest’ or ‘natural selection’.
Survival of the fittest; the smooth rock vs. the porous rock in a stream of water. No, we can’t compare living organisms to rocks… Rocks are not intelligent and even the basic cellular life forms have intelligence. There is no survival of the fittest with rocks, stars (rock stars maybe), snowflakes, rain, noise, light, etc… is there? Survival of the fittest implies a need for survival, an intelligence, somewhere and somehow. If not, what separates a ‘purely’ chemical reaction like fire, from the biological?

Well, it comes down to this Intelligent Design vs. stupid design

If a young man struggling in the ocean pushes, a rescue rope to an elderly lady in the water with him and drowns before the rescuers return – is he stupid or a hero? Our military is doing this same thing for our freedom and our country.

I haven’t seen any rocks or stars do this – I have listened to rock stars sing about it though.

[gore3000]

Well, with gore3000's pictures, the explanation is that they are examples of irreducable complexity. For example, the bat's echolocation is supposed to be something that is irreducably complex -- something that could not have evolved gradually.

That there are alraeady theories to explain the development of echolocation is irrelevant.

Of course you cannot cite any, you are a laugh. The explanations are in the same place that Gould's species are - where no one can see them.

The echolocution of the bat is better than the sonar of our armed forces. The navy is studying the bat's echolocution in order to better its sonar. There are no other mammals with this ability. The bat clearly needs it - and needs it to the extent it works now in order to eat the insects and small animals it lives on. Tell me how the bat lived for millions of years between meals. Tell me that one smart guy.

You still have all the other species I posted to explain. All of which I have mentioned at one time or another previously and which none of the evolutionists here has been able to show how their unique features could have descenced from anything else.

[gore3000]

But we have ring species (several)

Oh yes, I remember your ring species very well, do you still have that article, you need to post it so we can all have a good laugh. Essentially the story is that after years of observation of these lizards and warblers the evo 'scientists' declared them the ring species different species without bothering to see if they could mate and produce progeny. The warblers they declared separate species because they sang a different song and had two yellow stripes that others did not have. Of course this means that Englishmen and Chinamen, having different skin coloring and different languages are different species.

It is of such absurdities that evo 'science' uses as 'evidence'.

[scripter]

Thank you so very much for the link! The article was very interesting!!! And it goes well with the article I linked, because in that article the author illustrates how gross genetic pronouncements overreach the facts when other important factors, such as antropology are waved off.

What? No hug? ;-)

[scripter]

I realize you're busy - don't be such a stranger.

[AndrewC]

The whole thing reeks.

An apt description of Hardison's program and of Rennie's characterization.

And no I don't believe that the mesonychus is the ancestor of the whale. Neither do I believe the pakicetus is that ancestor. I do not believe that Hardison's program is any semblance of a process that goes on in nature. I've given enough evidence that I agree with Dr. James Shapiro

[gore3000]

I suspect some BS detectors would light up that aren't lit now.

Yup, my BS detector is on high alert. You are as usual attacking stuff which not one single person has mentioned on this thread. You are making your own strawman because you cannot refute the evidence presented against your theory on these pages. Shameful.

[Hila]

The One Physycian and true Scientist happens to be very Biblical. Get a revelation - maybe not too late for you, yet.

[gore3000]

I'm saying the letter of recommendation is a teacher's perogative.

Your statement does not in any way excuse the abuse of power by this teacher.

Do you consider it moral to FORCE the teachers to give letter of recommendation to all students?

No, I consider it immoral to deny it to a student who deserves it due to his not agreeing with the teacher's atheistic beliefs. I consider it immoral to essentially force someone to deny their religious beliefs in order to continue their education. This is the essentially the same as forcing someone to deny their faith or die. This is the behavior of petty tyrants and totally immoral people and you should be ashamed of yourself for defending such behavior.