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

[Jaguarbhzrd]

LOL, isn't that the truth?

[Jaguarbhzrd]

"Common descent" meant one thing BEFORE that finding, and something else AFTER that finding

Wow, your fantasies know no bounds.

Incredible, you actually think your personal fantasies are somehow scientific theory.

It really is amazing.

Common descent, means what it says, the genetic markers confirmed it, not changed it.

[muawiyah]

A full ROTFLMAOPMP ~ absolutely tremendous. You're also putting your finger on the most lucrative part of the further development of evolutionary theory ~ the rewriting and sale of new editions of all bio related textbooks.

This gives the Creos even more targets, about which they understand less and less, and they too get to peddle new pamphlets and new books.

[Coyoteman]

Coyoteman posts the skull chart, so here's the debunking.

How much of that "debunking" is from creationist websites?

[Jaguarbhzrd]

Where did he call you ignorant?


I did that, not "Ichy".

Although if he did, I can hardly blame him.

If you call that surly, well, the truth hurts, and if being surly is calling you ignorant, then I guess I am pretty surly too.

[muawiyah]

Now you're getting personal.

[b_sharp]

"Uhh, I think your opponent there thinks oil gets squeezed out of tarsands under great pressure and heat, not that it's simply an hydrocarbon residue from billions of years ago.

That's not what she said. She said that the sand contains fossils and that squeezing the fossil filled sand produces oil.

"Else, you are saying you can't get oil from tar sands, and the Province of Alberta, which is shortly going to be the wealthiest spot on Earth, will simply have to go out of business (based on your word, and your word alone)."

The oil from the oil sands area of Saskatchewan and Alberta is not extracted by squeezing the sand.

[Jaguarbhzrd]

Wow, someone else that talks big words, but has no idea what they mean.

That was really neat how you did that, but your misunderstanding of the entire thing was a really big wow.

Thanks for sharing, but please, don't do it again.

[muawiyah]

And he still didn't tell me what his problem is.

Now that problem is in one of two areas ~ the source of his demiurge that impels him to post, or, more likely what was his question that he thinks he asked me 10 posts ago, which simply doesn't leap out at me no matter how far back I go on the thread.

Its absence makes me suspect he thinks I'm asking about the demiurge.

[Jaguarbhzrd]

Now you're getting personal.


How can I get personal, I don't even know you?

See, I can play with words too.

[Liberal Classic]

The images seem to be cribbed from a site called Detecting Design which appears to be a Young Earth Creationist site. They claim, among other things, that the geologic column was caused by a single catrostrophic event, that plate tectonics is a fraud, carbon dating is unreliable, etc.

[muawiyah]

Descent is one of those words that involves a long period of time and many generations ~ you know, kind of like the "evolution affects groups not individuals" sort of thing.

You really have to address "common descent" back to the point where you have "convergence".

Outside of bacteria and viruses I don't recall ever seeing anything about "convergence" for the higher animals. you can play with the words all you want, but my Great Ape ancestors didn't have those virus genes until they were inserted.

[Jorge]

Evolution Is Practically Useless

I disagree.

Evolution is totally useless.

Except maybe to deceive people away from believing God.

[muawiyah]

It's too early.

[Ichneumon]

ERV's are assumed, not observed.

Oh boy, an anti-evolution creationist spewing complete nonsense again! What a surprise! The only question now is whether they do so out of gross ignorance, cynical deceit, or a combination of both.

Dan, I regret to inform you, you just told a giant whopper. Yes, ERVs are indeed observed, they actually exist, they have been observed inserting themselves into the genome, recent ERV insertions have been traced within the past generations of families and the individual who had the original insertion has been identified, the genetic markers around ERVs clearly indicate that they originated as retrovial insertion events and they're not just coincidental matches with viral DNA sequences, etc. etc. etc.

Hey, I have a novel idea -- why don't you go off and learn something about a topic before you start babbling next time, instead of just posting whatever uninformed horse manure pops into your skull?

Look, kid, if you don't understand the first thing about a scientific topic, don't just post your wild-assed guesses about it, it only makes you look like a lying fool.

They do not produce viral particles,

Some do, and/or produce functional viral genes. You really like lying about science, don't you?

but are identified by the presence of sequences that code (or once coded) for viral proteins, including gag (structural proteins), pol (viral enzymes), and env (surface proteins), as well as telltale long terminal repeats.

...as well as by unmistakable tell-tale markers of viral insertion splicing. Sort of "forgot" to tell that when you were lying by omission, eh?

The ERV 'dating' conclusion is dependent on single organism infections with random integration into the genome and subsequent move to fixation.

...and beautifully matches multiple independent cross-confirming lines of evidence, thus proving their validity.

They present serious problems for evolution

ROFL!!! Dream on, son. Please stop posting complete nonsense, it only makes you and your anti-evolution cause look like, well, lying propagandists who are trying to mislead the public. How does it feel to be following in Michael Moore's footsteps?

since there are thousands of these things in the human genome alone and the substitution cost to move them all to fixation is tremendous.

Yo, Mr. Stupid: The "substitution cost" only applies to things which reach fixation by positive selection. ERVs achieve fixation via genetic drift, and "substitution cost" does not apply. Now, were you just knowingly telling another huge whopper in the hopes that no one would catch you at it, or were you just randomly stringing together terms you had seen but not understood when you were quote-mining sites that actually dealt with genetics?

Now, pull the other leg and tell us again how ERVs "present serious problems for evolution"? Show us your math, this should be freaking hilarious -- the hilarious part will be watching GourmetDan struggle to make excuses for his inability to provide a substutition cost analysis of any kind that actually a) makes any sense mathematically, b) matches any kind of valid evolutionary scenario, and c) incorporates anything resembling the modeling of actual ERV insertion rates, human population genetics, and lineage histories. Watching anti-evolutionists make excuses for not providing support for their claims is one of the best entertainment values around!

The 'best' evidence for evolution is always in the least-understood areas because they allow the greatest level of 'interpretative' overlay.

No, the best evidence for evolution is the vast mountains of overwhelming evidence along multiple indepedent cross-confirming lines.

Meanwhile, the best evidence for the fact that the anti-evolutionists don't have a leg to stand on is how every time they attempt to attack any corner of the mountain of evidence for evolution (when they even bother -- note how often they try to just baldfaced lie and say there isn't any, cf. SuzyQusy on this thread), they keep getting caught revealing that they either don't even *understand* the nature of the evidence in the first place, or keep falling on their faces when they attempt to talk about without screwing up. In short, if they had any kind of actual case, they wouldn't have to lie about it so much.

[GourmetDan]

This link represents what is, IMO, a common evolutionary tactic. Post volumes of low-quality arguments and pretend that they are overwhelming evidence.

Take the gorilla-chimp/human 'chromosome fusion' argument as an example. One problem that I've never seen answered is how scientists explain away the 5' to 3' problem of joining 2 chromosomes head-to-head? It would seem to be critical to the claim, yet I have never seen that addressed.

Whaddaya think, Mr. Beta?

[GourmetDan]

IOW, you don't have an answer but you're going to pretend it's my problem.

Nice.

[Jaguarbhzrd]

The virus genes were not inserted, so to speak, they are more like markers, where they changed the host's code.

So, to say that they were inserted, is a bit of a misnomer, they were, shall we say, edited. The same amount of genetic material and DNA are there, it is just that some of the genetic sequences have been changed.

The ones that were edited that were neutral, were passed on, because they did no genetic damage to progeny that was noticeable, or negative to the creature in question.

Those genetic markers match with our cousins, the other apes, up to a point, the ones we share, came from a common ancestor, the ones we don't, came after we broke off.

The more genetic markers match, the more closely related we are.

[muawiyah]

Right, heat alone ~ and it helps to sift the stuff around so you can break up the little pockets ~ kind of like getting juice from oranges on an industrial scale.

My suggestion was that given the language used by the poster we might have someone actually seeking information and not just slamming down a gauntlet, so maybe you might want to readdress the ABRUPT answer you gave.

In fact, if you will quickly flip over to page 70 at this site (http://msmd.gov.ng/Bitumen%20Bid%20Memo.pdf#search=%22athabascan%20tar%20sands%20recovery%20machinery%22 ) you will find some statements suspiciously like those used by that earlier poster ~ almost like we have a young person reading about the Nigerian tarsands and getting confused with the discussion on the fosils in them.

I just love Google.com's search capabilities. DOn't you?!

[Coyoteman]

The images seem to be cribbed from a site called Detecting Design which appears to be a Young Earth Creationist site. They claim, among other things, that the geologic column was caused by a single catastrophic event, that plate tectonics is a fraud, carbon dating is unreliable, etc.

Figured as much. Its not even worth rebutting. Those sites are so laughable. People who believe what's on creationist sites are not going to be willing to listen to what science really says.

I do a lot of radiocarbon dating, so I have checked out a lot of the creationist sites on that subject. The stuff they write is so bad! Half of them don't even realize that you can't date dinosaur fossils and early hominid fossils with radiocarbon!

Then they go on about how the decay rates were different before and after the flood, and how the decay in reality that took billions of years all has taken place since 4004 BC.

There is simply no science in creation "science."