Muslim medical students boycotting lectures on evolution

Dammy said:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...walking-lectures-Darwinism-clashes-Koran.html
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Ahh the Daily Mail, that bastion of fair minded even handed journalism... You do know that over here they have an even worse reputation for distorting the truth than Fox does, right?

Dammy said:
My only question is will the Muslim students who refused or walked out of class be penalized for it or on any test that have such questions?
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Yes. Given that all of medicine stems from biology, it'd be pretty hard not to.

Other groups that have tried the same include Jehovah's Witnesses.

Dammy said:
I'm wondering if they will be treated the same as those from other religions who did the same in prior years.
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Yes. The GMC doesn't take too kindly to people substituting fact based scientific information with woo. It's why the term Doctor is a legally protected in the UK.
 
yay the 2/3 population that believes in an invisible cloud being cant agree on anything other than what is real; really isnt... brilliant!!!!! ugh...
 
Seems like a mountain out of a molehill to me.
Yes. Given that all of medicine stems from biology, it'd be pretty hard not to.
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To be fair, I'm not sure how relevant evolutionary biology is in modern medicine; general biology / biochemistry, definitely. How the human body works now would seem far more important than how it developed over millions of years, which although interesting when discussing some unusual features in anatomy doesn't exactly preclude you from learning all about said features.

Having said all that, I don't understand the rush of so many Muslims today to charge headlong after the literal creationism model. After all, Al Jahiz was speculating on the environmental influence on the development of animals around 1,200 years ago in the Kitab al-Hayawan. Ibn Kaldun took the idea even further in the Muqaddimah 634 years ago. The ideas he put forth in the very first chapter would scare those students to death:
One should then look at the world of creation. It started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of touch. The word "connection" with regard to these created things means that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group.
The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to think and to reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world of the monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At this point we come to the first stage of man after (the world of monkeys). This is as far as our (physical) observation extends.
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http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/Chapter1/Ch_1_06.htm

Substitute the word "creation" for "chance mutation" and you've almost got Darwin...
 
Karlos said:
To be fair, I'm not sure how relevant evolutionary biology is in modern medicine; general biology / biochemistry, definitely.
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If it's MODERN medicine you're talking about, lots. You might not need it to be a GP but that's not the end of medicine.

However, if a person has a beef with evolution then they have a beef with biology and they probably shouldn't be taking it. Most of the tropes that Yahya (actually, all of them, as far as I can see) I directly lifted from the well worn threadbare tracks of Christain creationists.

All life evolved, no gods required. If it makes you feel happier to have one for personal reasons, knock yourself out, but one isn't necessary to explain the world but rather it clouds the way the world works by invoking a false mystery which presupposes the search for answers is pointless.
 
Karlos said:
Seems like a mountain out of a molehill to me.
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For now, 15 years ago consider how we laughed at the one or two creationist nutters in the US doing the same.

Now look at them.

Karlos said:
To be fair, I'm not sure how relevant evolutionary biology is in modern medicine; general biology / biochemistry, definitely. How the human body works now would seem far more important than how it developed over millions of years, which although interesting when discussing some unusual features in anatomy doesn't exactly preclude you from learning all about said features.
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You're fine right up until you come across your first germ. At that point, the refusal to believe it can adapt to become immune to drugs becomes a major problem. Especially for your sick patient.

Karlos said:
Having said all that, I don't understand the rush of so many Muslims today to charge headlong after the literal creationism model. After all, Al Jahiz was speculating on the environmental influence on the development of animals around 1,200 years ago in the Kitab al-Hayawan. Ibn Kaldun took the idea even further in the Muqaddimah 634 years ago. The ideas he put forth in the very first chapter would scare those students to death:

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/Chapter1/Ch_1_06.htm

Substitute the word "creation" for "chance mutation" and you've almost got Darwin...
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I imagine it's the same reasoning behind the Christian creationist backlash against science. Certainly the source material fits.
 
the_leander said:
For now, 15 years ago consider how we laughed at the one or two creationist nutters in the US doing the same.

Now look at them.
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Fair point.

You're fine right up until you come across your first germ. At that point, the refusal to believe it can adapt to become immune to drugs becomes a major problem. Especially for your sick patient.
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Actually, even the most ardently anti-darwinist muslims I've met strangely don't seem to have a problem with this concept of adaptation at the microscopic scale at all. They just don't accept that it works for higher organisms (beyond minor adaptation to environment). Which is pretty odd, I grant you, but at least one of them had the ingenuity to suggest it was not that different to the failure of most of quantum scale behaviour to be demonstrated at the macroscopic scale.

Anyway, I expect the guys protesting against it are from same stable as those that didn't want to treat patients of the opposite sex.
 
Karlos said:
Actually, even the most ardently anti-darwinist muslims I've met strangely don't seem to have a problem with this concept of adaptation at the microscopic scale at all. They just don't accept that it works for higher organisms (beyond minor adaptation to environment).
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Ah the old micro/macro evolution canard. A staple of Christian fundies the world over. How very convenient.

Karlos said:
Anyway, I expect the guys protesting against it are from same stable as those that didn't want to treat patients of the opposite sex.
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Really, if they have these sorts of personal issues, I seriously question their being in medicine. But that's just me :)
 
the_leander said:
Ah the old micro/macro evolution canard. A staple of Christian fundies the world over. How very convenient.
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If I may it's religious fundies the world over. At least for Christianity, Islam, and Judiasm where they derive the belief their Holy Book is gospel. As such no measure of proof will be allowed to superscede their belief.
Really, if they have these sorts of personal issues, I seriously question their being in medicine. But that's just me :)
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We've seen right-wingers here, and other places, encouraging things such as religion in schools and enabling doctors or pharmacist's personal views to supersceded the patient and superscede their schooling. For example, right-wingers have promoted the idea that if a pharmacist is anti-abortion then forcing them to sell Plan B infringes on the pharmacist's freedom. Instead, right-wingers argue, we should allow the pharmacist to keep their freedom while forcing a reduction of freedom on the patient, eg the patient doesn't get Plan B.

I'd argue that if a job is against your belief system you cannot possibly fulfill your job duties. Either your pay should be slashed or you should not hold that position. A pharmacist's job and a doctor's job is to make a patient well using a scientific foundation. If you can't do that you've neglected the foundational requirements for your job and should be immediately sacked. (This harkens back to the Canadian Doctor thread who doesn't have scientific evidence for his belief of a cure yet prescribes the cure anyhow.)

Imagine the computer world if you hired a someone to maintain your Microsoft environment and they reimaged everything with Linux. Would their freedom hold up to the clear neglect of duties? Of course not. They'd be out of there so fast the doorknob and their butt would become one.
 
faethor said:
If I may it's religious fundies the world over. At least for Christianity, Islam, and Judiasm where they derive the belief their Holy Book is gospel. As such no measure of proof will be allowed to superscede their belief.
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Oh don't get me wrong I fully understand that, but the whole macro/micro split was first born, or at the very least first became popular amongst the religious right in the US. It's just now it's been picked up by others.

faethor said:
We've seen right-wingers here, and other places, encouraging things such as religion in schools and enabling doctors or pharmacist's personal views to supersceded the patient and superscede their schooling. For example, right-wingers have promoted the idea that if a pharmacist is anti-abortion then forcing them to sell Plan B infringes on the pharmacist's freedom. Instead, right-wingers argue, we should allow the pharmacist to keep their freedom while forcing a reduction of freedom on the patient, eg the patient doesn't get Plan B.

I'd argue that if a job is against your belief system you cannot possibly fulfill your job duties. Either your pay should be slashed or you should not hold that position. A pharmacist's job and a doctor's job is to make a patient well using a scientific foundation. If you can't do that you've neglected the foundational requirements for your job and should be immediately sacked.

Imagine the computer world if you hired a someone to maintain your Microsoft environment and they reimaged everything with Linux. Would their freedom hold up to the clear neglect of duties? Of course not. They'd be out of there so fast the doorknob and their butt would become one.
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Quite so.
 
the_leander said:
Ah the old micro/macro evolution canard. A staple of Christian fundies the world over. How very convenient.
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Getting back to my earlier point, as long as any student of medicine knows, understands and is able to apply what they are expected to know, understand and be able to apply, as far as I'm concerned their personal beliefs about some of it are not relevant. It becomes relevant if their beliefs come into conflict with what the job requires and their judgement or ability to do their work is affected.

I briefly brought this up with an old uni friend that's been a fully fledged doctor for a few years and he agreed with my suggestion evolution theory is as relevant to his work now as the efforts of Ada Lovelace are to mine; it's background information. There's *far* more going on in medicine right now to keep abreast of as it is. We both agreed, however, that walking out on lectures on some objection to the subject matter is fundamentally stupid and frankly they deserve to fail.

I know what it's like to be expected to learn something you believe (or in my case know with certainty) is wrong. For example, there's plenty of crap I got taught in chemistry that was all unmitigated bollocks. Worse still, it was known by myself and my teachers to be unmitigated bollocks at the time it was being taught and they knew that I knew. However, the fact that I already understood the basics of QM atomic and molecular orbital theory (from my own reading) at a point when we were being taught over-a-century-out-of-date rubbish about valence shell pair-repulsion, octet rules and so on, did not prevent me from taking it all in and passing the exams I needed to pass.

Really, if they have these sorts of personal issues, I seriously question their being in medicine. But that's just me :)
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No, I fully agree. As a doctor, you take an oath to give assistance and care to any other human being without discrimination. You might be confronted with your worst nemesis and be expected to treat them or basically break the oath (and yes, I realise there's a "Muslim version" of the Hippocratic oath - principally, removing the parts that swear to pagan gods/goddesses. They weren't the first do do this, there have been many similar revisions throughout history by other groups. No sincere Muslim would actually swear by anything except God, singular).

Anyway, given how many Muslims, Christians, Jews and members of other religions work in healthcare, I'd say most of them have no issues with treating patients of the opposite gender etc. Those that do aren't fit for purpose.
 
Karlos said:
[...] evolution theory is as relevant to his work now as the efforts of Ada Lovelace are to mine;
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As talented as she was, I don't think that's a fair comparison. The names you should be citing are those such as Alan Turing, George Boole and Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī - broad foundational work on which we still build.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
As talented as she was, I don't think that's a fair comparison. The names you should be citing are those such as Alan Turing, George Boole and Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī - broad foundational work on which we still build.
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That's just it though - comparing the relevance of the solid theoretical work of Turing to modern software development with the contribution of Darwin's theoretical work on the origin of species to modern medicine (as opposed to it's influence on biology/zoology and related areas of study) is giving the latter far too much credit IMNSHO. I'm not saying that it's not beneficial to understand, it's just somewhat down a list of rather more relevant bodies of knowledge.

Incidentally, if you are going to delve back into the "golden age" for examples, then Ibn Sina's works are probably more relevant to medicine (yes, even today) than Darwin's*. The nearest you get there is Alan's point about understanding the origin of new strains of pathogens. Even if you simply believed they are being spontaneously created, it doesn't stop you from understanding that being different, their chemistry is going to differ too and all the risks/uncertainties that brings when attempting to apply an existing treatment. Nor does it stop you from recognizing they happen to be very similar to some existing species which likewise serves as an indicator that existing treatments may be successful. In short, you probably don't have to believe they appeared by chance mutation in order to understand how to deal with them.

*Lest anybody think's I'm knocking Darwin, I'm not. I've never been your "literal creationist" type.
 
Karlos said:
[...] Darwin's theoretical work on the origin of species [...]
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Darwin's insight was not unique and many others had the same idea even back to ancient Greece, and famously Wallace, whose independent discovery of evolution prompted Darwin to publish. However, it was Darwin's mighty tome with its thorough argument that brought evolution by natural selection to the fore.
The nearest you get there is Alan's point about understanding the origin of new strains of pathogens.
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Indeed, the flu hunters are definitely working from an evolutionary model and where they look for threats is based on an evolutionary perspective. Those who work with the growing number of drug resistant bacteria are using evolutionary models too. Using an evolutionary model changes the kind of questions you can ask and changes how you look at the answers. If an evolutionary model didn't exist then the modern science of genetics would likely eventually produce one but fortunately we had things the other way around which is why we had such an interest in genetics and why we have made so much progress there.
Evolution is also informing the studies of how people from different lineages react to treatments, and the search for new antibiotics. While most of the people who practice medicine don't need much science (their job is to match symptoms to treatments) the people working on what the practitioners will one day practice use the idea much more extensively.
 
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