Does evolutionary theory provide any useful scientific benefit?

[beaglelady]

@Eddie

Your comment is silly. Dr. Egnor, a trained physician and surgeon, does not need your instructions regarding infections and antibiotics. How many brain surgeries have you performed?

Yes, deadly infections and antibiotic resistance are silly. (Ha ha, hee hee) I’m sure all doctors, veterinarians, and nurses think so. Now I’m being faulted because I haven’t performed brain surgeries, by somebody who hasn’t done any either. ( I did dissect a sheep’s brain.)

[Mr.Molinist]

Eddie, you seem to be moving the goalposts again. You claimed that medical school students weren’t being taught evolution theory. Now you have retreated to the insistence that the issue is whether there are entire courses to particular evolutionary science topics. (Medical schools are not training evolutionary biologists. They are teaching various evolutionary biology topics—along with many other scientific concepts—within an intensive curriculum focused on giving physicians those broad ranges of knowledge and skills from many fields of science so there is no reason to artificially segregate all of the evolution topics in a single course! (Obviously! Frankly, your pretending to not understand this is quite disconcerting.)

Another of your posts to me has appeared. Clearly you aren’t even bothering to read what I’ve posted. (While it is possible that you are not reading carefully and are simply not comprehending anything I wrote, I’m not going to try to determine why you are misrepresenting my posts so egregiously.)

Also, you keep piling questions on me while ignoring the questions I’ve addressed to you. That taxes my patience. (And when someone keeps sidestepping and wanting a “intellectual background” in an entire list of academic disciplines and then asks if I have read “a good number of books” “all the way through”, I start looking for Allen Funt and the hidden cameras. Insert face-palm here.)

Thus, I will keep things cordial and simply withdraw from this forum. For whatever reasons, the bottom line is that another repetition of the basic facts will not serve any further purpose here. Answering a few questions is one thing. Remedial tutoring in my spare time is entirely another. So I bid a good evening to all along with my very best wishes.

[beaglelady]

@Eddie

You are not being “faulted” for not having performed brain surgeries. You are being “faulted” for presuming to talk down to Michael Egnor, a man who has saved many lives by his skill and medical knowledge, and who knows more about antibiotic resistance, biology, general medicine, and surgery than you are ever likely to know. And I did not say that deadly infections were silly; I said that your comments about Egnor were silly.

And does Egnor accept the fact that antibiotic resistance is caused by evolution?

[Joao]

[quote=“johnZ, post:1, topic:548”]
It is important when answering this question, to distinguish between the atmosphere of evolutionary theory, and the logic of evolution without which such discoveries could not have happened.[/quote]
It’s far more basic than when you present a quote, you provide a source and are familiar with the context of the quote and don’t just accept it out of context from a third party.

Why did you provide no source for the quote, John? Do you not want people to see it in context?

In addition, coincidence cannot be equated with “responsible for”.

I agree. What’s your point?

[quote]And, also, if such incidents exist, do they outweigh the opposite happenings, where evolutionary theory has hindered or misdirected practical applications of science to human and animal welfare?
[/quote]Can you provide evidence for such happenings?

And even more importantly, why do you place so much more emphasis on what people say than on the actual evidence?

[Joao]

@Eddie

My remarks were limited to pointing out that – to the best of my knowledge – no medical school in the USA has compulsory courses in evolutionary theory on the M.D. curriculum.

And pointing that out is irrelevant and ludicrous. Just as a start, why would you stipulate “compulsory”?

[Joao]

@Eddie

The purpose of pre-medical education is to give physicians a broad scientific basis for their work.

That’s ridiculous, Eddie. Only a tiny number of courses in science are required for medical school admission.

[Joao]

[quote=“Eddie, post:62, topic:548”]
you have no first-hand knowledge whether evolutionary theory is taught in medical schools, but conjecture that it must be.
[/quote]I have first-hand knowledge that empirical aspects of evolution are taught in medical schools.

@Eddie

And similarly, whether or not the surgeon knows the first thing about evolutionary theory should not matter to you if it doesn’t detract from his work.

Why would I care about theory? I’d want the surgeon to have empirical knowledge about evolution.

Your obsession with theory and avoidance of empiricism is pathological, Eddie.

[Joao]

@johnZ

In this case however, we were asking about the benefit not of science, but of a particular theory.

No, John, it’s not a particular theory. It’s a set of theories. Would it be too much to ask you to learn before making such representations?

[beaglelady]

@Eddie

If you want to know what Egnor thinks, why don’t you read his books, his articles, and his blog? Or why don’t you write to him? Why do I have to be the go-between? I merely reported his view that evolutionary theory was of no help to him in his surgical career, and that medical schools do not require courses in evolutionary theory. These were his views the last time I looked. If you want to have a detailed discussion with him about antibiotic resistance or anything else, you should write to him, not me. And let us know the upshot of the conversation.

So you don’t know?

[beaglelady]

Might it be that Dr. Egnor simply doesn’t wish to acknowledge that antibiotic resistance is part of evolutionary theory? Or maybe he truly doesn’t know. After all, humans were selectively breeding animals and plants long before they had any knowledge of genetics.

[beaglelady]

@Eddie

I know his opinion regarding the uselessness of evolutionary theory for brain surgery

It’s misleading to claim that evolutionary theory is useless for brain surgery if the surgeon prescribes antibiotics. (Of course, I don’t know if he has ever prescribed antibiotics, do you?) Anyway, when a doctor or surgeon prescribes antibiotics, he is relying on the work of pharmaceutical researchers who know that evolutionary theory is critical to their work.