Evolution's bottom line

National Center for Science Education ^ | 12 May 2006 | Staff

[PatrickHenry]

In his op-ed "Evolution's bottom line," published in The New York Times (May 12, 2006), Holden Thorp emphasizes the practical applications of evolution, writing, "creationism has no commercial application. Evolution does," and citing several specific examples.

In places where evolution education is undermined, he argues, it isn't only students who will be the poorer for it: "Will Mom or Dad Scientist want to live somewhere where their children are less likely to learn evolution?" He concludes, "Where science gets done is where wealth gets created, so places that decide to put stickers on their textbooks or change the definition of science have decided, perhaps unknowingly, not to go to the innovation party of the future. Maybe that's fine for the grownups who'd rather stay home, but it seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school."

Thorp is chairman of the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina.

[Junior]

Non sequitur -- it does not follow.

[r9etb]

What the biotech industry does has nothing whatsoever to do with ID, as proposed by ID's main proponents.

It is, nevertheless, ID.

[Junior]

You're assuming God had anything to do with the writing of Genesis.

[ThinkDifferent]

So God just lied when in Genesis he said he created the heavens and the earth and all in it?

"Genesis is literally accurate" and "God is a liar" do not exhaust the available possibilities.

[woodb01]

"Where science gets done is where wealth gets created...

What kind of nutty, fruitcake, go eat your fruit loops comment is that? Is this guy a madman?

That's like saying "where bread, milk, and meat are consumed is where wealth gets created!

That's just nutty. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany both had MASSIVE scientific programs and scientific expenditures, NEITHER of them prospered. What was that guy smoking other than more of his SSECULAR FUNDAMENTALISM!

CREATION - EVOLUTION

[visually_augmented]

Dimensio: "Do you have a coherent explanation as to how a lack of religious teaching can lead to agricultural disaster?"

I was merely highlighting the inconguity of your assertion - not that I think religious training had much to do with the state of agricultural development.

The hypothesis that the Soviet State quashed most all science and free thinking is probably more to the root of the matter. It just so happens that religion was caught up in this same net as well.

[mlc9852]

And you're assuming he didn't.

[edcoil]

Neither does governments unless you are on the receiving end.

[atlaw]

But if we are wrong, so what?

You're unfamiliar with Islam?

[Dimensio]

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany both had MASSIVE scientific programs and scientific expenditures,

Josef Stalin outlawed the teaching of Darwinian evolution because he preferred the implications of Lysenkoism. He believed that scientific truths were determined by whether or not he liked what a scientific statement implied. Interestingly, the only individuals I encounter who express similiar sentiments are creationists who attempt to use the "moral implications" of evolution as some means of proving the theory false.

[Elpasser]

If what you say were truly practiced, evolution would be discarded tomorrow as failing every test of reasoned observation.

[andysandmikesmom]

Indeed, I agree 100% with your post #164...this argument is floated around all the time on these threads...we are told, "Believe Genesis as being literally accurate, and if you dont, then you are calling God a liar"...this sentiment is expressed on these crevo threads quite regularly...

Of course, many others, such as yourself, myself, and millions of others, do find, that there are other possibilities..

[mlc9852]

I am more familiar with Islam than I want to me. That's the religion that says kill the infidels, right?

[cccp_hater]

"Of course you aren't going to convince me humans descended from ape-like creatures either."

Do you believe the first humans were born out of a womb?

[muir_redwoods]

"Stay on subject. Hitler took evolution and applied it."

He also applied aeronautical engineering. Does that make Boeing a nazi plot?

[Elpasser]

"Of course, the same can be said for proponents of intelligent design, many of whom seem blissfully unaware that intelligent design does not assume Biblical literalism, a global flood and accepts that all organisms existing today originated from common ancestry."

Hmmm. So you're in agreement that the PA federal judge got it wrong by finding that ID is an attempt to advance religion or a Biblical view?

[shuckmaster]

the point is, while making this money, who exactly benefits?...is it just the ones doing the true scientific research, the ones selling their 'creationist' aids, or is there a larger benefit further down the road, and for who?...who actually produces the very results, that benefit all of us?

I agree and you put it in better words than I. Advances in science produce benefits that are ultimately shared by all but, the money collected by charlatans and liars only benefits and encourages more charlatans and liars while the suckers who donate don't get anything but false hope and soiled knees in return.

[Junior]

I can be pretty sure He didn't. Even if He had a hand in it originally, the story was handed around orally for centuries (try playing telephone sometime) before being initially written down. After that, it was copied and copied again and again and again, and during this copying process, done by men, errors would crop up -- mispellings, dropped words, word changes -- not to mention the changes made by scribes to clarify a certain point, or to emphasize a particular doctrinal point.

If there can be 30,000 errors in only 100 versions of the NT -- and that is less than 2,000 years old, how many more errors could crop up in a story that not only was written down hundreds of years previously, but had been kicking around by word of mouth (with all the errors that could crop up there) for centuries prior to that.

So yes, I can say God did not write Genesis, or at least the version we have today.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Again, the initial features that develop and subsequently compete ARE random (mutations are, by definition, random). Just because the process that takes place AFTER those features develop is not random does not make the over all process non-random."

I didn't say there were no random elements involved. Certainly there are. But the selection process itself is not random.

[Quark2005]

The only term that makes sense in describing Hitler's policies is Intelligent Design, not that he understood it any more than he understood evolution.

Another thing to remember, is that in creating a race of "superhumans", the end product of their efforts was still to be in the form of a human. Isn't this just "microevolution"? Don't almost all creationists acknowledge that "microevolution" occurs?

How is it that creationists don't share equal blame with evolutionists for what the Nazis did, then, according to this line of reasoning?

This whole line of arguing turns my stomach, anyway. Let's face it, even if the biggest S.O.B. that ever lived did base his whole philosophy on evolution, it has no bearing on whether or not it's true - you don't have to be Aristotle to figure that much out.