crazyfingers

Creationists' evolving argument

The whole column scores a lot of excellent points.

butswana

Great article. Thanks.

Principia

Excellent! Nevertheless I have a minor problem with: Inevitably, some IDiot is going to argue that understanding evolution is not correlated with being a good physician. After all, wouldn't the good doctor Sean Pitman over at ChristianForums be a contradictory example? So, the problem here is not as simple as an analogy of someone who doesn't believe in gravity applying for a physics graduate program. The problem is more akin to whether or not the student is capable of making logical, scientific conclusions when presented the evidence. Dini is quick to point this out in his website: I highly doubt that someone is going to do some correlation study about what a recommender subjectively thinks makes a good graduate candidate and what actually results in a good professional. But, that we can't determine objectively what would result in a good professional seems to be the very reason why recommendations are sought in the first place. If every recommender had a fixed set of criteria for admitting students, then the value of a recommendation diminishes. This is the reason, recommenders are asked to "go beyond" the grades and lists of accolades. It is also the reason why a single recommendation is rarely taken to be representative of the student's potentials. For Dini, he feels strongly about having a good basis in evolutionary biology. If we were to fault him for that, we might as well ding him on requiring that the student achieved an A in his course. Since when did making an A in Dini's course become a national requirement to enter medical school? Perhaps he is a particularly difficult grader in his course. Does that mean that his standard is prescriptive? Not at all -- many B students end up becoming quite excellent doctors, too. In fact, the average science GPA for matriculants is only a 3.1 (in 1992)-3.4 (last year) -- hardly the 4.0 Dini is looking for. So if we fault the Dinis for requiring overachievers in their own courses, maybe we should take issue with all of the other recommenders that use similar criteria [hell, I know I have]. The point is that Dini is certainly entitled to his opinion of what he considers a qualifying student. He is after all volunteering his recommendation.

So, no, the analogy in this op-ed doesn't quite work, because it seems to justify that mere disbelief in an accepted theory disqualifies one from a position. In fact, the nature of gravity is actually quite a contentious issue in theorectical physics at the moment. What seems to me to be the greater point is that this student cannot critically ascertain a scientific theory in light of the evidence. Remember that the student's beef is that he cannot accept evolution because of his Christian faith, not because he has critically evaluated the evidence for himself. Faith is the acceptance of a belief independent of the evidence. Dini requires noone lose his faith. His condition merely requires that the student "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" for himself, before the student asks for a recommendation. This, imo, is the least coercive stance one can take in this matter.

Valentine Pontifex

The following paragraph is really interesting:

If the guy was not complete Dr. Dini's class or get to know the professor then he has utterly has a baseless suit. Quite bluntly even if Dini was discriminating against Christians (which is obviously false) Spradling would have no case since he did not suffer any of the alleged discrimination himself. What is he going to do for an encore? Sue the local muffler shop for $100 because he thinks that muffler shop overcharged someone that he does not know a $100? Any lawyers here? To what extent is the traditional requirement that a plantiff in a lawsuit have actually been someone who has been wronged still being enforced. Does Dini or his school have grounds for a counter-suit?

In any event, I think that anyone wanting to sue Dini needs to find people who they claim is clearly worthy but was denied a recommendation and suffered as a result. I really don't think they have much of a chance to ever doing this.

I do have some reservations about Dini's policy, mostly in the line that I don't think it is very wise base recommendations on a set of absolute rules. About the only rules that should be
absolute is that he adequately know the person and think
him worthy. Of course, if practice, this going to come out
the same as his stated rules 95-99% of the time. Take the rule for requiring an "A" from his class. In normal circumstances this would be fairly obvious and really would not need to be spelled out: if you can't get an A in his class than clearly you deserve for him to call you amoung the best students he has had. However there is certainly a very small percent of those who got a B who might be worthy of a recomendation. In particular I am thinking of someone who might have illness, personal distaster, etc. that affected his ability to make the grade and was unwilling to drop a semester or two. I am also a bit worried about the slippery slope. That evolution is a fact of life really should be obvious. But there are certainly less obvious facts of life. There is no clear spot that divides obvious from the non-obvious. We really don't want profs requiring acceptance of their pet ideas.

I suspect that the Dini's evolution requirment might be superflous anyways. If the student is either too ignorant or too incompetent to understand that evolution is a fact of life then there is certainly reasonable ground not to give a recomendation even without even bringing up evolution. And of course, I do not like giving the creationists an issue to rally around either.

theyeti

Apparently some IDiot has.

But it's irrelevant. Whether or not disbelieving in evolution makes one a bad physician is a personal decision for Dini. If we insist that every criterion that a professor uses to give a recomendation be somehow backed up by an objective study, then what's the point of even having recomendations? We could just use the objective criteria itself to decide, and cut out the human element.

Legally speaking, this will come down to whether or not the courts find that this is religious descrimination, and I doubt they will.

theyeti

Gooch's dad

What greatly disturbs me is the bit about Ashcroft's Justice Dept. investigating the case. Why? It should be obvious, as others have pointed out, that the student has no standing for a suit.

GRRRRRR, Ashcroft really pisses me off.

Doubting Didymus

Actually, I think this is less obvious than intuition would suggest. I will have a search for a thread started by scigirl, outlining some of the professional problems that ordinary practising creationist doctors might encounter. The trick is to look at what your average creationist actually denies. There are some very forboding hypothetical problems, especially in immunology! What mental loop-de-loops must a creationist doctor be forced to perform in order to understant the evolution of 'golden' strains from non-resistent species?

Intuition suggests that evolution, which seems to be a small field of biology if you take the proportion of people studying it to be representative, is not all that vital to the practice of such a big field as medicine. Closer inspection reveals that ALL fields of biology are irrevocably tied to evolution, and to try to excise it from any other biological field is to tear apart the threads of knowledge that holds biology together. Real, practical, and possibly deadly problems could arise when you try to throw out the baby, but keep the bathwater.

P.S. can anyone remember the title of scigirls thread?

tgamble

I don't think it'll be much of a problem. They just use the old "it's just variation it's still a _________" and fill in the blank with whatever is needed.

tgamble

Brilliant! I love it!

damn right!

Doubting Didymus

If they deny speciation, how can they get this right? It will not be helpful if a doctor insists on calling the new species of golden staphlococcus that has evolved uder his very nose 'just ordinary staphlococcus'.