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

[RadioAstronomer]

The point is that evolution isn't the lynchpin of all modern science as some Evo's try to claim for it.

Possibly not ALL modern science, but biology? Absolutely!

[freedumb2003]

Those who wish to pursue Life Sciences without understanding the underlying foundation are certainly able to.

Many Engineers don't know physics. Many Programmers who use SQL don't understand The Relational Model.

But all these people top out at "Practitoner." They will never be on the forward edge of any real research.

[muawiyah]

What the bacteria are doing isn't so much "evolution" as it is having sexual congress.

[My2Cents]

It's a simple, readily-observable form of evolution we see every year.

But...a flu virus remains a flu virus. It doesn't become, say, a dog. One can raise examples of micro-evolution all they want, it lends no credence to the conclusion that higher life forms rise from lower ones.

[muawiyah]

What the flu virus is doing isn't so much "evolution" as it is something truly strange since viruses don't have sex.

[freedumb2003]

Ping a ding ding to a ding dong dinglebat.

[RegulatorCountry]

"What the flu virus is doing isn't so much "evolution" as it is something truly strange since viruses don't have sex."

From the perspective of the virus, it's merely developing immunity to disease.

[PatrickHenry]

You gotta be kidding.

[therut]

It is useless in any practical sense. That is one reason that I get a big kick out of the secular Darwinists when they scream unbelief in Darwin is going to ruin Science. Hogwash. I am a physician and Darwin has absolutely nothing to add to my scientific thought or practice. I have never and did never really even think about it much. I is not something I use.

[RightWhale]

Not good to continue to mix philosophy, natural philosophy, theology. Aquinas divided these as far as he could so as to get the maximum benefit from each. It would be well to continue following that plan.

[DannyTN]

"The mutational shifts can be tracked and for influenza there is a pattern to the shifts. These can be anticipated as the CDC has been doing for many years. They induce these shifts into strains of influenza that are maintained in the CDC labs."

Really?!? Do you have a source for this? Because my understanding is that the CDC proccess involves predicting which four or five of the known existing influenza strains are likely to be the most prevalent. And their vaccination production is tied to these existing strains with NO ANTICIPATION OF MUTATIONS.

If the CDC is actually vaccinating us against a yet to be identified strain of Influenza, I think there are many people who would like to know about that.

[muawiyah]

From the perspective of the virus it gets some new code. Otherwise these suckers are all the same.

A few tweeks here and there and we can actually combine several viruses into a new one, and it with others, and so on.

It's more like they are loose parts ~ and Crick was probably right about how they got here.

[jude24]

What the flu virus is doing isn't so much "evolution" as it is something truly strange since viruses don't have sex.

Evolution doesn't require sex. It requires change in expressed DNA.

[indcons]

I see you are here already. Wanted to ping you to this latest bit of pseudo-science from a website (and a poorly designed one at that) called http://creationsafaris.com/

LOL

[svcw]

I say if you are true envionmenatist you would not take any vaccinations or any medical treatment at all ... after all it is survival of the fittest.

[RightWhale]

Evolution is also near useless to physics. In fact, evolution is anathema to physics and cosmology. Evolution appears to be useful to botanists and animal physiologists, so let them use it if they want.

[AndyJackson]

What the flu virus is doing isn't so much "evolution" as it is something truly strange since viruses don't have sex.

sexual reproduction is not a prerequisite to the evolution of a biological system. Virus's mutate (evolve) and the one's that survive and go on to create infectious diseases are the one's that mutate to a form against which a "network" of humans have not developed immunity. That is evolution and survival of the fittest in action.

[Quark2005]

"Appeal to Consequences" placemarker

[Physicist]

I think you are a Jewish man...

As an unreconstructed Judeophile, I thank you kindly and sincerely, but I'm not equal to the honor, being Pennsylvania Dutch in ancestry, Moravian by upbringing, and a Deist by faith.

I believe that God created everything just the way he wanted it...he made NO mistakes....

I agree completely. (That's the essence of Deism, by the way.) Because God created the universe exactly right from the very first instant (i.e. at the Big Bang), He has had no need to interfere or adjust its workings at any time. Therefore, some sort of materialistic, automatic process must have generated the species we see today. If not Darwinism, then something else (Lamarckism, Lysenkoism, what have you). To believe otherwise is to demand divine tinkering, which is another word for correction, which can only imply mistakes.

IF there was evolution there would be a CLEAR process that could be shown in any and every Natural History Museum. I have been to many and haven't seen such things.

I've been to many, and I've seen them bursting with such things.

[Zeroisanumber]

...I am a Catholic girl...

The Church accepts evolution as scientific fact.