Well... I'm not sure how much real science a physician needs to know. So much medical training is rote memorization, and contrary to how it's portrayed on TV, anyone who tried to be really creative in modern medicine would be awash in malpractice suits. My brother the MD swears that most of his training involved discouraging him from too much independent thought.
I do write letters of recommendation for medical school. I'm generally not aware of students' views on evolution; the subject comes up only infrequently in my teaching. But if I were aware an otherwise talented student had creationist views, I think I'd be obliged to mention it in the letter, and let the admissions committee make up its own mind.
Yes, but you're just passing the buck to the admissions committee. By what criteria will they make their decision? To me, it's not complicated. A career in the sciences requires that one must have a scientific frame of mind. At minimum, this means a willingness to recognize the facts and to apply reason in arriving at a conclusion. Where does a creationist fit in this picture?
Actually religion should be a requirement for practicing medicine. It is a well known scientific fact that faith heals and helps keep people alive. An atheist cannot heal the sick. As usual, the materialists have things backwards - and if you were in medicine you would not be saying that belief in God prevents one from practicing medicine.
What if you were at a company and were in charge of hiring a scientist? If one came along with top notch credentials and you found out they didn't believe in evolution, I guess you'd have to think twice about hiring them. You would hesitate to hire Dr. Russell Humphreys, a nuclear physicist at Sandia National Laboratories who has had over 20 articles published in scientific journals, Dr. John Baumgardner, the author of the catastrophic plate tectonics theory mentioned in Nature, Dr. Edward Boudreaux of the University of New Orleans, the author of 26 articles and four books on physical chemistry, multiple Nobel Prize nominee Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Dr. Maciej Giertych, Head of the Dept. of Genetics at the Institute of Dendrology at the Polish Academy of Sciences to name a few. In fact, I assume you'd conclude they were incompetent. Any candidate who believes in evolution with mediocre credentials would be a superior candidate, because they must have a "more scientific frame of mind". You people are really too much with your self deception.
I find it stunning that someone with your background (I read your CV) would assign such unmerited weight to the evolutionary opinions of a med school applicant. Wow --- that is mind-blowing. You'd keep the kid out of med school (excuse me, I mean you'd "mention it but let the admissions board decide") because he doesn't kowtow to Dawkins? Amazing.
Evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the cognitive capacity and ability of any scientist, let alone a second-tier applied scientist like a medical doctor. This is a LIVE THEORY --- very much a debatable theory. The top people in the world are racking their brains on this theory. Why should some lack of orthodoxy among med students be of any concern to you at all?
My father's cousin is an obstetrician ---- a very good one. Much loved and highly respected for his technical abilities as a practitioner. When the s*** hits the fan, he's the one they call. He takes the toughest cases. He's also a devout Catholic and a national leader in the Pro-Life movement. He is a general skeptic about evolution in the sense that one might find it conveyed by some of the milder skeptics in these threads. None of those factors play any role whatsoever in the way he a) keeps up with the developments in his discipline, or b) treats patients.
Why would you consider quizzing a kid about his views on evolution before recommending him to a medical school?