Posted on 08/28/2006 6:31:13 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
This is incorrect, although it is a common misconception. There is no varying degrees of evolution, and no one group can be more "evolved" than any other, because evolution has no goal. There is no target and no "ladder of evolution." Evolution isn't a heirarchy. There is just adaptation to local conditions. Those adaptions endow different groups with different features and characteristics, but that, again, is just differences.
I would have appreciated your back on the Katherine Harris threads.
Good post.
In my experience, bad people tend to cloak themselves in ideas that sound beneficent. The more I hear lofty ideas, the oftener I check my wallet.
The founders of the United States made laws, many of them based on the principle I just described.
"What do you mean by "more evolved"? What metric(s) is/are measured to determine the level at which an individual is "evolved"?"
Pick some metrics. It doesn't matter. If evoloution is real, the devil is in the details. If the theory holds, plants and animals should have evolved to suit their particular environments. Changing the environment of one group should put them at the disadvantage when placed in a different environment.
I probably should have been PC and said "evolved differently" but that's not what Darwin alluded to, even though I think that applies as well.
My point is, that it can't be ruled out as a possiblity, or even a probablity when scientifically addressing the theory of evoloution as it relates to man.
On a side note, it's interesting how plants are rarely, if ever, discussed when the subject of evoloution pops up. I'm still wondering how that sharp thorn came to be. ;)
Yep, clarified in post 447. Relative to environment.
Sir Arthur Keith was apparently applying evolutionary theory to the behavior of nations. That was the understanding I got from my reading, at least.
LOL....your post made me laugh a lot. Thanks for the unintended humor.
Once again: Hitler was a creationist. A pagan creationist, but a creationist nonetheless.
Well, if that post was yours, it has been yanked. What did you say that was so outrageous?
Only when properly attired. While I realize common sense has its limitations, I pay attention when it tells me to come in out of the rain.
I believe it was an invitation to remove himself from the gene pool, to put it gently.
Fascinating.
Being that 'On the Origin of the Species' wasn't published in the U.S. until 1860 (and less than a thousand copies at that) it managed to justify slave holding in less than a year -- that is some powerful kind of book!
Of course, one wonders what book was used to justify slavery prior to 1861 ...
There is, of course, a lot of additional context to these declarations; the thing I'm pointing out to you, however, is the very explicit statements of racial superiority, and the obvious "evolutionary basis" from which those claims are drawn.
Then it wouldn't be Darwin. He first used the term 'evolution' in 1872.
It really is a shame that American schools do such a piss poor job of teaching history. Darwin caused things that were happening thousands of years before he was born.
"Darwin caused things that were happening thousands of years before he was born."
Oh, now ... I've been told several times on this thread that Plato advocated and Sparta practiced "animal husbandry." Never mind that your guys are talking about people like cattle; maybe that's what's bugging you.
The Number of abortions in United States,
according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, has been approximately, 1,300,000 annually since 1973. The early years started a little slowly. There were "only" about 800,000 in 1973 and then increased to as much as 1,700,000. So it's actually more than 40,000,000.
As far as I am concerned, my questions and numbers stand,
However, you can't rationally excuse racism by using the theory of evolution.
Sure you can. In the aforementioned passages, Darwin basically defines "more civilized" as the direction of human evolution, and by extension, more civilized races would therefore be "more evolved" than would the so-called "savage races." The question is: if that is the case, what should we do in response? Is it good to follow the eugenic approach and attempt to strengthen the "better," and dispose of the "worse?"
Both of us would respond by saying that no -- it is the culture, not the genes that needs changing. But since I think we'd also agree that some civilizations are better than others, we must necessarily address the counter-argument that the difference in civilizations is in part genetic -- and thus in some sense evolved.
Explaining how "civilization" evolves is of course a thorny issue. One might, however, seek specific inheritable "marker" traits that could explain the "civilization gap" between Darwin's civilized Caucasians, and his savage negros and Australians. We can start out by noting that African countries tend to be uncivilized sh*tholes -- there is a rather clear distinction in the civilization levels of, say, the Congo as compared to the United States.
Intelligence has been hypothesized to be just such an evolved "marker" trait, and from that the hypothesis and has been made that the difference between "civilized" and "savage" races cab be explained by a difference in intelligence. Attempts were, in fact, made to find just such a measurable difference -- and Stephen Jay Gould wrote an entire book attempting to debunk such measures as had been put forth. He was severely handicapped in achieving his ultimate goal because idea that intelligence evolved, necessarily suggests that one would expect to find differences in intelligence among "less" and "more" evolved racial groupings.
In fact, one hypothesis for the evolution of intelligence involves the concept that it arose from groups moving away from their origins (Africa) into more intellectually challenging environments. The unspoken implication of such a theory is once again that we might expect to see a geographically-defined, and thus somewhat racially-defined intelligence divide.
And on that point, there appears to be a definite and persistent racial component to IQ scores (whites falling in the middle, between Asians and Blacks -- to use colloquial terms). Gould attempted to explain this away, but wasn't all that successful -- other researchers have apparently attempted to control for a wide variety of factors, and yet the difference -- albeit relatively small -- persists. Whether or not that difference is actual proof of "superior" vs. "inferior" races, it provides an argument in direct agreement with the idea that the "civilized" vs. "savage" world can be partly explained by a racial difference in intelligence.
As it happens, I fully agree with your position that racists will grab on to whatever arguments they think will support their fundamentally irrational beliefs. (Perhaps "visceral" is a more descriptive term?) To a Klan-type racist, the argument from evolution is simply one of convenience.
I also agree with you that any such differences -- even if real -- do not justify a morality that treats various groups as having more or fewer rights.
But at the same time, it's clear that you can make a rational argument to the contrary.
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