[DannyTN]

I don't know that survival of the fittest is circular. But it is certainly hard to prove.

How do we know that the fittest survive? We don't. We assume that whatever survives must be the defacto fittest, because we believe in and to some extent see evidence that it's a dog eat dog world. Logic would say that only the fittest survive. But what if they don't?

What if the least fit survive? Take man for example. We strive hard to keep even the weakest members of our species alive. We let drug addicts reproduce. As a species we certainly don't practice let the fittest survive. We let people like Saddam, cowardly mean people ascend to positions of power.

Whose to say that the most fit salmon survive and reproduce? Perhaps lesser fit salmon survive and muddy the gene pool.

De-evolution - man isn't coming from the apes, he's going to them. The biblical model is that man started out immortal with perfect genes, but when sin entered, the earth was cursed and man's genes have been declining ever since. The early biblical patriarchs lived almost 1000 years then they started living about 400 then 200 then 120, then 70.

Look at how many billion of Chinese there are? Are they the fittest? And if so by what measure?

Perhaps it's not circular but it is nothing more than an assumption with "fit" being an ill defined concept.

[Dimensio]

How do we know that the fittest survive? We don't. We assume that whatever survives must be the defacto fittest, because we believe in and to some extent see evidence that it's a dog eat dog world. Logic would say that only the fittest survive. But what if they don't?

Ah, no. "Survival of the fittest" is not a governing rule, it's an after-the-fact observation. This is why it's faulty reasoning when creationists assert that it is a circular statement. The fittest always survive, because they weren't fittest within their environment, they wouldn't have survived.

Whose to say that the most fit salmon survive and reproduce? Perhaps lesser fit salmon survive and muddy the gene pool.

If they weren't fit to survive in their given environment (which includes all external variables coming into the environment and changing it), then they wouldn't survive.

"Fittest" simply means "best able to survive in a given environment". It's not the governing rule of natural selection, it's simply the end result.

[donh]

I don't know that survival of the fittest is circular. But it is certainly hard to prove.

Well then, it's a good thing that proof has nothing whatever to do with natural science. It's a viable theory, like all scientific theories.

How do we know that the fittest survive? We don't. We assume that whatever survives must be the defacto fittest, because we believe in and to some extent see evidence that it's a dog eat dog world. Logic would say that only the fittest survive. But what if they don't?

We know the fittest survive because that is how we define "fittest" for scientific purposes. Noodling around about the actual, transcendental meaning of the word "fittest" is about as silly a ploy as I've seen anytime lately.

Likewise, the fact that there is little significant selection pressure on humans in the 21st century [as yet] is hardly a signficant refutation of darwinian evolutionary theory. It is, in fact, just about totally irrelevant.

[whattajoke]

Look at how many billion of Chinese there are? Are they the fittest?

Perhaps in TN they teach you differently, but I grew up under the impression that Chinese people are actually the same species as us white people.

[Old Professer]

What if the least fit survive? Take man for example. We strive hard to keep even the weakest members of our species alive. We let drug addicts reproduce. As a species we certainly don't practice let the fittest survive. We let people like Saddam, cowardly mean people ascend to positions of power.

Darwin addressed that by saying that society was fatal to to his theory due to what he termed "misplaced compassion," he actually was forecasting a sort of evolutionary confusion where no real progress could occur.

I believe it was his cousin who came up with the notion of social evolution as a means of explaining class structure, but society stood ready to do battle with that then as well as now; so we wait.