l-bow

I have to post this here. I posted a message in t.o criticizing Loma Linda med. school for creationists beliefs, specifically a decision concerning a baboon heart transplant. One Wade Hines subjected me to post-modernist PC vomit, where every belief is equally valid (funny, since he accused me of being PC). So what am I to say about creationist? I know! How about this:

The young-earth creationist Duane Gish is a perfectly reputable PhD holding scientist. He simply has views that are different from us.

<a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl1652435084d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=Xns92B374283FB9Dwadehinesrcncom%40199.184.1 65.241&rnum=182" target="_blank">link</a>

pz

I'm going to defend Wade (up to a point) on this. He's making a valid point, and it isn't the relativism you are seeing.

Loma Linda is a decent medical school. As long as your goal is to simply learn the procedures of medicine, it is perfectly adequate. If you want to learn the underlying concepts of biology, which are essential if you want to make significant new discoveries in medicine, it isn't the best place to go. Wade's chastisement was actually similar to St. Augustine's. Creationists are perfectly capable of learning how to set broken bones, remove an appendix, or do a heart transplant. When you accuse them of incompetence in such things when they are readily able to demonstrate their ability, you undermine your credibility and the credibility of evolutionists in general.

I disagree with Wade on one thing, though. I think the Baby Fae case was ethically indefensible -- it was treating an infant as an experimental animal in an extremely poorly thought out experiment, and accomplished nothing other than tormenting a child and her family for a brief period of time. Creationism was one factor among many that led these doctors to make a very, very bad decision.

Valentine Pontifex

Wade is in the right on this one. And you have not accurately described what he said in that post. I don't see anything in that post saying anything even remotely like all beliefs are equally valid. If he has done so, it was not in the post you linked to.


If you are going to say that Loma Linda is a bad medical school or that it has a bad reputation than you are going to have to provide evidence for it.

But the simple fact is that Loma Linda does have a good reputation.

<a href="http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/rank/otherhea01.htm" target="_blank">http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/rank/otherhea01.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.residentphysician.com/Medicalschool_rankings.htm" target="_blank">http://www.residentphysician.com/Medicalschool_rankings.htm</a>
<a href="http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/rank/medttlnod.htm" target="_blank">http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/rank/medttlnod.htm</a>

Doing some searches on Linda Loma revealed that William Jarvis of CSICOP and a well known crusader against pseudoscience in medicine is from that university. This suggests that Loma Linda does have evolutionists.

l-bow

If you are going to say that Loma Linda is a bad medical school or that it has a bad reputation than you are going to have to provide evidence for it.

The doctor unnecessarily injected creationist assumptions in the case of Baby Faye. And if that doesn't make LLU disreputable, then neither are the majority of creationist organizations, and we should stop criticizing creationists for just having different beliefs from us. We might as well close down this forum, if that's the case.


Most creationists are in fact perfectly legitimate scientists. It's the creationism that ruins them.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: l-bow ]

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: l-bow ]</p>