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.

---

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

[Physicist]

One process for suppressing a gene is called "DNA methylation".

All well and good. But why does that happen in modern birds when it didn't happen in ancient birds?

[RobRoy]

>>Bacteria have not 'evolved' drug resistance; the resistant bacteria have always been there; all the drugs have done is tilt the population demographics in favor of the resistant strains by killing off the non-resistant ones. If this is evolution, then the genocide in Africa is evolution too.<<

Excellent point.

I was shocked when I made the same point to some Rabid True Believer evolutionists thinking they would change the subject. I thought they just didn't understand what was going on. Instead they vehemently defended that very scenario as EVOLUTION IN ACTION. They DID understand it and still considered it proof of evolution. I was dumbfounded. I suddenly realized just how much we are dealing with "educated children" here. They only know what they have been told, and believe it because they trust their professors. That is a good thing because as most of them age and replay in their minds what was being taught and by whom, they will start thinking for themselves and alter their world view. In fact, I just coined a new phrase based on an old favorite:

"Show me a young man who is not an evolutionist, and I will show you a man who was not paying attention in school. Show me an old man who IS an evolutionist, and I'll show you a man who never learned to think for himself."

[corlorde]

bookmark

[muawiyah]

Alas, it happened in ancient birds as well.

Remember, birds are very, very ancient. They used to come in two varieties ~ those with breastbones, and those without breastbones. At the time of the great destruction of the dinosaurs, the birds without breastbrones appear to have all been destroyed.

Recent findings suggest that all modern birds are descended from one small branch of birds with breastbones ~ the waders.

We, on the other hand, find our origins among mammals with attitudes.

[betty boop]

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.

In philosophy, there is a technical word for this sort of operation: MYTH. I've got nothing against myth, mind you. But myth has nothing to do with science or the scientific method.

Thanks for the ping, Editor-Surveyor! I was really tickled by your analogy of African genocide to bacterial evolution! :^)

[muawiyah]

Look, what you are up against are folks who have confounded "evolution" with "change". They automatically argue that any change of any kind is, in fact, evolution.

No doubt they themselves will someday become parents who tell the other one that "the baby's diaper needs evolved".

Darwin himself seemed to like to reserve the word "evolution" as an explanation for the origin of species. I am sure if he meant "change" he'd have used "change" exclusively.

[A. Pole]

he compares the origin of species with the origin of language: "We haven’t seen one language change into another either, [...]

Well, we did! We observed Latin language changing into Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.

[ClaireSolt]

Have you ever considered that the inquisition might just have been an enlightened policy? I'll bet not. but it enabled Ferdinand and Isabella to create Spain out of a disunited and culturally mixed Iberian peninsula. If you are like a lot of people here you support sending illegal Mexicans home. Same policy.

[jwalsh07]

You're stuck in the same box as the other guy. Enjoy.

[js1138]

Hmmmmmm ~ the "other problem" ~ where one side starts claiming the territory thought to have been carved out by the other.

Evolution is evolution, whether due to natural selection or not.

Natural selection has been and still is believed to be the primary shaper of populations, but natural selection is one of a number of processes involved in evolution.

Evolution is a change in allele frequency in populations over time.

[Physicist]

Recent findings suggest that all modern birds are descended from one small branch of birds with breastbones ~ the waders.

<gasp> That's evolutionist talk!

The point is still that the ancestors of modern birds had teeth. If the waders didn't have them, their ancestors did. Why the change?

(Again, the specifics are beside the point. Something changed, the change was inherited, that's evolution.)

[js1138]

Excellent point.

But as pointed out, completely untrue. Just flaming ignorance of science facts.

[RobRoy]

>>Its not about science. It is about overriding science with a particular narrow religious belief.<<

That is kind of funny because that is exactly how I look at evolution as taught to our young people.

[RobRoy]

>>But as pointed out, completely untrue. Just flaming ignorance of science facts.<<

Nope. It is rejection of exposed science dogma.

[Liberal Classic]

I want to see the evolution...the EVOLVING of an animal!! t's NOT there. The age of the earth has NOTHING to do with anything....Face it...you have NO evidence of the evolving of an animal...NONE.

You're asking for the wrong thing. An animal does not evolve because individual organisisms do not evolve. Populations of organisisms evolve. Evolution is the genetic change that occurs in a population of organisms over time.

[js1138]

Soyo are going on record with editor-surveyor and muawiyah asserting that evolution never includes beneficial mutations? And that a bacterial culture starting with a single organism cannot acquire new and useful traits through mutation?

[RegulatorCountry]

"applying evolution to humans"

You argued at length that what the Nazis did was not "evolution" at all, because it was not natural selection. Now that it's convenient, you're arguing the opposite. And, you didn't even thank me for handing you the phrase "applied evolution," that you're now sprinkling so liberally in your replies. It'll come back to haunt you, lol.

[js1138]

Soyo=So you

[Physicist]

They automatically argue that any change of any kind is, in fact, evolution.

No, evolution is inherited change. That's precisely what Darwin meant, and precisely what we mean.

Darwin clearly and explicitly pointed to minor variations in finch beak size as constituting evolution. His crucial insight is that there is no qualitative difference between such minor variations and the gross differences between any two arbitrarily chosen organisms, only a quantitative difference.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Practical benefits of the theory of evolution: It makes its adherents feel good about themselves and their knowledge, sells a lot of books, and offers an intellectual cudgel with which to bash the "unenlightened."