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

[DannyTN]

Honest Evo Ping.

[Pablo64]

"Evolution is practically useless, admits Darwinist."

"Well, duuuhhh!" respond Creationists.

;-)

[MeanWestTexan]

Oh whatever.

By the same reason, studying history is useless.

There are legitimate quibbles with evolutionary theories. This is not one.

[corkoman]

Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably.

Oh really? Well I suppose then that all the creationsits can skip their annual influenza vaccinations and free up the limited supply to the evos.

Junk science makes for great snake oil.

[DannyTN]

"By the same reason, studying history is useless. "

He who ignores history evolution is doomed to repeat it. Nope doesn't work. History is practical and relevant. Evolution is not.

[muawiyah]

Oh, yes, the market value of evolution is........?

Very good point.

Concerning language, we have a good record on the evolution of English.

However, it didn't become a new sort of language ~ just another transformation of a synthetic to an analytic language type.

Sometimes analytic languages become synthetic, or part of a synthetic language.

In biological terms this would be like cats turning into dogs, and dogs turning into cats.

Biological evolution doesn't work that way and is conceptually unable to be applied to linguistic change.

[Mogollon]

Oh I don't know, Marx, Stalin, and Hitler found a lot of usefulness for the theory of evolution. Especially Marx, in fact he wanted to dedicate the 2nd volume of Das Capital (one of the pillars of world communism) to Charles Darwin. Darwin refused this dubious honor though.

[DannyTN]

"Oh really? Well I suppose then that all the creationsits can skip their annual influenza vaccinations and free up the limited supply to the evos."

What does evolution have to do with influenza vaccinations? The first vaccines were invented by a Creationist.

[somniferum]

Cite?

[DannyTN]

Yeah, I also questioned the darwinist's claim that no new lanquages had been observed. What about Pig Latin? Or Jive? Or Technical Jargon? Clearly language is evolving and rapidly. English today is dramatically different than English 600 years ago. That claim can't be made for animals or plants.

[Bob Eimiller]

BTTT

[Suzy Quzy]

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

[My2Cents]

Evolution makes an atheist comfortable with his atheism (to paraphrase Richard Dawkins).

[RadioAstronomer]

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

Evolution is a scientific theory and does not address God in any way shape or form.

[muawiyah]

The solution to the problem is to simply note that we have biologists, particularly botanists and bacteriologists, pushing evolution as a world-view for everything.

I doubt any of them ever noticed that there is a vast science devoted to the study of languages.

This is one of the reasons biological science researchers have to hire "word smiths" ~ otherwise no one would figure out what they were saying ~ not that they are illiterate even if they seem to be.

I learned a new word today: "Balkansprachbund" . This has to do with certain linguistic structures common to all Balkan languages irrespective of what language branch they came from.

There is debate over whether or not these languages are melding together, or simply adhering to some common standards that facilitate communication.

Apparently none of the folks involved in the debate ever studied Latvian, Greek or Latin ~ there they'd see that entire separate languages have been absorbed, in toto, right down to the conjugations and declensions. I think it's Greek that shows signs of having absorbed a "female only" language group at one time.

Biologists would have a devil of a time explaining all of this in the language of evolution as they understand it.

[Physicist]

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

The corollary is that rank ignorance is for those who do (if you accept the above statement).

[GarySpFc]

Ping

[ml/nj]

Even though I think Darwinian evolution is completely bogus, I think this is a silly point to make. It hardly invalidates the concept.

Saturn has rings. This knowledge has thus far been completely useless to mankind; but it's still true.

ML/NJ

[DannyTN]

"Evolution is a scientific theory and does not address God in any way shape or form."

Perhaps, but if evolution's only practical effect it to explain where we came from... And to many, that explanation doesn't fit the data as well as a Creator.

One really has to question, is exclusion of God a form of negatively addressing God.