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

[Suzy Quzy]

A list??? wow...weak...

[balrog666]

Just SHOW me the crumb of evidence!

[Suzy Quzy]

A list of FOOD is your evidence of evolution!! Give me the gradual list of changes in the naimals...all you said was a LIST of animals!! Actually...don't write me again if you can't show me this gradual change in just ONE animal....P>S. Not a list.

[Suzy Quzy]

Not getting it.

[Physicist]

I call troll: I no longer believe that you personally believe what you're spouting. You're either here to stir the pot or to make conservatives look ignorant.

You had me for a while. However, you've overplayed your hand.

[js1138]

I have a crumb for her...

[hosepipe]

[ Whatever you imagine yourself to be now, you can't make vitamin C for the exact same reason that a chimp or gorilla can't. ]

Absolutely you can.. grow some orange trees.. or several other plants, including potatoes..

[RunningWolf]

When I get the chance, I will show you what I mean.

Get ready for all the evo bomb throwers though, with all their 'place-markers' and balrog images etc.

W.

[b_sharp]

I realize I am getting into this rather late but your line of reasoning about whether gravity is a pull or a push intrigued me.

If gravity is a pull then whatever is in the 'to' direction is supplying the force. If the Earth is the source of gravity and gravity is a pull, then we would be 'forced' towards Earth rather than away from it.

If gravity is a 'push' then whatever is in the 'from' direction is supplying the force. If the Earth is the source of gravity and gravity is a push then we would be 'forced' away from Earth then.

This is inherent in the definitions of push and pull.

The only way that we would remain tied to the Earth and still have gravity be a push would be if the source of the force is something other than the Earth. If that is the case, where is the source of gravity?

If the source of gravity is not towards the center of mass but from somewhere outside of the mass then you need to explain the correspondence between larger masses and higher gravity.

This is all limited to practical application since the maths involved are sign reversible. However, the sign reversibility of the maths does not affect the practical use of descriptive language.

Claiming that knowledge about the direction of gravity is unknowable and assigning the terms 'push' and 'pull' to those directions is a conflation of descriptive language with the sign reversibility of applicable math functions.

[Coyoteman]

I was talking about Darwinists' ultimate goals, not science's. I do not consider evolution science, nor Darwinists scientists as in the sense of hard science scientists.

Which "Darwinists" are not scientists?

Paleontologists and paleoanthropologists, who find fossils, then analyze and publish their results.

Geologists, geochemists and nuclear chemists who help date the fossils.

Geneticists who compare the genomes of various species to determine relationships.

Or any number of other specialists who work contributes to the overall theory of evolution.

So, who are these non-scientist "Darwinists" you are talking about?

[b_sharp]

"You have NO proof because there isn't any, but you cannot bring yourself to say that God CREATED everything just as he wanted it."

Again I'm a little late getting into things here.

You are asking for proof that evolution is a fact, which is an honest if ill defined question. If you require proof you need to define the type of proof required. Evolution is a very large field that spans ancient and modern evidences, extinct and extant organisms, direct and indirect observations, and a fair number of interrelated scientific disciplines. What part of that do you want 'proof' of and what observations would satisfy your question?

BTW, the theory of evolution (the SToE) as a theory, and like every other theory, does not rely on 'proof' but on the accumulation of verified evidences.

But anyway, please state your requirement for proof as specifically as possible and I'll try to answer it as well as I can.

[js1138]

I thought gravity was best described as curvature in space-time. What's with the pullmepushyou?

[GourmetDan]

Um, no. The ultimate goal of science is discovering the truth as revealed by physical evidence, wherever it leads. Science just happens not to care about political correctness, religious correctness, or anybody's personal feelings, for that matter.

Um no. Science has no capacity for discovering 'truth' since truth is a metaphysical concept.

Science also cannot admit that existing evidence does not bridge observed gaps, but must postulate unobserved laws, properties or effects in order to preserve the assumption of naturalism.

Science cares very much about the political correctness, religious correctness and personal feelings of pantheists and only pantheists.

[GourmetDan]

Now js.

You're merely defining 'evolution' to be consistent with observations without admitting that the observations can also be explained in a creation model.

No unique observations supporting evolution-only means that you can't honestly do that.

That's disingenious.

[GourmetDan]

In answer to your question, the fact that an ancient bird, archaeopteryx, had teeth while no birds do today is evidence for evolution.

Moving from bids with teeth to birds without teeth is a loss of function path.

Like blind cave fish, flightless insects, etc.

Are you saying that evolution predicts super-organisms with all known features that 'evolved' into current diversity through loss of function?

Where are they in the fossil record?

[RobRoy]

"The only way that we would remain tied to the Earth and still have gravity be a push would be if the source of the force is something other than the Earth. If that is the case, where is the source of gravity?"

Good point. Looks like it is possible there is still something we don't know, but may find out.

The reason I bring up the gravity thing is to get people out of their paradigm rut. It intrigued me when I first learned that gravity was only a theory, even though we observe it'e effects constantly. I realized so often that although we KNOW what we observe (and of course there are arguments even for that), we often only have hypotheses and theories for what is causing it.

We have identified the strong, the weak, electromagnetic and gravity. We don't necessarily know EVERYTHING about how they work. It is just fun to point out that we don't KNOW that gravity pulls. It could be that things are pushed from all directions equally until something large enough to significantly block this "push" from one direction causes something smaller to be pushed towards it rather than pulled. It would mean gravity is a different force than we thought it was. It just kind of opens up the creative thought process a bit, which is almost always good.

[ml1954]

I asked YOU and a bunch of other evolutionists last night to show me a CRUMB of PROOF..

There are no crumbs of proof. Science doesn't give us crumbs of proof. Science doesn't deal in 'proof'. Science examines data and proposes explanations of that data that have predictive power. The batting average of the explanations to explain the known data and predict the discovery of future data determines a scientific theory's acceptance in the scientific community. The Theory of Evolution's batting average is about .99999+.

that's is sad and laughable at the same time!!

What's sad is dogmatic, reflexive, unthinking, irrational, willful ignorance and fanatical denial of reality. And it's not laughable.

[YHAOS]

"It shows how everything from frogs to fleas got here via a few easily grasped biological processes."

My cousin, the rock.

[Suzy Quzy]

I want to see step-by-step pictures of the Gradual Changes from say, a bird to a dinosuar or vice versa that eolutionsts is always talking about.