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.

You might want to specify exactly to which God you are referring. I won't speak for balrog666 but if he does not believe in any Gods then a mention of a God without context is confusing, as the one in which you believe is not the only God postulated throughout human history.

Some people are bothered by the idea of any God. Others have a problem mainly with the Biblical God, but are comfortable with a much less defined God. I don't know which of these groups he falls into.

As I pointed out in a post to PatrickHenry, if someone was going to pursue studies in say, physics, and stated they didn't believe some established theory from that field, I really doubt it would raise any eyebrows, as long as there was no question of their ability to understand the theory. Disbelieving in evolution therefore is a problem for some people for some other reason than the ones they're giving, i.e., they lack a "scientific mind" or whatever.

Second hand descriptions with text is very hard, but think a boulder the size of a car placed in a streambed with mellon sized rocks on the side of a hill.

As a fisherman, I've seen more car-sized to house-sized boulders along valley bottoms than I care to think about. I suspect that most are residue of ancient landslides that widened the valley long before. Your flood geology is crude and cannot account for the complexity of features that we see.

With few exceptions, any given area has a complex history and a geology that reflects it. Here's an example, although it's a bit hypothetical in that it tries to show most of the possible kinds of features in one spot. Here's a nice real-world example.

From here. Yes, the "Mississippian" layer looks out of chronological order on that chart, but it's not. f.Christian is still sometimes using the chart-drawers error as proof it's all a house of cards.

You haven't responded to this link I gave you some time ago. Non-response dodges issues such as this,

HOW could floodwaters have deposited layers of HEAVIER sediments on top of layers of LIGHTER sediments? In other words, if there had been an ultramassive Flood, we would not expect to see limestone strata overlaid by granite. No creationist has ever explained how the Flood could have deposited layers of heavy sediment on top of layers of lighter sediment.

or this,

There would be no segregation of fossils. If all organisms lived at the same time, we would expect to see trilobites, brachiopods, ammonites, dinosaurs, and mammals (including humans) all randomly mixed together in the worldwide blanket described in point #1. This is not what is observed.

or this,

Igneous (volcanic) rocks, if they existed at all in flood sediments, would all be in the form of pillow lava, which are extruded underwater. There could be no segregation of igneous rock types. Basalt would be the only igneous rock type because all activity would have been extrusive. There would be a complete absence of volcanic layers within the strata.
In reality, there are very clearly defined volcanic layers, from which radiometric dates are obtained. How can we observe layers of volcanic rock within the strata if there was a Flood at at the time?

or this,

... we would expect to find no examples at all in the geologic record of the following delicate fossils or evidence for land deposition :

fossilized dinosaur nests
ant nests
termite nests
bird nests (of a relative of the flamingo in the Green River Formation in Wyoming)
fragile wasp nests
complex rodent burrows
animal dung left in its original position of deposition as it hardened on dry, solid ground
trackways of land animals
raindrop imprints
fossilized mudcracks
fragile things preserved as fossils, such as bird feathers (Confuciusornis)
ferns (adjacent to coal beds)
insects (Oligocene lake beds near Florrisant, CO),
oxidized rocks layers (redbeds) because there is insufficient oxygen in the water to oxidize (bring up) the iron present.

and many others.

To complete and repair your woefully decrepit education on living organisms, negative entropy, and information theory I suggest you first read Erwin Schrodinger's brilliant little treatise "What is Life," published in 1925.

Been there, done that. It was cute, but less than earth-shattering. And it was published in 1948, not 1925. Schrödinger's paper on wave mechanics wasn't even published until 1926. He had to become famous before a publisher would touch a book full of rather flaky philosophical musings.

Then I suggest you read Claude Shannon's paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication, "published in 1948. Shannon should have been awarded a Nobel Prize, but was not.

In what? There is no Nobel prize in mathematics.

Finally, bring current your essential knowledge of biological systems as information processing systems of astonishing complexity, by synthesizing Schrodinger's and Shannon's insights within the context of Watson's and Cricks' Nobel prize-winning work on the structure and mechanism of the DNA molecule.

One of the things that dismays laypeople about science is the discovery that this sort of content-free gibberish is usually dismissed out of hand as 'hand waving'. It sounds so impressive, if you listen to the cadence of the words and don't look for meaning.

Boltzmann's law tells us the entropy associated with a random assortment of say, 10^9 base pairs in a genome. It's just k ln(1000000000)^4, or 1.14 X 10^-21 J/K. That's a humblingly low number. It's smaller than the increase in entropy on emitting a fart. It's smaller than the incresase in entropy when a fly farts. So if you say "my genome is special, it has this exact sequence, even one base pair change will make it different", your genome is lower in entropy than a completely random assortment of base pairs by this staggeringly low value.

The 'information theory' version of entropy gives exactly the same result, by the way. If you have sufficiently understood these great men and synthesized their discoveries and insights, you will be humbled to learn just how little you do know. And you will be embarrassed for Charles Darwin.

I don't need to be reminded I don't know nearly enough just do to the research I do. It's a depressing fact every working scientist runs into every day. I come to these threads to remind myself I could be a lot worse off. As a bonus you will be painfully aware of the difference between Boltztmann thermodynamic entropy and Shannon information negentropy. Go ahead, and explain it to me then. I was under the impresion I did know what entropy is as applied to data, but, gosh, I could be convinced by an erudite adversary.

I recall the seeding was a problem to my project because it means that the RND function can never generate a truly random number.

The problem with the program has nothing to do with the quality of the randomness, but has to do with the quality of the algorithm.

It prints out "TOBEORNOTTOBE" in sequence. It is 100%(as far as the output is concerned) predictable. First the "T" is printed. Then the "O" is printed, so on and so forth. The "randomness" figures in only on how long it takes to print each individual letter.

The last output would look like


T
O

B
E

O
R
N
O
T

T
O

B
E

N=[SOME NUMBER] KEYS PRESSED TO WRITE 'TO BE OR NOT TO BE'
FOR 10 RUN(S) OF PROGRAM


WITH 3000 RUNS, THE MEAN
# of trials=333
THE MEAN TIME REQUIRED
WAS .14 MINUTES TO PRINT
TOBEORNOTTOBE

Dear moderator: The relevancy of this post is that it addresses what seems to be newly-imposed website rules, and it may assist freepers in complying with FR policy.

AndrewC's deleted 559 was addressed to me. It contained the ascii bat, and a quote from medved. I don't know what purpose the post served. Still, it wasn't abusive, and I have no idea why it was deleted (unless it violated the apparently new rule of "relevancy"). I didn't hit the abuse button.

My deleted "placemarker" post #572 was addressed to VadeRetro, and it contained only five words (copied from Vade's earlier post #569) followed by the word "placemarker." Vade's post wasn't abusive, and it's still there. I have no idea why my placemarker was deleted, unless there's a new rule that forbids placemarkers.

575 was also deleted. It was from g3k addressed to me. It also contained the famous ascii bat, and a vaguely insulting comment about me. Nothing really new. Compared to other comments addressed to me from that source, it wasn't a standout. Anyway, I didn't regard it as abusive, and I didn't hit the button.

I have no idea what's going on around here.

The theory of evolution is fundamental to chemical biology. When the think in bioinformatics, in genomics, we relate gene/protein sequences to other genes in the same organism, or in related organisms. The way those relationships arose is by evolution. If someone didn't believe in evolution, then there would be no reason for them to expect, say, lemur sequences to be closer to humans than bacterial sequences.

In addition, merely mentioning 'alternatives to evolution' in a grant proposal in a biological field would be the certain kiss of death. It's like mentioning Area 51 or contrails or alien abductions. Tinfoil helmet stuff. One thing academic departments won't do these days is hire unfundable faculty. And if the candidate meantioned his creationism to a search committee, why wouldn't he be foolhardy enough to mention it to a granting agency?

Science is not subject to the first amendment. We dismiss damnfool ideas out of hand every day. Evolution, in the minds of 99+% of working biologists, occupies so central a position in biology that anything questioning its fundamental truth (as opposed to the details of its mechanism) qualifies as a damnfool idea.

And no I don't believe that the mesonychus is the ancestor of the whale.

The surviving "mesonychan hypothesis" would have it somewhat offline in the most-related case as I personally interpret it. It would be something like an uncle of Pakicetus at most.

Neither do I believe the pakicetus is that ancestor.

Here it gets curious again. You have about 5 million years from the first Pakis to the first Ambulos. There could always emerge a contemporary of Pakicetus that, when found, looks like a better candidate for the main line, but that's Paleontology for you.

The fact is that we now have a fine, graduated sequence where in 1955 Colbert could only make the quote that Duane Gish still dishonestly trumpets on the ICR website,

"These mammals must have had an ancient origin, for no intermediate forms are apparent in the fossil record between the whales and the ancestral Cretaceous placentals. Like the bats, the whales (using the term in a general and inclusive sense) appear suddenly in early Tertiary times, fully adapted by profound modifications of the basic mammalian structure for a highly specialized mode of life. Indeed, the whales are even more isolated with relation to other mammals than the bats; they stand quite alone."

The finds of the 80s and 90s in cetacean paleontology are a smashing triumph for evolution, which predicted all along that such a sequence of fossils would turn up. Predicted it, in fact, when the picture was far worse than in Colbert's time. Creationism scoffed, claiming as always that all gaps are real and would never be filled.

In light of that, let's examine the posts of AndrewC, who claims to accept common descent, natural selection, evolution, the whole nine-yards minus the completely random nature of mutation under extreme selection pressure. You might say AndrewC has his own version of theistic Punk-Eek, a position almost the same as theistic evolutionist Junior's and which accomodates and is supported by exactly the same paleontological data. Both people have long ago examined the evidence and come to almost identical conclusions about the truth of the origin of species.

Is, say, Pakicetus evidence for AndrewC's theory? Indeed, it would seem to be a fulfilled prediction of Andrew's theory, with the proviso that a better-candidate contemporary could turn up later, it's always a bush, not a chain, yadayadayada.

But here's where it gets funny. Contrast AndrewC's posts to Junior's. One gets the clear impression that Junior accepts the new evidence which tends to further support what Junior long ago accepted as true.

AndrewC does not accept new evidence for what AndrewC says he accepts as true. He is not merely skeptical; his denials are squirmy, scurrilous, lawyerly, hissy. AndrewC, who tells me to shut up at his pleasure, makes posts to me insinuating that he has discredited what he accepts as true. AndrewC postures and gestures, playing to the people who do not accept what he claims to accept as true.

You can post to me and there's nothing I can do. It's your privilege on this forum so long as the powers that be don't mind you being here. But I can reply by asking for clarification of what you think you're saying. Feel free to clarify anything you like.

AmericanInIsrael wrote: The guy that was teaching about healing prayer in church (he was a visitor) said if you have to pray for a back problem check the legs first. Most back problems are rooted in leg length problems. Fix the legs first then pray for the back.

As they say in Israel, Oi vey! Are you unaware that this leg length trick/diagnoses has gone the way of phrenology? It's complete bunk and is one of the multitude of reasons Chiropractors are not MD's.

AmInIs went on to write: a little child commanded that my leg grow and my back be healed in the name of Jesus. It did... I would like to pray and see if a round the world prayer works. This Jesus in action stuff is kinda new to me. For years it was philosophy, now it is physics. The first year I believed God gave a rip about me and decided to return the favor I prayed for a wart on my cousins hand he could not get rid of with compound W or a pocket knife. I put my thumb on it and prayed and when I lifted my thumb the wart was gone.

Wow, why aren't you world famous? Better yet, why aren't you a millionaire? James Randi would love to meet you and test your skills in a completely fair trial. If you succeed, you get a million bucks. This is totally real, totally accredited, and the money really exists. I look forward to the findings. Go to this link and fill out the application and good luck!
http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

It would be evidence if it were the ancestor. Just as the mesonychus was touted as the root, now the pakicetus is touted as that root. The problem, which I posted to you long ago, is that the Paki is 50 million years old. It is a "whale". If it is a whale and the hippo is not, then the hippo-whale split occured over 50 million years ago. That would push the other artiodactyl splits higher up.

I don't believe that. You do. Support it.

The anklebones convinced both longtime proponents of the mesonychid hypothesis that whales instead evolved from artiodactyls. Gingerich has even embraced the hippo idea. Although hippos themselves arose long after whales, their purported ancestors— dog- to horse-size, swamp-dwelling beasts called anthracotheres— date back to at least the middle Eocene and may thus have a forebear in common with the cetaceans. In fact, Gingerich notes that Rodhocetus and anthracotheres share features in their hands and wrists not seen in any other later artiodactyls. Thewissen agrees that the hippo hypothesis holds much more appeal than it once did. But he cautions that the morphological data do not yet point to a particular artiodactyl, such as the hippo, being the whale’s closest relative, or sister group. “We don’t have the resolution yet to get them there,” he remarks, “but I think that will come.”
What of the evidence that seemed to tie early whales to mesonychids? In light of the new ankle data, most workers now suspect that those similarities probably reflect convergent evolution rather than shared ancestry and that mesonychids represent an evolutionary dead end. But not everyone is convinced. Maureen O’Leary of the State University of New York at Stony Brook argues that until all the available evidence—both morphological and molecular—is incorporated into a single phylogenetic analysis, the possibility remains that mesonychids belong at the base of the whale pedigree. It is conceivable, she says, that mesonychids are actually ancient artiodactyls but ones that reversed the ankle trend. If so, mesonychids could still be the whales’ closest relative, and hippos could be their closest living relative [see box on page 74]. Critics of that idea, however, point out that although folding the mesonychids into the artiodactyl order offers an escape hatch of sorts to supporters of the mesonychid hypothesis, it would upset the long-standing notion that the ankle makes the artiodactyl.
...
Yet even with those details still unresolved, “we’re really getting a handle on whales from their origin to the end of archaeocetes,” Uhen reflects.

Supporting data, per your request. I realize you've read the article, but I can't tell how much is getting past your demon. Note that if you could really show that hippos arose from something young, their seeming relationship to whales is a problem. But the coal-beasts go 'way back.

You trumpet remaining questions and untidy aspects of the picture as if nothing were gained or learned, as if what you do not believe were advancing instead of evolution. I can't imagine that you don't know better.

Thank you so much for your post!

I agree that the program is meaningless.

Because the random function with a seed constant of 1 gives results from 0 to .99999999 the statement [X = INT (26 * RND (1)) + 1] can only generate a number from 1 to 26 from which the results are cherry picked in order (by alphabet position and in sequence) as you say!

That is not anything at all like the range of possibilities in nature. And the mean time observation is likewise meaningless because it is based on computer speed alone, there are no actual key depressions (by man, monkey or whatever) involved. And if there were, all possibilites of keys, non-keys, non-alphabet keys, key combinations would have to be considered (i.e. not just the 26.)

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