Posted on 10/06/2002 8:16:21 AM PDT by hispanarepublicana
Professor rigid on evolution </MCC HEAD>
By SEBASTIAN KITCHEN </MCC BYLINE1>
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL </MCC BYLINE2>
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/
On the Net
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
Excellent point! But I think it's worse than that: She'd look for any animal that looks like the animal whose genome is being decoded. So if she's decoding a bat's genome, she'd look up bird sequences! Decoding a porpoise's genome? Then ask the fish. Decoding the platypus? Ooh, then she'd get really confused - consult the duck genome for a start, obviously. Right, gore3000?'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)
models---remote viewing---space travel?
This is a perfect example of why arguing over religion is foolish. Take a look at your own statement. If your "refutation" was true, then there would never be heavy sediments over light sediments. But there are. What part of reality do you not get here? If flood waters cannot do what flood waters do, then particlular flood did not exist?! Look in any stream bed anywhere that is exposed in cross wise section (hint look at the sides of the stream beds where the stream has cut through an older section. Notice that all the materials are not sorted as to mass, but are sorted as to mass at the time the stream was flowing. Any change in the flow rate at any given point in time causes different deposits by mass/cross section at that point of time. (AnI law of cross sectional placerplacement).
So for this idea to be even remotely possible, the earth would have had to be absolutely round, no brush or hills to impede flow. The flood would have had to start by just appearing slowly until it rose to what ever height and then suddenly started to spin around the poles tearing up the dirt evenly never exposing any form of bedrock or anything that would impede the flow or cause eddy currents. Then magicly the flood would have had to slowly decelerate raining out the sediments and rocks it did not expose in the first place, evenly in a layer over the whole earth untill it just "went away". Then and only then could you have had even sorting of the layers that you need to believe there even was a flood. But there are layers there. What caused them, brain farts? Do you know of anything else that causes earth layering in nature besides, uh water deposits? That's it, a previously unknown dinosaur that had a fetish for sorting gravel that went extinct because of the Ice age. Yeah, it died of frustration because all the snow was the same size. Thats the ticket...
Of course there were mountains that caused runoff, and seabeds that existed as great sandtraps, and bushes to impede flow and even a storm that caused wave action. So naturally stream beds did what stream beds do, they deposited their layers in a haphazard form directly related to the flow as it happened at that point in time.
You also mixed rock types with sedimentary layers. Are you telling me that limestone and granite are sedimentary rocks? Look at granite some time. Does it look placered or are the rock particles rough, crystalline in form and uniform? Crystallization comes from igneous formation of particles not layering. Damn, you boys need to get outside some time and smell the roses.
The fact that you attempt to put the whole earth in a test tube and have come to the conclusion that God does not exist because it won't fit is the real problem here. This is not about science, this is about faith. And I passed on your religious arguments.
These ideas are so beyond you that you did not even see the obvious errors, how do your expect me, some jerk-wad in Israel to debunk them all for you if you cannot even understand them in the first place? I would have to have an IQ of about 3000 to have all the answers to everything in the world and at that point I would be way to busy to bother writing you a letter. Get real.
This was the first example you gave. I case you think I just found a simple oops in your observation... I will wade through the pasture, wait a minute while I adjust my suspenders. This is pretty think stuff.
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.
Oh give me a break! This like 5 guys who are blind trying to describe an elephant after on lunch break they have decided to at least agree on one thing. Elephants don't exist.
Why would dead animals have different rules than dead rocks? Just like in a stream bed you see sorting by mass/cross sectional area vs flow rate in floodwaters you see in fossils sorting by mass/cross sectional area vs flow rate. That is why you see debris sorted on the beach the same way. Tell me, if you find shells on the beach all piled together by size and type (as you see on any beach) does that prove the birds don't exist? Besides, anomalies in the fossil records abound. I have seen them myself. If you find a bird with a seashell in the same fossil strata, it is just labeled a bird age fossil. If you find a dinosaur bone with a sea shell it is just labeled a dinosaur age fossil. If you find the layering in reverse order, the layers must have been flipped over due to geological shifting.... Seriously you need to get out more. If fossils are so darned important to you, go dig some! Bring a picknik lunch, you will dig it. (no pun intended) Listen to the birds sing.
Nobody even knows how fossils come about being in the first place in the scientwistic circles because the answer is only obvious, and they have agreed that is the one thing they agree does not exist. (Hint, in order for fossilisation to take place, you need low level electrical currents.)
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,(what a concept!) 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?
The flood was only 40 days? -grin- Seriously, if what this statement said is true, there would be no such thing as lava formations of any sort than land or water. Did you catch the concept that lava happens before, during and after the flood? This again is an attempt to make the whole world fit in a single test tube. Very shortsighted.
As for radiometric dating, it is based on the concept that decay rates are a constant barring of course external influences. I suspect that a world wide flood is a bit of an influence. And since you want everything spelled out low level electrical currents passed through the lava would degrade the constant. The influence of external energy sources would shift the decay rate. A world wide flood grinds up metal veins and galvometric action caused by the electrical interaction of the metal particles degrading causes all sorts of odd things like the super x 22 bullet I pulled out of the sluice box once that was incased in sandstone. The bacterial action in the water caused acid that accelerated the galvonmetric activity between the lead bullet and the brass case. the bullet was perfectly imbedded in a do-nut of sandstone. LOOK A BULLET FOSSIL! Must be where 30-06's evolved from...
The third one is totally out of the ball park and hard for me to grasp.I don't do drugs... Because delicate fossils exist a single event that happened at one time in history did not? You know that pot makes your time sense history right?
Again, for the third time the method of trying to make a huge concept for a tiny brain to prove a blanket statement is used. Cult stuff if I ever saw it. What is it about your religion that anything can be believed if you shift the decimal point enough? It is like there is some finite limit to what your brain can hold. If you put a big enough thought in there, you can ignore the obvious. Time happens.
Ignoring that the flood is most likely the only way that delicate fossils exist in the first place, why is the presence of Noah's flood automaticly erase any existing fossil records before and after that flood? [there, I said the N word, sure to be flamed now]
Next time you get road kill in front of your house, go drag it onto your lawn, put up safety barriers around it with big signs saying DO NOT DISTURB, FOSSILATION EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS around it and report back to me when you get a dog fossil complete with hair in place. Of course you will have to keep flies and other dogs away. But then, if they are smart enough to design the next generation of dogs that fly, surely they can read your signs...
Hint, bury the dog. It stinks less that way. You are even more likely to get a fossil. Now tell me, what the heck is big enough to bury about 500 dinosaur's in a big pile, sorted by mass/cross sectional area? That is one HECK of a big Dog you got back there, A DOGOSAUROUS!. Or did dinosaur's actually have a highly advanced religion and bury their dead in graveyards? Perhaps you think dinosaurs have homing instincts for dead dinosaurs and one fell over a clift once and all the rest followed?
I had a boss that perfectly described the mind-set of the Scien-twistic religion. He was talking money, (which he always did), but he said lets not stumble over dollar bills to pick up nickles. The same way, you and your cronies ignore the obvious, to search the sublime.
I got a suggestion, get a girl-friend and go to a movie. Watch a sunset, swim at the beach. Do something silly for once and enjoy life. You only got one, and playing with fossils all day make Jack a dull boy. La Chiem. (To LIFE!)
And that is the problem in a nut-shell. Great post.
Seems to me Mendel was a priest and he is one of the greatest lights in biology. In addition to which, biology has shown quite well that evolution is totally impossible so it is evolutionists that perhaps should be excluded. All these evo scientists do is make up stupid theories instead of doing real research. Where would we be in biology if the evolutionist's stupid claim that the 95% of DNA not in genes was junk?
Science, real science is open to all questions. It cherishes debate. You obviously are a very bad scientist if you are a scientist at all. Science has no truck with ideologues like yourself.
Are they fruitcakes? While I don't have the vaguest idea of what NAS's agenda is, the fact that they have an agenda at all seems to me to be enough to disqualify them as a scientific organization. Science has no ideology. It is a search for truth and any organization with any kind of ideology is ipso factp non-scientific. Science and religious belief have never been opposites. In fact, many scientists have seen their religious beliefs reinforced by their scientific discoveries. You therefore are an ideologue and not a scientist. You do not care about truth, you only care about your ideology, your agenda. That is not what the scientific spirit is about.
How can you have physical laws in a random universe? How do you create information at random? The basis of materialism and evolution totally contradict any possibility of scientific research. It is materialists that should not be allowed in the sciences if anything. However, since the Christians who you continually denigrate are not ideologues like yourself and Dr. Dini, we never propose such tyrannical criteria. We judge each man for himself and for his work not according to a pre-conceived agenda like you do.
That someone can do something does not make it morally correct. That you can steal something or murder someone and get away with it does not make it right. In civilized society rightful conduct includes fairness. When someone misuses their power to advance a personal agenda that is wrong, that is immoral and that is despicable. Dr. Dini does not belong in any sort of educational institution. He does not belong in any position of power. He should be fired. He is an ideologue, not and educator.
A codon is a set of three DNA bases. Since a single DNA base only has 4 possible codes, in order to code for the 20 amino acids used to make proteins a set of 3 DNA bases is needed to code for them. Therefore when transcribing DNA in order to make proteins, an organism needs to read the DNA by threes.
I would go much further than you. I would say that if they believe in evolution they do not understand biology. Biology has shown that the simple-minded reductionist explanations of evolutionism are totally false.
And the proof of the last sentence is???????
Should I wait another 150 years for an answer to the question above?
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.
With millions of species to choose from it is easy to find such favorable comparisons. The interesting thing though is that evolutionists (unlike real scientists) refuse to discuss anything but what favors their theory. Real scientists for example, when they wanted to find out more about the human genome examined not the monkey, not the lemur, but the fugu fish. They found that the genes of the fugu fish were so close to human genes that they were able to identify some 1,000 human genes which two different genome sequencing projects had been unable to identify. The Fugu Fish Project gives the details.
That is funny! 'Different trees happen'! I thought these folk were supposed to be scientists. How did it 'happen'? Their crayons went out of control?????????????
Also, I find your statement 'Different molecular studies draw different trees all the time' quite an admission from an evolutionist. I thought evolutionists claim that molecular analysis proves evolution? If you get different results from different studies then obviously there is no molecular clock, molecular analysis disproves evolution and all this tree drawing is a bunch of nonsense by adults playing with crayons.
And in what field of science would evolution be absolutely relevant?????
My answer is none. Certainly not in biology which has constantly disproved evolutionist assumptions.
Aaaah, the not so gentlemanly concession of an evolutionist when he loses a discussion! What's next, you are going to try to get the thread pulled like you and your friends have done numerous times when you are losing?
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