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To: general_re
When I read the late David Stove’s essay ‘So You think you are a Darwinian?’ in this journal, I supposed that biologists or philosophers of biology would have been quick to respond.[1] But the last eighteen months have shown no sign of this happening.

Has it occurred to you (or the author of the above) that perhaps the reason for the lack of response is that what the article says is true?

… no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person, but … everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.

Well, regardless of the semantic argument about numbers, the point is that an organism is 'hard coded' genetically or however, to do what is good 'for the species'. This is obviously false as the many examples of criminals, sociopaths, and Clintonites show quite well. Their morals are quite explicitly 'if you do not get caught, it's okay.

Dawkins’s peculiar vision of us as mere vehicles for purposive genes is of his own making. It is not a tenet of Darwinism.

Stove must be saying something right when your 'refutation" of Stove needs to bash the prime living Neo-Darwinist in an attempt to refute him. If Dawkins is an idiot (as your author and I agree) then we certainly must throw away all his excuses for evolution out the window must we not??????

38 posted on 02/09/2003 7:48:11 PM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
As usual, you manage to fully and completely misunderstand everything that you see fit to comment on.
41 posted on 02/09/2003 8:05:06 PM PST by general_re (ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.)
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