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Professor Rigid on Evolution (must "believe" to get med school rec)
The Lubbock Avalanche Journal ^ | 10/6/02 | Sebastian Kitchen

Posted on 10/06/2002 8:16:21 AM PDT by hispanarepublicana

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To: Jeff Gordon
I would not want to be practiced upon by a doctor who did accept the garbage/insanity behind evolution. If his understanding of science and biology is that warped/rotten---messy...then any medical practices he engaged in would be tantamount to Voodoo/butchery.

Turnaround...'fair' play!

781 posted on 10/10/2002 2:33:52 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: Jeff Gordon
Here's a clue...

technology/science is derived---

woven...a tapestry from knowledge/philosophy---existence/creation(reality)...

evolution is 'science' fiction/fantasy---ideology/bias---spin/yarn(warp)...no woof!

Yeah...evolution is a persian carpet with no knots---LINT!

782 posted on 10/10/2002 2:41:27 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: American in Israel
As for the gold, I still have to ask: Why do you assume the hills were 4500 feet tall when the gold was deposited crosswise over them? In between the original shallow sea and the current upthrusted 4500 foot canyon walls, there were many different intermediate states - including hilly intertidal areas, etc.

Well you got me there. If you can move mountains at any point to any level then anypoint on earth could have been anywhere at any time. There is no zero on the ruler, no reference. So in return how do you know there was not a flood if every moutain top has fossils?

Well sure, if you assume there's a supernatural God out there who regularly puts His hand on the scale, then no evidence we ever saw about anything in the past could ever be trusted, even in principle. As for marine fossils on top of mountains, you just went into great detail earlier about how subtle geological details in the gold-filled canyons imply there was a flood! Maybe you should try prospecting in the foothills of Nepal. :-)

Then of course there's the earth dam that burst & let in the Mediterranean into the Black Sea, likely giving rise to a certain myth about a guy named Noah...

Uh, myth? Myths dont create fossils. Nor do bodies of things laying around. That creates stink. I have seen a lot of dead deer and other critters in water and out of it. Never saw a fossil in progress, just maggots. You know maggots stir feathers? What ever makes fossils is faster than maggots or keeps flys away.

What are you talking about? There are plenty of cases of local flash floods, lahars, local lava & ash flows, not to mention anoxic bottoms of lakes with slow & steady silt deposition gently covering up the dead bodies that sunk there. That's what happened to Archaeopteryx, IIRC.

OH THANKS A LOT. If it works, you will be hearing from my lawyer! >:-O

NO NO NO! First do the leg length test and if one is SHORT let me know. Trying to curse someone in Gods name is like trying to fly with lead baloons. Don't work, never will.

Seriously, if you think you're getting consistent results with faith healing, then I can point you to someone who could set up a blind test. They're offering a million $$$ if you can show results.

Hmmm, I think they should try to go see it happen themselves, would be much cheaper.

It sounds like it is a progressive process that starts off in just that way. Whattajoke already mentioned it's the Randi Foudation challenge. You can read all about the procedure here.

I don't have much use for a million bucks, but what is the point? Is it to heal someone or to put a silly test on God? If it is to play with Gods mind I don't think it would work, I or the child were not the healers, we were just the messengers. I don't like trying to force God's hand. He lets me sometimes when I am being stupid, but you have to understand that I love God. This is not a game to me, and I feel pretty bad if I misuse his grace. Kinda like finding out you took advantage of someone you love. You feel loved but feel icky at the same time. I don't like icky.

God is pretty smart, don't think anybody has ever pulled the wool over his eyes. There is a lot of healing in the Church, it seems the person who is willing to risk a million bucks at this point is a pretty even bet that they got heart problems that would prevent them from using their eyes to see. My bet is that it is a waste of time.

I'm very disappointed with where you're going here. This is also the standard rationalization of every psuedoscientific quack science claim: No double-blind test ever seems to work, because of the presence of skeptical people messing up the "energy field", etc.

Look: If you've found the methodology that makes faith healing work (commanding the demons out in Jesus' name instead of asking Jesus to remove the demons, etc.), then you've found something that should become standard medical practice. It should, because real people are living miserable lives because of their maladies, right now as we type! But modern medicine does not follow therapies that aren't verifiable thru some kind of objective criteria. If such an amazingly powerful healing practice as yours will utterly fail if your motivation for performing the healing is the least bit tainted by any intention of objectively verifying that this is a true phenomenon and not some kind of psuedoscientific delusion, then that would be a great pity. (And it wouldn't say much for the personality of God either!)

Here's an example you really should read about: Several years ago there was a movement among caregivers of autistic & CP sufferers called Facilitated Communication (FC). An assistant would lightly guide the patient's hand around a keyboard, and lo & behold, the severely autistic person was able to type coherent sentences! (Sometimes more coherent than F. Christian's!) Parents were overjoyed to discover that their child had a normal intelligence beneath that frustrating blank exterior. Some patients went to regular schools, with their facilitators, & IIRC even college in some cases.

It wasn't until years later that controlled experiments by dispassionate researchers were done on these people & their facilitators, and they proved that it was usually the facilitators, not the patients, who were doing the communicating. The facilitators were devastated - they were completely sincere in their desire to help the patients, and completely sincere in their conviction that they really were being neutral and merely helping the patients communicate their own thoughts.

You could approach a controlled experiment of your healing powers from a defensive posture if you want, but if you really want to help people you should approach it from a genuine desire to find out the truth.

(Off topic? Eh, I guess so. But that's all I have to say about your faith healing. If you continue to be convinced that it works, I sincerely think the world would be served by you putting it to an objective test as above.)

783 posted on 10/10/2002 2:42:06 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: PatrickHenry
Lint---hair balls---CLOGS!
784 posted on 10/10/2002 2:42:28 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: f.Christian
Main Entry: 1clog
Pronunciation: 'kläg, 'klog
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English clogge short thick piece of wood
Date: 14th century
1 a : a weight attached especially to an animal to hinder motion b : something that shackles or impedes : ENCUMBRANCE 1
2 : a shoe, sandal, or overshoe having a thick typically wooden sole
785 posted on 10/10/2002 2:46:30 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: lasereye
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.

Of course you could. You could think God made them that way. How is it that creationists like Duane Gish have been accomplished biochemists? Understanding how the sequences work is distinct from a theory of where they came from anyway, isn't it?

'God made them that way' has no predictive value. Let's say we sequence the genome of a new species. We know nothing about the biochemistry of this species (this is happening more and more; gene sequencing is so powerful and classical biochemistry so slow the former now almost always leads the latter). We'd like to identify the genes as far as we can. So what do we do? We compare them with genes from a better known species, one as closely related as possible, and infer that what codes for a serine kinase, say, in species 1, is probably also a serine kinase in organism 2. That works if we believe in evolution. However, if we don't believe in evolution, we start with a tabula rasa in every new case. Why, after all, should the creator have used a set of common blueprints? Why would he use similar genes for a serine kinase in two birds, and a different one in a tunicate?

(Of course, what would really happen is the hypothetical creationist would use the same relationships to assign the gene products, denying to himself that he was implictly accepting species 1 and species 2 had a recent common ancestor)

Or we could beleive that God was deliberately making the entire genome of every species deceptively suggest an evolutionary origin, in order to test our faith. And in rebuttal to that, I can only quote Einstein: Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber Boshaft ist Er nicht.

BTW, I was wondering why I hadn't heard of an 'accomplished biochemist' by the name of Duane Gish. So I did a SciFinder search. As far as I can trace, Gish wrote between 25 and 30 papers over a 20 year period, between 1952 and 1972, long before the era of genomics. A publication rate of a tad over 1 paper a year for 20 years stretches the definition of 'accomplished' - he wouldn't get tenure these days. Since then all he appears to have done is run this Creationist institute racket. So the answer is, he was able to survive before genomics; it would be far more of an obstacle today.

786 posted on 10/10/2002 3:06:51 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: hispanarepublicana
Nowhere does Dini state that a student must have a "belief" in evolution (it is an irresponsible misquote of his website). That is a myth involved with the creationism side: that their argument is at all equal to scientific fact and theory (both of these terms simultaneously describe biological evolution). Belief is not involved in science. Scientists accept good data, they do not "believe" in it.

Additionally, he requires this FOR A LETTER of recommendation. Don't like it? Tough. There are hundreds of literate professors on campuses like Tech. But doesn't this controversy in fact speak to the credibility and value of a letter from Dini?
787 posted on 10/10/2002 3:08:06 PM PDT by derek141
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To: G Larry
Your message betrays a complete ignorance of science.
788 posted on 10/10/2002 3:12:05 PM PDT by derek141
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To: whattajoke
2 + 4(lies) + 18(ego/bias) - 68(truth/science) x 1M(evolution) = 2(master race/'science')!

Evilution algebra---calculus---logic---LAWS(license)!

789 posted on 10/10/2002 3:14:53 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: MEGoody
But specifically, what problems could be caused by a doctor who successfully completed the required coursework, et al, but who did not believe in evolution?

You're asking the wrong person. I said this was an issue for the Med. School admissions committee, not a scientist writing a recommendation. Contrary to Gore 3000, who believes atheists can't be doctors (!), I'm not at all sure what, beyond anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, an MD needs to know. An MD when practising medicine is not a scientist, IMO his relationship to biology is like an engineer's relationship to physics. An engineer can believe the earth is flat and still be a competent engineer.

My greater concern would be that if a potential student adopts a Weltanschaung that is antithetical to reason and science, what other problems does he have?

790 posted on 10/10/2002 3:15:54 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Gritty
Evolution is BOTH fact and theory, as are both gravity and heliocentrism.
791 posted on 10/10/2002 3:18:24 PM PDT by derek141
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To: Right Wing Professor
Posted by f.Christian to All
On News/Activism Oct 8 2:43 AM #81 of 180

To: Dimensio
As I see it, evolution is an ideological doctrine. If it were only a "scientific theory", it would have died a natural death 50 - 70 years ago; the evidence against it is too overwhelming and has been all along. The people defending it are doing so because they do not like the alternatives to an atheistic basis for science and do not like the logical implications of abandoning their atheistic paradigm and, in conducting themselves that way, they have achieved a degree of immunity to what most people call logic.

488 posted on 7/29/02 5:18 AM Pacific by medved

Main Entry: log·ic

Pronunciation: 'lä-jik Function: noun


Etymology: Middle English logik, from Middle French logique, from Latin logica, from Greek logikE, from feminine of logikos of reason, from logos reason -- more at LEGEND

Date: 12th century

1 a

(1) : a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration : the science of the formal principles of reasoning

(2) : a branch or variety of logic

(3) : a branch of semiotic; especially : SYNTACTICS

(4) : the formal principles of a branch of knowledge

b (1) : a particular mode of reasoning viewed as valid or faulty

(2) : RELEVANCE, PROPRIETY

c : interrelation or sequence of facts or events when seen as inevitable or predictable

d : the arrangement of circuit elements (as in a computer) needed for computation; also : the circuits themselves

2 : something that forces a decision apart from or in opposition to reason < the logic of war >

- lo·gi·cian /lO-'ji-sh&n/ noun


792 posted on 10/10/2002 3:18:33 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: Right Wing Professor
LOGIC...

2 : something that forces a decision apart from or in opposition to reason < the logic of war >

793 posted on 10/10/2002 3:19:28 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: Right Wing Professor
"My greater concern would be that if a potential student adopts a Weltanschaung that is antithetical to"...

cult evolution/politics---ideology!

794 posted on 10/10/2002 3:23:10 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: Gritty
Words are are servants, not our masters. In science, the word "theory" serves us quite a bit more stringently than it does in the vernacular. A theory is the best, least cumbersome explanation for phenomena. A good theory has durable explanatory power, i.e., it withstands the most intensive scrutiny.
795 posted on 10/10/2002 3:24:37 PM PDT by derek141
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To: betty boop
It seems to me that you have difficulties to envision how one species may turn into an other. The problem however is that there is no sharp boundary where one particular population changes from one species to an other. It's a continuous process.
A good analogy is the continuous spectrum of the visible light. There you also can't say exactly where red turns into yellow, yellow into green and so on.
796 posted on 10/10/2002 3:29:14 PM PDT by BMCDA
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To: Right Wing Professor
The way I read the papal encyclical...

polite rejection---

nice paint job---bondo/chrome/blown engine...

totalled endlessly...bad rebuilds/recycles---WRECKS/relics!

Real cruizer(on blocks/cartoons)

---govt b-52 video---only the scences-lies(background) move!

All the trophies are fake...never had a start---track record!

Clowns---jason(jerks)!

797 posted on 10/10/2002 3:29:36 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: <1/1,000,000th%
The story is not fake. This is not an issue of University or departmental policy. Associate professors have always set their own personal policies: no faculty member is required to write any letter of recommendation. That is an act of generosity completely at the faculty member's discretion.
798 posted on 10/10/2002 3:34:13 PM PDT by derek141
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To: All
Running joke is 'evo-science'...

biggest cult of oxy-moonie-morons---art bells!

Latest evo gem--artist...

Sure. All domesticated animal husbandry is proof of evolution but in the case of planned animal husbandry, man, rather than environmental influences, play the role of selectivity. Try to think this through, which, I realize, may not be easy. If you cross a poodle to a poodle, do you get a wolf? (Knock, Knock)

Now: Do you care to give me scientific proof that God exists?

I'm not kidding. You people amaze me.

294 posted on 8/25/02 12:02 PM Pacific by AllSmiles

More...

Like FR 'patrickhenry'...

"search for the creator via evolution"---

"total--only evolution" too---

Now...latest---"NO COMPETITION"!

The papal encyclical rightwingprofessor-whack thinks/interprets---"professes evolution"...

could abortion be next???

Nebullis..."preschool evolution---INTENSIVELY"---

donh..."if the sun can create crystals-snowflakes...human life would certainly follow"---

(Why, if the sun can create crystals and snowflakes, can't it create life?)

(How much different is my paraphase of your rhetorical question---statement!)

also by donh...Hitler and nazi germany were all Christians---creationists!

(With this statement we can safely say bankrobbers/murderers are auditors/morticians!)

dominick harr..."just like a ball bouncing down the stairs----evolution created everything"---

jennyp..."anarchist evolutionary(natural) capitalism---Christianity(manmade) is communism"---

and patrickhenry doesn't know..."if prior to darwin---if science existed"...

SkyRat...Divine hammer-retribution from above via evolution!

exdemmom...evolution is the "lug wrench" that fixes science--biology/life!

...snip---

799 posted on 10/10/2002 3:36:20 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: 537 Votes
You don't understand very basic biology. Antibiotics do not cure viral diseases. They cure bacterial disease, and when abused, do indeed select for more virulent bacteria.
800 posted on 10/10/2002 3:37:53 PM PDT by derek141
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