Professor's Snub of Creationists Prompts U.S. Inquiry

New York Times ^ | 2/02/03 | NICK MADIGAN

[kattracks]

UBBOCK, Tex., Feb. 2 — A biology professor who insists that his students accept the tenets of human evolution has found himself the subject of Justice Department scrutiny.

Prompted by a complaint from the Liberty Legal Institute, a group of Christian lawyers, the department is investigating whether Michael L. Dini, an associate professor of biology at Texas Tech University here, discriminated against students on the basis of religion when he posted a demand on his Web site that students wanting a letter of recommendation for postgraduate studies "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to the question of how the human species originated.

"The central, unifying principle of biology is the theory of evolution," Dr. Dini wrote. "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?"

That was enough for the lawyers' group, based in Plano, a Dallas suburb, to file a complaint on behalf of a 22-year-old Texas Tech student, Micah Spradling.

Mr. Spradling said he sat in on two sessions of Dr. Dini's introductory biology class and shortly afterward noticed the guidelines on the professor's Web site (www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/letters.htm).

Mr. Spradling said that given the professor's position, there was "no way" he would have enrolled in Dr. Dini's class or asked him for a recommendation to medical school.

"That would be denying my faith as a Christian," said Mr. Spradling, a junior raised in Lubbock who plans to study prosthetics and orthotics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "They've taken prayer out of schools and the Ten Commandments out of courtrooms, so I thought I had an opportunity to make a difference."

In an interview in his office, Dr. Dini pointed to a computer screen full of e-mail messages and said he felt besieged.

"The policy is not meant in any way to be discriminatory toward anyone's beliefs, but instead to ensure that people who I recommend to a medical school or a professional school or a graduate school in the biomedical sciences are scientists," he said. "I think science and religion address very different types of questions, and they shouldn't overlap."

Dr. Dini, who said he had no intention of changing his policy, declined to address the question of his own faith. But university officials and several students who support him say he is a religious man.

"He's a devout Catholic," said Greg Rogers, 36, a pre-med student from Lubbock. "He's mentioned it in discussion groups."

Mr. Rogers, who returned to college for a second degree and who said his beliefs aligned with Dr. Dini's, added: "I believe in God and evolution. I believe that evolution was the tool that brought us about. To deny the theory of evolution is, to me, like denying the law of gravity. In science, a theory is about as close to a fact as you can get."

Another student, Brent Lawlis, 21, from Midland, Tex., said he hoped to become an orthopedic surgeon and had had no trouble obtaining a letter of recommendation from Dr. Dini. "I'm a Christian, but there's too much biological evidence to throw out evolution," he said.

But other students waiting to enter classes Friday morning said they felt that Dr. Dini had stepped over the line. "Just because someone believes in creationism doesn't mean he shouldn't give them a recommendation," said Lindsay Otoski, 20, a sophomore from Albuquerque who is studying nursing. "It's not fair."

On Jan. 21, Jeremiah Glassman, chief of the Department of Justice's civil rights division, told the university's general counsel, Dale Pat Campbell, that his office was looking into the complaint, and asked for copies of the university's policies on letters of recommendation.

David R. Smith, the Texas Tech chancellor, said on Friday afternoon that the university, a state institution with almost 30,000 students and an operating budget of $845 million, had no such policy and preferred to leave such matters to professors.

In a letter released by his office, Dr. Smith noted that there were 38 other faculty members who could have issued Mr. Spradling a letter of recommendation, had he taken their classes. "I suspect there are a number of them who can and do provide letters of recommendation to students regardless of their ability to articulate a scientific answer to the origin of the human species," Dr. Smith wrote.

Members of the Liberty Legal Institute, who specialize in litigating what they call religious freedom cases, said their complaint was a matter of principle.

"There's no problem with Dr. Dini saying you have to understand evolution and you have to be able to describe it in detail," said Kelly Shackelford, the group's chief counsel, "but you can't tell students that they have to hold the same personal belief that you do."

Mr. Shackelford said that he would await the outcome of the Justice Department investigation but that the next step would probably be to file a suit against the university.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post!

No, it wouldn't be if the particular issue was relevant.

Indeed, the professor can plead in his defense that he had compelling justification to discriminate based on religion. But the court would have to agree.

Essentially, to rule in Dini's favor the court would have to conclude that no young earth creationist could be qualified (licensed) to practice medicine - not just in Texas, but all over the U.S. because this is a federal matter.

And as mentioned in the previous post, the court would be arriving at that conclusion without evidence that patients have suffered as a consequence of the physician's religious beliefs. That would require a rather extensive study over a long period of time.

I don't think such a ruling is at all likely and even if the court so ruled, it would probably be summarily overturned by the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. The higher courts jealously guard constitutional rights!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Evolution is relevant to biology.

If you mean purported evolutionary origins of species, exactly what new information has this doctrine furnished to other fields of biology? As reflected in the statements of Dini himself, it appears to be a tangential issue, a superfluous mantra. Otherwise Dini would say something like "because of the theory of evolutionary origins of species, we now have this and that and the other valuable biological knowledge that has advanced the practice of medicine." But Dini can't cite any such thing.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post!

Perhaps if the guy hadn't of been such a jackass, and just refused without reasons given, he wouldn't be in this mess.

Exactly!!! Dini created his own problem from the get-go by raising the issue of human evolution v "cherished beliefs." And documenting it, no less, for all the world to see on the internet.

[Dan Day]

Rest assured God makes no mistakes, mathematical or otherwise. The Scriptures do not contain error.

Oh?

1 Sam.22:20 -- "And one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahibub, named Abiathar."

1 Sam.23:6 -- "Abiathar the son of Ahimelech."

So Abiathar is Ahimelech's son. It says so twice. Or is he?

2 Sam.8:17 --"Ahimelech the son of Abiathar."

1 Chr.18:16 -- "Ahimelech the son of Abiathar."

1 Chr.24:6 -- "Ahimelech the son of Abiathar."

So which is it?

That's not the only contradictory lineage. How about:

Gen.26:34 -- "And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite."

Gen.36:2-3 -- "Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and ... Bashemath Ishmael's daughter."

Odd, Bashemath, Esau's wife, has two different fathers.

Elsewhere, Lot is either Abraham's brother (two passages) or his nephew (three passages) -- the Bible can't seem to make up its mind.

Or, when was the earth dried after the Flood?

Gen 8:13 -- And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.

Gen 8:14 -- And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.

Oookay, which is it?

Or for a real poser:

Can God be seen?

God is seen.

God is invisible and cannot be seen.

Gen.12:7 "And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him." Gen.18:1 "And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre." Gen.26:2 "And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of. Gen.26:24 "And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not." Gen.32:30 "And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Gen.35:1 "And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother." Gen.35:7 "And he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel: because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother." Gen.35:9 "And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed him." Gen.48:3 "And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan." Ex.3:16 "The LORD God ... appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you." Ex.24:9-11 "Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel ... They saw God, and did eat and drink." Ex.33:11 "And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." Ex.33:23 "And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my backparts." Num.14:14 "For they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face." Dt.5:4 "The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire." Dt.34:10 "And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." Jg.13:22 "And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God." 1 Kg.22:19 "I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left." Job 42:5 "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee." Ps.63.2 "To see thy power and they glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary." Is.6:1 "In the year that King Ussiah died, I saw, also, the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up." Is.6:5 "For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Ezek.20:35 "And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face." Am.7:7 "The LORD stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand." Am.9:1 "I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and he said, smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake." Hab.3:3-5 "God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran .... He had horns coming out of his hand."

Ex.33:20 "Thou canst not see may face: for there shall no man see me and live." Jn.1:18 "No man hath seen God at any time." Jn.6:46 "Not that any man hath seen the Father." 1 Tim.1:17 "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever." 1 Tim.6:16 "Whom no man hath seen nor can see." 1 Jn.4:12 "No man hath seen God at any time."

Etc. etc.

[Dan Day]

"Cain married a woman from the east of Eden (the land of Nod), and I assume she was not his sister"

With the lifespans and prolific childbearing of that time, it could have been a niece.

So then who was the niece's mother?

One way or another, at least one son of Adam and Eve either had to marry and have sex with his sister, or with Eve herself.

Or, there had to be "separately created" people to mate with, and the Bible lied when it said that Eve was the "mother of all living" (Genesis 3:20).

[HiTech RedNeck]

A sister would be the mother, and a brother would be the father. The brother's name probably was Nod. (Who knows whether he had other brothers Winken and Blinken... just being silly. Getting serious again.) What we know as incest wasn't forbidden until Mosaic times.

[bondserv]

Great stuff there!

[HiTech RedNeck]

The lineage quibble is a red herring. "Son of" was sometimes a shorthand locution for "grandson" ("great grandson" etc.) in many cases. The emphasis was not on every single direct father and son but on notable men in the line, and sometimes alternative forms of names were used. We do not literally know all the members of many Biblical family lines.

[HiTech RedNeck]

If you were trying to understand the Bible as it was intended to be understood by its readers, we could have a serious discussion about it. But you aren't. Depending on what aspect of "seen" is intended, "seeing" God in that manner either is or is not possible. I can't "see" the whole earth (unless I go out into space and look back), but I can sure "see" part of the earth. So can I or can't I see the earth? Your quibble is at that level.

[Dan Day]

Just to jump in a bit here, but whatever a person's belief as to the origin of life on this planet, it has no bearing on how good a physician they will be. Why? Because it's not important to understanding the "here and now".

You are very wrong.

For one example, a physician who dogmatically didn't believe in evolution would reject the well-established doctrine that overprescribing antibiotics causes more harm than good in the long run, because the pathogens EVOLVE resistance to the antibiotics (and evolve faster when faced with antibiotics more often). This would make for a BAD physician, who would cause harm.

For an extremely specific example:

From http://www.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/genesis.htm

Finally, a (true) horror story. A few years ago there was a little girl, known to the concerned public as "Baby Fae," who needed a heart transplant. Human donors are hard to find, especially for infants, so a daring surgeon convinced the parents to let him implant a baboon's heart. A hopeful world held its breath, while skeptical biologists scratched their heads (a baboon's heart?), but everyone hoped for the best. Sadly, Baby Fae died after a few weeks. Among the contributing factors may have been that her immune system had recognized the heart as something foreign, and attacked it. After the sensational news stories had died down, it was reported that a biologist asked the surgeon why he had chosen a baboon donor, which is a much more distant relative of ours (in evolutionary terms) than a chimpanzee, which is our closest relative (DNA ~99% identical). Wouldn't there have been less danger of rejection with a heart from a closer relative? The surgeon's answer: he hadn't even taken that into consideration, because he didn't believe in evolution! To him, no creatures were related to each other, since they had all been created at once, in their present forms.*

Maybe a chimpanzee's heart wouldn't have saved Baby Fae either, but the chances might have been better. It's hard to find words to describe a doctor who would do this kind of experiment on a child, then later reveal that his decisions were based on a complete denial of the best modern science. I hope you are never faced with a life-or-death decision between what science says the world is like, and what you think it is like. But scientific progress is unstoppable, and all modern life science centers around the knowledge of the evolutionary genesis and relationships of living things. And there's no sign of that changing anytime soon.

*Response from a gentleman researching this and other creationist craziness for a dissertation:
I tracked this down, to a radio interview given by Bailey to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program "Health Report," hosted by Norman Swan, aired June 3, 1985.  I have obtained a copy of the tape.  It's true, Bailey says exactly that the concept of homology did not play a role in the selection process of donor species, but it was a case of availability and size.  HLA testing was done, and the closest match was used.  However, baboons have type A blood, while Baby Fae was type O.  The blood antigens caused a severe rejection of not only the heart graft, but also damage to liver and other organs.  The doctors thought that blood type immune response would not be sufficiently developed in a neonate to make a difference. Bailey says he's a fundamentalist, he can buy microevolution, but that millions of years of separation of species boggles his mind.  Homology of this kind did not count at all!

Another big consideration is covered from various angles in Welcome to the Ghetto (of Scientific Illiteracy) . It raises several concerns, including the one I was going to bring up -- a scientist of any sort, including a physician, who is capable of rejecting something as well-established as evolution, purely on dogmatically religious grounds, is capable of also refusing to accept WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE from science. There's no telling what scientific principles he is going to reject as being "incompatible" with his "if I think it contradicts my religious belief, it will be rejected" filter -- or what sorts of supernatural beliefs he will embrace. As an excerpt from the essay puts it:

Trained to reject and mock intellectualism and rationality, and accept supernatural and miraculous events unquestioningly, a great many will go on to accept uncritically all sorts of things that the creationists did not have in mind when they recruited the newcomers. After all, if the world does work mainly by miracle and magic, then maybe there's more than the one kind of magic. Once the anti-scientific mindset is established, it's not hard at all to start believing in lucky charms, numerology, psychic powers, communication with the dead, UFO abductions, ad nauseum. I know personally a fundamentalist-creationist pastor who sees nothing whatever amiss in consulting "moon signs" before making plans and decisions. And we can recall a recent President who at least gave lip-service to creationism--while his wife arranged his appointments on the advice of an astrologer.

[Dan Day]

The lineage quibble is a red herring. "Son of" was sometimes a shorthand locution for "grandson" ("great grandson" etc.) in many cases.

None of the examples I listed is resolved even by accepting "son of" in a broad sense of "descendant of".

Look at them again -- some of the lineages list A as the father of B *and* B as the father of A.

And a nephew is not a son nor vice versa, and the contradiction is not resolved even with son=descendant.

[HiTech RedNeck]

All I can say is God rebuke your quibbles. Sometimes the same name reappeared in a line.

[Dan Day]

Depending on what aspect of "seen" is intended, "seeing" God in that manner either is or is not possible. I can't "see" the whole earth (unless I go out into space and look back), but I can sure "see" part of the earth. So can I or can't I see the earth? Your quibble is at that level.

Feel free to explain what meanings resolve the following:

"Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me and live."

"And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend."

"And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."

Look, I know that the power of human rationalization is nearly infinite, and that even "1+1=2" could be explained away with creative enough "interpretation". My point, however, is that it *does* require "interpretation", and different people will necessarily interpret it in their own ways. The literalists don't have a leg to stand on, because read *literally*, the Bible is full of contradictions. It takes fallible, human "massaging" to get a non-contradictory reading of the Bible, and suddenly we're no longer in the realm of the infallible. Too bad God didn't annotate the text and let us know which parts were literal and which parts were to be "interpreted" metaphorically (and how), eh?

[Dan Day]

All I can say is God rebuke your quibbles.

Um, okay.

[Dan Day]

Bulls**t. If you profess to be a believer, then you either believe.........or you don't.

Believe whose interpretation, please?

[HiTech RedNeck]

You are throwing your brain right down the black hole of deconstructionism.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Feel free to explain what meanings resolve the following:

Tell me when you are really interested in finding a coherent message instead of mocking, and we can have a discussion. Otherwise I will not waste my time.

[Dan Day]

Tell me when you are really interested in finding a coherent message instead of mocking, and we can have a discussion.

I'll be really interested in finding a coherent message just as soon as someone manages to present one. So far everyone just gets huffy when asked to explain the tougher parts.

[HiTech RedNeck]

"You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink."

[HiTech RedNeck]

And with that good bye. If you have to be "forced" to approach the Bible as a coherent message to be understood, it ain't gonna happen by my effort or any other mortal's effort. Been there; done that; repented.