Biology Professor Refuses to Recommend Students Who Don't Believe in Evolution

Oh, in all seriousness--what inspired me to make that (very silly) post was that I was reading your previous posts... you seem to be very much a peacemaker who's out to try to reconcile the Bible with evolution.

Hey, cool, thanks for the vote of confidence! That's what I hope to do, I can't claim I always succeed, I think I recently said something to set off Cvengr, for instance, but I do the best I can... One problem specific to the internet is that we often forget that there are real people behind these posts, and it can show sometimes, in the way we treat each other...

I'm a believer of both the Bible and of evolution as well.

Excellent! I'm glad I'm not alone here :)

That's a rare position on FR...

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but it certainly seems that way...

however, my experience is that minds on both sides are pretty shut.

:( This is really saddening, if this is the case... Then nobody learns anything...

You cannot convince a YEC Freeper that a belief in evolution does not result from some subconcious desire to be a sexually deviant communist,

LOL! I was wondering what those urges I've been having were about ;) BTW is that someone who goes around saying stuff like "F__ Lenin", and really means it? :)

and you cannot convince a true atheist Freeper that there are some pretty awesome things about the universe and the Earth.

...which is really too bad :( To then go out and attack others based on the misguided belief that religious people are somehow automatically stupid or ignorant, that just doesn't make any sense - You can't expect someone to consider what you have to say if you spend your time alienating them!

You're completely right, of course... that post was a really weird way of telling you "don't worry if you can't change any minds".

Very cool - I really appreciate that, thanks a lot for writing, and for the support!

DFS

you better hope your xray vision of his soul turns out to be true (he "desires to deceive," is not merely "mistaken") or else the God of the universe will have something to say to you about false witness against your neighbor

Sir: (i presume, forgive me if i am mistaken)

No worries, your presumption is correct :) I am Dan, hear me roar ;)

It will take some time to respond to your latest post to me.

No problem. Feel free to cut stuff as necessary.

In the interim, i will attempt to send the requested information to you...let us pray these links actually work.

Thanks! Looks like interesting stuff, and a PRL paper is definitely nothing to scoff at - Our group put something in PRL once, it's a good journal... The Usenet Physics FAQ is cool too, I've seen it briefly before, but I've never looked through it carefully, up to now...

As noted, the first link is creationist (as are you if i have read your posts correctly) but note that the postulation is heavily debated even within that community.

Not a problem - If it's good science it doesn't matter where it comes from. As for me, I definitely believe that our current-best scientific theory of evolution in no way detracts from or contradicts the description of Creation given in the Bible - That the core principles of Christianity are beyond such challenges. I dunno what that makes me :) (Oooo, idea for a new movie: "Part Christian...Part Monkey...ALL COP!!" ;) If memory serves, there's a term for someone with these beliefs in one of those links I sent, though...

On the hermes link, you will simply have to right click, select "properties" and follow the link as written, as i was not able to find a direct path. At any rate, it is a repetition of another link (assumed due to the fact that the link took me to Adelaide University in Austrailia.

I got it eventually :) Had to do some google-searching, but it came up eventually. The URL has changed slightly, for those who are interested, and it's now here:

http://hermes.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dkoks/Faq/

i will be formulating a response to the rest of your post, but may not get it finished this evening...excuse me, morning

:) Again, no problem, thanks for the links, and thanks for writing!

DFS

Who wrote and edited the Bible?

God.

John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And if I am corrected and disciplined by Him, Thank You Lord, for He loves all who follow Him. Thank you for your warning. In return is a warning for those who rebel from His will by refusing to discern unrighteousness and remain lukewarm.

Far worse is the fate of those who reject Him, run to any false thing and then belittle His name by influencing others to place other things before Him.

If one wishes to present some outstanding criticism of my stance it would be in noting how scarred I am to actually place science in high esteem and even consider things puzzling between science and Scripture, rather than dismissing science outright as a human endeavor independent of God and neccessarily more akin to Satanic cosmic systems adversarial to His will and plan, than in obedience and worship of Him.

I recognize that all things He has created are not evil and therefore in observation of His creation consider science to have positive value insofar as it worships Him and not the creation. Unfortunately, too many people seek to worship not only the creation, but their personal intellect and run to do so before even acknowledging His sovereignty.

Affirmation of a belief is, by definition, acceptance of that belief. Affirmation of a "scientific answer" is professing belief in such an answer.

Since there is no scientific answer to the question, the professor sets an impossible standard - forcing a student to accept his religion of evolution in order to receive his recommendation. Akin to a professor of theology demanding that students affirm the truth of the teachings of the Catholic Church in order to be recommended for a doctorate. Acceptable in a Catholic school, certainly. Especially one intended to produce Catholic scholars. But not acceptable from, say the Princeton School of Divinity.

A reasonable presumption, when a person is persuing a degree in medicine, is their belief in the efficacy of medical science - hence my dismissal of your "faith healing" doctor premise.

Any belief about the origins of life is religious in nature, since faith is required as a foundation of belief. So any belief that meets the criteria will suffice - such belief being a religion of sorts.

I would consider species to species transitions the largest possible gaps and the most important.

Then you don't know that species differences can be pretty minor, and the transitions between them essentially indetectable.

You should learn more about subjects you don't know much about.

Who wrote and edited the Bible?

God.

John 1:1

:) OK, I should've known it would come down to this. As usual we're dealing with a matter of interpretation.

Why is it then, that in church we always talk about reading a passage from the "Gospel according to Mark," for instance? Shouldn't it just be the "Gospel according to God"? Why bother naming numerous sections in the Bible after their various human authors, if they didn't actually write them? There were something like 40 (human) authors and 66 books written over a period of ~1500 years.

"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,"

Hebrews 1:1

"for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,"

2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture was inspired by God, yes. But that inspiration was recorded through men, and, like all men, they were imperfect - Even if they were prophets, and even if they were inspired. God did not sit down at his desk one day and write the Bible.

In addition, we have lost the original texts (in archaic Greek and Hebrew). We rely on the work of numerous men before us in properly translating and recording the texts and assembling what we have now. Anyone who's ever tried to translate anything knows that it's hard to do a good translation, and again we rely on fallible men to have done so and done so correctly.

Finally, there are numerous different versions of the Bible out there. How is this possible, if the Bible is the Word of God, by definition perfect and therefore in need of no changing? Is there one version that's better than all of the others?

DFS

Affirmation of a belief is, by definition, acceptance of that belief. Affirmation of a "scientific answer" is professing belief in such an answer.

...but here is the difference:

If it is religion, the belief is unshakeable, and we need no evidence - That's why it's called faith.

If it is science, you only accept a theory as being the best possible scientific explanation, so long as you have physical evidence. When presented with a better theory and sufficient evidence, you accept that one instead, even if it contradicts the previous one.

We cannot argue that faith, of the religious sort, and acceptance of a scientific theory, based on evidence, are the same thing.

Since there is no scientific answer to the question, the professor sets an impossible standard

Based on your assumption, this is absolutely correct. However, that's one heck of an assumption :) Can you show me that there is no scientific explanation for the origin of man, despite evidence to the contrary? If you can, we'll be in agreement.

- forcing a student to accept his religion of evolution in order to receive his recommendation.

Again, it's not a religion - We must make a distinction between belief in a religious sense and in a scientific sense, because they are not the same. This is why I generally choose to say that I "accept" a theory, because "believe" is too loaded a word for some, and I want to be clear about my meaning.

Akin to a professor of theology demanding that students affirm the truth of the teachings of the Catholic Church in order to be recommended for a doctorate. Acceptable in a Catholic school, certainly. Especially one intended to produce Catholic scholars. But not acceptable from, say the Princeton School of Divinity.

So that sort of belief-based standard is acceptable, so long as it's properly related to the training? I guess we don't need to argue after all :)

A reasonable presumption, when a person is persuing a degree in medicine, is their belief in the efficacy of medical science - hence my dismissal of your "faith healing" doctor premise.

...but if a Christian Scientist wants to go to medical school to study the relationship between prayer and healing, should we deny him / her that chance? Wouldn't that be discrimination based on religious beliefs?

Any belief about the origins of life is religious in nature,

Why? Does that mean that athiests who accept evolution are actually religious? :)

since faith is required as a foundation of belief.

Faith is not required as a foundation for the acceptance of any scientific theory - And in fact, it must be discouraged, for science to remain skeptical, as it must remain.

So any belief that meets the criteria will suffice - such belief being a religion of sorts.

...OK, so, then, the "religion of science," as you call it, would suffice? Or is that not really a religion? :)

I don't doubt that you mean well, or that you believe strongly in what you say - But your logic seems to be inconsistent:

You're telling us that any belief in the origins of life is by definition religious in nature, and that any religious belief that meets your previously stated criteria regarding the origins of life will suffice.

At the same time, you're decrying Dr. Dini's (alleged) treatment of evolution as a form of religion. Well, by your logic, it is a form of religion, since it deals with the origins of life, and as a "religion of sorts", it passes your test! So where's the problem? :)

DFS

If God wanted to explain the origins of the universe to people living thousands of years before us, and if those origins were consistent with our current scientific theories, he still would not do so using the language of 20th century scientific inquiry, or he would confuse the hell out of everyone. He would make basically the same description, then, whether or not what science currently tells us is truly the case. This means that we cannot conclude which of these two situations took place, from the description in the Bible,

First, if God had used 21st Century Scientific inquiry language, it would be confusing and inadequate. There is still far too much that science cannot explain, i doubt that anyone has seriously disputed that, having learned their lesson the year before Einstein published his paper on the theory of General Relativity. If the descriptions are the same (and the grammar structure is such that they are simple declarative statements), then there is no reason to resort to a metaphorical interpretation...By "these two situations" i assume that you mean evolution or special creation, yes?

See what I mean? In short, we cannot assume that the Bible was meant to be taken literally.

You have made too many a-priori assumptions to make this statement.

1) You assume that our "current scientific theories" are correct.
2) You assume that our "current scientific theories" have always been correct, when even current scientific theory disputes that matter. (big bang physics as expired time approaches zero, remember?)
3) You assume that all of our science is universally true.
4) You assume that an omnipotent God could not act in a supernatural manner.
5) You assume that even if an omnipotent God could act in a supernatural manner, that He would not do so.

There are other assumptions that i could add to this list, but these will do for now.

In certain specific instances, we must explicitly take a non-literal intrepretation, or risk denying what we observe (i.e. the earth is round, it goes around the sun, for instance). This shows that we cannot take a 100% literal view of the entire Bible. Is there a way around this logic that I am not seeing?

There is an entire "science" of interpretation. It is called hermenutics, and it applies to all literature, not just the bible. In this particular case, the author is doing what is called Historical narrative. That is to say, he is relating an event alleged to happen in past time. God's statements are in a structure called "indirect discourse". There is no reason in the context of the passage to consider this narrative as metaphor or allegory.

True, there are passages that are allegory, even with the narrative element. An example would be the parables that Jesus told. While the passage is a literal account of Jesus' stories, it is clear that what Jesus was saying was an allegoryical story.

Were you to read other literature such as The Oddesy, The Illiad, and The Epic of Gilgamesh with the same restrictions that you have placed on the text of the bible, it would be giberish and nonsense to you.

Bible interpretation is quite a separate question in light of the a-prioris listed above. It seems that human scientific inquiry being admittedly fallible, needs to prove it's case before it presumes to tell the Almighty, and the world He created what He did, and How He did it.

i will respond to the rest of this post in a subsequent post. Please forgive my delay, i was unaviodably detained, and wanted to phrase my arguments as coherently as i am able. i hope that i have been sufficiently conherent.

Regards,

CDL

Throw your argument out the window. Place your faith in Him, not in 'fallible men'. If you seek an original text, go back to the Hebrew, try an Interlinear if necessary, but for all practical purposes most modern translations of KJV, NASB, NIV are fine.

Even from these translations it's obvious that upon indwelling and filling of the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures were indeed written by God, not by 'fallible man'.

There's more to man's life than materialism or mysticism,...and it may be eternal through Him.

If you have doubt, place your faith in Him and allow Him to guide you.

Most books on apologetics give a fairly good comparison of extant manuscript documentation for the accuracy of Scripture. Even Campus Crusade for Christ provides a fairly rigorous compilations of such apologetics. More rigorous studies are available from the Bible Archeology Review, Bruce, etc.

PS I wouldn't mention to a Jew that the Torah had been corrupted over the ages by fallible rabbis constantly making mistakes such that there is no way anybody can know what God means.

DFS,...don't get me wrong,...I'm not some fruitcake who ignores reason merely to satisfy an arrogant belief as many who study science might interpret those who are devout.

My immediate frustration is based upon observing how much people will erode Scriptural positions in order to avoid awkward arguments or conclusions.

The more I study Scripture and then observe life, body, soul, spirit, heart, and mind, the more I realize that so much of Scripture has simply been laid bare, before the entire world to read, believe and follow,...and yet to some extent, if one doesn't have it,...they never get it while they remain in their own system of belief.

Interestingly, it's sort of like Lazurus and the dead man seeking to have Lazerus returned to warn the rich man's brothers about the Torments. Abraham simply responded that if his brothers wouldn't listen to the Prophets or in our case even to the Crucifiction and Ressurection,...they won't listen to other arguments.

My frustratin is with those who rush to metaphor to explain away an awkward situation when there are far many more situations where we are scarred and misinterpret literal Scripture in more complicated cases,...yet by placing faith in Him, He brings us to maturity in time by His plan.

How could you DFS? Quote me, now people are going to assume...oh what the heck!

You had a challenge on what should be done.

Because...

...Dr. Dini's recommendation is not a right of all students...
Not exactly true. Students are the university's clients. If they have someone either acting in bad "faith", or so far out of bounds they could be considered malicious or negligent, the university has a responsibility to remedy that failure. If they do not, they are responsible. No, not all students have a right to a recommendation. But if 3 standard deviations worth of students would have gotten a recommendation and he denied, he should be required to provide that would satisfy a court, if requested. I knew a prof that flunked an all A engineering student because of his politics. It's a long story but the deans reversed it because it was so egregious.

...Dr. Dini's recommendation is meaningless if it does not come of his own free will...
Recommendations are meaningless unless the evaluators know the source. It is just the student that bears the cost in most times, and that is the sad part.

...Denying it does not deny the student his or her rightful education...
If done with malice or negligence, it is a denial of their rights they paid good money for.

...You can be deeply religious and still give a scientific answer to his question...
You got me?

...while I can understand people not agreeing with Dr. Dini's attitudes, I don't see any justification for punishment, and certainly no justification for any sort of government action or investigation. Remember, your tax dollars are being spent on this! Are you really OK with that?
He is a science educator at the undergraduate level mostly. He is not training scientists, but general students. This is probably the basic problem I have with most of the arguments I've heard. Because he is a science educator at the undergraduate level, he feels no need to explain. That's an excuse for academic arrogance. I don't mind academic arrogance at all. I also believe that if their beliefs generate jeers, they should be accepted in the same vein.

Philosophy of science is required at any level. How do you know what you know? What is logical? What is required to prove one a concept?

I would still contend that if he, as a biologist would spend the time out of his office, at the med school and ask as many teaching physicians as he felt necesary "What was the most important concepts and skills from undergraduate biology you require from your students?". If he spent the time doing that, I would say to him, have at it!

I've read Dr. Dini's bio. From it, he was very Catholic in his early years, including college. He may still be, in which case most the religious arguments probably fail. If someone of faith were to spend the time to defend their faith, and their studies, he would probably give the required recommendation. If he has had a break with the church and gone academically "postal" , he probably does need a visit from a forceful dean.
DK

Hi folks,

Sorry for my recent unresponsiveness!

I have been reading your posts carefully (CDL, in your case I've also had a chance to read through most of the text of the articles you sent as well - Interesting stuff, I think I actually read something about the Davies paper a while back, that work sounds familiar), and I want to make sure I give an equal amount of time and consideration to writing my responses.

The weekend is over, though, and things are hectic at work right now - I'm sure you folks have stuff to do as well, so I appreciate you taking the time anyway, and I promise I'll get back to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, thanks for your patience!

PS - This'll allow someone else to get a word in edgewise, I kind of feel like I've said more than my share here... Hopefully no one was put off by this...

DFS

DF,

No problem, take your time, i'm up to my ears in details, and still working on your last post, too many distractions.

Whenever you get to it is fine.

Regards,

CDL

After all, we were able to adequately (for our purposes) explain the motion of the heavenlies long before relativity were we not?

Depends on what you mean by "adequately", "long before", and "for our purposes" :) In general, though, if you mean pre-Galileo, then the answer seems to be "no".

Come now sir, consider your statement. The Potolemiac model of the universe was admitedly, flawed. However, it did make predictions that were accurate enough for man's use. Merchant sailors were able to navigate by stellar "motion". In that it was a model in which useful predications could be made, and useful data could be obtained. The science was wrong, as was the Copernician model, but it was hardly necessary to refer to allegory in the scriptures in either case. In point of fact, a flawed hermenutic was used by the church to support a flawed "scientific" model!

Sure, we must keep working on our best explanation 'til a better one comes along, explaining more than the old one. We're now in the process of acknowledging inconsistencies -

It should be observed that many of those inconsistencies are erronious science, not a flawed biblical hermenutic. An example of this would be the phenomena that produced the Gould/Eldridge "punctuated equilibria" theory of evolution. This had nothing to do with creationism or the bible, yet the Darwinian evolutionists are just as vehemently opposed to Gould as they are to Henry Morris or Duane Gish!

In this case, between a literal reading of Biblical Creation and what is accepted based on scientific inquiry combined with physical evidence. I am attempting to explain these inconsistencies by postulating that the Bible was not meant to be taken completely literally, and I am offering evidence of this (cases where it cannot be taken litearlly and still have relevance to physical observables). While I don't expect that everyone will agree with me, I hope the logic I use, at least, is clear.

i am happy that you acknowlege that not everyone will agree with you, it should frighten you if they did, because it would demonstrate that some people are not thinking!

i get very worried when i have no opposition.

i have already addressed the question of interpretation in my previous post and will not rehash it here in order to prevent confusion.

My next (and hopefully last) post will adderss the remnant of the argument presented on your last post...Living a life does complicate things, doesn't it?

(c)Finitus Non Caprux Infinitum, exhaustively explaining processes of creation by an Infinite Being to a finite creation is a fool's errand!

Absolutely! Which is an excellent argument against the supposition that He has done so, in the Bible or anywhere else. Therefore, we are relegated to relying on what we can divine from the descriptions in the Bible - Which, by your logic, will not be at all clear or precise, as we cannot know the mind of God, nor expect him to explain everything. Therefore we must combine this with what we can learn about the natural world, based on the scientific method (as it is the best way we've found so far to figure things out) and using our God-given talents in doing so.

The operative word in my statement was exhasusively. God does and has explained His workings, that is not in dispute. None of those workings can be exhaustively explained. What we do not have liscense to do is attempt to explain away something based on questionable literary techniques, when we are by definition, the ones who are limited!

Third, if the "metaphor" that God uses is contradicted by "scientific inquiry", it then makes the entirety of God's special revelation to us unreliable, therby calling into question the character of God, therby presenting a contradiction with the defined attributes of deity, therby disproving God's existence.

I'm certainly not questioning God's existence, and anyway that can't be disproven.

Let me ease your mind on this point, and reduce the scope of the argument at the same time. It has always been bad logic to attempt to prove a negative (i.e., that God does not exist). That is the reason that our Judicial system (as opposed to the Napolenic system) places burdon of proof on the accuser.

Since, as you say, God has never explained to us the full details of his Creation, and we have only accounts written and edited by men to understand it by, if we find that our interpretation of those accounts does not jibe with scientific inquiry, that hardly means that we need doubt God's special revelation to us - That is not what's unreliable. It's the people who wrote down and edited what we read, and our own interpretations, that must clearly be at fault, since we agree that God is perfect, and we are not. The metaphors we refer to are man-made.

Finally, we have reached the majour area of disagreement. i will spare you the standard defense of the bible, as time and space constraints would make it rather difficult and clumsy at best. That is a subject that is best left for another thread. At any rate, i do not need to go into a defense of the reliability of scripture to make my point. You have, inadvertently, confirmed the itiliacised portion of my comments above.

Forgive me, but i find your statement to be contradictory. Let us examine it in detail.

we have only accounts written and edited by men to understand it by,

The statment implies (by use of the words "only accounts") that God's revelation is either partial, erronious, within "added" material, made up out of whole cloth, or complete and accurate as written.

if we find that our interpretation of those accounts does not jibe with scientific inquiry, that hardly means that we need doubt God's special revelation to us - That is not what's unreliable.

Based on the account given above, it is in fact, a possibility to be considered! We are lead to the possibility that either scientific inquiry is incorrect, our interpretation is incorrect, or the record of scripture is incorrect. This is a contradiction of your premise that we need not doubt God's special revelation.

It's the people who wrote down and edited what we read, and our own interpretations, that must clearly be at fault, since we agree that God is perfect, and we are not. The metaphors we refer to are man-made.

In other words, you eliminate the possibility that scientific inquiry might be erronious!, it becomes "transmission of special revelation", or our interpretive process. It seems that you are actually begging the question here, as well as offering a limited alternative falacy.

i see no need to respond to the rest of the arguments on this post, since we have, in my humble opinion, found the central area of disagreement, and all else is just fluff.

i have no basis what-so-ever to question your sincerity, and do not so do. i would urge you to look into your position and address these aforementioned inconsistencies in it, and come up with a better model. This seems a rational course. Thank you for you kindness, time and patience.

Regards,

CDL

You're trying to be too clever by half.

Evolution is a religion - and evolutionists are usually NOT open to other scientific explanation. Witness their reaction to proponents of "intelligent design" - "Intelligent design is not science, therefore intelligent design is not science." Now, they dress is up a little bit, but the fact of the matter is, they define the concept of intelligent design out of the realm of science, then argue that it isn't science. Some good scientists have proffered evidence of intelligent design...at least as much as that supporting evolution. Evolutionist have also weakened their claim to science because of the several knowlingly fraudulent claims that have been promoted as evidence (Jonathan Wells - Icons of Evolution) - the act of a devotee, not a scientist.

So by your own definition of the distinction between science and faith, evolution is a faith - because its adherents reject the notion of an alternate view. Michael Behe - biochemistry, William Dembski - mathematics, Jonathan Wells - molecular and cell biology, (and several others) are all serious scientists that present an alternate theory to evolution.

William Lane Craig - philosophy - presents towering scientific arguments against evolution, yet his work and that of the scientist I mention above is largely ignored by the "scientific community" because "intelligent design is not science".

Inasmuch as their ideas are debated on the grounds of their work, their premises, their logic, their evidence - it is honest scientific debate, and a few evolutionists accept that challenge. But most reject their arguments BECAUSE OF THEIR CONCLUSION - a hallmark of faith and its intolerance of apostacy.

Next, I take great exception to your twisting of my argument to suit your purpose. The situation of a Catholic school, established and maintained for the specific purpose of educating and training Catholic scholars is clearly different than that of of a typical university. If you want to establish a university for the education and training of evolutionary scholars, THEN we have some equivilance. But the professor, who was the genesis of this discussion, does not teach at a school of evolution - yet he is trying to turn his institution into such a school. That is the argument here, so don't assume the conclusion in order to argue your point.

This professor sets his criteria in such a way as to include ONLY evolution as an acceptable theory (creationism is not science), requires that a student accept both his false criteria and his religion - and he does this under the false colors of the honest pursuit of truth and fact and furthermore, his standard is immaterial to the situation. As proof of such immateriality, let me pose this question - Would you, if faced with a delicate, risky and necessary medical procedure, insist that your doctor be an evolutionist? Or would you seek the most highly skilled doctor available? Do you assume that such skill and a belief in creation are mutually exclusive?

I can answer that those issues would come to my mind - because I would not knowingly place my life in the hands of a person who believed that life in general was merely a happenstance and of little significance. I would want my doctor to have a firm belief in and commitment to life as sacred and purposeful generally and mine in particular.

The professor's criteria has absolutely no bearing on a student's fitness for consideration for an advanced degree - it is placed there soley as forced obesience to his faith and nothing more. As such, it is grossly out of place and an offense to science itself.

I'm baaaaacck :)

What a week. On not one night this week did I get home from the lab before 10 pm, and since I didn't get a chance to work on the thesis then, it'll need some attention this weekend...[sigh]

With that said, thanks for your patience - I can't promise I'll get to everyone today, but I'll do my best.

CDL, first things first - And beware, this is REALLY long, it was the only way to properly consider what you sent, and I wanted to be thorough here, and as fair as possible.

I did some research (using SciFinder Scholar, a _great_ indexing service for scientific literature), and I found a bunch of references on the VSL cosmology as they call it (VSL = Variable Speed of Light). It's clearly a serious postulate, it's been written up in some very good journals, and there's a lot of scholarly debate surrounding it, mainly from the last five or ten years, so this is a recent thing. You're correct also in that it typically involves a non-linear change in the speed of light over time.

There are some scientists who argues its advantages, and claim that it solves the "horizon" and "flatness" problems of the current model, i.e. that it could explain certain topological features that our universe apparently has.

There are other scientists who say that the model has serious limitations, mainly having to do with violations with the second lay of thermodynamics.

I will freely admit that I don't have all of the necessary backgound to understand everything these people are doing, so I am happy to provide references, if anyone is interested. It seems to me, from looking at this, that from a theoretical point of view, allowing for the variation of the speed of light is one of a number of possible ways of accounting for some of the difficulties with the current standard model. The reason the debate continues, in the community, is that no one so far seems to have published a paper that definitively proves that the speed of light is varying.

Davies' work, referred to in the links you sent, is excellent stuff, and he's a VSL cosmology proponent - But that is only one of a number of interpretations of his data, which shows a variation in the fine structure constant, not the speed of light. The fine structure constant (alpha), which is the ratio of the speed of an electron in a hydrogen atom to the speed of light, is defined as follows:

alpha = e^2 / [(2)(epsilon-naught)(h)(c)]

...where e is the charge of an electron, epsilon-naught is the dielectric permittivity of free space, h is Planck's constant, and c is the speed of light. The value of alpha is about 1/137, FYI.

There seems to be a lot of debate in the community as well, as to which value(s) could be changing, and what the consequences would be. Some people say varying the speed of light makes the most sense, others say it makes more sense to vary permittivity, for instance, or the electron charge - No one has presented the perfect postulate yet, though, as there seem to be problems with each of them (a lot of them are busy poking holes in each other's theories, basically :)

Two final points, with respect to VSL cosmologies: The magnitude of the measured variation in the fine structure constant seems to be very, very small, and none of the VSL cosmologies seem to make predications boiling down to an explicit c(t) = (something) type expression.

Therefore, the most we can say right now, based on this work, is that, if we believe the data, the fine structure constant is changing very, very slightly, which _could_ mean that the speed of light is changing, which _might_ be consistent with one of a number of VSL cosmologies. I saw one or two papers proposing interesting means of testing variations in the speed of light directly - Hopefully someone will perform one of these tests and see for sure, because right now, based on Davies' work alone we can't say whether the speed of light is changing or not.

I should also say that it appears (and I didn't know this - so this is cool, I learned something!) that the speed of light may be subject to variation by other means. There are postulates that imply that temperature extremes, very strong magnetic fields, and even _direction_ may change the speed of light (the last has to do with the assumption of isotropy in the universe - there might be very slight anisotropy, it seems). Wavelength is another one - If photons are massless, there should be no wavelength dependence, but if they have some exceedingly small but finite mass (this may even be below the Planck mass, making measuring it impossible, at least so far as we know currently), their speed may then be very weakly wavelength dependent - While the previous variations I don't yet understand, that makes more sense to me, having seen de Broglie's equation. Keep this in mind whenever you see the speed of light measured - There are a number of factors, then, not including the uncertainty principle, that may account for very small variations.

FYI the Internet Physics FAQ you linked to (marked as "hermes" in your original post, the one I posted the update link to) may need to be updated in light of Davies' work, as it says that "to the best of our current ability to observe, the fundamental constants really are constant" :)

All of this brings me to your first link, the one where Montgomery and Dolphin do a statistical analysis of 120 measurements of the speed of light, and conclude that it's decreasing with time. The paper is interesting, and the statistical methods they use are generally accepted - No problems there. They did a least-squares regression, but they don't give the fit-type - I can only assume it's linear, because we're presuming (approximate) linearity over the time frame we look at.

With that said, and as I'm sure you are aware (Cvengr can back me up on this as well, I'm betting, it sounds like he's got the background for it), the famous Twain quote regarding "lies, damned lies, and statistics", while a humorous if somewhat cynical exaggeration, has a grain of truth to it. If you set up your analysis properly, you can get a variety of results, not all of which will agree. This is usually not due to improper application of statistics or bias on the intent of the researcher so much as the fact that statistical analysis is necessarily limited, being based on probability, and can never be said to be said to be 100% correct and accurate. Montgomery and Dolphin analyzed _selected_ data, which they admit is the weakest point of their study. If we define the proper selection procedures, we can come up with a variety of results. In addition, while they show a lot of statistics on their data, they did not show the statistics (i.e. the predicatble statistical error) on their statistics :) This is very important.

Here's a good example of what I mean. I typed the 120 data points [phew!] they had into MicroCal Origin 6.1 (Excel won't do regressions) and took a look myself (if you want the file, I'll be happy to send it along). The mean value of c I found is identical to the one they report, so I don't think I made any typos, BTW. Here's what I found:

A linear regression, fitting to c(t) = A + B(year), gives me A = 311968.66461 and B = -6.3209. Well, fine, you say, it's going down, right? Not so fast :) The adjusted R-squared value for these coefficients is 0.31926(!) And worse yet, while the t-value for A is quite high (194.88342), the one for B is dismal (-7.53716).

I direct anyone unfamiliar with these measures to this good, brief explanation of R-squared and t-values, here:

http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/pks4/files/teaching/handouts/r2_tstat_explained.pdf

The statistical implications are clear - We can't be at all sure of the B coefficient, which is what defines the trend, therefore we can't be sure of the trend. We're a little more sure of relevance of A, however - The R-squared is poor, but the t-test value for A is quite high. This makes sense, as it's (roughly) the speed of light, as we know it.

In addition, when I tell Origin to perform the regression using error weighting, based on the error in each measurement as reported by Montgomery and Dolphin, I get a horizontal line, with A = 299792.48738 (i.e. nearly dead-on the accepted value; t-value = 2.54298 MILLION here). The R-squared value is horrendously low, for obvious reasons - The line fails to pass anywhere near a few early measurements - But the reported error in those measurements is so large compared to the more recent ones that the error weighted fit comes out this way. In this case, B = -0.0000144815, +/- 0.0000595668 (yes, the error is larger than the value :) The t-value is -0.24311 here, though in this you don't need the negative t-value to judge that this doesn't mean much, with the error as large as it is.

Now, we can get into more complicated data fits (exponential, polynomial, power law) and do the same thing, but in those cases it will be the trend itself that disproves the fit, since the equation we will get will predict much larger variations in the speed of light in just the past 500 years than we can reasonably accept, even based on current VSL cosmologies. I'm happy to show you any sort of fit Origin is capable of, however, if you're so inclined - Just let me know what you want.

In summary: Montgomery and Dolphin did a smart thing, and I don't think they (intentionally) biased the data by their selection criteria. However, the statistics of a linear least-squares regression analysis of the data show that any trends we get from that data set cannot be trusted, and an error-weighted analysis indicates that the idea of a constant value of c, over the time-period studied, is much more reasonable. I invite you to try this and see what you think - You should get the same numbers.

With that said, I should also mention that I am very curious as to where the error values reported in Montgomery and Dolphin's table come from. As I'm sure everyone here can agree, scientists are often tempted to overstate the accuracy of their numbers, and in any case, error values are often simple "best estimates", or based solely on statistical error, (i.e. not including experimental error). Therefore I suspect that the error values used are likely a bit too low - Though admittedly I cannot prove this :)

In any case, nothing is truly proved here - It's possible that there are variations in the speed of light with time, I've simply shown that that conclusion cannot be drawn from this data set. In fact, the simplest explanation that explains this data is that c is constant.

So we're back to square one :)

VSL cosmologies are taken seriously, and have been for the last ten years, so while the scientific community may have been skeptical or dismissive of the idea before, they should not be now. Clearly this is not some wacky, off-the-wall idea - This really could be what's going on! But we need to show it, and so far, the scientific evidence is not quite there.

Anyway, this was cool 'cause I learned something - Besides refreshing my statistics, I also found out about a number of different environmentally induced variations in c that have been postulated, and I have you to thank for inspiring me to look up the VSL theories in the first place - I wasn't aware they were as popular or as much talked about as they are these days! Hopefully you folks found this informative as well...

Wow, I'm beat. I'm gonna save additional responses for another time. In the meantime, I hope we can agree on the above - That this is important, that it might be happening, but that no one has shown it yet.

Thanks for reading, DFS

Back to the practical matter at hand, I like the solution proposed here:

http://pla.blogspot.com/2003_01_26_pla_archive.html#88396751

Quoting excerpts in italics / bold:

Dr. Dini refused to write a letter of recommendation for his student, because Mr. Spradling, although wanting further education and a career in biological sciences, could not “truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer” to the question of the origins of the human species. Mr. Spradling, apparently, does not believe in evolution.

Mr. Spradling responded to the refusal to write the letter by suing both Dr. Dini and the school, Texas Tech.

We think that Dr. Dini should settle the suit by writing the letter for Mr. Spradling.

Our perspective is not that of an academic, an ethicist, a philospher, a scientist or a cleric. We view this from the perspective of a litigator.

Litigating over an issue as trivial as a letter of recommendation is absurd. The money spent by Texas Tech paying lawyers to defend Dr. Dini’s letter of recommendation policy would be better spent improving the biology department of Texas Tech. The money Dr. Dini does not spend on litigation could fund a trip to the Galapogos Islands to study the length of bird beaks.

The letter might read something like this:

Dear Sir or Madam:
I understand that Micah Spradling has applied to your fine institution in an effort to further his training in the biological sciences. I have been asked to write this letter by Mr. Spradling.
I know Mr. Spadling fairly well as he has taken lower level and upper level courses from me. I have also met with him in my office to discuss matters of biology.
In our meetings, the issue of the origin of the human species arose. Despite four years of training in the biological sciences, Mr. Spradling was unable to truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to that question.
As a result of that inability, I declined to write a letter of recommendation for Mr. Spradling. When I declined, Mr. Spradling sued me as well as Texas Tech.
This letter is written under the terms of the settlement of that suit and you should regard it as such.
If you seek litigious students who, after four years of training in biology, are unable to state a scientific basis for the origin of the human species, then Mr. Spradling would be a fine addition to your program.

Sincerely Yours

We cannot expect professors to do more than provide truthful letters that contain an honest assessment of a student. The above letter is both.

Comments on our overly litigious society welcome :)

DFS