Philosophy Discussion Forums

Posted: **April 3rd, 2010, 7:52 pm**

ape wrote:
Marabod wrote:
This thesis of him was making sense as soon as his Theory of Evolution was replacing the previous Theory of Evolution by Lafater, and Lafater was insisting that the drive for mutation was "desire" - sort of a giraffe got long neck because of the constant desire to reach the tree leaves. Darwin as a polemical argument used "random changes" and explained the success of some of them by natural selection. So it was not addressed to us, it was addressed to the past, to 18th century Biologists. Darwin's theory is a theory, not a law of nature, and as such presents only a contemporary scientific explanation of the facts, known in his time - it never was designed as universal, as any universal and fully proved theory disappeares and become a Law or a separate Science. This happened recently with Quantum Theory, which received full confirmation by experiments and disappeared, leaving instead the science of Quantum Mechanics.
Hi Marabod,

Darwinism did not go anywhere, it is still here. In Darwinism, evolution symbolizes the survival of the fittest so that those who survive are the fittest, even when the weakest.

Darwin deals with Evolution as his religion and as the only teacher social codes of conduct, while Modern Evolution tries to fine tune Darwinism.

Preferences given to Darwin only mean an evolutionist refuses to deal with Cosmogonical problems and concentrates on human society instead, hence spontaneous evolution from nothing. Darwinism is also a step back from Monotheism, as he still has the same Dopamine-Hate for what monotheism dopamine-loved, while dopamine-loving what Monotheism dopamine-hated.

Darwinism is a form of paganism and idolatry, this was already proposed by Anaximandre (610-546 BC.):animals appeared from the sea due to the sun's warmth: that at the beginning they were covered by a thorn crust they lost; by Empedocles (483-423BC) and etc; but even this does not prevent it from proclaiming that it was in fact not a religion based on faith. Darwin only teaches us "do not worry about life being meaningless, just be happy" and provides that very mentioned dopamine-Hatred for weak, poor and oppressed and the unfittest and the ones who Darwin believed won't survive because they were not and are not the fittest.

Thanks.

It seems to me that you are seeing in Darwin's Evolution Theory much more than it was actually conveying. When I was a child, and learning it in school, it did not impress me anyhow, as I already knew it was just a "one of" in the row. Including the previous theories of Evolution.

"Survival of the fittest" is a fact of Reality, and the Darwin's highlight of this fact had indeed some philosophical impact, say it gave birth to Marx-Economist, Nietzsche-Philosopher and to Wagner-Composer. So what? As I claimed before, Darwinism is the obsolete teaching of 19th century, is a revolutionary one but not a modern one. It certainly helped in breaking the back-bone of Christianity and liberating people from the dopamine-bearing illusions of the latter, as for a modern person now a Chimpanzee is the same human as any Jesus, Adam or Eve, but it was never an anti-religious teaching, it was simply a scientific teaching. I treat my dog as an Image of God, same as I treat You or Myself, thank you Mr Charles Darwin. I think Darwin only helped us to respect each other!

Posted: **April 4th, 2010, 8:10 am**

Marabod wrote:"Survival of the fittest" is a fact of Reality,

Unless one can describe a predictive scientific theory of what "the fittest" means, all one is stating here is the tautological "what survives is what survives".

Darwin didn't give us a means to respect each other; Darwin gave humans a means of justifying any evil they wish to commit without pang of conscience, which is why despots like Stalin, Hitler and Mao used interpretations of Darwinism to sell and justify their tyrannical and murderous actions.

Survival of the fittest is an evil maxim because it directly justifies might makes right, which might explain why atheists find darwinism so intellectually fulfilling.

Posted: **April 6th, 2010, 11:02 pm**

Survival of the fittest is an evil maxim because it directly justifies might makes right, which might explain why atheists find darwinism so intellectually fulfilling.

or why the weak need a god

Posted: **April 7th, 2010, 2:53 am**

Meleagar wrote:
Marabod wrote:"Survival of the fittest" is a fact of Reality,
Unless one can describe a predictive scientific theory of what "the fittest" means, all one is stating here is the tautological "what survives is what survives".

Darwin didn't give us a means to respect each other; Darwin gave humans a means of justifying any evil they wish to commit without pang of conscience, which is why despots like Stalin, Hitler and Mao used interpretations of Darwinism to sell and justify their tyrannical and murderous actions.

Survival of the fittest is an evil maxim because it directly justifies might makes right, which might explain why atheists find darwinism so intellectually fulfilling.

Meleagar, you’re absolutely right to criticize the term “survival of the fittest”. Yes, it is a tautology. Perhaps that’s why you are misinterpreting it.

If one is so inclined, s/he can take “fittest” to mean more powerful and more disposed to exercise might than right. However, that is not at all what Darwin meant. He meant it to define the “principle by which each slight variation (of a trait), if useful, is preserved”. He later regretted having adopted the similarly misleading term “natural selection, “preferring the term “natural preservation”.

I’m sorry, but it looks like there must be some other reason why atheists find Darwinism so intellectually satisfying.

****************

With regard to Darwinism versus creationism in general, I ran across this reasoning that natural selection helps to reduce the pace of the inevitable human degeneration occurring in the creationist model. (Sorry, I lost the reference.)

“Natural selection also plays a role regarding mutations. Harmful mutations are selected against by natural selection, but not all are removed from a population. The creationist model teaches that all creatures and our first father and mother, Adam and Eve, started without any genetic flaws. This means that we who have inherited harmful mutations are inferior to our ancestors. In this case natural selection plays the role of reducing the rate at which harmful mutations can infiltrate a gene pool - but it does not eliminate all harmful mutations. Therefore, natural selection can be thought of as a process which slows the degeneration of a species. Without natural selection we may suppose that the human race would degenerate far more rapidly than it is currently doing. This is in direct contrast to the Darwinist model which believes that creatures today are superior to their ancestors.”

Posted: **April 7th, 2010, 7:11 am**

Dewey wrote:Meleagar, you’re absolutely right to criticize the term “survival of the fittest”. Yes, it is a tautology. Perhaps that’s why you are misinterpreting it.

I'm making comments about how others in the past, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Darwin and the man who coined the phrase, Herbert Spencer, interpreted it.

If one is so inclined, s/he can take “fittest” to mean more powerful and more disposed to exercise might than right. However, that is not at all what Darwin meant.

It's exactly what Darwin meant if the excercise of one's might resulted in a greater fecundity; take for instance A Natural History of Rape by Craig T. Palmer and Randy Thornhill, where they make an argument for an evolutionary path justifying a direct connection of "might makes right" to fecundity: rape as a means of producing more offspring.

He meant it to define the “principle by which each slight variation (of a trait), if useful, is preserved”.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Darwin's comments about the inevitabile genocide of lesser human sub-species?

Code: Select all

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." (Descent of Man, Chapter Six: On the Affinities and Geneology of Man, On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man)

Wow. No wonder Stalin, Mao and Hitler wer such fans of Darwin; he basically gave them scientific license to exterminate any groups they found "unfit".

I’m sorry, but it looks like there must be some other reason why atheists find Darwinism so intellectually satisfying.

I was being somewhat facetious when I connected the justification of evil acts and atheists.

“Natural selection also plays a role regarding mutations. Harmful mutations are selected against by natural selection, but not all are removed from a population. The creationist model teaches that all creatures and our first father and mother, Adam and Eve, started without any genetic flaws."

Darwinism is essentially a theistic argument, which I think is one reason why it is so compelling to Athestis. Much of Darwin's argument is based on his theistic conviction that god wouldn't have created life the way it currently exists. Many scientists today still incorporate that theistic argument in their defense of modern evolutionary theory, not realizing how deeply flawed it is.

Posted: **April 7th, 2010, 9:26 pm**

Meleagar wrote

I was being somewhat facetious when I connected the justification of evil acts and atheists.

and therein lies the rub, I write a few initials in a comment and get censored and edited for them, you write atheists justify evil acts and get no censorship?

Posted: **April 9th, 2010, 12:34 am**

I have seen far more theist`s justify evil acts than atheist`s.

Posted: **April 9th, 2010, 2:22 am**

Dewey said:
“If one is so inclined, s/he can take “fittest” to mean more powerful and more disposed to exercise might than right. However, that is not at all what Darwin meant”

Meleagar said:
“It's exactly what Darwin meant if the excercise of one's might resulted in a greater fecundity; take for instance A Natural History of Rape by Craig T. Palmer and Randy Thornhill, where they make an argument for an evolutionary path justifying a direct connection of "might makes right" to fecundity: rape as a means of producing more offspring.”

Dewey says:
Well, again, inclinations rule. I read numerous reviews of this 10-year old book very popular in its time. Creationists liked it: Scientists, nearly all of whom regard evolution as proven and most of whom are skeptical of creationism, criticized it for its lack of data and its dubious logic – ignoring or underestimating , for instance, the great influence of cultural and environmental change on the evolutionary adaptation process.

The book’s arguments also do not hold up well when another theory is considered. That is the influence of the brain in choosing between the aggressive and nonaggressive biologic traits.

Meleagar said:
“Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Darwin's comments about the inevitabile genocide of lesser human sub-species:

'At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." (Descent of Man, Chapter Six: On the Affinities and Geneology of Man, On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man)'"

Dewey says:
It doesn’t take much understanding of Darwin’s theory to KNOW he could not have meant anything other than this: The evolutionary adaptations to man would adjust him to the predominate change, becoming a more civilized culture and environment. The misfit of those adaptations to primitive man in his different culture and environment might lead to his eventual “extermination” (or perhaps to his division into a separate species).

Meleagar said:
“Wow. No wonder Stalin, Mao and Hitler wer such fans of Darwin; he basically gave them scientific license to exterminate any groups they found "unfit".

Dewey says:
Perhaps you’re being somewhat facetious. If you’re not, this answer by biology philosopher Michael Ruse to a similar remark is in order: “ Total bull. Of course the Nazis used quasi-social Darwinian terms but by and large they did not like evolution because it showed that we are all Jew and Gentile of one race. The difference between the Descent of Man and Mein Kampf is simply huge. Hitler owed more to Austin Chamberlain and others like him than to Darwin.”

********************

We can continue to exchange opinions and produce opposing proofs. But it’s a shame that we can’t shake ourselves free of our prejudices. of our pre-frozen certainties, of our ferocious win-lose strategies.

The uncompromising relationship between science and religion is the biggest shame of all. I have read enough of Michael Ruse’s essays to realize that we can, if we choose to, continue to be religious AND accept the discoveries of science, including evolution. A middle way is possible, and imperative.

Posted: **April 9th, 2010, 7:47 am**

Abacab wrote:I have seen far more theist`s justify evil acts than atheist`s.

That might be because there are a lot more theists in the world than atheists.

Dewey,

You are completely ignoring the point; whatever intellectual justifications or rationalizations that Hitler or Stalin or Mao employed were authorized by Darwinism as simple, neutral evolutionary product that were part of the naturally-generated environmental stressors that seperate the unfit from the fit. Whatever survives is by definition more fit to survive; whatever doesn't survive is by definition unfit.

It doesn't matter if those fascists were improperly or properly interpreting Darwin; under Darwinism, the inescapable physical fact is that their genocidal or democidal programs were necessarily darwinistic in nature -generated by darwinistic processes which develop successful thoughts and ideas that in turn offer one's lineage a greater fecundity.

Even if Darwin would have deplored their actions, Darwinism itself justifies Hitler, Stalin and Mao as agents of evolution because they cannot be anything else; and, Darwinism inevitably sees any moral condemnation of those three as nothing more than relativistic, biologically produced reactions that have no bearing on the evolutionary processes involved.

The persecuted Jew or Christian or political enemy or dinosaur or trilobite might see whatever is killing all of their kind off as "evil", but it's just evolutionary processes in action, according to Darwinism.

Darwinism justifies every evil by making every evil nothing more than a subjective perspective of evolutionary process in action - an environmental stressor of natural selection - which leads to the kind of evil tripe represented by the the aforementioned scientific justification for rape.

Posted: **April 9th, 2010, 8:19 pm**

"Science can only determine what is, but not what shall be, and beyond its realm, value judgements remain indispensable. Religion, on the other hand, is concerned only with evaluating human thought and actions; it is not qualified to speak of real facts and the relationships between them."

-Albert Einstein

It's fairly obvious that the two of you are chewing at the ends of the same string. Religion and science need to be implemented in a way that satisfies each, but what is that?
I think you are just avoiding the question.

Posted: **April 10th, 2010, 4:26 am**

Natural selection as a main avenue for evolution is so probable that we don't have to try to falsify it. However, every trial involving the theory of natural selection, and there are very many such trials involved in commercial production methods, is in effect an attenpt at falsification. It has never been done although Darwin's original has been refined.

Where religion should enter into science is putting the brakes on immoral commercialisation of scientific findings . Religion can alert the lay people to immoral applications of science.

Posted: **April 10th, 2010, 9:00 am**

Belinda wrote:Natural selection as a main avenue for evolution is so probable that we don't have to try to falsify it. However, every trial involving the theory of natural selection, and there are very many such trials involved in commercial production methods, is in effect an attenpt at falsification. It has never been done although Darwin's original has been refined.

Can you support your assertion that natural selection has never been falsified as the evolutionary force responsible for what survives and what fails to survive? That claim seems suspect consideringthis peer-reviewed article by a member of the NAS. From the article:

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution occurs primarily by natural selection, but this view has been controversial from the beginning. Two of the major opposing views have been mutationism and neutralism. Early molecular studies suggested that most amino acid substitutions in proteins are neutral or nearly neutral and the functional change of proteins occurs by a few key amino acid substitutions. This suggestion generated an intense controversy over selectionism and neutralism.

Hmm. Why was there an intense controversy over selectionism and neutralism if selectionism has never been contraindicated via lab experiment?

The article concludes with:

It appears that mutation (including gene duplication and other DNA changes) is the driving force of evolution at both the genic and the phenotypic levels.

It appears that lab results have (at least to this member of the NAS) falsified natural selection as the driving force of successful phenotypical variation and believes mutationism is the better candidate explanatory candidate.

Posted: **April 10th, 2010, 3:28 pm**

Jester Gren wrote:
It's fairly obvious that the two of you are chewing at the ends of the same string. Religion and science need to be implemented in a way that satisfies each, but what is that?
I think you are just avoiding the question.

Jester, you have echoed what I just said (last 2 paragraphs of Post #143I). But it cannot be said too often. And, it does need to be said loud and clear! This chewing, as you aptly name it, may turn out to be our evolutionary suicide!

Science has told us the bald truth. We are a species of animal and like all animals and other organisms must adapt to our environment or risk extinction. We are making or allowing environmental changes in the world’s environment that have already led to the extinction of many species. It may be leading to our extinction.

Darwin’s magnificent study of earthworms put us on the road to this discovery He showed how utterly dependent our agriculture is on the ability of this humble creature to keep our soil fertile. Other Darwinists have gone on to show the relationship that all living things have with each other. The destruction of one form of life may imperil all life. The human species has caused or allowed changes in the world’s environment that are rapidly destroying other forms of life and endangering ours.-- coral reefs, polar bears, forests, and uncounted others.

Our, possibly God-given, trait of self-consciousness gives us the unique ability to delay or even to halt this deadly process. Right now, I doubt that we will. We are too busy wrangling over where we came from and who it was that started us off on this trip. We are paying no attention to where we are going!

Incidentally, the posts between Jester’s and this illustrate another twisting and misuse of Darwinism.
It’s the tawdry field of eugenics.

Posted: **April 11th, 2010, 3:30 am**

Your link did not work Meleagar. If it was about that para-Lamarckian finding that genes can jump from one organism to another and not by genetic cells but by more direct learning, then I have to believe it until it is falsified. However this process of non-genetic evolution can coexist with natural selection as evolutionary process.

Posted: **April 11th, 2010, 7:32 am**

Belinda wrote:Your link did not work Meleagar. If it was about that para-Lamarckian finding that genes can jump from one organism to another and not by genetic cells but by more direct learning, then I have to believe it until it is falsified. However this process of non-genetic evolution can coexist with natural selection as evolutionary process.

No, it's not about neo-Lamarkianism.
Here's a working link
.

You can believe whatever you want, but science apparently disagrees with your belief. Also, I have yet to see any evidence that natural selection is a sufficient sorting process when it comes to filtering random variation and ending up with complex, novel, functioning body plans, abilities, and interspecies ecological dependencies.

In a series of papers by Dembski and Marks, peer-reviewed and published by the IEEE, they show that no search algorithm can significantly outperform a blind search unless information is inserted into the search about the goal.

From one of the abstracts:

Conservation of information theorems indicate that any search algorithm performs on average as well as random search without replacement unless it takes advantage of problem-specific information about the search target or the search-space structure. Combinatorics shows that even a moderately sized search requires problem-specific information to be successful. Three measures to characterize the information required for successful search are (1) endogenous information, which measures the difficulty of finding a target using random search; (2) exogenous information, which measures the difficulty that remains in finding a target once a search takes advantage of problem-specific information; and (3) active information, which, as the difference between endogenous and exogenous information, measures the contribution of problem-specific information for successfully finding a target. This paper develops a methodology based on these information measures to gauge the effectiveness with which problem-specific information facilitates successful search. It then applies this methodology to various search tools widely used in evolutionary search.

The problem with believing that natural selection is a sufficient search algorithm for successful novel, functioning, integerated biological information is that there is simply no evidence (that I've ever been made aware of) that it is, and insurmountable mathematical evidence indicates that it cannot be sufficient because it cannot confer teleological information into the developmental process.

In order to generate new, complex, functioning, coded biological information, the information generation system, and/or the filtering or search process must be teleological.

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Belief in Darwinism; what does it even mean?