Re: Two major reasons why America should throw evolution into the trash
- From: hersheyh@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 27 Sep 2005 10:02:35 -0700
bimms@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> First, the theory of evolution provides absolutely zero technological
> applications. Thus, the loss of this unfalsifiable theory won't damage
> the technological prowess of America one iota.
>
> Science has gained its massive prestige PRECISELY because of the
> technology that it has given us. Every major technological breakthrough
> has always been based upon theories that are immediately falsifiable in
> the laboratory.
>
> Since evolution CANNOT be immediately falsified in a lab, it will NEVER
> provide us with any technological applications. Therefore, evolution
> can be dispensed with. We don't need it.
IOW, it doesn't matter if descent with modification is demonstrably the
best explanation for observation in nature. I prefer comfortable lies
to facing reality.
>
> Second, evolution was the intellectual justification for Hitler's
> "master race"
Intellectual justification was unnecessary. Religious bigotry was.
> and Communisms "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Actually Marx did like Darwin's ideas, but the reverse is highly
unlikely to be the case. What Marx liked (for obvious reasons in the
age of the robber barons and crude exploitation of labor) was the idea
of evolution because he thought it was evidence that there could be
*change* in the economic realm as part of a historical process of
'evolution' not primarily, if at all, because it justified the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" (which I think was an addition to
communism by Lenin rather than Marx or Engels).
Let me also correct another poster here. Stalin never disagreed with
the idea of evolution (if he thought of it at all). What Stalin and
Lysenko opposed was *Mendelism* or particulate genetics, which, at the
time was thought by many to be a problem for evolution, since genes
seemed to be permanent and unchangeable by environmental conditions.
They preferred a kind of Lamarckian genetics, which allowed changes in
environmental conditions to directly affect the next generation. They
thought that Mendelism, because of the stability of inheritance,
prevented the making of the "New Soviet Man" whereas their
Lamarckianism, by allowing changes in environment to affect organismal
heredity, allowed for the making of "New Soviet Man".
I find it amusing that the land of cut-throat screw-the-poor Social
Darwinistic capitalism and government, the U.S., opposes evolution
because many citizens think it is against religion while the Soviet
Union opposed Mendelian genetics because they thought it was a plot by
those who supported the so-called opiate of the masses (Mendel being a
priest and all).
Alas, *real* science supports both Mendelian genetics (as well as
non-Mendelian genetics ;-)) and the descent with modification and
natural selection that is the basis of Darwin's ideas.
> Therefore, with these two facts in mind....
>
> 1. first, that the theory of evolution has never provided us with a
> single technological application, and
Darwin, of course, first came up with the mechanism (descent with
modification) by which he proposed that evolution could occur (by
natural selection) *because* humans were already applying (for
millenia) the technology of natural selection in order to change or
shape organismal form to do what the *humans* wanted of them. This
technology based on natural selection is called "artificial selection"
and has been responsible for most of the food you eat, the pets that
share your home, and the animals used for work and sport.
An understanding of 'descent with modification' is how we understand
the changes of the flu virus and adapt our technology (vaccines) to
combat the changes.
> 2.second that the theory of evolution HAS historically provided us with
> reasons to slaughter Jews and murder bourgeoisie by the millions
How, even if this were true (and it is not), would it make the fact
that the best explanation of the fossil record and relationships
between currently living organisms is *descent with modification*
false? How, even if this were true (and it is not), would it make
natural selection not exist?
Even if the theory of evolution had been used as the sole reason for
justifying these events (and that is empirically false), rather than a
rather minor role, that would not mean that the history of life on this
planet did not involve descent with modification and that natural
selection can't cause change in organisms over time. I am not in favor
of denying hard reality and teaching comfortable lies. Why are you in
favor of teaching lies or ignoring reality?
> We can simply toss evolution aside.
So we should stop breeding new varieties of plants and animals because
we don't want to use a technology based on the evil idea of natural
selection and the ability to change form and function in living
organisms via selection? Toss out our understanding of genes and how
they work? Should we also purge our textbooks of all the evidence that
life has a history and that there has been descent with modification?
Do you want us to pretend that reality is different from what it really
is?
> Technology wouldn't suffer, and the
> moral poison that darwinism has polluted our society with will
> gradually fade away.
To be replaced by what other moral poison? Theocratic athoritarianism?
Post-modernistic denial of reality? The last would, of course, be
requisite.
.
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