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

[js1138]

So, anyone wanting to question this should be prepared for many decades of their welfare checks being "lost in the mail".

Does the FBI know that there is an organized conspiracy among postal workers to politicise the delivery of mail?

Or did you just make this up?

[muawiyah]

You've come up with several "statements" from all of those guys where they, in fact, have said "can be" and followed that expression with "change" instead of "evolve". Hmmmm.

However, those statements are CONCLUSIONS they've provided as part of their literary efforts ~ they are NOT representative of their work in biological sciences. For that we need to go to their peer reviewed papers published in respected periodicals.

You bother me enough and I will dig through some of them and find where each and every one of them has used "evolve" when he meant "evolve" and "change" when he meant "change".

The mind doth recoil at the concept of your girl friend telling you "Honey, go evolve the baby's diaper, will ya'?".

The fact that folks with Ph.D's cannot feel the "wrongness" in that usage does not speak well of our universities' higher level degree candidate selection processes. Oh, no it doesn't!

But the good news is there will always be a place for professional wordsmiths, the "writing genes" not having penetrated everywhere!

[js1138]

You are not answering the questions.

1. Futuyma is considered an authority on evolution by the community of biologists: yes or no.
2. Ernst Mayr is considered an authority on evolution by the community of biologists: yes or no.
3. Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes are authors of a biology textbook yes or no.
4. All of these people have used the word "change" as a rough synonym for evolution (for example: In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change... or Evolution in sexually reproducing organisms consists of genetic changes from generation to generation in populations... or evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.): yes or no.
5. Muawiyah has said:(NOWHERE is anyone, not even biologists, using the word "evolve" to mean the word "change.): yes or no.
6. Muawiyah knows more about evolution than Futuyma: yes or no.
7. Muawiyah knows more about evolution than Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes: yes or no.
8. Muawiyah knows more about evolution than Ernst Mayr: yes or no.

[muawiyah]

Look, not being part of the ID crowd I haven't given it a moment's thought. On the other hand, it seems to be a koan with your ping list.

[muawiyah]

The FBI is part of it. They never investigate complaints about the post office.

[muawiyah]

I have no obligation to answer questions about the personal lives of people I've never met. On the other hand, you think highly of those people and not highly of others. I trust your judgment to know and understand your own feelings.

Go in peace my son. Be happy. Enjoy.

[DannyTN]

"It provides the only practical framework for a taxonomic structure, allowing a systematic study or a confusing collection of species. "

Evolution is not even necessary for that.

The first catalogue of the animal kingdom was produced 250 years ago before Darwin and was based on similar morphology but not evolution. And at least two of the most prolific cataloguers after Darwin didn't beleive in evolution.

Evolution only adds evolutionary lineage, based also on morphology, but that lineage is questionable. Evolution mistakes species variability for transition from species to species.

[gitmo]

What you said is true, but concepts of evolution provide a framework in which there should be a "correct" placement for a species in the taxonomic structure. Without it, the placement is simply by convention based on morphological similarities.

In reality, however, it still boils down to conventional acceptance of proposed structure. The biological community has to agree with the phylogeny proposed for a group, and evolutionary theory provides no proofs. For example, moving Fungi into its own Kingdom assumes an independent phylogeny from plants. Some of us agree, some disagree.

[andysandmikesmom]

In spite of what someone might want to insinuate, I have no vitriol...I merely was asking you about the post office as my husband is retired from the post office...

My husband is also retired military...which leads me to the next question...where my husband worked, almost every single person he worked with, was ex-military...and a huge percentage of them were retired military, and I found that rather odd...I know that vets get some extra points when they take the postal exam, but neither my hubby nor I expected to see, that almost everyone he worked with was either retired or ex military...perhaps the explanation is that we live and work very close to a very large military base...and live within a community with a huge concentration of retired and ex military...even tho we are no longer active military, living in close proximity to a large military base, is extremely beneficial...

Speaking of benefits, I must say, the post office does enable one to have a very fine retirement package...that in addition to our military retirement, enables us to do what we want, when we want, without worry...

So, I know that many folks do make cracks about the postal workers, regardless of their position with the post office, but from my personal relationship and friendship with many of my hubbys postal working friends, they are by and large a hard working group of people, who like any other occupation may have a few bums in the group, but no more so than any other occupation...

Gee, did you notice any vitriol there?

[muawiyah]

Many postal workers were in the military earlier in their lives. I once administered a program that hired over 100,000 guys just getting out of the military, including my former First Sergeant.

[b_sharp]

"Obviously, i don't agree with the dating of the fossils as those times keep changing and are based again on evolutionary fiction. Uniform theory of geology has about as many problems as the democrats. of course, chemistry is a true science until the evolutionists distort it ."

In other words the only 'true' scientists out there are defined not by what they do but by whether their science agrees with your presuppositions.

Since it appears your definition of a science is based on your opinion rather than on an accepted definition why should your definition take precedence over anyone else's? Heck, why should anyone even consider your definition at all?

BTW, the dates determined by radiometric methods are accurate to within a percent of two and are calibrated and cross checked using other methods.

[GourmetDan]

The existence of a 'higher' code only make it more difficult for evolution, not easier.

How would this 'higher' code 'evolve'?

They can barely explain the current code.

[GourmetDan]

Nope, strand 2 is non-coding.

[GourmetDan]

Nope, Haldanes's dilemma is a concern whenever genes move to fixation in a population. The excess reproductive capacity must exist and must be used to fix the allele.

Joe Felsenstein did not solve the problem. He merely claimed he did.

You are correct that ERV's are not observable, by defintion.

Be careful whenever you deal with things that are not observable, by definitin.

[GourmetDan]

Good grief dude.

You know absolutely nothing about this subject.

One strand does code and the other does not.

Do some research.

[muawiyah]

Let's draw an analogy with your PC.

YOu have a chip with lots of stuff "hard wired". Then, you have an operating system that's uploaded to "set the switches" in the variable portions of that chip.

Then, on top of the OS you have your application packages. Those might be combined together in something like Windows to simplify things from your perspective.

What we have in the cell is DNA. It's "wired up" ~ only we don't know where all the wires are but there are some good guesses. What we do know is what some of the applications packages are since we can observe the enzymes they use to cut, carve and manipulate DNA.

The higher level code controls the selection of the application packages and the specific DNA spindles to be selected for the applications.

Here's a problem with the report on the higher level code ~ the older members of the team will have have probably been influenced by IBM's JCL, and may well have used that knowledge to work backwards into the system to discover the code and the sectors where it's resident in the system.

And, everybody will have been influenced by their knowledge of how their PCs work. The JCL and computer models are suitible for researching the internal operations of the cells, but odds are good that that's not really how the cells work, so you can only get so far in this line of logic.

My personal choice for finding the background codes, application packages and operating systems is to start with the phenomenon of DNA carrying a current, and work backwards from there. If there's an electronic circuit somewhere in the cells directing the chemical communication devices, we're going to find it at some frequency or the other. A discovery here would enable us to work up to the codes on the chemical side with a much better idea of what they mean.

[Coyoteman]

BTW, the dates determined by radiometric methods are accurate to within a percent of two and are calibrated and cross checked using other methods.

Aren't those dates obtained through nuclear chemistry?

[GourmetDan]

Simple defining evolution as 'any change in allele frequecy' makes it applicable to a population that is accumulating deleterious mutations.

That qualifies a 'any change in allele frequency'.

How you gonna get humans out of an accumulation of deleterious mutations?

[GourmetDan]

Yeah, well all of the stuff you referenced is 'ID'.

You saying that life is ID?

[Coyoteman]

1000?