Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist

Creation Evolution Headlines ^ | 08/30/06 | Creation Evolution Headlines

[DannyTN]

Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist    08/30/2006  
Supporters of evolution often tout its many benefits.  They claim it helps research in agriculture, conservation and medicine (e.g., 01/13/2003, 06/25/2003).  A new book by David Mindell, The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life (Harvard, 2006) emphasizes these practical benefits in hopes of making evolution more palatable to a skeptical society.  Jerry Coyne, a staunch evolutionist and anti-creationist, enjoyed the book in his review in Nature,¹ but thought that Mindell went overboard on “Selling Darwin” with appeals to pragmatics:

To some extent these excesses are not Mindell’s fault, for, if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits.  Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say.  Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably.  But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding?  Not very much.  Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’.  Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties.  Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.

Coyne further describes how the goods and services advertised by Mindell are irrelevant for potential customers, anyway:

One reason why Mindell might fail to sell Darwin to the critics is that his examples all involve microevolution, which most modern creationists (including advocates of intelligent design) accept.  It is macroevolution – the evolutionary transitions between very different kinds of organism – that creationists claim does not occur.  But in any case, few people actually oppose evolution because of its lack of practical use.... they oppose it because they see it as undercutting moral values.

Coyne fails to offer a salve for that wound.  Instead, to explain why macroevolution has not been observed, he presents an analogy .  For critics out to debunk macroevolution because no one has seen a new species appear, he compares the origin of species with the origin of language: “We haven’t seen one language change into another either, but any reasonable creationist (an oxymoron?) must accept the clear historical evidence for linguistic evolution,” he says, adding a jab for effect. “And we have far more fossil species than we have fossil languages” (but see 04/23/2006).  It seems to escape his notice that language is a tool manipulated by intelligent agents, not random mutations.  In any case, his main point is that evolution shines not because of any hyped commercial value, but because of its explanatory power:

In the end, the true value of evolutionary biology is not practical but explanatory.  It answers, in the most exquisitely simple and parsimonious way, the age-old question: “How did we get here?”  It gives us our family history writ large, connecting us with every other species, living or extinct, on Earth.  It shows how everything from frogs to fleas got here via a few easily grasped biological processes.  And that, after all, is quite an accomplishment.

See also Evolution News analysis of this book review, focusing on Coyne’s stereotyping of creationists.  Compare also our 02/10/2006 and 12/21/2005 stories on marketing Darwinism to the masses.

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¹Jerry Coyne, “Selling Darwin,” Nature 442, 983-984(31 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/442983a; Published online 30 August 2006.

You heard it right here.  We didn’t have to say it.  One of Darwin’s own bulldogs said it for us: evolutionary theory is useless.  Oh, this is rich.  Don’t let anyone tell you that evolution is the key to biology, and without it we would fall behind in science and technology and lose our lead in the world.  He just said that most real progress in biology was done before evolutionary theory arrived, and that modern-day advances owe little or nothing to the Grand Materialist Myth.  Darwin is dead, and except for providing plot lines for storytellers, the theory that took root out of Charlie’s grave bears no fruit (but a lot of poisonous thorns: see 08/27/2006).
    To be sure, many things in science do not have practical value.  Black holes are useless, too, and so is the cosmic microwave background.  It is the Darwin Party itself, however, that has hyped evolution for its value to society.  With this selling point gone, what’s left?  The only thing Coyne believes evolution can advertise now is a substitute theology to answer the big questions.  Instead of an omniscient, omnipotent God, he offers the cult of Tinker Bell and her mutation wand as an explanation for endless forms most beautiful.  Evolution allows us to play connect-the-dot games between frogs and fleas.  It allows us to water down a complex world into simplistic, “easily grasped” generalities.  Such things are priceless, he thinks.  He’s right.  It costs nothing to produce speculation about things that cannot be observed, and nobody should consider such products worth a dime.
    We can get along just fine in life without the Darwin Party catalog.  Thanks to Jerry Coyne for providing inside information on the negative earnings in the Darwin & Co. financial report.  Sell your evolution stock now before the bottom falls out.
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory

[DannyTN]

"29+ Evidences for Macroevolution"

And all of them have been debunked. Most were never evidence of evolution. Most are simply observations like homologies that fit equally within a common design as a common descent model. Some that evolutionists claim supports evolution are actually evidence against evolution. Like vestigial organs or that stupid and desceptive skull chart that Dr. Theobald has in his 29 evidences.

29 alleged evidences debunked

Skull Chart Debunked.

[Coyoteman]

It isn't god. It is satan, and he tinkers with life forms in a way to manufacture the appearance of evolution in order to mess with the minds of you credulous so-called scientists. It is all deception to delude you from adhering to the One Truth. And don't try out that Occam's razor nonsense on me - that is another trick of the Devil.

You forgot the /sarcasm tag.

That would have been handy, because otherwise what you posted is complete drivel.

[bvw]

Interesting article. Thanks!

Yet "evolution" is a very useful concept. In the world of ideas, that is. Ideas do evolve.

[Coyoteman]

Posted three days ago by coyoteman--placemarker

Posted on this thread, as well as on a thread three days ago ===> Placemarker <===

(Sometimes learning requires repetition.)

[DannyTN]

"Wow, nothing like misrepresenting the comments of the person being quote-mined out of context."

Perhaps you can give us some examples from Coyne's work where he cites an example of macro-evolution having a practical use other than explaining where we came from?

[DannyTN]

"Answer truthfully, is Al Franken ascended from Chimpanzees?"

Al Franken is evidence of deevolution. Man isn't coming from the apes, he's going to them.

[DannyTN]

"Medicine is for those without faith. True believers find all they need in faith."

Proverbs 17:22 - A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

If God in the Bible says medicine does good, then my faith is in medicine because it's endorsed by God and the Bible. And I have little faith in Charismatic preachers who dismiss medicine contrary to the Bible.

[null and void]

Recalling that the skies were much clearer in ancient times than they are today,

What??? With that antediluvian sphere of water up there???

some people (not all) could see the rings as if they were horns, or a scythe.

I rather doubt that, no human eye has the angular resolution needed to resolve that fine a detail.

I'd be more inclined to believe that an even more ancient civilization invented the telescope. Sadly that would push civilization back further than 4004 BC. Far enough back that not only were all physical examples of a telescopes lost, but the very concept of telescopes was forgotten.

[js1138]

Perhaps you can give us some examples from Coyne's work where he cites an example of macro-evolution having a practical use other than explaining where we came from?

Most of what you eat is a result of polyploidy within historical times (< 10,000 years ago).

• Triploid crops: banana, apple, grass carp
• Tetraploid crops: durum or macaroni wheat, maize, cotton, potato, cabbage, leek, tobacco, peanut, Pelargonium
• Hexaploid crops: chrysanthemum, bread wheat, triticale, oat
• Octaploid crops: strawberry, dahlia, pansies, sugar cane

[Quark2005]

Skull Chart Debunked

That would the "debunking" where (among other things) you claim a 100,000+ year old skull was the result of a death by an "8mm gunshot wound"?

That was definitely classic material. Completely wrong, of course.

[Virginia-American]

Oh I don't know, Marx, Stalin, and Hitler found a lot of usefulness for the theory of evolution...

Unfortunately for Soviet agriculture and science, Stalin didn't accept standard biological evolution and genetics and instead used the power of the state to enforce a false theory, Lysenkoism.

[DannyTN]

"Perhaps you can give us some examples from Coyne's work where he cites an example of macro-evolution having a practical use other than explaining where we came from?"

"Most of what you eat is a result of polyploidy within historical times (< 10,000 years ago)."-JS1138

polyploid –adjective 1. having a chromosome number that is more than double the basic or haploid number. polyploidy n : the condition of being polyploid

So? How did this result in evolution having a practical use? I hope you aren't suggesting that breeding experiments prior to evolutionary theory even existing were the result of evolutionary theory being applied by scientists.

[Virginia-American]

Perhaps, but if evolution's only practical effect it to explain where we came from...

False premise, from which it is impossible to derive anything.

A recent practical application was the discovery of Tiktaalik: the ToE was used to predict what an intermediate between fish and amphibians would look like, when it lived, and what sort of habitat it lived in. When strata formed in that era and habitat were examined, a fossil was found that looked like the predicted one.

This is merely one example out of thousands.

It will not be possible to take ID or creationism seriously until they can duplicate these feats and do a better job of it. So far, nothing.

[csense]

There is far more evidence supporting the theory of evolution (and indeed it is a scientific theory) than gravitational theory.

Do you deny that gravity exists?

This is a very misleading analogy.

In common usage, gravity is interchangeable as both hypothesis and observation. There's no denying that variation exists within species, just as there's no denying that if I hold my hand out and drop a penny, it will accelerate downward. Both observations are true and self evident.

The hypothesis of common descent, like the many hypotheses of gravity, have yet to be demonstrated. So in accordance with these terms, I would say yes, to your question.

Unless of course, you can demonstrate the gravity hypothesis of your choosing [and in so doing, falsify all the remaining hypotheses] and how it is compatible with relativity, and in particular, the equivalence principle.

So, without further adieu, the stage is yours.

Put up, or shut up...since I'm tired of seeing this inappropriate analogy constantly being bandied about...

[wireman]

Science and math are tools of the devil. The earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth.

Now you're talking!!! There's a lot of folks on this thread who (if they would be honest with us) think just that.

[js1138]

You asked about macro-evolution, and I gave examples of known instances that have proven useful. Many of the instances have been selected by humans after occurring naturally.

We know they occurred after human cultivation started because they can't sustain themselves without cultivation.

Now you can quibble about the naturalness of this, but the fact is that until recent decades, all such mutations were natural, and humans simply changed the rules for selecting which variants got to produce the most offspring.

The principles of evolution can be useful without being written down in books, just as people could make music befor the invention of notation.

[DannyTN]

"A recent practical application was the discovery of Tiktaalik: the ToE was used to predict what an intermediate between fish and amphibians would look like, "

The TOE does make a lot of predictions like that. Most of which are never found. And much of what is found, is questionable. And often forced fit into what evolution predicted. Like skull 1470 being reconstructed out of 100 pieces to look like a man-ape with a flat face when it was just an ape with a sloping face.

Tiktaalik is indeed an excellent example. Did you perhaps miss all the threads debunking this as a missing link? And showing the simliarities to existing shallow water fish.

Tiktaalik: Our Ancestor?

Another fishy missing link

[muleskinner]

With the constant derision of modern science I see on these threads, it's no wonder we are manufacturing more and more overseas. It would seem any creationist who cross-posts on one of the "evil foreign importers" threads, is a complete hypocrite and fool.

[Elsie]

HERESY!!!

Light th TORCHES!!!

--EvoDude

[DannyTN]

"Now you can quibble about the naturalness of this"

It's not the naturalness about it that I question. I question what it has to do with evolution. So man conducts breeding experiments and practices artificial selection to produce plants and animals with specific traits. That's selection, but it's not evolution. That's simply selecting the already existing gene pool to heighten certain traits. And man was doing this thousands of years before evolutionary theory was dreamed up.

Evolutionary theory didn't have squat to do with it.