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.

Howdy Pietro...here's more about how the quote came to be & I'll give you the orginal site the quote came from at the end of this post. :)

Bridge to Nowhere?
An Evolutionist Seeks Answers
Volume #2
Autumn Edition 2002

Can You Tell Me Anything About Evolution?*
A Bridge to Nowhere?

By: Dr. Colin Patterson with comments by Wayne Frair**

Editor’s Note: Dr. Colin Patterson, lifelong evolutionist, shocked colleagues by expressing serious doubts about the theory in a 1981 lecture presented at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. Internationally-known creationist, Dr. Wayne Frair, a credentialed scientist researching turtles, attended the lecture and preserved a tape of the lecture. Excerpts from Dr. Patterson’s presentation are followed by Dr. Frair’s commentary on the occasion. For a detailed picture of the event, a copy of the tape and its transcript can be acquired through Access Research Network.

Quotations excerpted from the Colin Patterson lecture are presented in italics with some marked in bold for emphasis.

“…I’m speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it’s true to say that I know nothing whatever about either…One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let’s call it non-evolutionary, was last year I had a sudden realization.

“For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it.

“That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long…

“…I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people: ‘Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing you think is true?’

“I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said: ‘Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.’

“…It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that’s all we know about it…about eighteen months ago…I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way.”

Patterson took the words of Neal C. Gillespie alleging that the “pre-Darwinian creationist paradigm” was “‘…not a research-governing theory, since its power to explain is only verbal, but an anti-theory, a void that has the function of knowledge, but conveys none’” and suggested “…It must seem to you that I’m either misguided or malicious to suggest that such words can be applied to evolutionary theory.

“…Most of us think that we are working in evolutionary research. But is its explanatory power any more than verbal?…I feel that the effect of hypotheses of common ancestry in systematics has not been merely void, not just a lack of knowledge-I think it has been positively anti-knowledge.

“…What about evolution? It certainly has the function of knowledge but has it conveyed any?…It is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven’t yet heard it.

“Well, here we all are with all our shelves full of books on evolution. We’ve all read tons of them, and most of us have written one or two. And how could it be that we’ve done all that, we’ve read these books and learned nothing from them? And how could I have worked on evolution for twenty years, and learned nothing from it?

“…There is some sort of a revolution going on in evolutionary theory at the moment…It concerns the possible mechanisms that are responsible for the transformation…natural selection is under fire, and we hear a rash of new and alternative theories…”

Again quoting Gillespie accusing that those “‘…holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,’” Patterson countered, “That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: ‘Yes it has…we know it has taken place.’”

“…Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you’ve experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that’s true of me, and I think it’s true of a good many of you in here…

“…Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics…”

VERBAL VIOLENCE AT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM
Dr. Wayne Frair’s eyewitness commentary on the event.

On 5 November 1981 a well-respected British paleontologist, Dr. Colin Patterson, made a presentation, the reverberations of which still are being felt within the scientific community and all those concerned about origins. Patterson's title for the talk was "Evolutionism and Creationism," and that evening, a room at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City was jammed with standing-room-only’s lining the sides and back. Patterson was the author of a standard book on evolution, but in his talk he revealed that he had been considering non-evolutionary and anti-evolutionary ideas.

Evolutionists generally understand that "similarity indicates descent from common ancestry", but often organisms will show similar features without good evidence of common (or evolutionary) ancestry. This phenomenon may be termed convergence; and Patterson proclaimed that "convergence is everywhere." The tenor of his whole talk tended to be anti-evolutionary, and the audience, which consisted primarily of museum-staff scientists and visiting scientists, reacted quite strongly.

I was sitting in the front row next to an AMNH curator of mammals, Karl Koopman, who, obviously very agitated kept slamming his pencil down in front of him. Niles Eldredge in the Department of Invertebrates at AMNH was standing by the left wall (as one looks toward the speaker). Beside Eldredge stood a high school biology teacher, Roy Slingo, from the prestigious Scarsdale NY district. Slingo later informed me that at one stage of the talk Eldredge (well known for his anti-creationist perspective) grabbed his forehead and slid down the wall proclaiming, "My God, how can he be doing this to us."

My main research has involved turtles, and I have donated hundreds of them to the Herpetology Department at AMNH. I knew personally all the scientists in that department and had spent about twelve years studying specimens in their large collection, and also using their library. In fact, when there were evening meetings like the Patterson gathering, I was in the habit of arriving at the AMNH in the morning, spending the day chatting with colleagues and studying research materials. So on the Thursday when Patterson was to speak I arrived at the lecture hall very early, obtained a front seat directly in front of the podium and set up with my tape recorder (which I kept clearly visible on my lap), receiving no objections from Chairman Donn Rosen or speaker Patterson.

Later I loaned the Patterson tape to the now late Luther Sunderland who made and distributed transcripts. Unfortunately this transcript contained errors and omissions, and I started to correct it. But I postponed this task because of the time it was going to require. The transcript began to be quoted widely especially by creationists, and I believe there were other distributed-transcripts containing certain inaccuracies. I mention all this because some evolutionists who have been exercised by Patterson's comments have blamed creationists for sneaking into the memorable AMNH meeting, smuggling a tape out, etc. It is important that the record be straightened out.

In October, 2000, the Access Research Network published an accurate, carefully prepared and footnoted transcript of the entire talk, with comments, questions and answers, and some biographical information about the participants.* The editors have identified the source of every utterance except possibly one (with an elderly-sounding voice) who was opposed to evolution, favored catastrophism and polyphyly, and he referred to authors Austin H. Clark, Leo S. Berg, and Daniele Rosa. In the recently-published transcript editors titled this speaker as "voice", and they are anxious to learn of evidence which will lead to identification of this individual.

Recently I was discussing the unforgettable AMNH evening with the above-mentioned Roy Slingo, who also recorded the meeting, and his tape supports, except in a few minor instances, the new ARN transcript. In ongoing discussions involving creation/evolution it is imperative that only accurate information be disseminated.

The events of that memorable evening 20 years ago still have messages for us today that we should strive for accuracy and be prepared to reconsider objectively what we believe.

http://www.creationequation.com/EvolutionistSeeksAnswers.htm
And here are where all the quotes came from...Pietro

http://www.godsaidmansaid.com/topic3.asp?Cat1=81&Cat2=244&ItemId=703

Here's a copy of the letter in question. I typed this up from microfiche (docs: "ED 228 056" and "SE 040 933").

Thanks for your letter of 5th March, and your kind words about the Museum and my book. I held off answering you for a couple of weeks, in case the artwork you mention in your letter should turn up, but it hasn't.
I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be asked to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?
I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say that there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type organism was derived." I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps not: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.
So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job.
Thanks again for writing.
Yours sincerely,
Colin Patterson

If Patterson didn't really mean what seems obvious do me, why would Philip Kitcher state the following in a television debate on March 3, 1984:

Dr. Patterson, when he wrote that letter in 1979, he wrote that letter in complete ignorance of the political situation in the USA. He thought that he was writing a letter to a fellow professional scientist.

This is a perfect example of why arguing over religion is foolish.

Try to imagine that we're arguing geology here. I point out to you that there are things that a single flood, however massive, won't do and that the earth is chock-full of exactly such features. You do not directly address but go into a long song-and-dance, stopping only to joust at strawmen. Anyone reading the post to which your long screed purports to reply will see the evasions.

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?

My point, not yours. One big flood won't put a heavy layer over a light one.

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?

Yes. Do you? (Hint: look up "loess deposits.")

In the section containing the above quote, you spin out of control into furniture chewing. I'm not sure what you're trying to say, really, but it ain't pretty.

You also mixed rock types with sedimentary layers. Are you telling me that limestone and granite are sedimentary rocks?

Yes and no.

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.

The fossil record is not sorted by any size or mass rules. There are no rabbits in the Precambrian. There are no Dimetrodons in the Pleistocene. Most trilobites were the size of a modern pill bug. Why are all their fossils in sediments older than the dinosaurs?

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.

You can't have it both ways. If most/all of the world's geologic column is supposed to be from the Great Flood, there shouldn't be dry-land volcanic sediments (not underwater-extruded pillow lava) here and there between "flood" layers. But in fact there are always active volcanoes somewhere or other in the world. We have a geologic column that reflects that. Pick a time from the present to the Archaean and you can find evidence of dry-land volcanism somewhere. What you can't find is evidence of one flood all over the world.

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.

You have a scoop. Your Nobel in Physics awaits you. Current thinking is that nothing in any flood, no matter how big, has anything to do with radioactive decay rates.

Because delicate fossils exist a single event that happened at one time in history did not?

Delicate dry-land fossils, up and down the geologic column. At no time was the world all underwater. (OK, there may have been a period about 700 million years ago when quite a lot of it was under ice, but that's not a big part of the geologic column and it wouldn't have looked like a great flood.)

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...

See, you're ignoring efforts I've made to educate you already. Had you paid more attention, you'd know to take that road-kill dog and throw it in a nice swamp or small lake. The bottom of same is probably full of anoxic water because of all the decaying plant matter. Fish won't go after the dog because they don't swim where the water has no oxygen. None of the usual animal scavenger culprits can live in that stuff. So the dog has a chance at least to get buried in silt before the swamp gets drained or the lake water layers "turn over" after the some cold night in the fall. (Drop off the dog in late spring for the maximum burial time.)

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!)

If we're exchanging suggestions, I'll say that you should stop kidding yourself and others that you're interested in science. Just relax and go to church. Don't torture yourself with the wicked ways of this world.

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