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

[stands2reason]

I don't see your logic.

[Virginia-American]

The TOE does make a lot of predictions like that. Most of which are never found.

Put up or shut up. What are you talking about?

And much of what is found, is questionable

Show me the peer-reviewed questioning.

Tiktaalik is indeed an excellent example. Did you perhaps miss all the threads debunking this as a missing [sic - it's not missing] link? And showing the simliarities to existing shallow water fish.

The links don't work. Of course there are similarities to fish - but also to amphibians. Show some peer-reviewed evidence, not DI or AiG armchair speculation. The review is important because the creationist and ID advocacy groups have an extremely poor record when it comes to telling the truth.

BTW, it appears that you acknowledge that it was found where the ToE said it would be.

[Captain Beyond]

bump for later read

[Virginia-American]

They CLAIMED all that!! Where is the GRADUAl CHANGING EVIDENCE of EVOLUTION??? Hint...it doesn't exist except in viruses.

Please be more specific. Who claimed what? Was the claim later proved true?

A good example of the gradual change is the series between reptiles and mammals. Follow the link I gave in post 344.

[RunningWolf]

the above picture is from a creationist website, and they say it's a bird. Can you really look at it and deny that birds have changed over time

That is an interesting proposition you have there

I don't know where they got it but that skull looks like another composite skull that has a few suspect and unnatural intersections.

W.

[Virginia-American]

LOL ..show me where Darwin predicted the pre cambrian fossils.....

IIRC, it's in the "Origin", I don't have the precise reference handy

...this discovery is major evidence against Darwin!

Huh? In what way? Sometimes you see anti-evolutionists attempt to use the "Cambrian explosion" as evidence against standard biology - now you're saying preCambrian life is!

[RunningWolf]

Well I was hoping to see another artfully drawn evo flow diagram but even that is not on that link.

You should have seen the exhibits at all the big museums 40 to 30 years ago. Life-size panoramic vistas of the imagined 1million+old creatures, and then read parts of their 'thesis', and seen the shards of bone (off an African terrain) that gave form to their visions (yeah Leaky and the rest) And you just might have said .. whhaat?

And from that, you might even have begun to question the authority that academia grants itself.

W.

[RunningWolf]

That skull might be a transitional in your flow chart with all its 'best guess dotted lines' but that is where it ends.

That skull is nothing but a composite (they assert is 1.75 mya) 1.75 million years old, and is made up of a few hundred pieces that don't fit together all to well.



Just one place to start is that rear head area, another is the profile. But don't take my word for it, take the images they have as evidence, blow them up and start taking a look. Then put that in context to what they are suggesting. Then apply the most accurate dating method to the pieces, and notice the margin of error.

W.

[ReignOfError]

I am a physician and Darwin has absolutely nothing to add to my scientific thought or practice.

So if you had a TB patient, you'd give him the same antibiotics today that you would have given him in 1952?

[ReignOfError]

evolution is anathema to physics and cosmology.

Evolution is irrelevant to physics and cosmology. They're separate subjects. You might as well argue that music theory is anathema to architecture.

[muawiyah]

Since the telescope was invented in Middleburg Nederland some time in the 1400s, we know the ancients did not, in fact, have telescopes.

On the other hand, your belief in the total uniformity of human visual accuity is highly disturbing. There is and has been substantial variation.

[muawiyah]

Don't know that he rejected "evolution", but he sure had some funny views on "genetics".

Remember that he spent his life before the discovery of DNA.

[muawiyah]

The Tiktaalik critter had some surprises. Not everything was predicted, and some things that were predicted hadn't happened.

The only legitimate claim is that there should have been an "in between critter" at some point, and there he is.

[muawiyah]

Hiring lots of lawyers will find you more oil than other techniques. As I've been saying "claim jumping" works.

[muawiyah]

It's possible to trick chickens into growing teeth. It's a one gene sort of thing ~ and a small fraction of chickens do grow teeth anyway.

Why would anyone believe that no bird today grows teeth?

[muawiyah]

Bacteria obviously have an "immune system" ~ we have "immune systems". Getting over a cold is not a case of "evolution in action". Same with the bacteria.

Look, folks, we really do have to get a handle on word usage or we'll lose the words.

I know there are some who argue that any genetic change at all constitutes "evolution", but such changes sometimes bring about no change in function ~ so it's not sufficient to say that "change", per se, constitutes evolution.

Else, we might tell young children "evolve into your pajamas".

Capice?

[muawiyah]

BTW, concerning the arrival of modern Iron Age man to North America, there's a really big problem on the East Coast ~ the soil is acidic enough that almost any chunk of iron (knife blades, ploughs, helmets, swords, guns) that fell into the soil 300 or 400 years ago is now gone ~ dissolved ~ ain't there no more.

Makes it difficult to do archaeology ~

[ml1954]

All Dose Skulls Are Fakes And Frauds; Part 2, Rerun: Placemarker

[Physicist]

It doesn't matter whether this particular archaeopteryx skull is a reconstruction or not. There are several complete skeletons that have been found, and they all have teeth.

[RunningWolf]

Yus are reduced to a placemarker placemarker