How would you know an explanation is wrong? Would you look at the predictions made by the hypothesis and see if it matches observations?
First, you need to decide if observations and hypothesis testing can lead to explanations.
Second, Alu transposons are not retroviruses.
Third, we can observe endogenous retroviruses inserting randomly in the genome. We can even take the mutations out of ERV’s in the human genome and get functional retroviruses from them, and those retroviruses insert all over the place in the human genome.
Infectious disease research, to be exact. In fact, I am working on adenovirus right now which is a retrovirus.
Without wanting to get into a discussion here, for the lowdown on the global-warming movement, just ask Patrick Moore, one of the seven founding members of Greenpeace, who distanced himself from them ages ago.
I would suggest the 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius where he did the first rough calculations of how increasing carbon dioxide increases the heat trapped in the atmosphere.
Does practicing medicine require evolution to be true?
Medicine is a scientific discipline. It requires following the evidence and dealing with what it shows rather than insisting on beliefs for which there isn’t a shred of measurable evidence anywhere or insisting on beliefs which ignore the overwhelming evidence from every measurable direction.
Otherwise what you have is the practice of witchdoctors, exorcists, and alternative medicine, which I am not entirely opposed to. Frankly they often follow the Hippocratic oath better than medical doctors do – doing less harm just as they tend to do less help as well. Even if the disease causing demons are in our minds (or in the subjectivity of the spiritual), that doesn’t make them less real to those who suffer from them.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
102
Now THAT is intriguing.
1 Like
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
103
First of all, thanks for getting the thread back on topic, as opposed to…whatever this thing had turned into.
Second, I’ll offer a somewhat different perspective to yours, and one that’s a bit comparable to @jpm ‘s thoughts earlier…you know, way back when this thread was on topic. I’d submit that for the vast majority of physicians, evolutionary theory is largely irrelevant. Nor does a lack of acceptance of evolutionary theory mean that one would necessarily be less of a physician as a given.
The practice of medicine really distills down to diagnosing & treating the individual patient, one patient at a time. Whether that individual human being is a product of billions of years of evolution or not is again, largely irrelevant. Unlike veterinarians we physicians treat exactly one species, Homo sapiens, and there are two versions, male & female. The scientific basis of medicine to which you referred is overwhelmingly the product of research done since the mid-20th century. We just don’t draw upon much science that’s older than that. One notable exception would be psychiatry, where the work of guys like Jung & Freud still looms large in some modes of treatment.
Homo sapiens just hasn’t evolved much since the mid-20th century, so again in the treatment of any one patient — and the underlying medical knowledge base guiding a physician towards the most effective treatment — one really isn’t concerned with any broader evolutionary biological processes.
I suspect that I know some fellow physicians who would be YEC advocates. I don’t know for sure, but I base that assumption on where I know some of them go to church. I’d definitely be willing to bet that I know some who would be OEC and/or ID-type sympathizers. None of that would make them bad doctors. I will add, though — as @jpm also mentioned — that more academic/research oriented work in fields like genetics, oncology or infectious disease draws more heavily on evolutionary biology. So there is that.
I think many of them are bypassing evolution because of it failures and severe limitations. They are working on transgenetics: Creating your own monster, gene by gene.
also the microbiome, which has become far more implicated in health and disease than previously imagined.
Genomics has also elucidated the remarkable microbiome that coats all human mucosal surfaces with at least as many microbial cells as the number of somatic cells that compose the human body. The most varied microbiome is found in the gastrointestinal tract. The microbiome has co-evolved with animal hosts and protected the host against pathogens, and assisted in digestion of food and in the development of the immune system… The genome, microbiome and evolutionary medicine