Personally, I’d have a hard time with a doctor who I knew to be a conservative Christian or a young earther. Why? Because young earth means a rejection of science- which makes me uncomfortable (personally, I want my doctor to believe in science). Second, I’ve had more than one run in with a doctor who put his religious beliefs over a patient’s medical and bodily autonomy.
If I researched a doctor and saw a known conservative Christian undergrad listed, I’d look elsewhere. Is that fair of me? Probably not but it is what it is.
Sure, but there are also practices in my city and elsewhere I’m sure that advertise themselves a Christian and hospitals that are Catholic and don’t do a few things so the idea that is some huge problem strikes me a little odd.
I wouldn’t suggest that anyone who is religious cannot work in the sciences. Kenneth Miller is a renowned geneticist and a devout Catholic. He was a central figure in keeping intelligent design out of biology classrooms back when that was being hotly debated. There have been countless scientists through history that have been religious. The majority of them are non-religious, or atheist, but that’s doesn’t mean that one must be.
However, let me pose this question another way. If I don’t believe in God, why would I go to church?
Point is that a lack of acceptance of evolution is one of the most fantastically irrational positions that one can hold. Every single argument that I’ve ever heard made against evolution is representative of little more than a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is. People think that the eye is the Achilles’ Heel of the theory of evolution…and it’s not in any sense at all. We know how the eye developed. We have a great deal of evidence to support our conclusions too.
People invoke arguments like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to disprove evolution…and in so doing they are only showing how little they understand both thermodynamics and evolution. That argument fails horrendously, and yet they still use it.
The micro/macro argument has been done to death, and it has been thoroughly explained…and yet people still use it.
It’s strangely reminiscent of a severe drug addict. The friends and family keep telling him “you need to stop, this stuff is killing you.” The addict resists. He says he doesn’t see any evidence that it’s killing him and that he’ll be just fine.
If there is an intelligent designer, then he/she/it created the world in such a way that every bit of evidence would support the creation of a theory of evolution, and not one shred of evidence would support intelligent design. Mysterious ways indeed.
It was important to me my children go to a college with a mission, teaching and campus culture compatible with my beliefs and worldview. When I hire professionals: doctor, lawyer, CPA; all things being equal, I’m going with someone who shares my beliefs and worldview. That will be one of my criteria. This just makes communication easier. imho.
Liberty has a provisionally accredited medical school. Surely there is a population preferring a doctor from this school?
adding: I don’t want my young female relatives seeing a doctor who has moral misgivings about premarital sex, birth control or abortion, even if the doctor is able to keep personal opinions separate from professional practices. Why should they see such a doctor? There are doctors who have no problems with these issues.
I have many family members who are religious (all the way on up to what many would consider “ultra”) and also scientists. Two work in a sub-field of physics that deal with the origins of the universe. One is an active researcher in the life sciences.
NONE of them thought about the issue the OP has raised for longer than a nano-second when beginning their training and education. Each of them sought out the very best educational opportunities (undergrad, grad, fellowship, post-doc, tenure-track positions, etc.) which for them meant the absolutely best institutions in their field (or working with one of the best mentors in their field) without regard for what it meant for their religious beliefs or comfort zone.
So do I believe you need to be an atheist or secular humanist to work in the sciences? Not for a second. But if someone has a calling to the sciences, I don’t believe that compromising their intellectual development by seeking out an institution which will be in synch with their religious values will work long term. My family members needed SOME religious accommodation (mostly access to kosher food, everything else they figured they could make-do) but certainly not theological accommodation. Do the scientists in my family believe that the Torah is the word of god? Absolutely. Do they believe that the world is 5776 years old (which is the date right now since the creation of the universe, according to Jewish tradition) ? You can’t get a PhD from a top university if you need to study in a department where the evidence to the contrary (and there is MUCH physical evidence which proves definitively that the world is older than 5776 years) is ignored. You just can’t. And you certainly can’t get an academic job if you are the scientist who insists that physical evidence which surrounds us isn’t as compelling as the doctrines you believe in. The Torah can be true AND carbon dating can prove the age of a femur or skull discovered in a bog in Scotland.
So the kid is interested in science- check. Stay away from physics and biology, and all is good. I have seen some sad cases ( a woman dying in childbirth when they shouldn’t have, because the attending physician was more interested in being able to baptize the baby than save the life of the “already baptized” mother) to think that entering a field with some asterisks already identified is a good outcome. A religious person who wants to work in life sciences has no doubt figured out an intellectually satisfying “workaround” by the time they are choosing a college. And if not- pick another field.
In spite of Hunt’s excellent post #67, I am very concerned that what you are failing to understand is that in mainstream colleges and universities, there is no debate about evolution. None. No one is interested in that debate. Evolution is just taken for granted. Your idea that intelligent design needs to be covered in science class is completely out of synch with the reality of what goes on. You can disagree with how college science education is handled, but it is what it is. When we disagree with educational practices, it seems appropriate to look for alternative choices. imho.
ETA: My kids visited classes in their areas of interest during college tours. They also looked at online course descriptions. They had a pretty good idea of what their course of study would be before they enrolled. There is a lot of information out there on individual colleges.
Overnight visits are a pretty good idea, too, imho.
No. However, a physician will encounter people who have different senses of values and morality. S/he must consider whether interaction with and offering medical care to such people presents a conflict with his/her senses of values and morality; if so, how will s/he handle such a conflict? If s/he cannot handle such a conflict in a way that does not compromise medical care and advice to the patient, then s/he should reconsider whether s/he should go into medicine.
Reminds me of the time I took a class on The New Testament at my Large State School. It was a very objective examination, which shocked my sheltered young self. There was a kid in the class who hotly argued every point the prof tried to make, was very disruptive, until he finally “disappeared”. Point-a secular class is fact-based. It’s not that the prof was trying to shut down debate; rather, the kid wanted to argue the facts. That, too, was enlightening. Me, I learned that there were discrepancies that I had to come to terms with personally (outside of class!). IMHO same with science. A science prof teaches the examination of facts and sources, interpretation, and how to test and draw conclusions. As a scientist, I’m suspicious of people who disregard facts for a belief. I think recruiters would wonder about a candidate who does. Baylor is an extremely solid research Uni, producing undergrads who successfully go on to Med Schools and grad school. While the students there tend to be religious, they do not (ime) allow religion to interfere with scientific thought. Just my .02.
“Roi was nowhere to be found. Instead, Dr. Melinda Karam greeted them by saying, 'I’ll be your doctor, I’ll be seeing you today because Dr. Roi decided this morning that she prayed on it and she won’t be able to care for Bay,” Jami said.
The new mothers were shocked and humiliated."
Perfectly legal, by the way–allowed by both the state and the AMA. Still, it would have been nice if prayers had told her during the prenatal visit that she shouldn’t care for this child, and not while the new family was in the waiting room with a 6 day old infant…
First, will it disadvantage your son in getting into grad/med school?. I suspect that if anyone deciding on Graduate Admissions knew that Liberty focused teaching the arguments against the theory of evolution, this would diminish your son’s chances of admission. It would be hard to take his education in biology seriously. Even if they were wrong about the quality of the rest of his education, I would guess that they would consider his education a big question mark (what did he really learn?) or worse, a bit of a joke. He’d have an unnecessary hurdle to overcome. That is in part because they believe the evidence at all levels is compelling and believe as @sorghum and I do that the counter-arguments raised may be effective PR for non-scientists but are not real scientific issues.
Second, is this a good field for him?. As @blossom points out, there are lots of ethical and political minefields he will encounter and again he will find that serious scientists don’t take him seriously if he shares the beliefs taught at Liberty. What about chemistry of physics or, as @blossom suggested, engineering?
The advancement of science comes from learning from evidence. If one’s belief system makes constructing falsifiable hypotheses or assimilating evidence to change one’s beliefs impossible in a field, it is probably a bad field to go into. (That is why people might not take him seriously). Again, there is no debate among scientists about evolution. It is not just a hypothesis, but a theory with extremely compelling evidence in support. The “debate” is contrived by people whose religious faith doesn’t enable them to consider the evidence. If you and your son are actually not blocked by your beliefs from actually weighing the evidence, then some of the problems I mentioned above go away. However, attending a school that has fundamentally non-scientific views as the basis of its science curriculum will not help him in subsequent admissions.
I found the following WSJ article extremely insightful.
It argues that there is no inherent incompatibility between believing in a god and being a scientist, there is a logical inconsistency between believing in a god that actively intervenes in our world (e.g., answers prayers etc.) and the fundamental tenet of science, the scientific method in which one makes falsifiable hypotheses and tests them. If god can intervene in our controlled experiments, then we cannot have confidence in the scientific method. His argument (and JBS Haldane’s before him) would seem to say that there is a fundamental logical inconsistency between a belief in the kind of god that evangelical Protestant sects have at the center of their beliefs and the scientific method. [The logical inconsistency would be evident in any religion where god intervenes in human affairs and probably extends to Orthodox Judaism (God separated the waters for Moses) or Catholicism (virgin birth) but may not be a problem for some eastern religions.] I think that the this latter is a much broader and more complex set of issues, but they are relevant to someone thinking of going in to science but who would also be comfortable at a place with Liberty’s beliefs.
A med student who refuses to treat someone who is HIV positive during his or her ER rotation is never going to make it to residency, let alone board certification. An undergrad who believes that all life is holy and therefore cannot participate in a study which breeds mice who have a certain genetic disorder (if that’s the exercise the professor has chosen to teach a certain set of lab skills) is going to have a short career in that field.
I took an entry level anthropology class in college which used monkey jaws and eye-sockets, compared to contemporary human skulls, to teach field measurement techniques. If a kid needs a doctrinal environment in which to study, there are a lot of fields where that kid doesn’t belong.
Shawbridge, I did not see your post when I posted mine but I can assure you that at Bar Ilan university (the only non-secular university in Israel), Yeshiva university, etc. the fact that God parted the waters of the sea during the flight from Egypt is not viewed as controversial by students of oceanography/geology. You can accept as a matter of faith that God’s hand was instrumental during the Exodus (which is one of the theological pillars of traditional Jewish thought) without abandoning the scientific method when measuring and observing actual physical phenomenon.
It seems that the OP doesn’t want to engage in this bifurcated world view- which is of course, his prerogative.
As others have already said, at the mainstream academic level there is absolutely no debate about the theory of evolution. It is never questioned in any sense at all by any science class.
The only thing I’d add to this thread is a recommendation to read a book called “Why Evolution is True” by Jerry Coyne. In my opinion, it is the best and most concise popular science style book about evolution. Coyne clearly lays out the staggering array of evidence for the theory, which eventually leads to the ultimate conclusion that everything we know about biological life only makes sense IF evolution is true. If evolution is not true, then one must strongly question the “intelligence” of the designer in question.
I think there are plenty of scientists and doctors who believe that supernatural events may occasionally happen. That doesn’t mean that they expect them to happen in their work, or that they take the possibility of supernatural events into account in experiments and the like.
As with intelligent design, the possibility of supernatural events can’t be disproven, although whether any particular event is supernatural might be.
Loukydad - I respect your right to hold your own beliefs, as I do everyone else’s rights, but “Young Earth” creationists, along with other denialists, implicitly impose religion over most areas of pure science, and some advanced mathematics. How can you be a scientist if you reject Carbon’s fundamental properties? How can you be a physicist if you refuse to accept most of the science behind the Big Bang, and the ever-expanding multiverse? How can you be a mathematician if you deny many Laws of Physics? Faith is a beautiful thing, but you can’t be a scientist if you intend to subordinate empirical evidence to unwavering Faith.
Doctors in my family have told me they believe God directed the Big Bang and evolution (that it is all beyond human understanding) and believe in the possibility of miracles. I also agree with woogzmama that faith is (sometimes) beautiful. When much younger, I used to find Kierkegaard’s leap to faith an extremely moving idea.
@blossom, if one can compartmentalize between the religious and scientific spheres, one has no problem – one just can’t apply religious beliefs to science. This is what I think you are describing. As you say in your last sentence, the OP probably doesn’t intend to compartmentalize.
Even if one doesn’t compartmentalize, if one believes that God no longer intervenes in today’s world (even if God once did), I don’t think one has an issue (except, I suppose, if you are thinking about the origins of the universe or things that happened more than 2000 years ago – hence biology, geology and physics might not be easy fields for someone who doesn’t compartmentalize). However, for someone who believes that God still intervenes in the present and does not compartmentalize, there is an inconsistency between that belief and the scientific method. That’s what Krauss and Haldane were commenting on.
I may be confusing all the posts but I think the OP is wondering if attending a school like Liberty will hinder subsequent educational opportunities in the sciences. I think this thread’s debate supports that there would be reservations about a grad from that school. Would the student be prepared to defend his ability to be objective in his studies? Idk. But I think he may find himself at a disadvantage. It’s good to be asking these questions. Otoh, the child ultimately wants to find himself a place where he fits in!
My example of the religion class was meant to show the difference between religious belief and a state Uni’s class. The OP will probably not find a state Uni that includes faith in a fact-based class (unless it’s meant to).
^I thought that was a very useful post for those unfamiliar with how classes work at state universities.
It isn’t clear to me exactly what the OP was hoping to get from this thread. There are some great posts here and I think the various approaches described are probably useful to many reading along.
I once sat next to a very interesting young graduate student at a dinner. She had been homeschooled by Christian fundamentalist parents and described to me her utter unpreparedness for university life. She was extremely bitter towards her parents for putting her in that situation. I think they meant well, but were just naive. She lost her faith in college. This young woman had particularly asked to meet me because I was homeschooling and she wanted to be sure my children weren’t disadvantaged in the same way she believed she had been. I do need to add she was at a top graduate program, so her long term prospects weren’t exactly diminished by what she saw as her parents’ negligence.