January 31, 2003
UPDATE: Many comments ensued. Notable: a long, thoughtful, and impassioned post by Lydia Nickerson, about scientific truth, religious belief, and real-world medical practice. [07:20 AM]
Sorry, but I think Mark is just plain Wrong. There are two key reasons here.
Firstly, understanding evolution *is* essential to the practice of modern medicine. It's not obvious to an outsider, but evolutionary mechanisms are at work in several key areas that will impinge on the work of a doctor -- bacterial resistance to antibiotics, cancer cells responding to cytotoxic treatments, and so on. If you can't understand how evolution works, or don't believe it works, then you've got a problem if you have to deal with these conditions.
Secondly, there's a more fundamental objection. Bluntly, evolution is *not* just "a theory". It's the alternative proposals that have to prove themselves via an uphill struggle. It seems that the creationists still have a toe-hold in the United States, but anyone espousing that kind of belief in a British hospital or medical school would be laughed out of the house as a superstitious nut. You guys are bending over backwards to be nice to deluded nut-jobs: stop it! I can yell until I turn blue in the face that the earth is flat, but that will no more make it so than saying "evolution is just a theory" will invalidate the fact that it's one of the cornerstones of microbiology and genetics and a whole load of other essential sciences that underpin modern medicine. And a doctor who denies the evidence that's right in front of their nose is a doctor who may not be able to impartially evaluate the signs and symptoms in front of their nose in order to come to a correct diagnosis.
I'd go further than this professor: I'd consider categorizing "young earth" creationism as a belief that should be considered grounds for debarring the holder from any medical role above the level of bed-pan changer. (But then, what would I know? I was just a pharmacist.)
Both the Prof and Charlie have valid points. If you're gonna get a recommendation as a competent biologist, you're gonna have to understand how evolution works. Because it does.
The Prof has a responsibility, here. He can NOT certify someone as competent in the field if that person denies evolution. The fact of that denial invalidates any claim to competence.
I was going to rant a bit, but Mr. Stross speaks for me.
I have to agree with Mr. Stross. This is not about religious intolerance; this is about the demarcation between science and metaphysics.
The demarcation problem between science and metaphysics is a fundamental one; first successfully tackled by Popper in his "Logic of Scientific Discovery". Broadly speaking, it demands that scientific theories be falsifiable in principle; i.e., that there are viable avenues of refutation. Metaphysical theories do not fulfill this requirement, because they are irrefutable in any strict sense; you can not refute "God exists", just as you cannot nail a pudding to the wall.
That does not mean that there is a problem with people professing all kinds of religious beliefs or other metaphysical theories. You can neither prove nor disprove them; they might be correct or incorrect, and nobody can know for sure. But because of this uncertainty, they cannot be used as a foundation for science, because you cannot draw conclusions from them. If you draw a conclusion from a scientific theory, and then have evidence that contradicts that conclusion, you know that the scientific theory is incorrect. With metaphysical theories, you do not get that.
Creationism tries to break down this important barrier; it is not metaphysics on its own terms, nor is it science; it is metaphysics sneakily masquerading at science, and an attempt to poison the well of scientific discovery. In the worst case, we'd end up with a situation like the one Galilei faced, when religious doctrine overruled his discoveries. (In practical terms, this means that creationists should not be allowed to ever be part of the peer review process, among other things.)
Let me chime in and say that on this issue, I don't think there is any wiggle room. Not accepting evolution means not accepting a whole lot of stuff: the fossil record, the nature of genetic inheritance, how results from one species can be applied to another.
Those who do not accept evolution are not thinking scientifically (i.e. taking a materialist view of the universe). Therefore the professor is justified in not recommending the student.
It seems that the creationists still have a toe-hold in the United States, but anyone espousing that kind of belief in a British hospital or medical school would be laughed out of the house as a superstitious nut.Toe-hold? They've got at least one whole foot in, unfortunately. (We've had a Secretary of Education in recent memory who didn't believe in evolution, etc., etc., ad extreme nauseam.)
I can't resist noting that British medicine has its own foibles, like homeopathy (which is also around here still, but doesn't have the kind of official recognition it does in the UK).
But that's a tangential footnote. I agree with everything else you say.
I can't help but think that nobody in this thread so far has really engaged with this portion of Kleiman's comments:
First, as noted above, the policy extends to med school, not just bio grad school. They're not the same thing. Second, it's perfectly possible to understand a theory without accepting it. I can give fairly competent accounts of the labor theory of value, humoral medicine, Lysenkoism, and the doctrine of the Real Presence, without believing any of them. If the professor wants to say that he won't recommend a student who can't explain the theory of evolution by natural selection, with appropriate reference to the evidence supporting it, that's fine with me. It's the required confession of faith that sticks in my craw:Of course, a lot of people in the science fiction world, and the world of information technology, basically do believe on a gut level that "truth is self-evident," and one of the consequences of this unfortunate epistemology is unlovely remarks like "I'd consider categorizing 'young earth' creationism as a belief that should be considered grounds for debarring the holder from any medical role above the level of bed-pan changer." Personally, I don't think the world is so oversupplied with compassionate and competent medical caregivers that we can really afford to thin their ranks by demanding they swear loyalty oaths, even loyalty oaths to something I consider to be the truth.If you set up an appointment to discuss the writing of a letter of recommendation, I will ask you: "How do you think the human species originated?" If you cannot truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation for admittance to further education in the biomedical sciences.Does Kevin want to assert that truth is self-evident, so that no one can understand a true theory without accepting its truth? Otherwise, his equation of disbelief in evolutionary theory with ignorance of biology doesn't seem to be valid. [For a critique of that optimistic epistemology, and an argument that its political consequences are noxious, see Popper's "On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance."]
Charlie's right that our understanding of natural selection sometimes impinges on the practice of medicine. But it doesn't much impinge on, for instance, providing affordable medical services to inner-city poor people, or Third World famine refugees; and as it turns out, a lot of those services are indeed provided by doctors and nurses with conservative religious beliefs. Charlie Stross is a kind and humane fellow, but the literal reading of his suggestion is that ridding medicine of such people is worth letting other people die.
I believe in natural selection. I believe that it's more than an entirely speculative, notional "theory", as people use the word in the vernacular sense. I have no patience or tolerance for balonious "creation science." I also believe in not organizing society around loyalty oaths.
While I don't think Mark's position is inarguable, I agree with Patrick that the previous posts may be missing the thrust of his argument. This post by Eugene Volokh might clarify.
Alternatively, here are some questions based on the Kleiman and Volokh posts:
(1) Could a person who believes in the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth be a competent doctor?
(2) If yes, why couldn't a person who does not believe that humans and other mammalian species evolved from a common ancestor be a competent doctor? How are the two cases different, if at all? (Is there a way you could refuse to believe that proposition and still be a competent doctor?)
Alkali: I gather there's been a whole bunch of comment about this over at the Volokh site; I haven't actually been there yet.
QQ asserts that "Those who do not accept evolution are not thinking scientifically (i.e. taking a materialist view of the universe)."
Certainly the practice of real science requires a materialist model. However, scientists are also human beings, and human beings are complex and often two-minded creatures. If we are going to purge the ranks of science of everyone who's not a strict materialist 100% of the time, we're going to lose a lot of good people.
Fundamentally, the problem with the professor's demand is that it goes beyond questions of practice to a demand that the student affirm a state of being. I have remarked before that this tip-over, from concern with our fellow humans' behavior to concern with their inherent nature, is at the root of much of the worst kind of authoritarianism and cruelty. I am a lot more concerned with it than I am with the idea that some nurse or pediatrician might have wacky but harmless religious beliefs.
Patrick writes: "Charlie Stross is a kind and humane fellow, but the literal reading of his suggestion is that ridding medicine of such people is worth letting other people die."
This is hyperbole. I don't see the direct connection between a single professor wanting to affirm that his recommendation is a sound one with "letting people die". A recommendation to med school is not a god-given right. It is just that: a recommendation. I have no problem with this professor establishing particular standards of scientific orthodoxy for those he chooses to write a recommendation for.
This isn't a "loyalty oath". It's a way for the professor to establish that the person he's recommending has a strong, fundamental grasp of the central unifying concepts of the biological sciences. If he feels they don't, why on earth should he be compelled to recommend them for a profession in which people's lives are at stake on a daily basis?
Charlie, I think Mr. Kleiman's right, but for the wrong reasons — your point that evolution is inseparable from biology and from medicine is dead on. But Dr. Dini's approach is absolutely the wrong one. Not because it's not nice to deluded nut-jobs. Because it throws more gasoline on the fire.
The reason we have this idiotic “science vs. religion” debate in this country is that the nut-jobs think the word believe means the same thing in science that it does in religion. (It doesn't help that there's a strain of militant atheism that agrees with them.)
In the sense an American evangelical uses the word, I don't believe in evolution; hell, I don't believe in anything. (I know, it's a character flaw.) I think evolution through natural selection is the best explanation I've heard so far for the facts that I know; and that's a horse of a very different color. Who knows — maybe in fifty years I'll have bought into Stephen Wolfram's cellular automata instead.
I think I understand Dr. Dini's frustration, but deliberately trying to put these kids (and these are kids we're talking about) in conflict with their faith is either stupid or cruel. By asking “How do you think the human species originated?”) he's not finding out whether his students understand how evolution works and can apply it, he's just applying the from “The Thing”. Poke 'em with a hot wire; if they jump, they're evangelicals.
Now, if they buy into flood geology — yeah, I'm with you about the bedpans.
P.S. — Derek, you're wrong; the way Dr. Dini asks it, and in the circumstances under which he asks it, it is a loyalty oath.
My remark is "hyperbole", and Stross's assertion that "categorizing 'young earth' creationism as a belief that should be considered grounds for debarring the holder from any medical role above the level of bed-pan changer" isn't? Derek James is straining at gnats and swallowing, well, much bigger gnats.
The argument that it doesn't matter since this is just one professor and there are other professors is pretty weak. To announce such a policy is to make a statement about what one expects and requires from aspirants to the sciences. Funnily enough, that's what the subsequent argument is about. Either Professor Dini is serious, in which case his practice is a legitimate subject of debate, or he's not, in which case never mind.
By the way, I didn't say so earlier, but I do not think Professor Dini should be nobbed for "religious discrimination. And I fully share Kevin Drum's suspicion that this "Liberty Institute" outfit is simply a right-wing pressure group looking for targets of opportunity.
How about we look at *the professor's words themselves*, rather than various interpretations (esp. the use of that dangerously slippery word "believe".)
http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/letters.htm
Key paragraph:
Good medicine, like good biology, is based on the collection and evaluation of physical evidence. So much physical evidence supports the evolution of humans from non-human ancestors that one can validly refer to the "fact" of human evolution, even if all of the details are not yet known. One can deny this evidence only at the risk of calling into question one92s understanding of science and of the method of science. Such an individual has committed malpractice regarding the method of science, for good scientists would never throw out data that do not conform to their expectations or beliefs. This is the situation of those who deny the evolution of humans; such a one is throwing out information because it seems to contradict his/her cherished beliefs. Can a physician ignore data that s/he does not like and remain a physician for long? No. If modern medicine is based on the method of science, then how can someone who denies the theory of evolution -- the very pinnacle of modern biological science -- ask to be recommended into a scientific profession by a professional scientist?
And he's *absolutly correct.* The word "theory" gets left on theories that have long been accepted as hard fact -- See "Gravity, Theory of" and "Relativity, Special and General, Theory of". These are hard facts in physics, just as Evolution is a hard fact in Biology.
For a student to state that he doesn't "believe" in Evolution, and then wants a reccomendation from a biology professor, is inane. If you don't like a theory, you have *one* recourse to you as a scientist. Disprove it, by cold hard fact and careful experimentation. Einstien *hated* Quantum Mechanics, and spent the later part of his life trying to disprove it. He could not. (Note that both Relativity and QM are now cornerstones of physics.)
A biologist who does not accept evolution as a fact, and does not present a provable alternative theory that A) takes into account all the current facts understood, and B) successfully makes predictions that hold up (and were not made by Evolution.) is not a biologist. They are charlatans -- they refuse to use the very tools their degress state they have, and I, for one, fully support Dr. Dini's refusal to reccomend them. He is a biologist, and his recommendation *as a biolgist* becomes meaningless if he offers students who reject key parts of Biology as 1) accomplished biologist, and 2) as scientists.
Change the whole description. Say "Relativity" instead of "Evolution" and "Physics" instead of "Biology." Then convince me that the assertion that "It's improper for a professor to refuse to reccommend students who decry a key fact as false, yet offer no provable alternative theory" is true.
I'm going to stick by my guns. The relationship between medicine and biology is equivalent to the relationship between engineering and physics. Would you want to work in a building constructed by a civil engineer who wasn't willing to admit that pi was not equal to three (because that was the value assigned to it in one memorable passage of the Bible)?
As for the argument that "it doesn't much impinge on, for instance, providing affordable medical services to inner-city poor people" -- I hate to say it, but it does. (Evolving antibiotic resistance is one of the most important hot-button topics in urban epidemiology right now, as witness the current scare over Vancomycin-resistant staph aureus strains and multidrug resistant TB.)
But I want to go a bit further. I think the evolution thing is being seen by most of us, in this discussion, as a litmus test for a whole raft of other beliefs that can generally be gathered together under the umbrella of "Christian fundamentalist praxis". Because that's what this debate is really about, let's make no mistake.
A doctor who doesn't understand and give some credence to evolutionary theory is going to be a positive hazard in dealing with antibiotic resistance, genetic disorders, and a bunch of other things. But more importantly, they probably also hold certain associated beliefs about abortion, contraception and homosexuality -- because belief in creationism implies a teleological, deterministic approach to human nature. (If we were created, then it follows that there we were created with a purpose and intended to live within certain parameters.)
This cluster of beliefs have implications for the way such doctors will treat their patients, many of whom do not live their lives within the predetermined parameters of such a belief system.
I know this goes beyond the scope of the original argument: but I believe it is fundamentally wrong for us to place in a position of responsibility for our health people who hold prescriptive beliefs about human nature, and who may rule out certain procedures on the basis of their religious beliefs rather than the patients' well-being or wishes.
And that's what I think this whole storm in a teacup comes down to.
(You'll note, please, that I'm not arguing against religious beliefs per se. Many convinced Christians have no problem whatosever with evolution as a theory, and indeed view it as the primary mechanism through which their deity creates people. What I'm arguing against is a specific belief that evolution and scientific explanations of human origins are invalid, and I'm arguing against it because people who hold such beliefs almost invariably hold other, positively expressed beliefs, that will have detrimental effects on their patients if they ever practice as physicians.)
((And now I've got a headache so I'm going to go and lie down :))
Patrick writes: "The argument that it doesn't matter since this is just one professor and there are other professors is pretty weak."
I didn't say it didn't matter. I asserted that the criteria for an individual professor's recommendation should be left to the discretion of that professor.
"To announce such a policy is to make a statement about what one expects and requires from aspirants to the sciences."
Right. Isn't that a school and a professor's job?
I second Eric V. Olsen's comment and reiterate the question: Would it be inappropriate or discriminatory for a physics professor to ask a student what their thoughts on the relationship of matter and enery were before providing a recommendation? Or a geology professor asking a student what shape they thought the earth was before testifying that the student was top-shelf material?
"But I want to go a bit further. I think the evolution thing is being seen by most of us, in this discussion, as a litmus test for a whole raft of other beliefs that can generally be gathered together under the umbrella of 'Christian fundamentalist praxis.' Because that's what this debate is really about, let's make no mistake."
Charlie Stross's categorical claim that this is what the entire debate is "really about" can be read in only two ways. Either Mark Kleiman and I don't exist, or we are arguing in order to promote "Christian fundamentalist praxis." Both interpretations are odious. I'm grieved to be getting this from a person and a writer whom I like and respect.
"To announce such a policy is to make a statement about what one expects and requires from aspirants to the sciences."
Right. Isn't that a school and a professor's job?
Yes, and are we or aren't we entitled to have views on the matter? I was arguing for the legitimacy of the discussion, against the suggestion that it's trivial and doesn't matter because he's just one professor among many. Obviously he thinks it matters. Are you really keeping such poor track of what you yourself have said, or are you just looking for opportunities to kick sand and blow smoke?
Me again.
I think this issue is getting a lot of attention because the rejection of evolution is a kind of trip wire - a chance to nail conservatives (or at least nail some of them, especially the slippery Volokh).
Over the past couple of years we on the left have been struggling to challenge all sorts of conservative notions: double-taxation is immoral, the free market helps all in society, marriage penalty should be abolished, supply-side economics works, global-warming isn't proven yet, big tax cuts should go to those who pay the most, wealthy people got that way through effort and talent, abstinence education is the cure for AIDS, and so on.
The thing was, all those conservative notions had a kernel of truth - even if it was a tiny kernel - and it required detailed examination to rebut their claims. (That was why they are so successful - on a surface level they sounded reasonable.)
However, when dealing with evolution, opponents don't have even have a kernel of truth. Instead, they have adopted a fairy-tale to explain history. If you can't call out conservatives on this issue, what hope is there for the nuanced ones mentioned above?
Are there anti-evolutionists who have no problem with saying that bacteria can evolve into drug-resistant strains while simultaneously denying that humans evolved from apes? My understanding is that fundamentalists' problem with evolution is primarily with the idea that we're descended from monkeys, and the rest of it is less troublesome. I can accept a doctor whose denial of evolution stops with the "descent of man" stuff so long as he's willing to act towards TB germs and suchlike appropriately. I'm sure such doctors exist.
Either Mark Kleiman and I don't exist, or we are arguing in order to promote "Christian fundamentalist praxis." Both interpretations are odious.
It appears to me as though what's really happening is that you're talking past each other. Charlie's beef, a valid one, is that someone who willfully rejects scientific knowledge is a hazard to medicine. Patrick and Mark, on the other hand, are making the equally valid case that it is a faulty assumption that someone who accepts the Gospels as, well, gospel, is going to reject the dictates of reason vis a vis his medical practice. To assert that only atheists can satisfactorily practice medicine is something you'd expect to hear from Stalin, not an American college professor. I don't think that's what's going on, though. At least I hope not.
It seems to me that Dini has simply developed an understandable prejudice against a specific group of dogmatic, over-zealous young Christians who're compelled to let the world know that their belief in the Bible is literal, complete, and unflappable. Which is a detriment to their liberal education and to the world at large, as these kids would probably have a lot to contribute if they'd pull their heads out of their asses and learn to think outside the box. There's nothing more depressing than watching a brilliant mind rationalize stupid dogma.
This is how I would answer the Doctor's question about the origin of life on Earth: I believe that God's Universe is engineered in such a way that it is inherently self-organizing, and that the origin and evolution of life on earth through natural selection is a consequence of that inherent tendency. Do I get a recommendation? If so, then fine. If not, then we have a problem.
Patrick writes: "Yes, and are we or aren't we entitled to have views on the matter?"
Of course. But you made it sound as if a professor placing academic standards on a student was unfair.
It's definitely a worthwhile topic for discussion and certainly not trivial. I'd never suggest otherwise.
And yet you, Patrick, haven't answered the money question: How is it discriminatory for a professor to insist that a student have a firm grasp of the underlying principles of his discipline before he writes that student a recommendation?
"Are you really keeping such poor track of what you yourself have said, or are you just looking for opportunities to kick sand and blow smoke?"
What exactly is this supposed to mean? When have I contradicted myself or obfuscated the topic?
Sorry, Patrick, I don't mean to imply that I think you're arguing for fundamentalism.
But I don't think it's possible to understand the furore this professor's statement has stirred up without seeing it as part of a much wider argument. Creationism -- which is what's in question here, as it's about the only non-scientific explanation for where humans came from that is on the table -- is inextricably part of a religious agenda.
There is the question of whether it's possible to be a good doctor and not express a (conditional, scientific) belief in evolution -- my answer is blunt: "no". Maybe in 90% of the cases they deal with it will not be relevant, but sooner or later the creationist physician will stumble into something they cannot square with their world-view, and at that point the patients' interests will suffer (or the physician will have to compromise their beliefs -- which is less likely, if they've gotten that far).
Meanwhile ... it seems to me there is a specific political agenda attached to creationism and the religious beliefs that foster it. It is superstitious, anti-scientific, virulently opposed to the enlightment program, and socially traditionalist. I don't like it. (You guessed, didn't you?) This agenda doesn't really have a coherent name, but it's like enough to its 20th century predecessor to be giving me the creeps. (The predecessor: well, replace "creation science" with "racial science" and transplant it several time zones to the east and 70 years back in time and you won't go far wrong.) It was possible to be a Nazi and train as a doctor, but sooner or later a number of Nazi doctors found themselves taking actions that were dictated by their ideological beliefs rather than the interests of their patients (or test subjects). By the same token, I don't want anyone who lets their ideology or religion get in the way of the pragmatic scientific method to get anywhere near an operating theatre or a prescription pad.
I hope I haven't Godwinated this thread; but I don't see this as a matter of requiring ideological loyalty oaths from students. On the contrary, I think it's about ensuring that students forswear rigid ideological preconceptions before going forward to a position of power over other people.
And yes, Matt Sturges is right that Patrick and I are arguing at cross-purposes. My only excuse is that I can't evaluate this issue without imagining the effect such people would have in the real world. It's not an ethical point, to me; it's a pragmatic one, and a matter of literal life or death for these future doctors' patients.
People seem to be overlooking the fact that what is being denied here is not admission to graduate school, but a single personal recommendation from an individual. Are you really supposed to write glowing praises of someone you think is a complete nutwad, just because they can competently dissect a frog? Imagine the following letter:
Mary Kay excels in the fields of anatomy and toxicology, possibly as a result of her faith which informs her that animals do not have souls and thus do not suffer pain as humans feel it--not even if you spray oven cleaner in their eyes as she did during a summer internship at her family's cosmetics company. She did her thesis on this subject and plans, once obtaining a degree in medicine, to continue this work. She also read extensively outside of the required course materials, presenting research papers which proposed amazing alternate theories to many scientific mainstays. For example, the bones of dinosaurs were all the animals drowned in the Deluge. When I asked if God drowned the icthyosaurs, Mary Kay proposed a giant "Hand of God" holding their heads underwater, though admitted it was equally likely some had survived as the Loch Ness monster, stranded in mountain lakes once the Deluge receded. Her explanation for the discovery of the bones of pithecanthropus and other early hominid specimens was equally enlightening: "Satan created those and planted them for scientists to find." When asked about the discrepancies between the number of species on the planet and the listed seating capacity of the ark, Mary Kay proposed the medieval theory of spontaneous generation. "After all," she said, "God had to create some things later on. Like the AIDS virus. He created that because he hates homosexuals. Them and heroin addicts." When asked why the transmission rates were the lowest among lesbians, Mary Kay, never without an answer, responded, "God hates them too. He just hasn't come up with a plague for them yet." She also speculated that the high rate of transmission in Africa is a result of those of African ancestry being "the race of Caine," who God also hates. Rarely have I had such a bright and creative student, and I heartily recommend her for your program!
I don't understand the difficulty; the professor is refusing to recommend students who do not regard evolution as operatant, on the grounds that not regarding evolution as operant is evidence of willful self-delusion concerning facts.
That's a correct position from every angle I can see it from.
If the position was 'you have to profess atheism', I can see -- very easily! -- making strong complaints, but that's not what this is.
The creationist position *really* is indefensible on scientific grounds; truth isn't self evident, and neither was Natural Selection, but the accumulated body of evidence admits of only one interpretation of the correctness of natural selectection, the descent of man, and the cohesion of mechanism across living things.
For a professor to refuse to recommend someone who insists on dismissing that evidence without advancing a defensible alternate is only proper.
(*lots* of people have been looking for a defensible alternate for a long time; the success of a theory in the face of that is supposed to tell us something.)
Christine, Charlie: It's quite possible to believe in the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria populations without believing in the creation of new species through random genetic drift. No one claims that vancomycin-resistant staph is a new species, after all. There are a lot of creationists who will admit that population pressures create variations in genetic frequency; they just don't believe that such variations lead to the creation of new species.
I agree with Patrick that there are many branches of medicine which have at most a wave-at-a-distance relationship with evolutionary studies. The relationship between evolution and general practice medicine is not the relationship between an architect and the value of pi; it is much closer to the relationship between an architect and the Copenhagen Interpretation.
That said, I think that anyone who studies the evidence seriously and does not believe in the origin of species through modification by descent is being dishonest to himself. However, I can't see that the world is improved by asking such a person to lie about his personal beliefs to get a recommendation to graduate school, either in science or in medicine.
I used to spend far more time than was good for me arguing with creationists. Every Young Earth creationist I've ever talked to was pretty wildy -- even willfully -- ignorant about most of science. Some of them managed to be pretty sharp about other matters, but most of them were just dumb as stumps in general, the sort of folks you wouldn't expect to even get to the point of being serious candidates for a demanding technical field like medicine.
But I find that Old Earth creationists are more common nowadays. And some of them manage to know enough science that I wouldn't be outright dismayed to find them as practicing doctors.
And the bit about creationists having difficulty with bactieral antibiotic resistance is a red herring. Every even halfway intelligent creationists I've ever encountered has professed belief in "microevolution" -- evolution occuring below the level needed to bring about different "kinds" of creatures. (I've never been able to nail down exactly what level of taxonomy "kind" is.)
Kevin, tht's bllsht rgmnt. First, it's an unfair caricature. Second, whether someone believes (say) that God created man in His own image has Sweet Fanny Adams to do with whether they hold any of the rest of your litany of beliefs — the syllogism you're implying is faulty.
Two words: negative capability. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it,
. . .the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
If a student can reconcile a real understanding of evolutionary theory — which, I agree, should be an absolute requirement — with a belief in an omipotent, omnipresent (and, clearly, ineffable) God who all appearances to the contrary created man in His own image, I don't see why it's fair for Dr. Dini to second-guess that student. Nor is it fair to tar that student with the “complete nutwad” brush.
§
You know what this reminds me of, is watching Eric Raymond blaming China Miéville for Stalinism.
Chris Quinones asks: Are there anti-evolutionists who have no problem with saying that bacteria can evolve into drug-resistant strains while simultaneously denying that humans evolved from apes?
I believe that this is what is referred to as the microevolution/macroevolution split: one might have no problem with the idea that bacteria (for example) might adapt to a new environment (one heavily contaminated with vancomycin, say) or even that finches might radiate into a whole bunch of niches in observable time (indeed, being able to observe this is fundamental for those who hold to this split), while rejecting the notion that finches are a kind of dinosaur. That is, one accepts change within a narrow clade while rejecting the notion of a change in species.
But I didn't google this, so I could be wrong.
Charlie, you say "What I'm arguing against is a specific belief that evolution and scientific explanations of human origins are invalid, and I'm arguing against it because people who hold such beliefs almost invariably hold other, positively expressed beliefs, that will have detrimental effects on their patients if they ever practice as physicians".
If that's the case, then it seems to me it that it would be preferable to test for those other beliefs that will have detrimental effects on patients, and not use acceptance of evolution as an imprecise proxy. Using evolution as a proxy is manifestly unfair to those for whom disbelief in evolution does not go hand in hand with these other criteria of which you speak, and fails to account for those people who believe in evolution but would fail under the criteria you're worried about.
David Moles writes: "If a student can reconcile a real understanding of evolutionary theory — which, I agree, should be an absolute requirement — with a belief in an omipotent, omnipresent (and, clearly, ineffable) God who all appearances to the contrary created man in His own image, I don't see why it's fair for Dr. Dini to second-guess that student."
Dini isn't "second-guessing". In writing a recommendation, he's being asked to express confidence in a particular student's understanding and abilities. Why should he be compelled to recommend a student who does not believe in the underlying principles of the discipline?
Again, it's perfectly plausible that a student majoring in geology could make straight A's throughout their undergraduate work. If they then went to a geology professor and asked her for a recommendation, would it be discriminatory for her to ask "How old do you think the earth is?" If the student answered 10,000 years, would it then be discriminatory for that professor to refuse to write a recommendation, on the basis that they do not have confidence in that student's grasp of geology?
I think a lot of people have so far overlooked a key fact. That is, that this is a _biology_ professor recommending students based on their understanding of a biology course, not on the basis of whether or not they would make good doctors. It is not his job to consider whether or not students who might believe in creationism could become successful doctors, it is to determine whether or not they are competent biologists. It is the job of the professors at medical school to decide whether or not they would make good doctors.
And willfully disregarding a fact-based "theory" of evolution that is the cornerstone of biology, in my honest opinion, means that the individual has allowed their personnel beliefs to occlude material covered in the course. If you disregard evolution in a biology class, it is only right for the professor to decline to offer a recommendation based on this.
If I want a letter of recommendation from my old employer, his/her decision on whether or not to provide one is based solely on my job performance at that job, not on what job I am applying to now, or how badly I need this new job, or whether or not I am emotionally or dogmatically suited to take it. It is up to my prospective employer to consider these things.
This professor is writing a recommendation based on the student92s understanding of biology and its mechanisms. He is refusing to recommend students who have shown themselves to be incapable of fully comprehending said mechanisms. Whether or not creationists can be good doctors, and whether or not they should even be allowed to become doctors, is a tangential argument, but one that should have no factor in deciding whether a biology professor can choose to withhold a recommendation to a biology student based on their inability to fully comprehend biology.
Noel, you're asserting that anyone who believes in creation has failed to “fully comprehend biology.” Derek, you're asserting that if someone thinks the universe is 10,000 years old he has an inadequate grasp of geology. That attitude is unfair and condescending. You're assuming there's a logical flaw in their reasoning, when in fact they're just reasoning from different axioms. Don't assume that because someone disagrees with you it's because they've failed to understand your argument. If they can explain the evidence and the reasoning behind consensus geology and biology as well as any student who professes to “believe” in the consensus interpretation, and if they're willing to admit that the only reason they don't “believe” in the consensus interpretation is an a priori belief in an omnipotent creator God, and if they're willing to teach the consensus interpretation — then, more power to them!
Kevin Murphy: Well, that was startling. I can't help wishing you'd chosen another example.
Mary Kay--no, I hate pink
David Moles writes: "Derek, you're asserting that if someone thinks the universe is 10,000 years old he has an inadequate grasp of geology."
No. I'm asserting that a geology professor should not be obligated to express confidence in such a student.
That said, I have no problem ascribing to the assertion you stated. Are you seriously asserting that someone who thinks that the earth is 10K years old has "an adequate grasp of geology"?
Depending on their particular specialization, it may or may not make a practical difference. If the geologist is looking for petroleum deposits, their belief that the earth is 10K years old may not be a factor. If they're working a dig with a fellow paleotologist and they're asked to evaluate the age of a fossil based on the geological strata, they might very well estimate the age of a T. Rex fossil at 9,670 years old (or whenever the Great Deluge was supposed to have taken place).
The former might make a decent geologist. The second most certainly would not.
This biology professor doesn't want to lend his _personal recommendation_ for post-graduate study in biology-related fields to people who, in his opinion, are incompetent to pursue such studies due having a terminally flawed understanding of biology? What's the problem here? Why in the world should anyone be forced to give his or her personal recommendation to those who don't deserve it?
The only potential problem here is if the criterion for denying a recommendation has nothing to do with the 'topic' of the recommendation - such as, say, race, gender, etc. But a thorough understanding and appreciation of the theoretical underpinnings of modern biology is highly relevant to whether one can be said to be competent in biology. So what if the _reason_ someone's comprehension of the scientific method and theoretical biology is addled is _religion_? If I intentionally said that 2+2=5 on an arithmetic quiz, the fact that I was wrong is what matters. Arguing that I believe two and two make five because Five Is Holy in my religion would not and should not allow me to get away with my error.
I hardly think I ought to expect to get a bachelor's degree in physics or astronomy, let alone a recommendation from a competent physics professor if I think Aristotelian mechanics corresponds better than Newtonian mechanics to reality, and am coincidentally a Flat Earther who believes that Elvis Lives, and Has the Answer to Any Physics Question One Would Care to Ask, and am willing to go into all this at length if asked whether heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects in a vacuum. Claiming that these beliefs are all a part of some religion I hold dear shouldn't influence anything.
The situation in biology should not be any different.
(If anything, young-earth creationism is even worse than the above scenario, because it's not only demonstrably false but attempts to "poison the well of scientific discovery", as Reimer Behrends wrote above. The physics equivalent might be the conviction that invisible-yet-pink all-powerful sky-manatees carry planets in their orbits, and all that 'orbital mechanics' nonsense is just materialist propaganda trying to turn all of our children into atheists. [Won't you please think of the children?])
David Moles writes:
"...if someone thinks the universe is 10,000 years old he has an inadequate grasp of geology. That attitude is unfair and condescending. You're assuming there's a logical flaw in their reasoning, when in fact they're just reasoning from different axioms."
Well, sure, they could just be arguing from different axioms. The problem is that the axioms from which one can deduce that age for universe are not those of the scientific method. And what's being dicussed is a science class. Furthermore, unlike in math, where strictly speaking you can pull any set of self-consistent axioms out a bag and go a-theorem provin', you've got to ground your 'axioms' in physical reality in science.
And if someone can demonstrate a thorough grasp of evolution, and is willing to teach it, and all that, and still throws the whole thing out as being false because it goes against their religious beliefs, then that person is a hypocrite, and the professor involved is free to not wish to write letters of personal recommendation to hypocrites. Further, as others have written, a person who is willing to toss aside evidence whenever it conflicts with their religious convictions would be a dangerous doctor, and a poor scientist.
"Why in the world should anyone be forced to give his or her personal recommendation to those who don't deserve it?"
One of the things that has become appalling about this thread is the sheer amount of attitudinizing going on. Nobody, nobody in this thread has suggested that anyone should be "forced" to do any such thing. I specifically said I thought the charges of "religious discrimination" were bunk. But it's a lot of fun to strike a pose, isn't it?
Patrick Nielsen Hayden writes:
"Nobody, nobody in this thread has suggested that anyone should be "forced" to do any such thing. "
You're right. My apologies. I guess I was responding to the MSNBC article rather than anything written here, which is admittedly stupid, seeing as I'm responding here, and not on MSNBC.
David Moles writes: Noel, you're asserting that anyone who believes in creation has failed to 93fully comprehend biology.94 ... You're assuming there's a logical flaw in their reasoning, when in fact they're just reasoning from different axioms. Don't assume that because someone disagrees with you it's because they've failed to understand your argument.
Yes, I'm arguing that anybody who subscribes dogmatically to the "world is 10,000 years old, we aren't descended from apes, evolution is a crock" flavor of creationism isn't capable of properly understanding biology. I will concede that such an individual could comprehend the steps involved in the theory of evolution and then decide to reject it in favor of their previously held beliefs. However, that act itself, in my opinion, means they are ill suited to become biologists, or any type of scientist for that matter.
Science is about looking at facts, and building a theory that fits; connecting the dots. Believing in creationism is about belief, but not a belief in facts; rather, it is a belief in a gut feeling, or a leap of faith. Those people who reject evolution in favor of their previously held beliefs when those beliefs are not measurable in any quantifiable way, but are rater built upon superstition and tradition, are not the type of people who would make good biologists/scientists/doctors. If you want to assert that their belief holds some validity, fine; religious oriented belief is an argument that tends to polarize people, and I see no way I can convince somebody who asserts that one type of belief is equal to the other type of belief otherwise, just as nobody is going to convince me that rationally thought out, fact-based belief does not have an inherent edge (and if that's condescending, I can live with it). However, science _is_ about fact-based belief and using tangible evidence to create theorem, and no matter the merits of creationists' belief systems, the choice to ignore facts in favor of an inherent belief in creationism that has no hard evidence to support it makes somebody a person who cannot properly comprehend biology, someone who does not rely on the scientific method to reach their conclusions. Someone who should _not_ get a letter of recommendation from a biology professor since they are incapable of letting cold hard facts usurp their cherished beliefs.
Looks like Aleksey C. already said what I wanted to say in his second post while I was writing my response. :)
I'm with the biology professor, and not just for the obvious reason that evolution is true. It's because I'm sick and tired of those who keep on insisting that their own brand of creationist nonsense be the last word on the subject. It's about time someone stuck a finger in the eye of the religiously correct hypocrisy that elevates belief to the realm of fact, where it *doesn't* belong.
Is Dini's question, "How do you think the human species originated?" necessarily a slam-dunk easy one answer for the evolutionists? They might be on firmer ground, but only in the direction they argue. I would hope that Dini sweats all his prospectives equally hard. "evolution" isn't an answer or if it is "please explain" should be the next question, followed by lots of "whats the evidence for that?" You could run through a lot of geology, anthropology, zoology, biochemistry etc. to justify your answer and you should. There is a bit in Clifford Stoll's book, The Cuckoo's Egg, where he's describing his oral defense; one prof asks but one question "Why is the sky blue?" They finish about an hour later. This could be that kind of question. Hopefully, he makes everyone jump through the hoops.
On the other hand if he asked "Do you believe in an afterlife?" that would be irrelevant. In that case, lack of evidence is the only evidence there isn't an afterlife.
PNH: "Nobody, nobody in this thread has suggested that anyone should be 'forced' to do any such thing. I specifically said I thought the charges of 'religious discrimination' were bunk."
I guess this is part of the problem, Patrick. What are you suggesting? You seem to be saying that Dini's third guideline isn't discriminatory, but that it is inappropriate. If this is your position, I don't understand the reasoning behind it.
David Wilford writes:
"I'm with the biology professor, and not just for the obvious reason that evolution is true. It's because I'm sick and tired of those who keep on insisting that their own brand of creationist nonsense be the last word on the subject. It's about time someone stuck a finger in the eye of the religiously correct hypocrisy that elevates belief to the realm of fact, where it *doesn't* belong."
Let's look at Professor Dini's rule again:
If you set up an appointment to discuss the writing of a letter of recommendation, I will ask you: "How do you think the human species originated?" If you cannot truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation for admittance to further education in the biomedical sciences.
I take it, then, that David Wilford can imagine no reason that anyone might honestly decline Professor Dini's demand, save that they are advocates of "religiously correct hypocrisy" who "insist that their own brand of creationist nonsense be the last word on the subject."
That seems to be the view of several people posting here. If you aren't willing to salute Professor Dini's formulation without qualifications, you must be some kind of insane fundamentalist religioso. This view has been repeatedly expressed, often in language whose violence is exceeded only by its self-congratulation. I am passionately in favor of evolution, rationalism, and the scientific method and (do please note) I myself would have no problem assenting to Professor Dini's formulation, although given his tone I would be more inclined to tell him to put it in his hat. However, reading this thread has been a reminder that people don't have to be religious to be sanctimonious.
To answer Derek James's question: I think it's foolish, and invites criticism on a number of levels. I don't think it rises to the level of "discrimination" or creates a problem that demands a legal remedy.
I am all for educators in the sciences crusading, with all due passion, for skepticism, rationality, and the scientific method. I am against making these things into idols--into a ring which we then demand our supplicants kiss.
Well, people often have a right to be rude. That's because we don't have a right not to be offended, and the merely rude is protected, not protected FROM.
But they don't have a right to be rude in your living room, unless you choose to let them. That, among other reasons, is why deletions and disemvowellings from Electrolite comment threads are not censorship.
By the same token, I think the professor has a right to make that stipulation. He has a right to recommend or not recommend whoever he likes, for any reason he cares to apply. And I have a perfect right to think he's a bigot, which I do.
I think Creationism is stupid. I have my own prejudices against people who profess it. When they claim it's "scientific" I laugh them to scorn.
But it's a far cry from "the human species was created by God" to "all these little microorganisms must have come from the Garden of Eden, in exactly the way they exist now." Someone could believe in the Eden myth and yet understand that things have evolved since then. They could believe in the "God made everything look just as if it evolved to fool us" stuff, and yet have a good grasp of what the "fake" evidence is and what it "means."
In Linguistics, we're taught to distinguish between the synchronic (right now) and the historical (over time). A related distinction: the ORIGIN of the human species is not the same as its ONGOING process of change. I haven't met a person who believes in Creationism and also understands why most Europeans are immune to leprosy, but it doesn't strike me as an impossible combination.
I think the professor's test fails to screen out people who are willing to lie to get a recommendation. It also screens out people who might make good doctors. His test is IMO a bad idea; in fact it strikes me as unscientific. If he's really trying to screen religious people out of the medical profession, then he's also a bad person IMO, but that's neither here nor there.
He has a right to be unscientific. He has a right to have bad ideas and apply them. He has a right to be a bad person if he wants to be. A recommendation from a professor is not a right, and there's no case to be made against him by anyone. (I wouldn't invite him to dinner.)
The religious right would be behind a professor who refused to recommend people who were NOT Christian. Certainly they didn't protest when Margot Adler was locked out of the running for host of All Things Considered back in the 1980s solely because she's Wiccan. Therefore their protesting this professor on the grounds of "religious freedom" is pure hypocrisy. If you truly believe in religious freedom you defend those you disagree with as well as those you agree with.
You don't have to write them recommendations, though.
As a P.K., I've been dealing with creationism all my life, one way and another. The depths of silliness and ignorance to which it can fall is vastly underestimated. The heights of intellectual dishonesty often indulged in by the creationism "theorists" are truly dizzying. I despise them.
I don't despise people who believe in the divine creation of the universe, though. One can easily be a creationist without going anywhere near the crap misnamed "creation science." Dr. Dini is demanding a statement of belief, no less intrusive and inappropriate as if he had been demanding that his students confessed that they did believe that God had created the world in seven days. The question that he asks is, as Patrick pointed out, a loyalty oath.
As was pointed out earlier, there is a clear division between science and religion. Science must be disprovable. Religion cannot be. To demand that someone reject the divine creation of the universe is tantamount to requiring that someone reject the belief that Christ died for our sins. (Well, probably not mine, but moving right along) Religions have miracles. They just do. Whether it is a little one, like the loaves and fishes, or the biggest of them all, the creation of the universe, these things fit into a completely different framework from that of scientific inquiry. They are, by definition, actions outside the natural, explicable world. If they were explicable, _they wouldn't be miracles_. When you argue that no one who believes in the divine creation of the universe can possible by a biologist, you are claiming that no one who believes in any religion whatsoever can be a biologist. That is surely nonsense.
Stephen Jay Gould argued repeatedly that there was no reason for science and religion to conflict. I agree with him. Science answers the question how. How did man come to be? How do bacteria become resistant? How is it that birds can fly? Religion answers the question why. Why was I born, why do I die, and why do I spend so much of the intervening time wearing a digital watch? Religion has often attempted to answer the why questions with how answers, which provides answers as bankrupt as trying to answer how questions with why answers. I have a friend who, without the benefit of even a rudimentary understanding of quantum mechanics, has founded her cause for life and happiness on the uncertain nature found in said physics. Needless to say, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Quantum mechanics is totally cool, but it doesn't really provide much of a deep, spiritual reason to live. Nor does the story of Persephone and Pluto do much to explain how it is that it is winter for part of the year and summer for part of the year. Of, if you want a Christian example, how it is that rainbows come to be.
As science learns to answer more and more of the how questions, religion has had to retreat from trying to control the answers to how things happened. We are still left with the why questions. The answer that God created me and loves me is one answer to the question why am I here. Evolution can't really answer that question. How I got here starts way back at the big bang, and the number of random changes since then are infinite. Here I am, and evolution doesn't explain why, just how. I think that's just especially keen, and I find a certain sense of wonder and connection because of it, but that's me imposing my perception on a random process, not the process itself.
It is not necessary to reconcile a seven day creation model with the scientific viewpoint. They aren't about the same things, they aren't even on the same plane of reality. One of the most despicable things that the Fundamentalists do is try to drag God himself, down to this earth, to tie him down to the physical reality that we exist in. They insist on 7 24-hour days (even though the sun doesn't exist until, what, the third day?) and only plead the ineffability of God when they're losing the argument. The specific goal of Fundamentalism is to literally treat all of the bible as literal that can possibly be treated as literal. I would think that it would be very hard for a Fundamentalist Evangelical to be a decent scientist. They spend too much time tying kinks in their brains, trying to reconcile a system constructed entirely out of absolutes. (I wonder how they are at maths.)
The argument that someone who doesn't believe in evolution can't be a good doctor suggests to me that the people who make that argument don't spend much time around doctors. There are doctors and then there are doctors and then there are research doctors. The research doctors need to be able to believe in evolution, though there's no reason why that belief can't co-exist with a belief in divine creation. Your average, family practice, pretty good general doctor, though, is largely a walking reference library. Medical school is agonizing years of learning lists. List all the bones in the human body. List all the symptoms that this disease can cause. List the major organs and their function. List all the drugs that can be used to treat this disease... They don't teach all that much about how systems interact. A friend of mine said that she had a terrible time in medical school because she couldn't memorize lists, so she had to reason out answers based on what she knew of biology and anatomy.
When you go into see a doctor, he's not going to do a careful, scientific examination of you, he's going to go down his flow chart/check list, decide what it is you most likely have, and treat that. If that doesn't work, then he'll have you come back and he'll treat something else. If he's good, he'll arrange the therapies in such a way that they rule out possibilities if they don't work, but that's still just flow chart work. Even a young earth creationist can do flow chart work.
I worked in the Bone Marrow Transplant clinic for a couple of months. The transplant specialist doctor rarely looked at the medical chart or slides or films prior to talking with the patient. Just like my regular doctor, he'd cart them in there with him, and page through the chart, asking questions that you've answered a hundred times before, including just a half hour ago when his nurse went through an H & P. These patients have terminal, complicated diseases. But their entire chart is very rarely combed over, and considered as a whole. The doctors are good at what they do, but I hardly see how a belief in the possibility of miracles would make them worse doctors. Nor better. They do this because they're heavily scheduled, and because this is the way they are trained to treat patients. It even, for the most part, works.
Remember being a sophomore, and asking late at night if maybe the universe had just been created a second ago, with all its history and past and so on. How would you know? How could you check? Was it being re-created every second? A nice, eerie, pointless thing to worry at in the middle of the night. In the end, we always concluded that it made no difference. It was a totally untestable theory, and just at the moment it felt like we were and had been here, so we might as well behave like it. Believing in creationism and evolution at the same time is a little like that. God created the universe with all its history and past and proof of the big bang and evolution. The fact that God went to all this trouble suggests that he means for you to do something useful with it. Like treat it like it exists. You don't have to lose any of your scientific principles to allow as how, just maybe, the universe is only a second old and you don't and can't and won't ever know it. The universe works in certain, predictable ways unless God intervenes. You're not God, and it's not your job to figure out how to get him to intervene. Your job is to understand what's there under your nose, and not worry about whether or not there's some weird solipsist trick being played on you behind your back. Refusing to believe in evolution is like refusing to belief in gravity. God _can_ save you when you step off a cliff, but he probably won't. Evolution might be false, but you'll make endless errors if you treat it that way. You don't have to lose your faith to accept that God can do anything, including create evolution if he wants to. The two are in totally separable worlds.
In case you need to know, and it's not clear by now, I was raised a Fundamentalist and am now a militant agnostic.
Xopher said:
I haven't met a person who believes in Creationism and also understands why most Europeans are immune to leprosy, but it doesn't strike me as an impossible combination.
I have. Any number of them. Real serious, scary 24 hour 7 day creationist types. The thing they really gag at is speciation. Anything up to then they can usually stomach.
First, I am in general agreement with the points Charlie Stross and Reimer Behrends make.
There is a fundamental difference between a belief held in a religious or political context, and a belief held in science. In religion, you are free to believe whatever you want, but in science you have to back up your belief with scientific arguments, and, as Mr. Behrends already said, give up beliefs that are contradicted by the evidence and thus falsified.
This is a test of whether a student accepts the scientific method and is willing to give up his *scientific* beliefs in light of contradicting evidence, not about religious beliefs. And anybody who seeks a career in medicine (which is, after all, a science and in which she could strive for a career as a researcher) has to be willing to accept scientific methodology. This seems to me absolutely necessary, if science is to mean anything at all.
Let me also take Brian Ledford's point a bit further: Prof. Dini does not actually ask students to profess a belief in evolution - and it's remarkable that the debate has been framed around this statement.
He only asks them to explain how they think humans originated, *and then back it up by scientific arguments*. Now, that is indeed a scientific question, to which a scientific answer can be given. It's not a question about religious beliefs. Somebody who believes in creation is free to argue this on scientific grounds, if he can. I believe it is a fair question, and highly relevant to the competence of the person seeking a recommendation. If she cannot argue her belief in that question, or persists in a belief on a matter of science that cannot be reconciled with the facts, than that certainly does not merit a recommendation for a career in science.
If this is indeed what Professor Dini is doing, the English language offers many fine tools for clarifying the matter.
There are fundamentalist animal breeders and plant breeders as well as fundamentalist doctors and nurses; the observable fact of differential inheritance simply doesn't have to lead automatically to the idea of variation without potential limit (which is more or less what macro-evolution does). There are some brilliant fundamentalist telcom engineers - a lot of the advances in miniaturization of broadcasting gear for remote transmission owe their existence to folks televising evangelism crusades and mega-church gatherings, for instance, and doing that stuff does mean working routinely with quantum mechanics.
Patrick touched briefly on the point that a lot of medical care for the poor and needy comes from people of non-evolutionist outlooks. The Roman Catholic church runs more AIDS hospices than anyone else. And they provide some great care, and routinely take part in research on various aspects of the problem Likewise with a lot else. Acceptance of macro-evolution is demonstrably neither necessary nor sufficient to be a skilled and humane provider of medical care.
As for Dr. Dini in particular...I would never say he cannot do what he's doing. I say that he ought not do it. Since it's a matter of public information, I - and the rest of us - are commenting. This is what life in civil society is all about. And since I'm unlikely to ever need a recommendation from him, I'm using his stance as a springboard for my own thinking about these issues in general. What standards would I like to apply, and why? How do I feel about others' proposed standards, and why? All of this requires some criticism as well as some praise, and as long as we keep away from saying "that stance ought to be prohibited", none of this is a threat to others' power of choice.
I'm fond of the Phillips-head phrasal adverb.
Looking over *all* of Prof. Dini's website, I admit that he indeed does make clear which answer he expects. But then, I myself do not think that, on purely scientific grounds and weighing all the evidence, you could possibly reach any other conclusion than that, so far, evolution is the best theory we have. Adhering to scientific methods, there is no way to get around this.
But let me reiterate: He does not ask a student what religious beliefs he holds, and whether he believes in God and creation, which would be clearly improper. He asks a perfectly legitimate, scientific question, and expects the answer that is generally accepted in the scientific community. If somebody wants to give a different answer, one that goes against the accepted theory, then he should better have good scientific arguments for it - which, for all I know, do not exist. Professing a religious belief as an answer to a question clearly in the realm of science misses the mark.
I think the problem here arises exactly because a religious answer clashes with a (from my point of view) scientific question. Creationists *want* to give a religious answer to the question of the origin of humans. So from their point of view, the question itself is indeed a *religious* question, because it has an answer given by their religious beliefs. Therefore, in their view, asking the question is highly improper.
On the other hand, a scientist asking the question seeks a scientific answer, which for him lies entirely in the domain of the biological sciences and does not touch on personal religious beliefs. He does not regard this as a question about religion, and therefore not as improper.
I believe that this conflict is likely at the root of the discussion.
Bertram Klein wrote:
There is a fundamental difference between a belief held in a religious or political context, and a belief held in science. In religion, you are free to believe whatever you want, but in science you have to back up your belief with scientific arguments, and, as Mr. Behrends already said, give up beliefs that are contradicted by the evidence and thus falsified.
This is exactly my point. A belief in an omnipotent, ineffable God is not falsifiable. (An omnipotent God can fake whatever evidence He wants.) All that scientific argument can do is apply Occam's Razor, and say that an omnipotent, ineffable God is not necessary to explain the evidence. (Which happens to be my personal answer to the “Is there a God?” question, but that's neither here nore there.)
I don't think that to do good science requires a belief even in Occam's Razor, though; only the ability and willingness to wield it.
I don't think I agree entirely with Bertram Klein here:
In religion, you are free to believe whatever you want, but in science you have to back up your belief with scientific arguments, and, as Mr. Behrends already said, give up beliefs that are contradicted by the evidence and thus falsified.
As religious history has shown, very often people are not free to believe whatever they want, even in societies which never knew the first bit of science, and religion formed the entirety of the culture. But that doesn't mean people couldn't argue about the merits of certain scientifically unfalsifiable religious beliefs as they existed. And argue about them rationally.
Saint Augustine's science, such as it was, was pretty poor. But his intellectual dismemberment of astrology is no less convincing 1600 years later.
I know... this is probably nitpickingly obvious....
Mary Kay--
Ack! Sorry about the choice of name for the example. I was thinking back to the old Bloom County gag, not you.
David--
Apart from using Mary Kay's name, it was a perfectly fair characterization. Every last one of those ideas was stated to me at some time in my life by some stripe of Evangelical Christian, usually as some part of a "Creation Science" debate. Animals having no souls, so it's okay to torture them? Check. Dinosaurs drowning in the flood? Check. Satan creating all fossil evidence as giant Piltdown Man hoax? Check. God creating AIDS? Check. God planning something for lesbians? Check. Black people "race of Caine"? Check.
All I did was string them together and put them in the mouth of a single character. I have not made up any "Creation Science" that Creation Scientists haven't made up themselves.
Though I never did get an answer when I asked Brother Bob, "If hurting animals isn't a sin, since they don't have souls and don't feel 'real pain,' and God let's us do whatever we want in Heaven, so long as it's not sinful, if I go to Heaven, do I get to torture a cat with a fork?"
If they can't even answer simple theological questions based on their statements, why should we let Creation Scientists answer scientific ones?
To me, the point is simple. Dr. Dini is asking this.
"I am a scientist. You are asking me for my recommendation as a scientist. Therefore, I ask this: Do you accept the Scientific Method, even though it may be in conflict with your beliefs, desires and perceptions? Do you accept that you always have to go by the facts, the data, and the results, even though that may go contrary to all you know, all you've researched, and all you belive?"
This is the *soul* of Science. Nothing is infallable. Anything can be disproved. Heisenberg shattered the idea of a completely knowable universe. Faraday shows the connection between electricity and magentism, giving us, well, our entire society. But, other greats are proven wrong. Newtonian mechanics cannot describe the orbit of Mercury. Stephen Hawking has disproved most of what we thought we knew about black holes -- and, in the process, disproved his own doctoral thesis! For this, he was not disparged as someone who can't stand by thier own opinions, but hailed as one of the great theoretical physicist of our time.
And that's the core of Dr. Dini's "loyalty oath." Will you accept the knowledge found, and extend on it -- even if it disproves your longest held beliefs in how the world works? If not, he, as a scientist, will not recommend you as a scientist.
Good on him.
There are two things about the current state of medicine that make me wish more professors asked for proof of ability to understand scientific reasoning before recommending would-be medical students.
The first is the sheer volume of nonsense medicine out there right now. It's popping up at an amazing rate, and much of it is backed up by "studies" in the loosest sense. I want a doctor who isn't going to be fooled into thinking testimonials are science and start recommending ingestible magnets (to name an oddball treatment I haven't seen yet, but expect to any day) to me.
The second reason is the rapid proliferation of new treatments, medications, etc. I want to be able to walk into my doctor's office and know that I'm talking to someone who knows whether there is now something that can be done for my condition (and under what circumstances it's mostly likely to be effective). I want someone who isn't going to recommend expensive and invasive treatment (or even testing) for something that responds to simple exercise.
In short, I want someone who can put aside whatever their feelings may be on a subject in favor of scientific proof. And I want someone capable of distinguishing what constitutes that proof.
Admittedly, this may rule out some of the better "caregivers." I wouldn't be surprised if this type of dispassion came at the expense of forming good relationships with patients. But I suspect that we are moving toward a medical model that separates the two more thoroughly, and I think that may not be all to the bad.
I think it would also be fair to say that the "affirm" portion of the pledge is the sticky bit. Unfortunately, in adding the affirm Dini is merely making explicit what is implicit in any scientific discussion. Would it be more polite to leave it implied? If he simply said "Explain the origin of the human species" and left off the belligerent affirm and skipped the paragraph on evolution, would that be better? Personally, I'd like the heads up if I'm going in for a recommendation. It's probably a awkward way of emphasizing that science and medicine are always about what "I" think, but it is worth emphasizing, especially to an MD.
Brian
I like Erik V. Olson's approach just fine. It's a pity that Professor Dini's little game of passive-aggressive baiting doesn't much resemble it.
Here's the difference: Erik's approach is designed to crusade for the truth. Dini's approach is designed to sniff out heretics. Guess which one I prefer.
I'm sorry, I can't accept the word 'heretics' -- without falling into the trap that creation scientist love to set.
It's not heresey. Nothing is being asked *on faith*.
Or, to turn the question around -- Is it appropriate for a professor of Catholic Theology to ask if those wanting a recommendation for ordiation as priests in the church if they belive in the Trinity, the Nicine Creed, and so forth?
Would everyone agree that a person certified as a medical doctor ought to believe that a good practictioner of clinical medicine ought to strive to keep patients alive and regard a dead patient as, well, dead?
Yes? Then would we all be okay with Professor Dini asking potential recommendees, "When a human being dies and is duly certified as such, can he later come back to life after a period of many hours of being clinically dead," and challenging anyone who answers by referring to a belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to offer scientific proof for their claims? Would we be okay if Professor Dini asked a Buddhist or Hindu to scientifically justify a belief in reincarnation before he'd hand out a recommendation?
Why is Dini's actual question any different? Is it categorically impossible that someone who believes in creationism (which, to make clear, I think is a stupid belief) could make a good medical doctor? If so, how do we account for the number of practicing MDs who profess to be fundamentalists and seem to perform their jobs just fine?
I can see denying a particular individual a recommendation if you judge that they simply will not cope well with medical school based on your observations of *prior* inability to cope with biomedical knowledge because of strong beliefs that contradict it. I might refuse to recommend for medical school if they had previously and regularly professed that their convictions made it impossible for them to process and use biomedical knowledge effectively. In my own context, I might deny someone a recommendation for a doctoral program in history if they had consistently performed poorly in my history and cultural studies courses due to an intense belief in solipsism and a consequent belief that the past did not happen or is not knowable. But I might go ahead and counsel them to consider a Ph.D in philosophy or a few other fields if I thought they were otherwise bright and capable.
But this would be about my observations of actual capabilities, not on a canned question that had one right answer. That's a lousy way to run the recommendation railroad regardless of what the subject of the loyalty oath might be.
Timothy Burke: yes, exactly, and well said.
Erik, O buddy, bitter and twisted sysadmin, font of technical knowledge and damn good soundman, too. I am not suggesting that scientific knowledge is metaphysically equivalent to religious faith, so set your mind at ease.
Your attempt to "turn the question around", however, founders on the fact that the job of the working scientist is not to proclaim or bear witness to the truth of the scientific method, but rather, simply, to practice it.
And by the way, before we drag the Catholic Church any further into this food fight, we might want to note that it has no bone to pick with Darwin. Indeed, for all of Rome's many sins, this is a subject on which it's been pretty sensible. "Revelation is debased when it is considered another source of information that science is capable of getting on its own." Now pass up the *cable*, if you know what I mean, and nobody gets hurt.
What I think:
1. Hardline dogmatism on the part of literalist creationists begets hardline dogmatism in their opponents. Acknowledging that this reaction is perhaps inevitable doesn't mean we can't deplore individual instances of it. Patrick was deploring one such instance. He's against litmus tests and loyalty oaths in general.
2. The lawsuit is a put-up job. Any student who needs a recommendation from a member of the Biology faculty at Texas Tech, but whose personal beliefs rule out getting a recommendation from Professor Dini, can instead go to Randy D. Allen, Robert J. Baker, She4n Bilimoria, Richard L. Blanton, Robert D. Bradley, John Burns, James A. Carr, Ronald K. Chesser, Nathan L. Collie, Llewellyn D. Densmore, Richard Deslippe, Sandra Diamond, Lauren Gollahon, Candace H. Haigler, Caryl E. Heintz, Lewis I. Held, A. Scott Holaday, Marilyn A. Houck, R. C. Jackson, Randall M. Jeter, Clyde Jones, Mark A. McGinley, Nancy McIntyre, Robert D. Owen, Nick Parker, Reynaldo Patif1o, Carleton Phillips, Calvin A. Porter, Brian Reilly, M. Kent Rylander, Michael J. D. San Francisco, David Schmidly, Kenneth Schmidt, Richard E. Strauss, Bernard Tandler, David T. Tissue, Michael R. Willig, John C. Zak, or Hong Zhang.
3. "Micah Spradling", the student who brought the complaint against Professor Dini, is obviously a leftover bad guy from an Ayn Rand novel whom the Liberty Legal Institute picked up on the cheap from a literary surplus catalogue.
4. Any fundie who professes to believe that God made the universe and everything therein, including its physical laws, yet thinks it's an affront to religion and the dignity of God's creation to believe that man might be subject to some of that universe's subtler laws, is not thinking about the matter very hard.
5. It likewise betrays a weak understanding of God's ways for a Christian to argue that the moral status of human beings would be diminished if we were found to have been brought into the world via any means less simple and obvious than play-dough modeling.
6. Evolution is another one of those quasi-issues that kicks up vast amounts of dust and feathers as it's passing by, but doesn't change a thing.
I like the "are you an Ayn Rand character" litmus test, come to think of that. Anyone who passes is obviously unfit for whatever it is.
Erik: I think that you have missed Patrick's point with an audible whoosh. The question you put into Dr. Dini's mouth is a question about science. Patrick clearly believes that the question Dini is actually asking precisely is hunting for heretics--that is, asking people to recite their agreement with an article of faith.
It is possible to disagree with this point. But you completely failed to engage it.
Incidentally, after reading Dr. Dini's own statement on the subject, I'm more of the opinion that he is asking a question about the student's understanding of science rather than of scientific dogma.
Of course, if the student was capable of getting an A in Professor Dini's class (another requirement before he will write a recommendation), one has to wonder how it matters a gnat's ass-hair difference what the student "really" believes about speciation. Dini's courses are on general topics in biology; if a student has managed to get an A in Dini's class, she has presumably already demonstrated an understanding of the mechanisms of speciation to Dr. Dini's satisfaction.
What I want to know is, how come he doesn't know this after having students in class? If it's truly a matter of finding out whether they have a Grasp Of Science, why doesn't a semester or more of interacting with them give him that information anyway?
Lydy-
Where did requiring people to deny the divine creation of the universe come into it? That isn't what the good professor is doing. Nor is he claiming that you can't simultaneously believe in evolution and creation. You yourself say that there's a lot of room within the broader notion of creationism. What Prof. Dini is doing is testing to see if students believe in creation to the *exclusion* of believing in evolution. Whether their belief in creation causes them to discount the scientific account of human evolution. He's not asking them to swear a loyalty to science over religion, he's asking them to acknowledge that science has proper domain over the how questions. I see that you and P. are reacting to the word affirm, but I think at worst it's an unfortunate word choice.
One of the basics of doing any science competently is a willingness to discard prior explanations if they are sufficiently incompatible with the preponderance of facts. Another basic to doing science is the assumption that science is capable of providing explanations for the phenomena it seeks to account for. Someone who is unwilling to release the privileged status of certain hypotheses, who will not grant that a science has explanatory power with regard to one of its most basic tenets is not a competent scientist. That person is essentially denying biology dominion over the answering of how questions, to put in in your own terms. That is anti-scientific on the very face of it. Anti-scientism in a scientist seems like a pretty good litmus test of not being competent enough to merit recommendation.
"When you go into see a doctor, he's not going to do a careful, scientific examination of you, he's going to go down his flow chart/check list, decide what it is you most likely have, and treat that. If that doesn't work, then he'll have you come back and he'll treat something else. If he's good, he'll arrange the therapies in such a way that they rule out possibilities if they don't work, but that's still just flow chart work. Even a young earth creationist can do flow chart work."
Yes, but a young earth creationist is a person in the mental habit of ruling out certain hypotheses out as untrue *prior* to testing. Which means that there can be sections of that flow chart which will never be entered, a priori. Or even perceived, if the mental compartmentalization of the doctor in question is sufficent. There are other reasons why doctors reject hypotheses out of hand, and they are equally bad. But recommending someone for medical school who is already showing signs of rejecting empirical hypotheses out of hand seems like a bad practice.
Also, arguing that there are subspecialties which need no acquaintance with evolution isn't much use when there is no guarantee that the student in question will pick one of them. Letters of recommendation don't come with caveats -- Oh, he's a swell student, unless you let him specialize in epidemiology. A recommendation is essentially a blanket endorsement, or it isn't much of a recommendation. I suppose Prof. D. could be less honest and simply write weak and undermining recommendations to such students, but I don't think that would be better.
"What Prof. Dini is doing is testing to see if students believe in creation to the *exclusion* of believing in evolution. Whether their belief in creation causes them to discount the scientific account of human evolution. He's not asking them to swear a loyalty to science over religion, he's asking them to acknowledge that science has proper domain over the how questions."
As I said above, if Professor Dini indeed wishes to convey all of these fine and admirable nuances, the language affords him a wide variety of ways in which to do so with clarity and vigor. So far, it ain't happening.
"I see that you and P. are reacting to the word af
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