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]

Just my $.02 in beating a dead horse.

Your analysis is excellent, however as with many evolutionist lies, this 'tobeornotobe' program is still not dead after having been shown to be totally ridiculous. Evolutionists keep bringing it up in discussions. Sorta shows to me the desperation of evolutionists in the face of scientific facts clearly disproving it.

[gore3000]

So you have a skull, you can carbon date it. Then you have another skull, and you can date that one, too; and find it's more recent than the first one.

Just a slight correction. You cannot carbon date beyond 50,000 years ago. Carbon dating is about the only method of dating which has been verified. Since it operates on the most recent finds, it has been possible to verify its accuracy by checking it against historically known dates. However, when first used, in spite of the clearly scientifically provable basis of it, the results were innacurate. Carbon dating had to be adjusted by some 20% in order to agree with historical data. All other modes of dating may suffer from problems but cannot be calibrated or tested in any meaningful way.

[gore3000]

For him to argue against special creation would mean he'd be required to excommunicate himself. :^)

Yes indeed! It is pretty hilarious how Patrick keeps insisting that the Pope is not Catholic!

[gore3000]

2 + 4(lies) + 18(ego/bias) - 68(truth/science) x 1M(evolution) = 2(master race)!
Quacks/whacks---taliban!
Evocracy---devils!

Gee, the translation is pretty obvious. You can only get to the idea of a master race by whacked out math. This whacked out math is used as 'proof' for evolutionist's tyrannical attitudes which excuse totally immoral behavior.

[whattajoke]

I recognize that you no longer want to continue our little dialogue, so I promise this will be it for me. I can't simply ignore your post, no matter how hard I tried.

You post on a public forum, quite matter of factly, that you have been healed in such a way as to break every known law of biology, medicine, physics, and logic. You went on to state that you have even healed people breaking every known law of biology, medicine, physics and logic. I personally find these claims earth-shattering to say the least. You made a guy's leg grow by thinking about it?!

I can not ignore these claims. (I am ignoring your flood geology stuff, not because I'm stumped, but simply because jennyP and others have done a nice job helping you out with that. I find it interesting your whole theory never accounts for glaciation in the least. but I digress...) I do not mean to discount your religion and I do not mean to demean your faith. However, the world of faith healing is a dangerous one, where people who are actually sick end up dying as a result of these charlatans. There is plenty of documentation for this. And that pisses me off. Your leg length story is as old as the hills.

Here's something from Probe Ministries (do a Google search) who are honest to god real christians, by a Pat Zukeran: On November 21, 1991, many of us saw the ABC _Primetime_ special on faith healers and television evangelists. One of the men exposed was W. V. Grant. _Primetime_ discovered that many of his "healings" were not healings at all, just magician's tricks and deceit. People in wheelchairs were commanded to get up and walk, and indeed they did. Many in the audience believed a miracle had occurred, but the people in the wheelchairs never had problems walking. The miraculous work of leg-lengthening was merely an illusion in which Grant simply pulled out the heel of the person's shoe. As a result of this show, many people have condemned all television evangelists, churches, and other ministries. I agree with Diane Sawyer that there are some illegitimate preachers on television, but there are also many fine ones. The key is to be able to distinguish between true spiritual leaders and false ones.

Oh, but your experience was different, of course. It may have been, because you may not have been aware you were doing this. (I posted from an evangelical christian website on purpose. I could have posted from numerous other, "non-believer" sites, but you'd have dismissed them).

so you say don't care about a million bucks. Good for you (although I don't believe you entirely). But wouldn't your church enjoy the windfall? Imagine how many people you could help with a million bucks? Since you have this gift, and since the million dollars is there for your taking, by not taking the time to display your healing you appear to me to be one of the most selfish, unloving christians the world over. I'm a non-theist and I promise you, if I had a chance to collect a million dollars, I would certainly do so and donate it not only to FR, but to many other worthwhile causes. This makes your claims ring hollow. Not to mention the fact that you spend your days searching for gold. Hmmm, you'll go to the middle of no where to search for tiny pieces of gold, but you won't fill out a simple application for an easy million bucks. Again, this makes your claims ring hollow.

In case you don't want to click the link to read the rules, here they are for you. Have a good day and best of luck.

The Foundation is committed to providing reliable information about paranormal claims. It both supports and conducts original research into such claims. At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The prize is in the form of negotiable bonds held in a special investment account. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test. Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the "applicant" becomes a "claimant."

[whattajoke]

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...

Please please pleeeeaasse tell me you are kidding. T'would upset me to learn that I've been discussing science with someone at this level.

[betty boop]

Just a slight correction. You cannot carbon date beyond 50,000 years ago.

Thanks for the information, gore3000. I didn't know that.

And yeah, the Pope is Catholic! I'm wondering whether PH thinks we're going to have another "Galileo incident" if the Pope doesn't endorse the "Common Ancestor"....

If we do in fact have a "common ancestor," I'd have to say that would be God. I'm pretty sure Pope John Paul II wouldn't have the least problem endorsing that.

Thanks for writing!

[Phaedrus]

Your citations at 864 and 866 are very, very good. Kindly share with us their source.

[Phaedrus]

OK, sorry to bother. It's Phillip Johnson's essay, the link to which was posted by Alamo-Girl. Johnson has no peer.

[AndrewC]

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?

I think you've confused Darwininians with your imaginary friends.

Particularly strong evidence for this idea came in 1999 from analyses of snippets of noncoding DNA called SINES (short interspersed elements), conducted by Norihiro Okada and his colleagues at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The whale-hippo connection did not sit well with paleontol-ogists. “I thought they were nuts,” Gingerich recollects.

[betty boop]

Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

Sheesh, so what's wrong with miracles happening? And they do happen, usually to man's benefit!!! God is not bound by the laws He built into creation.

I just don't understand why some people hate God so much, as this Lewis Beck seems to do. What causes a man to turn away from the Light, and to put his faith in a grotesque reductionism?

Plus I'm sure Beck is dead wrong to think that "anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything." I would say the polar opposite of this statement would be the actual truth of the matter. Thanks so much for writing, A-G.

[Pietro]

Your list of quotations on 877 is very impressive.

[whattajoke]

Perhaps your "article" posted from "Science Digest" (nothing cited) would carry more weight if it were true.

Evolutionist Sir Fred Hoyle: Was certainly no evolutionist. 1st example is an outright lie! How do you so-called christians sleep at night? Hoyle was an astronomer who NEVER accepted evolution. However, I'm sure you'd be interested to know he thought life came here on a comet from another planet. No mention of creationism. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1503721.stm

Researcher and Mathematician I. L. Cohen: Haha, this is getting fun. after a difficult Google search, I finally found this "mathematician" on the "Tribulation Force" website. Apparently balancing my checkbook makes me a "mathetmatician." This same website provided me with much more of your "proof." (Warning this site is so annoying with it flashing background http://www.thetribulationforce.com/RNA_DNA.htm)

Evolutionist Michael Denton: Again, calling Micael Denton an "evolutionist" is like calling Bill Clinton a good guy. Denton is a published and well known ID'er from New Zealand. He has also been exposed as a liar and a cheat: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/denton.html

Peter Saunders (University of London) and Mae-Wan Ho (Open University): well, first of all Peter Saunders is a professor at KINGS COLLEGE in London. A deliberate attempt to make it difficult for me to find out that he is actually a mathematician with interests in the Precautionary principle and, gasp, biodiversity based of what we know of evolution. Another lie: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/PrecautionP.html

Evolutionist Dr. Colin Patterson: Sigh. You keep picking on dead people. This "quote" is widely known to be taken WAY out of context and is totally dishonest as it cut him off in the middle of a qualifying statement. Read this link and go out and buy his book. It's called "Evolution" and you might learn something (since he's one of your examples!) http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/5212_ievolutioni_by_colin_patt_12_30_1899.asp

Evolutionist Greg Kirby: You are right, for once. He is an evolutionist and even published a peer reviewed (imagine that!) paper: "Kirby, G.C. & J.J. Burdon. 1997 Effects of mutation and random drift on Leonard’s gene-for-gene coevolution model. Phytopathology 87(5); 488-493. In other words, you took his "quote" completely out of context and he'd probably be pretty pissed you are being dishonest about it.

I'll stop here. You get the point. Whatever Creationist website you pulled your list from is bearing false witness. When is this ridiculous campaign going to stop??

[whattajoke]

Yeah, great quotes. A bunch of lies is more like it. As a follow up to my previous post, Here's a good example of Ready2Go's sampling. Regarding Colin Patterson, who published a book entitled "Evolution" (hardly a good person to have on your creationist panel, no?) there's this:

Creationism itself receives only a few pages, which include Patterson's response to the taping: "Because creationists lack scientific research to support such theories as a young earth ... a world-wide flood ... or separate ancestry for humans and apes, their common tactic is to attack evolution by hunting out debate or dissent among evolutionary biologists. ... I learned that one should think carefully about candor in argument (in publications, lectures, or correspondence) in case one was furnishing creationist campaigners with ammunition in the form of 'quotable quotes', often taken out of context" (p 122).
Perhaps the best audience for this book would be anti-evolutionists. Not only could they learn about the evidence for evolution at the molecular level, but they might be inspired to correct the inaccuracies about the late Dr Patterson that abound on their web sites.

whoops, back to the drawing board, I suppose.

[Phaedrus]

Some on the evolutionist side may bristle when it is suggested that the theory is grounded in faith, but at least one scientist is quite frank about it ... [cite Phillip Johnson]

Right to the heart of the matter ... there is great angst among the Evolutionists and equivalent passion among those who accept the Bible as the one true soucre of authority. It is a battle of ideas and methodologies and philosophies, and it is a very important one. In my view, it is a crystalization of THE most important issue in Western Culture in these times.

The Great Religions, dealing with the wholly intangible, have found billions of devoted and devout adherents throughout the world. They are, in my view, not misled. Science, "homegrown" within the context of Christianity, has been resoundingly successful in explaining the material world. But I think it fair to say that some if not many of its practitioners have forgotten that science is built on the utterly fundamental assumption that there is vast, intricate, consistent order in the Universe and that their success has been based upon finding this order, not explaining its origin.

For centuries, Christianity was absolutely dominant in Western Culture -- it FORMED Western Culture -- and it had the power of life and death over its subjects. This power has been largely broken, by science, but its aftermath remains with us in the form of blind adherence to materialism, and thus we have a new material-based religious faith.

How interesting that this passion for religion, for understanding the great and fundamental issues, is so alive in all of us. It is a good thing.

[Pietro]

Do you have a source for the Patterson quote? It's hard to imagine how the meaning could be taken "out of context".

Thanks

[PatrickHenry]

Whatever Creationist website you pulled your list from is bearing false witness.

Old creationist technique:
QUOTE-MINING...THE TRADITION CONTINUES.
An Old, Out of Context Quotation .
The Revised Quote Book .

[betty boop]

But the new individuals are not exactly the same as their parents.

Hi Doc! I never said that they were.

[AndrewC]

She'd look for any animal that looks like the animal whose genome is being decoded

Here is the bone-cruncher's problem with DNA evidence and her pursuit of commonality(She does look at the physical for the connection).

Pakis, Hippos, and whales

Close this window to return to the previous window
Figure 4 Phylogenetic relations of cetaceans to artiodactyls, mesonychians and primitive ungulates. Strict consensus cladogram of 38 most-parsimonious trees (see Methods for details).

Also as an aside and concerning the problem of the mesonychus, I note this from the source of the above image.

...
Morphological cladistic analyses have shown cetaceans to be most closely related to one or more mesonychians, a group of extinct, archaic ungulates, but molecular analyses have indicated that they are the sister group to hippopotamids. Our cladistic analysis indicates that cetaceans are more closely related to artiodactyls than to any mesonychian. Cetaceans are not the sister group to (any) mesonychians, nor to hippopotamids. Our analysis stops short of identifying any particular artiodactyl family as the cetacean sister group and supports monophyly of artiodactyls.
...

Importantly, in none of the most-parsimonious trees was the mesonychian tarsus interpreted as a reversal from an artiodactyl-like morphology (the evolutionary model under which both hippopatamid and mesonychian hypotheses could be true).

[discostu]

When I say can I mean can in the legal and even moral sense. It's part of the freedom of speech and association, you also get the freedom to not talk (or write in this case) or associate. If the guy doesn't want to write the letter because the student wears plaid shirts and he hates plaid shirts, no biggy. Letters of recommendation are all about personal agenda, it is the teacher declaring the student worthy on a personal level, over and above the (hopefully) impartial grades. It is the teacher saying that in his personal opinion, based on his privately held beliefs, which might or might not relate to any impartial method of judging, this student is worthy.

Just because you disagree with his position at the root, and I disagree at the implimentation, doesn't make his actions wrong. He's done exactly what people who write letters of recommendation have done for as long as the things have existed. He's set his personal criteria for earning his personal recommendation, and those that don't meet the criteria can shop for recommendations elsewhere.