1. Richard Dawkins at the Edinburgh Book Festival

Comment #65769 by ceebuler on August 26, 2007 at 12:02 pm

The article says that Dawkins believes the reason that the Danish cartoons were not published was out of prudence, not cowardice. It doesn't say that he endorses this position! The people "disappointed" with Dawkins' position on this issue fail to see that he does not, according to the article at least, take a position on this issue.
CB

2. Medicine without Evolution Make Sense?

Comment #32765 by ceebuler on April 18, 2007 at 7:59 am

As a medical student in Toronto, I can attest that most medical students here passively "believe in" evolution, but very few have learned much about it and even fewer think it is relevant to our education. I was dumbfounded when I discovered that a close friend of mine in the class is an Orthodox Christian who believes the literal truth of the bible, including the age of the earth, etc. How could he believe this and still be a competent doctor?

Well, I must say that I think he will be a good doctor; he will know how to recognize and treat diseases. But he won't have an understanding of the ultimate REASONS these diseases exist. He won't appreciate the richness of understanding that evolutionary theory brings to the discipline.

I became interested in medicine after reading the Selfish Gene in grade 12, which catapulted me into science and subsequently medicine. I have encountered physician-professors who have equally been influenced by this book (including one who used memes as an analogy to explain viruses, rather than vice versa, which was quite interesting - and a little confusing for the majority of students who have never heard of memes).

Evolutionary theory is absolutely relevant (though not essential) to medical education. Just today, in lecture, a professor mentioned how certain clotting disorders (eg: Factor V Leiden) that leave a surprisingly large proportion of the population prone to develop fatal blood clots were probably favoured by natural selection because they reduced the risks of bleeding during childbirth. Nowadays bleeding is less of a problem than clotting, but this wasn't the case in our evolutionary past. But my creationist buddy will just remember the details of Factor V Leiden; he'll remember the proximal causes of the disorder (ie: a gene mutation...) and he'll ignore the ultimate explanation. It's a shame.

CB