On April 23, the Bush administration retreated from another clash with academicians, as the Justice Department quietly dropped an investigation of a university professor who was active in promoting Darwin’s theory about the evolution of life. It became possible after the Texas Tech University teacher of biology, Michael Dini, slightly changed his stance on issuing letters of recommendation which would enable students to join medical school.
The inquiry was initiated after a student in Dini’s class in Lubbock, Texas complained that he did not hope to obtain a formal recommendation for studying medicine because he believed that humans were created by nature while his teacher did not like his opinion about creation.
According to rules initially set by Dini, these letters were given to those who got at least one “A” grade in his class, knew him personally through joint work, and could “truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer” to the question: “How do you think the human species originated?”
The last requirement was immediately interpreted by critics as a concealed attempt to discriminate against religious students who believed in creationism — a transgression that could not be tolerated in a state-funded educational institution.
But the Justice Department, already under criticism for its conservative agenda, apparently had little appetite for launching another battle between liberals and religious right-wingers over the origins of human life.
The Justice Department accepted a small concession from Dini, who agreed to drop his demand that students “affirm” their personal belief in evolution but he continued to insist that they be able to “explain” Darwin’s theory.
Otherwise, the Darwinist professor would not agree.
“If you set up an appointment to discuss the writing of a letter of recommendation, I will ask you: ‘How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species?’” Dini states on his updated web site. “If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation.”
He insists that modern medicine is rooted in biology with the theory of evolution as its “unifying principle.”
“Someone who ignores the most important theory in biology cannot expect to properly practice in a field that is now so heavily based on biology,” the professor points out.
The question about how human beings came into being has turned intoa dispute ever since he began thinking about it. The word evolution was first used in 1647 as part of new biological science which promised advances in a new direction. It became more debatable in 1859 when Charles Darwin came out with his work “On the origin of species by means of natural selection”. The term Darwin used was biological evolution, which means “descent with modification,” which is precisely the simple definition of a human being’s rise to his present form by the process of evolution. This leads to the simple question “ how did life begin on the Earth?” Which is specifically related to the question of how the Universe came into being. Which is ofcourse supported by scientific evidence. By observing the minutest things in the Universe, today’s scientist agrees that from the Big Bang’s first moment evolution has remained a constant process. The evolutionists estimate the age of the Universe to be between 10 to 15 billion years. Our star, the Sun is comparatively young, its age has been estimated at five billion years.
Scientists have been intensely studying how the Earth came into being, followed by the creation of life, which found a hospitable environment for living organisms. Biological evolution suggests the Earth to be 4.54 billion years old. Early traces of bacteria came into being 3.5 billion years ago when the hard crust began taking on a firm shape. Traces of these organisms are found in life in the form of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). They suggest that “... the offsprings of these organisms differ from one another and from their parents in ways that are heritable — that is they can pass on the differences genetically to their offsprings. Furthermore, organisms in nature typically produce more offsprings that can survive and reproduce given the constraints of food, space and other environmental resources. If a particular offspring has a trait that gives it an advantage in a particular environment, that organism will be more likely to survive and pass on these traits to the next generation.
As differences accumulate over generations, populations of organisms diverge from their ancestors.” The proponents of evolution argue that if some gene is not needed it will gradually either diminish or vanish and another faculty needed to exist will be inturn enhanced. This is called genetic mutation. With the passage of time, the evolutionists argue, this genetic variation produces adaptive change. This is how the modern man evolved to his present form 0.15 million years ago, suggesting that the Australopithecene — the ancestor of present man — came into being four million years ago while the early apes rose to their feet 25 million years ago, according to biological dating. Dispute over the teaching of evolution arose in 1968 in the United States, but it did not generate enough heat. In 1987, the US Supreme Court became the centre of a long debate. A student sought the court for relief stating that studying the theory of evolution goes against his beliefs and that the teacher should therefore not be allowed to teach it to him. The court after hearing the long debates from both sides gave the verdict: “Creationism is religion, not science and cannot be advocated in public school classrooms.”
Many educational institutions followed the verdict but both schools of thought still continue to exchange their claims. The evolutionists claim that if we can teach physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences, why cannot the theory of evolution be taught as a science. If we observe the galaxies to be receding at a fast pace and the Universe to be expanding, why can’t we explore the origins of the human race and their early forms. Today’s science has advanced so much that the age of mountains and stones can be determined by certain phenomenon existing in the nature. If we follow the same principles in other sciences why is the theory of creationism then a hindrance in exploring human history.
On April 23, the Bush administration retreated from another clash with academicians, as the Justice Department quietly dropped an investigation of a university professor who was active in promoting Darwin’s theory about the evolution of life. It became possible after the Texas Tech University teacher of biology, Michael Dini, slightly changed his stance on issuing letters of recommendation which would enable students to join medical school.
