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

[muawiyah]

I don't need to. Not my job.

[muawiyah]

They change real slow ~

[muawiyah]

The Antedeluvian "water sphere" is an extra-Biblical manmade conclusion drawn from a misapprehension of the translation of a translation of a translation of an ancient Sumerian cognate language regarding where rain comes from.

Knowing that why should I discuss it ~ it's totally bogus.

[muawiyah]

BTW, there are people who have more than the average number of cones, with double the quantity in RED.

They have much better visual accuity than the average person.

[atlaw]

They're ultimate goal is the killing of God from the hearts and minds of man.

Who's ultimate goal? The lab rats and the underpaid biologists in flannel shirts and tape-repaired glasses who spend countless hours gathering field specimens? I never knew those folks cared about anything other than the science itself.

If their ultimate goal is the nefarious capture and corruption of the souls of all mankind, you'd think they'd find a better way to carry that out than eating stale tuna-fish sandwiches at midnight while spending 36 hours straight in a poorly ventilated lab under fluorescent lights analyzing the reproductive peculiarities of ascocarps.

[Physicist]

Could those ancestors be monkeys, by any chance?

Certainly. "Extinct" monkeys, to be sure, but monkeys nevertheless Or you could have pointed to (again, "extinct") apes, if you wanted something more recent. Or to fish, if you wanted to back further. Or to yeast-like single-celled organisms, if you like.

I notice you conveniently did not say we "descend" from monkeys, but used instead the common Darwinist ready-made phrase, "share common ancestors."

Then let me not stand open to puerile accusations of subterfuge: We descend from monkeys. The only way that statement can be construed as untrue is to take the position that we are still a species of monkey. There is merit in that view. But then this statement is irrefutable: We descended to monkeys.

[RightWhale]

When we're dealing with the fourteenth decimal place even real slow change can cause furious exchange of Letters and calling of emergency international symposia.

[js1138]

Apologies in that I misconstrued your statement about religious prejudice to mean religion was the source of the prejudice when in fact the Jews were targeted because of their religion, and not for religious reasons.

I have never intentionally tried to blame religion for evil, but I have consistently said that religion and science can be hijacked by evildoers.

It's a simple concept, wolves hide in sheep's clothing, not tiger's. When science is misused, it's always claimed that the results will be beneficial.

[null and void]

That sounds like a really good answer to me!

[the OlLine Rebel]

I'd have to uneducatedly agree. I don't know of what great benefit "evolution" is. It may be great to study it and just know what happened in the past, but I don't see the real "use" of it. It can't be any better than archaeology of primitive tribal camps.

[the OlLine Rebel]

"came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’."


Breed the best to the best and hope for the best.

[RobRoy]

>>Traits can emerge under environmental pressure in populations in which they did not originally exist.<<

Like the bird teeth?

What about the concept of the dormant gene? It was always there - just not apparent.

What we know can fill many volumes. What we don't know can fill many planets.

[RobRoy]

>>Please don't tell me you think this or this or this is a valid 'argument'. Where do you guys get this stuff???<<

You guys? I didn't "get" that stuff. You did. You stereotype a bit too quickly.

[Blackirish]

Evolution is for people who don't believe in God's Greatness and Power.

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God created evolution.

[Quark2005]

You guys? I didn't "get" that stuff. You did. You stereotype a bit too quickly.

Then what exactly did you mean by we don't know whether gravity is a "push or a pull"??

[muawiyah]

Your conclusion is based on the misapprehension that all humans have visual acuity that tends to the average, and that exceptions are few and far between.

Actually about 1 in 30 men have extra red cones. A smaller percentage have the extra red cones, and no green cones, and possibly no blue cones. Within that group there are those who have a far greater number of cones than the average.

Every now and then, in ancient times, when conditions were right, one of these guys would look at Saturn and notice that it had associated elements.

What you need to do is recompute everything assuming the observer has vastly superior eyesight in a much narrower frequency.

Galileo's telescope could resolve only 30X. It wasn't powerful enought to allow him to resolve the rings since he couldn't see the gaps. That didn't keep him from describing the rings as "horns". Which means, of course, that Galileo didn't really discover the rings ~ he discovered, instead, the "horns" that had been seen fleetingly through the ages by exceptional and rare individuals.

He could do this repeatedly, and that proved they were a real feature of Saturn.

[muawiyah]

I thought there were many people who descended from horses, the infamous "horses a$$".

[muawiyah]

Thank you. I bet you thought I didn't know about the "water sphere" concept. Frankly, the idea probably came from the spume rising up at the base of the waterfall pouring from the Mediterranean into the Black Lake. Of course, one day that got out of hand and ruined everything.

[muawiyah]

God can do anything He wishes.

[Quark2005]

God can do anything He wishes.

Unfortunately, creationists take the same liberty with science.