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Why Did Darwinism Emerge?

phildwyer said:
Pish, humans per se have never been subject to evolutionary pressure. As you know, evolution works too slowly for it to take effect over mere millennia. Whatever forces are driving us towards our own destruction, evolution ain't one of them.
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Even this is wrong. Here's a popular magazine article describing some recent research, as you're probably not scientifically literate enough to read the actual paper.
 
bi0boy said:
Even this is wrong. Here's a popular magazine article describing some recent research, as you're probably not scientifically literate enough to read the actual paper.
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Oh FFS, you fill your silly head with this childish crap, and you have absolutely no idea of (or apparently any interest in) the truly dangerous political consequences.

Here's a serious book for you. I wouldn't endorse it all, but it's a very good demolition of ultra-Darwinism for beginners:

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Pious...-Creationists/dp/0802848389#reader_0802848389
 
phildwyer said:
Oh FFS, you fill your silly head with this childish crap, and you have absolutely no idea of (or apparently any interest in) the truly dangerous political consequences.
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So were you wrong when you said "humans per se have never been subject to evolutionary pressure. As you know, evolution works too slowly for it to take effect over mere millennia"? Or is any research showing human evolution in the last 40,000 years "childish crap" ?

Here's a serious book for you. I wouldn't endorse it all, but it's a very good demolition of ultra-Darwinism for beginners:

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Pious...-Creationists/dp/0802848389#reader_0802848389
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That appears to be a book about how evolutionary theory might be compatible with belief in God. I'm sure it can be. What I'm interested in from you is some science regarding the flaws in the theory that evolution by natural selection is the primary mode of evolution. You appear to be offering nothing but flawed logic and cod-philosophy.
 
gentlegreen said:
So what is your hope in terms of possible change ?
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Political, economic and/or social change you mean?

I have little hope of that, unless people can be cured of the knee-jerk materialism that we presently imbibe with our mother's milk. For a materialist, and especially for a Darwinist, there is in fact no reason to desire change. Such people regard human beings as animals, and thus quite literally no better than worms.

It seems futile to expect ameliorative change from people who consider themselves no better than worms. I mean, why bother? So I'd say that we must change people's minds first. Further to which, here is another very good book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300164297/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk#reader_0300164297
 
phildwyer said:
Political, economic and/or social change you mean?

I have little hope of that, unless people can be cured of the knee-jerk materialism that we presently imbibe with our mother's milk. For a materialist, and especially for a Darwinist, there is in fact no reason to desire change. Such people regard human beings as animals, and thus quite literally no better than worms.

It seems futile to expect ameliorative change from people who consider themselves no better than worms. I mean, why bother? So I'd say that we must change people's minds first. Further to which, here is another very good book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300164297/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk#reader_0300164297
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Didn't we already try political, economic and social systems based on a near-universal belief in Christianity for over a thousand years?
 
phildwyer said:
As for not being a scientist, don't let that worry you. Scientists bank on just that kind of deference from laymen. You're just as capable of forming an opinion as they are--more so in fact, since you have no professional interests at stake.
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unfortunately, the weight of the evidence indicates that those opinions are also far more likely to be plain wrong as you seem to be providing ample evidence for in this thread.

see also the Anthropogenic Global Warming debate mostly consisting of scientists on one side, and none scientists on the other.
 
phildwyer said:
I find your wriggling quite sickening, frankly.

You're intelligent enough to see that I'm right, but you're just too bloody petty to admit it publicly. Shame on you.
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Phil, if you were right I'd admit that you were. If you knew me as well as you believe you do, that much would be obvious even to you.
 
alsoknownas said:
An extinction event is not a 'cause' of evolution. The only cause of evolution (change of form), is genetic mutation, and it's effects are always gradual.

To illustrate this - after the K-T extinction event many species suddenly died out. But that doesn't contradict Darwin - individuals, and even species usually die fairly suddenly. What would have contradicted Darwin would have been if the species had suddenly all grown wings, or longer beaks, or started to manufacture iPads. But they didn't. Just like at any other time in history these changes continued to occur gradually.
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Even "suddenly" is, in many cases, an elastic term which many non-scientists will (and do) take to mean "immediately", but which should be understood, in many cases to mean "over one or many generations).
 
phildwyer said:
Well you have put your finger on the crux of my disagreement with Darwinism. It has to do with the nature of causality itself.

Darwinists are methodologically committed to locating causality at the smallest possible level. In fact this micrological approach is the definitive characteristic of Darwinism. For Darwin himself, the smallest possible level was that of the individual organism. Today, Darwinists like to locate causality at a yet more micrological level--that of genes.

But throughout the history of Darwinism, the basic assumption remains the same: events are best explained by looking at the smallest possible causal elements.
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I don't believe that this is the case. The relationship between environment and the organism has always been central to the understanding of evolution.
Evolution doesn't seek to explain 'events' as a whole. It's specifically concerned with how our bodies change from one generation to the next, and by what mechanism.
Earthquakes, illnesses, and family feuds are all just spikes in the road - just obstacles to be survived, or not survived. The mechanism for organic change (evolution) remains the same no matter what environmental conditions are in place.
Evolution science is not going to help you predict the weather - but it might help you to work out which species are best adapted to find shelter.
 
Crispy said:
It's not a religion. There are no "followers". All truth does not flow from one man, long dead. Current evolutionary theory is the sum of all the work of all evolutionary scientists. Yes, large alterations to the theory are recent, but that is the case for all science. 200 years seperate Newton and Einstein, yet in the last 100 years physics has come 10x as far.

There are no "Darwinists". You have your little pet theory and are bending the rest of the world to create some sort of justification for it. This is what's known as *bad academic - no cookie*. Your attempts at the opening premise are so obviously twisted and self-serving, that you will find it impossible to get anyone to follow you down the road to your theory. Your methods stink.
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Do you think he cares, as long as he can publish?
 
having read the thread, I think I can see the crux of Phils problems here.

Essentially he's attempting to apply the type of logic applied in religions to darwinism. If you apply this logic, then anything darwin got wrong can be taken as evidence that everything was wrong, just as anything that's wrong in the bible must disprove the bible as being the undisputable word of God.

The problem with this is that nobody from a scientific background believes in Darwin as being the all knowing all seeing oracle, or that his Origin of the Species was in any way the last word on evolutionary theory. That's not how science works. Darwins theories form the base level logic upon which far more complex and detailed modern evolutionary theory is based, with the bits of his theories that didn't stand up to scrutiny / new evidence being seen as being refuted, with new more refined theories replacing them that better matched the evidence.

This is how scientific understanding develops Phil, we don't simply believe in one text written long ago being the undisputable truth. This being the case, anyone attempting to disprove the current theoretical understanding of a subject by pointing out flaws in a 140 year old text merely show up their lack of understanding of the scientific method IMO.
 
phildwyer said:
Pish, humans per se have never been subject to evolutionary pressure. As you know, evolution works too slowly for it to take effect over mere millennia. Whatever forces are driving us towards our own destruction, evolution ain't one of them.
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Wrong. Lactose tolerance has happened over the last 5-10 millenia (probably at the lower end of that span). That's just one example.
 
... and upon reading the thread all this has already been said. Ah well. So dwyer, are you gonna persist with this charade or are you gonna come out and say what you really want to say?
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
It's just another one of his "god exists" threads, nothing more.
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So he tries to get through via Adam Smith but avoiding the absurdity of Eugenics and Nazis, and then at some point sneaks God in ?

Evolution is just common sense now. I reckon he should have a go at Einstein's instead.
 
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