Is it in any way unreasonable for a scientist to insist that the people he recommends for scientific pursuits believe in the scientific method?
Evolution is one of the basic notions in biology. I don't know why fundies can’t get it through their heads that evolution is a description of the mechanism of creation. Science provides a description of how, not why, things occur. F=m*a is a description of dynamics, it tells one nothing of why a force acting on a given mass produces an acceleration, it merely describes the phenomenon and allows one to predict motion.
If a student does not understand what science is, and how science is done, there is no reason to recommend that student as a scientist. If you don't play by the rules of science you are not doing science - you may be getting correct answers, or you may not - but you simply are not doing science.
Our tax dollars are being spent investigating a professor for exercising his first amendment rights (that just happen to conflict with the religious views of John Ashcroft). Considering that Osama is still unaccounted for, I'd say this isn't the best utilization of departmental resources.
:m: Peace.
Does asking someone to "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to the question of how the human species originated" mean they are forced to believe it? I can think of many things I studied in college that I didn't necessarily agree with. Isn't that the point of education - to take in the most information possible in order to make informed decisions?LUBBOCK, Tex., Feb. 2 — A biology professor who insists that his students accept the tenets of human evolution has found himself the subject of Justice Department scrutiny.
Prompted by a complaint from the Liberty Legal Institute, a group of Christian lawyers, the department is investigating whether Michael L. Dini, an associate professor of biology at Texas Tech University here, discriminated against students on the basis of religion when he posted a demand on his Web site that students wanting a letter of recommendation for postgraduate studies "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to the question of how the human species originated.
"The central, unifying principle of biology is the theory of evolution," Dr. Dini wrote. "How can someone who does not accept the most important theory in biology expect to properly practice in a field that is so heavily based on biology?" (Full text here - free registration required)
Evolution is one of the basic notions in biology. I don't know why fundies can’t get it through their heads that evolution is a description of the mechanism of creation. Science provides a description of how, not why, things occur. F=m*a is a description of dynamics, it tells one nothing of why a force acting on a given mass produces an acceleration, it merely describes the phenomenon and allows one to predict motion.
If a student does not understand what science is, and how science is done, there is no reason to recommend that student as a scientist. If you don't play by the rules of science you are not doing science - you may be getting correct answers, or you may not - but you simply are not doing science.
Our tax dollars are being spent investigating a professor for exercising his first amendment rights (that just happen to conflict with the religious views of John Ashcroft). Considering that Osama is still unaccounted for, I'd say this isn't the best utilization of departmental resources.
:m: Peace.