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Darwinists, just divorce racism. Get back to me when you have filed, okay …

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Just up at an earlier post at  Uncommon Descent (comments box):

“Since ID is not a religious program, but a scientific one, I fail to see why an ID proponent needs comment what a religious organization does or doesn’t do. Evolution is all about science (or so we’re told), as such its founder clearly held racists views drawn directly from the science. If you have a similar connection between racism and ID, we’re all ears.” – Donald McL

Thank you, Donald! that is precisely my point.

I certainly do not hold myself responsible for everything anyone has ever done in the name of religion, simply because I am a Catholic Christian.

I have also never held any individual Darwinist responsible for everything anyone has done in the name of Darwinism.

But I am – at best – surprised by the lack of interest of science societies in backing away from Darwin’s racism.

It would be EASY to do.

I do not want to quarrel uselessly about this. I am simply asking all members of societies that have made statements supporting Darwin vs. intelligent design to FOLLOW UP with a formal statement *divorcing* Darwin’s racism.

Just divorce Descent of Man now! Just DO it!

Don’t tell me that you individually disagree with it. That means nothing in the current climate.

Now, if the Darwinists do not do it, won’t we know something useful?

I think we will know something very useful indeed.

I will be VERY happy to publicise any upcoming divorces from The Descent of Man!

Darwinist, do you or don’t you divorce this book?

I hope and pray you do. Look, I have friends and in-laws from across the globe, from all races and nations under heaven.

I want to reach across the ideological divide and ask you to use the “year of Darwin” to finally divorce racism.

And if you don’t, we will know.

We will definitely all know whether you did or not.

And most of us will not listen to you in the slightest until you do.

Just do it, okay?

Comments
That depends. If it were the case that the actions taken towards the native americans were based on a racial view influenced by Darwin and his writings, then maybe. Has anyone tried to make such a case and connection between the two?
Checking with Google, it seems Darwin has, so far, escaped the blame for this outrage. Perhaps it is a fruitful avenue for researchArthur Smith
March 13, 2009
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khan said " because as you clearly imply, evolution has one major goal, and that’s a progression towards humans and everything else is just noise?" I can always count on khan to misread things that are on this site. He is very good at it. I never said that evolution progressed towards humans and everything else is just noise or that is has one major goal. A long list of non sequiturs. Sometimes I do not know whether it is ignorance or inanity that drives the anti ID people who come here but it definitely helps ID. Khan, I am just repeating what many anti ID evolutionary biologists say. To argue that many organisms are not further on the road than others is sheer folly and is recognized by current evolutionary biology. So I thank you for yet more irrelevant comments. And yes folks, we do not pay khan to make these nonsense comments here. It does it pro bono.jerry
March 13, 2009
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Arthur Smith
Is it appropriate to raise the issue of the decimation of the original inhabitants of North America? Was Darwin to blame here, too?
That depends. If it were the case that the actions taken towards the native americans were based on a racial view influenced by Darwin and his writings, then maybe. Has anyone tried to make such a case and connection between the two?DonaldM
March 13, 2009
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Is it appropriate to raise the issue of the decimation of the original inhabitants of North America? Was Darwin to blame here, too?Arthur Smith
March 13, 2009
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Kris, You're missing something important when considering evolution--and that is the fact that it is directional by necessity, in the respect something comes out of something else--it is matter of new birth, descent. So there is a road and a DIRECTION. It's not explosions of particles all unrelated--evolution is a matter of relation, and struggle. The stronger may not have a mandate for taking the position of superiority, as you're alluding that I hold that view--but they take that position nonetheless. It may not be normative in ethics, but it is pragmatic in evolution. And if you want to argue that stronger or more evolved doesn't mean that might "should" take their evolutionary right to "win" the struggle for life, you'll have to take that up with nature.Clive Hayden
March 13, 2009
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AussieID @ 82, Great Comment.Clive Hayden
March 13, 2009
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mynym "Given that Darwinism is the projection of human economics onto nature it’s little wonder that it made people feel “natural” about their evil. Sheer greed? Isn’t that exactly what Darwinian reasoning predicts as natural?" In a social species? No. How did "Darwinism" make the conquistadors and the early nineteenth century slaughterers feel natural? They'd never heard of it. And are you under the impression that variation, natural selection and common descent are some kind of philosophy? mynym "So is Darwinism a universal acid which explains all of biology or isn’t it?" Of course not. We've come a long way since Darwin! mynym "…the end of a World War and the fallout of an attempt at the extermination of lower races that Darwin predicted." I can understand why you want to avoid the question I actually asked. (a), (b), or (c)? It's not difficult.iconofid
March 13, 2009
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Since 1950 then, have we witnessed... ...the end of a World War and the fallout of an attempt at the extermination of lower races that Darwin predicted. As Dawkins has noted the main thing that has held people back from looking at the application of Darwinian theory to man is Hitler. E.g.
I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question? Link
Perhaps you can explain why Dawkins is wrong? Why can't you breed for musical or mathematical ability? It seems to me that people should be educated in the world of ideas so that we do not have to learn by experiencing the brutal realities of the real world where words become bullets. Nietzsche was very similar to Darwin given that he essentially prophesied Nazism. He in the world of “fiery” ideas, Darwin in the real world of biology where lower races get “exterminated” like bugs. Battles lost in the world of ideas and information have a way of being made manifest in the "real world" where formations of matter are all that exists. So here's an idea, what's wrong with Dawkins mentally incompetent idea that musical and mathematical ability are linked to certain biological structures that can be bred for and so on?mynym
March 13, 2009
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The Australians were slaughtered and pushed off land for the same reason that the conquistadors got rid of perhaps a quarter of the South and Central American population three centuries before. Human economic drive, otherwise known as “sheer greed”! Given that Darwinism is the projection of human economics onto nature it's little wonder that it made people feel "natural" about their evil. Sheer greed? Isn't that exactly what Darwinian reasoning predicts as natural? Darwinists seem to want things both ways, on the one hand Darwinism is celebrated as a "universal acid" which eats away at traditional understandings of good and evil but on the other it is said to be totally separated from ethics and so on. Does Darwinism "explain" the evolution of sentience, intelligence and ethics or not? If it does not then why would anyone have any problem with people noting the fact that the transphysical nature of language, information and intelligence and/or spiritual ethical judgments may impact biology? If a person decides to be celibate for spiritual reasons that impacts evolutionary biology. So is Darwinism a universal acid which explains all of biology or isn't it? If it is then ethics are not separable, nor are they separate but equal. If Darwinism is a universal acid and the total truth of things then all that matters is what is true biologically speaking.mynym
March 13, 2009
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Jeez guys, what does it matter if Darwin ate babies ? He’s dead, what lives on are his ideas, like gravity etc. Darwinism is not like the theory of gravity, it is not an objective form of knowledge. All knowledge is ultimately unified so if someone is a moral degenerate it may call into question other forms of scientia/knowledge. The more objective someone's knowledge is, the less that they as a subjective person may have to do with it but pure objectivity is a myth. Perhaps the reason that a mythology of "Darwin the good guy, let's have Darwin day." has developed around Darwin as a person (There is no Newton day that I know of.) is because his knowledge was subjective. He imagined things about the past one way but it's possible for another person to imagine things about the past another and so on. How do you unify a "theory" rooted in hypothetical goo of this sort other than idolizing a single figure? There is little consistency to be had in the so-called "theory of evolution" itself given that it is generally a collection of a hypotheses about change, not a unified theory predicting it.mynym
March 13, 2009
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You need to read up what a polymorphic trait is. You are comparing a percentage of the entire genome with a percentage of a very small subset. Actually I was comparing a percentage of genetic charlatanism to another percentage of it. In fact I'd say that the percentage of charlatanism is about 99% similar, scientifically speaking. Charlatanism aside, the simple fact is that we generally do not know what is "determined" by genes anyway. Like the magicians and alchemists who are part of their tradition modern scientific charlatans generally cannot admit that they do not know, privately they may but publicly they generally do not. It's simply not in their interests. Fortunately there are typically a few iconoclasts here and there who point out that charlatans have less then half the knowledge that they claim to. So if you want to know about what we do not know then you have to read them. (On Darwinism read David Berlinski, Michael Denton, David Stove and others.) Darwinists/biologists are generally charlatans when dealing with the public (enter the ever ironic flat earth error and so on here), yet the greatest barrier to progress in knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge that charlatanism creates.mynym
March 13, 2009
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Aussie ID:"Social Darwinism is the major culprit. "Having studied Aboriginal Australia through my University years, and of course lived with Australian Aboriginals, it was always a mixture of the worst aspects of colonisation and the social beliefs of the white colonisers that decimated the population. Social Darwinism has to face the scrutiny for what it delivered the Aboriginal people." Were the slaughterers of aborigines prior to Darwin's first publication on evolution "Social Darwinists" and was Darwin a "Social Darwinist", and are the modern "evolutionary biologists" whom Ms O'Leary is so concerned about likely to be "Social Darwinists"? If tectonic plate theory tells us that plates move around the earth's surface, does that tell us that it's a good or bad thing that they do so, and should we perhaps attempt to help push them on their way? AussieID: "Many eminent Australian scientists of the day were to express similar attitudes. In Victoria, throughout the frontier years (between 1835 and 1850) the intellectual argument that the Aborigines more closely resembled “the ourangoutangs than men” made it easier for the squatter to treat the Aborigines as subhuman, to lump them with the dingo and shoot them as a “rural pest.” " Were they inspired by the book we're discussing in this thread? Written in 1871? The Australians were slaughtered and pushed off land for the same reason that the conquistadors got rid of perhaps a quarter of the South and Central American population three centuries before. Human economic drive, otherwise known as "sheer greed"! The specific excuses that people make to themselves in these circumstances are based on whatever's available (heathens, savages, etc.) and make an interesting study for social psychologists, but they are not the real reasons. No single specific excuse is needed, as people can always make new ones up. Here's an interesting twist for the thread. Evolutionary biology has been taught to some extent (not much) in western schools after the modern sythesis, starting in the 1930s. The first generation effected by this would have become adults around 1950. Since 1950 then, have we witnessed: (a) A marked increase in racism? (b) A marked decrease in racism? (c) About the same level of racism?iconofid
March 13, 2009
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"Jeez guys, what does it matter if Darwin ate babies ? He’s dead, what lives on are his ideas, like gravity etc. Why the constant fixation with Darwins character?" Darwin came up with gravity? I thought that was Newton. I think the point is that Darwinists have made public statements against ID as scientific, yet they never did the same for racism as scientific despite its many defenses by prominent individuals arguing that it was some kind of scientific fact.Lord Timothy
March 13, 2009
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jerry, of course we can see broad evolutionary patterns of increase, as well as decrease, and plenty of stasis.but are "increased neural capabilities" really a goal? or just an outcome of a process? is the massive reduction of genome size in buchnera symbionts of aphids a goal? how about the loss of uv vision in mammals? the loss of hemoglobin in notiothenoid fish? is that part of the grand evolutionary progression as well? what about the trillions of organisms that still only have a single cell type? or do they not count, because as you clearly imply, evolution has one major goal, and that's a progression towards humans and everything else is just noise?Khan
March 13, 2009
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"It is not necessary for me to talk about the destination, in order to know that some are farther ahead on the road from the origin. This assumes a linear progression of evolution." In fact, there has been a movement in evolution despite the protestations of many to deny that this is part of the theory. It does not have to be a linear progression but it is linear in nature if one plots the changes over time. One way of looking at the evolution is easy. Namely cell types. A typical mammal has 200+ cell types and this has linearly changed since the Cambrian Explosion. And these cell types allows more functions by the individual organisms. Is it perfect line? Of course not but the effect of the changes has been mainly linear and not geometric or some other curve. It is a windy road mainly in one direction. One of the roads has been a movement to more advance neural capabilities. And this is probably the dimension under scrutiny. It is kind of silly to say there has been no movement or that some are not further along on the road on some capabilities especially this capability. It is certainly true that there are many capabilities and no one species is best on all and it is obvious that some are almost completely deficient on some. But to say that there has not been movement along various dimensions does not meet with reality. ID is well aware of the various claims made about the purposeless of evolution but the actual evidence is contrary to that. However, movement is also supported by basic claims that such progress is just a natural outcome of variation and selection dealing with competitive environments. That is a major claim of all the evolutionary biologists. That competition drives increased capabilities. This is a peripheral part of this thread but it is nonsense that evolution does not progress and is acclaimed as such by the hard core natural and anti ID evolutionary biologists.jerry
March 13, 2009
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Denyse: “I do not want to quarrel uselessly about this. I am simply asking all members of societies that have made statements supporting Darwin vs. intelligent design to FOLLOW UP with a formal statement *divorcing* Darwin’s racism.” May I ask that the Catholic Church issue a formal statement *divorcing* the Church from the Lateran Treaties that Pope Pius XI signed with Benito Mussolini? These treaties declared the Vatican to be a separate country, gave the Church control of education and paid the church a yearly stipend. In return, the Catholic church gave its complete backing to Mussolini and the Fascist government which enabled him to consolidate his power over Italy. I’d also like the Church to issue a formal statement *divorcing* the Church from the Concordat it signed with Adolph Hitler in 1933. The church got money out of this one, too, as well as control over education. They had to give a little more than mere approval of the Nazi Party, however. They also had to spike the Catholic Centrum political party, which opposed the Nazis and was keeping Hitler from achieving total power. The Centrum party was taken over by envoys from the Vatican and directed Catholic voters to support the Third Reich, enabling Hitler to finally consolidate his power over Germany and cleared the way for him to begin his more “ambitious” plans, such as WWII and the Holocaust. It might also be nice to also have the Church issue a formal statement *divorcing* the Church from the notorious “Ratline” that enabled many high ranking Nazi officials, including Adolph Eichmann, to escape to South America, the US, Canada and the Middle East. In the Vatican’s favor, however, I must admit that this was more the work of Bishop Alois Hudal and others. Mind you, we don’t hold you personally responsible for the moral failures of your church, although you did join it voluntarily as an adult and remain a member in good standing. But we are – at best – surprised by the lack of interest in the Church at erasing this stain from its history. Don’t tell us you individually disagree with your Church’s actions. That means nothing in the current climate. Now, if the Church does not do it, won’t we know something useful? I think we will know something very useful indeed. I will be VERY happy to publicise any upcoming divorces from the Lateran Treaties it signed with Mussolini or the Concordat it signed with Adolph Hitler. Pope Benedict XVI, do you or don’t you divorce your church from this evil history?djmullen
March 13, 2009
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Social Darwinism is the major culprit. Having studied Aboriginal Australia through my University years, and of course lived with Australian Aboriginals, it was always a mixture of the worst aspects of colonisation and the social beliefs of the white colonisers that decimated the population. Social Darwinism has to face the scrutiny for what it delivered the Aboriginal people. As Gary Foley considers, one aspect of life that Australia shared with Germany in the first part of this century was the popularity of racial theories based on Social Darwinism. As Karl Schleunes wrote, "The publication of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution in 1859 had an immediate impact in Germany’, and when Professor Ernst Haeckel developed these theories to incorporate a general theory of human and social development, the notion was used by racial theorists to justify their, ‘conceptions of superior and inferior peoples and nations’. These were some of the major contributing elements for the Nazis to later concoct their policies against ‘inferior’ ‘races’, such as Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and Blacks. In Australia Social Darwinism was also very popular, especially among the scientific community. Andrew Markus has said, ‘One doesn’t have to read extensively to discern that a central concern of anatomists was to establish whether Aborigines were closer to the animal than human’. The Elder Professor of Anatomy at the University of Adelaide in 1926 said that Aborigines were, ‘too low in the scale of humanity’ to benefit from ‘the civilising influence of Anglo Saxon rule’. In the 1920’s and 30’s Australia’s Aborigines were a treasure trove of curiosity for scientists and academics who believed that here was the ‘missing link’ species that would advance the cause of Social Darwinism. Consequently, thousands of Koori peoples in communities all over Australia, were subjected to the whims of ‘scientists’ interested in such things as similarities between Aborigines and Chimpanzees, brain capacity and cranium size (one study in 1920 concluded that, ‘the average brain capacity of Aborigines was between the normal medium intelligence of twelve or thirteen year old children’) This Australian fascination with racial theories, phrenology and eugenics, closely mirrors a similar obsession with identical notions by German society of the same period in relation to the Jews. Professor A. P. Elkin, one of the most revered and ‘enlightened’ anthropologists in Australian history, in 1929 wrote, "...some races possess certain powers in greater degree...than do others. Thus, the Australian Aborigines and the African negroes are human and have their powers, but they are not necessarily equal to the white or yellow races." In Germany the same year as Elkin wrote the above, one of the leading racial theorists in the Third Reich, Professor Hans F. Gunther, said, ‘If an illustrator, painter or sculptor wants to represent the image of a bold, goal-determined, resolute person, or of a noble, superior, and heroic human being, man or woman, he will in most cases create an image which more or less approximates the image of the Nordic race.’. At the other end of the racial/social spectrum were the Aborigines of Australia. Many eminent Australian scientists of the day were to express similar attitudes. In Victoria, throughout the frontier years (between 1835 and 1850) the intellectual argument that the Aborigines more closely resembled “the ourangoutangs than men” made it easier for the squatter to treat the Aborigines as subhuman, to lump them with the dingo and shoot them as a “rural pest.” Australia during the 1930s was a society that held almost identical racial theories of evolution and Social Darwinism as those that dominated the ideology of Hitler’s Germany. It was the inherent assumption that ‘inferior’ peoples could be disposed of that led to genocidal acts being perpetrated in both societies. In Australia the greater part of the mass murder and genocide of Indigenous peoples occurred in the 150 years prior to the advent of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, and that the most destructive phase of the Australian concentration camps occurred from the 1930s through to the 1960s. To get more local, for me, the Tasmanian Aboriginal was regarded as the missing link between apes and humans. The construction of Tasmanian Aboriginal people by 19thC evolutionary science and by evolutionists like John Lubbock and E.B. Taylor as Paleolithic survivors went hand in hand with the robbing of fresh graves in getting those 'scientific specimens' to study. These men suggested that, in an evolutionary sense, the Aboriginal people were arrested in their development. Clive Haydon brings up the article about the 'Body Snatchers' that took 'fresh specimens'. He is totally correct that these things happened in the colony at that time. Aboriginal Australia has certainly been mistreated, and you must remember it wasn't until 1967 that Australian Aborigines were even given the vote! To have Aborigines shot was common place. For them to be taken and used as a scientific experiment was also a practice. Allen MacNeill's court room example should be evidence enough: it was staged in the USA (we don't have DA's here, we have Barristers) where the courts of law are severely biased, and the ruling was incorrect. Sound familiar?AussieID
March 13, 2009
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Mynym #79 Quoted from Alan's link: "Only 6.3 percent of the total genetic variation of 17 human polymorphic traits is explained by race, i.e. the between-group variance. Nearly ninety-four percent of human genetic variation occurs as WITHIN-GROUP variation." Your comment: But Darwinian charlatans also claim that we share 98% of our DNA with chimps. So if that 2% difference generally “explains” the difference in intelligence, civilization, art and so on between chimps and humans what is one supposed to conclude about DNA percentages used for a different type of charlatanism. Apparently that “2%” (the way “sharing” is counted may vary) could have something to do with vast differences in intelligence, creativity and so on. You need to read up what a polymorphic trait is. You are comparing a percentage of the entire genome with a percentage of a very small subset.Mark Frank
March 13, 2009
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Adel #65 That post is now gone, and it’s to Clive’s credit that he vaporized it. How do you remove/edit a post? Do you need special privileges?Mark Frank
March 13, 2009
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Clive
It is not necessary for me to talk about the destination, in order to know that some are farther ahead on the road from the origin.
This assumes a linear progression of evolution. To try and understand better where I'm coming from you can think of evolution as a kind of brownian motion. In brownian motion each particle reactes only to it's immediate surroundings and ends up travelling, sometimes quite far from where you first measured it. From a given starting point, you can see that a given particle has moved over time in a definite direction. If you look only at the starting point and the end point, it describes a linear progression. However, it is understood that the progression of the particle itself has not been linear, but has zigged and zagged along the way, so that any given particle found on or near that line has not done a better or worse job of traversing that line. Rather it happens to conform to a greater or lesser degree to the arbitrary line that you have dictated as the "road from the origin" by simple virtue of the fact that random jostling has just happened to move it more or less in that direction. Change the point that you measure from or to, or even just wait a moment and measure along the same line, and you will see that the particles that conform more or less to that line has changed drastically. The same kind of progression occurs as a result of evolution. Any individual creature or population isn't travelling along any line of any kind. It is reacting only to it's immediate surroundings, and so "evolves" in whatever direction allows it to survive, zigging and zagging in response to environmental pressures. You can choose to measure evolutionary change from what we understand to be the origin to any living creature and claim that creatures are to a greater or lesser degree "further" along that line than others, but that is an arbitrary line determined by you and your personal views rather than anything predicted by evolution. Change where you measure from or to, or even just wait a while, and you will see that the creatures that conform more or less to your arbitrary line has changed drastically (of course, waiting a while on an evolutionary scale can mean millions of years). Evolution doesn't say that something is "more evolved" because it conforms to some arbitrary line along which evolution is moving. There is no line. There is only the brownian motion of survivability. Now, let's ignore all that and just assume for a moment that there is such thing as "more evolved", just for the sake of argument. Since evolution is concerned only with survivability, if a creature can survive without killing or subjugating another creature, then there is no evolutionary reason to do either. So to claim that "I am more evolved, therefore evolution dictates that I am better than you and can kill or subjugate you how I please" is to inject a foreign ideology into the theory, distorting it into something else completely. Racism and eugenics do not follow from the theory of evolution, but are distortions of the theory caused by individual ideology, even if you do accept the idea that a creature can be more or less evolved than another, which I obviously do not.KRiS_Censored
March 12, 2009
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From Allen MacNeil's link:
A few additional highlights from Lewontin’s study are worth careful consideration. Only 6.3 percent of the total genetic variation of 17 human polymorphic traits is explained by race, i.e. the between-group variance. Nearly ninety-four percent of human genetic variation occurs as WITHIN-GROUP variation. In other words, for the variables measured individuals within socially determined categories of “race” were more biologically dissimilar from one another than they were between supposedly seperate “races.” [...]They found that up to 98.5 percent of the observed variance occurred WITHIN subpopulations at the individual level.
But Darwinian charlatans also claim that we share 98% of our DNA with chimps. So if that 2% difference generally "explains" the difference in intelligence, civilization, art and so on between chimps and humans what is one supposed to conclude about DNA percentages used for a different type of charlatanism. Apparently that "2%" (the way "sharing" is counted may vary) could have something to do with vast differences in intelligence, creativity and so on. Especially if you're stupid enough to believe genetic puppetry theorists who lecture about "selfish genes" and so on. As Johnathan Marks notes these types of percentages generally don't mean what people think they mean:
The problem is that in being told about these data without a context in which to interpret them, we are left to our own cultural devices. Here, we are generally expected to infer that genetic comparisons reflect deep biological structure, and that 98% is an overwhelming amount of similarity. Thus “the DNA of a human is 98% identical to the DNA of a chimpanzee” becomes casually interpreted as “deep down inside, humans are overwhelmingly chimpanzee. Like 98% chimpanzee.” …. …whatever the number is, it shouldn’t be any more impressive than the anatomical similarity; all we need to do is to put that old-fashioned comparison into a zoological context. The paradox is not that we are so genetically similar to the chimpanzee; the paradox is why we now find the genetic similarity to be so much more striking than the anatomical similarity. Scholars of the eighteenth century were overwhelmed by the similarities between humans and chimpanzees. Chimpanzees were as novel then as DNA is now; and the apparent contrast between our bodies and our genes is simply an artifact of having two centuries’ familiarity with chimpanzees and scarcely two decades’ familiarity with DNA sequences. (What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee by Johnathan Marks :28-31)
mynym
March 12, 2009
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If they wish to do this, however, they should make it clear to school and college students that Darwinism is unable to supply us with any ethical norms... There is evidence that students are ignorant in this area. They are being taught the same mistakes again. In my experience many begin to murmur the word science as if it is the definition of progress and mistakenly begin to associate Darwinism with progress as we know it. It seems that they are confusing a mythology of Progress with what can be known about progress historically. Edwin Black notes that ignorance is typical:
Genetics has become a glitter word in the daily media. Most of the twenty-first century’s genetic warriors are unschooled in the history of eugenics. Most are completely divorced from any wisp of eugenic thought. Few, if any are aware that in their noble battle against the mysteries and challenges of human heredity, they have inherited the spoils of the war against the weak. (War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black :425)
In fact, Obama's recent action on embryos was rationalized with the same ignorant view of science. Something along the lines of: "This is the scientific view of this issue. It is purely scientific, separate from politics and ethics." It's not without precedent:
For the biologists, the test of a scientific outlook was generally identified with a society’s attitude towards eugenics; that is, its willingness to adopt a genuinely scientific stance towards questions of what used to be called “race betterment.” The Marxist and Fabian biologists believed that Western societies had largely failed this test. (Eugenics and the Left by Diane Paul Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 45, No. 4. (Oct. - Dec., 1984), pp. :569)
mynym
March 12, 2009
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The only way for Darwinism to escape the charge of lending an added legitimacy to the barbaric practices described above is to divest “nature” of all normative status - which is what many Darwinists did from the outset. If they wish to do this, however, they should make it clear to school and college students that Darwinism is unable to supply us with any ethical norms, and that the workings of nature are utterly amoral. On this account, then, Darwinism can no more prescribe what is good for us than atomic physics. Darwinism is not like physics, it's hardly the same type of knowledge given that it allows one to cite imagining things about the past as the equivalent of empirical evidence. Given that it is said to be a scientific theory that explains the existence of ethical norms themselves it cannot be separated from them. Of course it does not actually explain them but if you're ignorant or stupid enough to believe that Darwinian theory explains biology and organisms in general then it "explains" ethics just the same. To the extent that people think that they have a form of knowledge which is as certain as the theory of gravity which explains ethics, debating ethics becomes as moot as debating whether or not an object "should" fall to the floor. We are all subjects of gravity and that's all that can be said. This was the view of Darwin and the Nazis with respect to the inevitable extermination of certain groups of people. It was not an issue of what should or should not happen, it was merely a brute scientific fact of nature. Given this view lamenting the inevitable fact of extermination is akin to lamenting the fact that objects subject to gravity fall to the floor. Darwin lamented it based on his pseudo-scientific ideas of supposed vestiges of a "noble instinct" and the Nazis engaged in the same type of pseudo-science. As Robert Lifton noted this allowed them to engage in "doubling" and so on and allowed them to separate their private ethical concerns from their public, medical and scientific roles. The argument that people can have knowledge (Or believe themselves to have it based on the sort of charlatanism promoted by proponents of Darwinism.) similar to the theory of gravity* and then simply "separate" it from public life or fail to apply it is merely an abstraction. History shows that in theory they could but in fact they do not. *The fact that the earth revolves around the sun is another favorite but one can use whatever puerile argument of association needed in order to maintain the illusion that Darwinian theory has progressed beyond the hypothetical goo of "evolution" in general. Things change...yes, imagine that!mynym
March 12, 2009
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Re Darwin and racism: I've been doing a bit of research on the Web. Here's a summary of what I found: (1) Scientific racism did not begin with Darwin. Allen MacNeill is quite right on this point, and I would like to apologize to him if I gave the impression that I believed Darwin was personally responsible for originating or propagating it as part of his scientific arguments. The true villains of the piece are Carol Linnaeus and Johann Blumenbach, whose work predates The Descent of Man by about a century.
Carolus Linnaeus (1707–78), a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist, who laid the bases of binomial nomenclature (the method of naming species) and is known as the "father of modern taxonomy" (the science of describing, categorizing and naming organisms) was also a pioneer in defining the concept of "race" as applied to humans. Within Homo sapiens he proposed four taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank. These categories are, Americanus, Asiaticus, Africanus, and Europeanus. They were based on place of origin at first, and later skin color. Each race had certain characteristics that were endemic to individuals belonging to it. Native Americans were reddish, stubborn, and angered easily. Africans were black, relaxed and negligent. Asians were yellow, avaricious, and easily distracted. Europeans were white, gentle, and inventive. In addition, in Amoenitates academicae (1763), Carolus Linnaeus defined Homo anthropomorpha as a catch-all race for a variety of human-like mythological creatures, including the troglodyte, satyr, hydra, and phoenix. He claimed that these creatures actually existed, but were in reality inaccurate descriptions of ape-like creatures... Edward Long, a British colonial administrator, created a more simple classification of race in History of Jamaica (1774). The next year, Johann Blumenbach published his thesis, On the Natural Varieties of Mankind, one of the foundational work of scientific racism (cited from Wikipedia article on Scientific racism).
More on Blumenbach:
Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., were correlated with group character and aptitude. He interpreted craniometry and phrenology to make physical appearance correspond with racial categories. The fairness and relatively high brows of Caucasians were held to be apt physical expressions of a loftier mentality and a more generous spirit. The epicanthic folds around the eyes of Mongolians and their slightly sallow outer epidermal layer bespoke their supposedly crafty, literal-minded nature. The dark skin and relatively sloping craniums were taken as wholesale proof of a closer genetic proximity to the monkeys, despite the fact that the skin of chimpanzees and gorillas beneath the hair is whiter than the average Caucasian skin, and that orangutans and some monkey species have foreheads fully as vertical as the typical Englishman or German (cited from Wikipedia article on Johann Friedrich Blumenbach).
Later in life, Blumenbach concluded that Africans were not inferior to the rest of mankind, but by then, his pernicious earlier ideas had already influenced other naturalists. (2) Darwin's own racism was relatively mild by the standards of his day, and he detested the cruelty of slavery, as other contributors to this post have amply documented. (3) The chief danger of Darwin's views, however - and this was perceived long before his Descent of Man was published in 1871 - was that it asserted that (i) humans sprang from animals (an idea not new to Darwin); and (ii) in the natural order of things, "fit" races of living creatures would supplant "unfit" ones. After all, the subtitle of Darwin's 1859 work, On the Origin of Species, was: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. If you were the kind of person who tended to identify what is "natural" with what is good or right (and Darwin himself was not), then you might well think, after reading Darwin's work, that those who hastened the demise of unfit races were carrying on nature's work, and hence doing something praiseworthy or meritorious. And if you happened to think that humans sprang from animals, it would be tempting to rationalize such wicked acts on the grounds that the victims represented a lower order of humanity. If, on the other hand, your concept of goodness was entirely divorced from your concept of what is natural, and you abhorred "nature red in tooth in claw", then you would not be tempted to think in this way - which is why Darwinists like Dawkins and Gould have felt entirely justified in rejecting racism. (4) Unfortunately, there were many scientists in the nineteenth century who interpreted Darwin's Origin of Species in a normative sense. What significance did this have for the Australian Aborigines? Some contributors have correctly pointed out that grave-robbing and desecration of Aboriginal remains occurred long before Darwin's works were published. That is indeed the case. However, as Professor Paul Turnbull points out in his historical survey (cited below), Darwin's account of the process whereby unfit races were eliminated, coupled with the then-commonly-accepted view (espoused by Darwin and many other naturalists before him) that the Aborigines were less "fit" than the European immigrants, lent an added legitimacy to these barbaric practices, for those inclined to think that they were simply furthering nature's work:
From the 1860s onwards, factors such as the professionalism of science, the rise to prominence of national scientific bodies, and the operations of associated patronage networks, rendered metropolitan science more homogenous in its guiding aims and practices. Contributing to this homogeneity was the widespread assent given Darwinistic modes of thought (Stocking, 1989).... The half-century or so after 1860 also witnessed a remarkable surge of interest in procuring Aboriginal remains for science. Darwinian sciences construed Aboriginal people as distinct "primitive types" or "races" in the time-scale of human evolution. They offered, among other things, what seemed a powerful explanation of the history of Aboriginal mortality since 1788 in terms of the sad, but inevitable, extinction of a biologically inferior race. By the same logic, the procurement of remains was an urgent necessity (cited from Ancestors, not Specimens: Reflections on the Controversy over the Remains of Aboriginal People in European Scientific Collections at http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/articles/turnbull.htm )
(5) Some contributors have suggested that Darwin be put on trial, as if he were in a court of law. That suggestion is laughable, for law courts require an unrealistically high standard of evidence, in order for attain certainty "beyond reasonable doubt." History deals in probabilities, not certainties. The historical question we need to address is: did Darwin's ideas (not Darwin the man) play an instrumental role in legitimizing despicable practices, such as the desecration of Aboriginal remains? Darwin is not on trial here; Darwinism is. (6) Allen MacNeill attempts to smack down damaging evidence as "hearsay" - a derogatory phrase, commonly connoting unreliable testimony, but which in fact means nothing more than "information gathered by the first person from a second person concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience (Wikipedia)." By that definition, most historical data is hearsay. Excluding this kind of evidence en masse as unworthy of credence is simply obtuse. Here's an example from Professor Turnbull's article "Theft in the Name of Science" at http://www.griffith.edu.au/griffithreview/campaign/apo/apo_ed21/Turnbull_Ed21.pdf, discussed in a post (#64)above.
...Archibald Meston, the flamboyant frontier entrepreneur, politician and self?styled anthropological expert, was on several occasions in the 1880s publicly accused of accompanying the Native Police on expeditions to secure Indigenous artifacts. When approached in March 1887 by Edward Pierson Ramsay, curator of Sydney's Australian Museum, about supplying the museum with Aboriginal skulls, Meston replied with grim humor: "Re skulls &c. skeletons of the festive myall!! To what strange uses are our noble primeval inhabitants to be devoted! At your prices I could have procured about £2000 worth in the last six years. I shall start on the warpath again! Hope to succeed in slaughtering some stray skeleton for you. Shall also see to weapons dilly bags &c. &c."
Professor Turnbull then supplies documentation for the remark: Meston to Ramsay, 15 March 1887, E.P. Ramsay Papers, Mitchell Library (State Library of New South Wales), MS 1589/2. I don't really care whether some smart-aleck lawyer can shoot this down in court as hearsay. What I want to know is: is it true? We have good documentary evidence, so my conclusion would be: probably. (7) So I return to my original question: is Darwinism dangerous? The answer hinges on whether nature is taken as ethically normative. Very few people divorce the concepts of "good" and "natural" entirely, in their minds. For most people, "natural" connotes "good", and if I wanted to know what a good diet was, I should begin by investigating our biological nature as human beings. The danger of people rationalizing bad behavior as "natural" is real. The only way for Darwinism to escape the charge of lending an added legitimacy to the barbaric practices described above is to divest "nature" of all normative status - which is what many Darwinists did from the outset. If they wish to do this, however, they should make it clear to school and college students that Darwinism is unable to supply us with any ethical norms, and that the workings of nature are utterly amoral. On this account, then, Darwinism can no more prescribe what is good for us than atomic physics. But then, of course, you are left with a question: where DO our ethical norms come from? The implication is that that morality is a purely human construct. Given the enormous differences in human sentiments and in accepted cultural practices, that sounds like a pretty fragile basis of morality to me.vjtorley
March 12, 2009
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Jeez guys, what does it matter if Darwin ate babies ? He's dead, what lives on are his ideas, like gravity etc. Why the constant fixation with Darwins character?Graham
March 12, 2009
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I read the entire thread. It is true that Darwin's views on racism have no bearing on the veracity of TTOE. On the other hand to many people, (me at least) it seems reasonable that if evolution is true then certain groups/individuals of living things are in competition with each other for the means of survival. While it may not make sense to say they are more evolved, one might as easily say they are "better adapted" than others. It stands to reason that certain groups/individuals through RM and NS are "better adapted" to survive than other groups just as certain individuals are better adapted via RM and NS. (The engines of evolution) Further, if RM and NS produce aggressive behavior or thought systems which aids survival of individuals/group by producing domination and extinction of individuals/groups without the identical adaptation - then TTOE, as defined by the engines of RM and NS can be considered the cause of aggressive behavior and aggressive thought systems. Seems pretty clear to me... If a group of bees develops a "Killer" mentality they are better adapted and can take over the "regular" bees. (We of course actually see this happening in the Southern US.) The bottom line is with TTOE, Ken Miller aside, there seems to be no "ought" there is just "is." Therefore which groups survive and which group go extinct is not a moral question at all but is instead one of survival. If a racist mentality helps a group exist/reproduce there is no moral constraint. TTOE in the least then, to my way of thinking, makes no moral judgment on racism and partially enables it by suggesting that some groups will be "better adapted" than other groups. Some groups of living things will become extinct as conditions change. It also makes good sense that groups that are "better adapted" would not want to be bred with groups that are not as well adapted and would also keep the less well adapted groups/individuals from the finite resource pool. I believe there is even a push now through artificial insemination to cull your kids for certain hair colors/types as well as IQ levels.joshuabgood
March 12, 2009
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Those defending Darwin here against charges of racism are engaging in special pleading. Let's cite several well-known examples from history and see who lets the following off the hook, or decide we need a special committe to decide their exact degree of racism: David Duke: racist or not? Abraham Lincoln: racist or not? General Erwin Rommel: racist or not? Cite any source or quotation you want, and I can find someone who has a *worse* case of racism than any of the above three. If I look far enough I can find some of their contemps who were better or worse. I can even invoke the "standards of the day" argument. But I am not sure any of that would matter one grain of sand to a single slave or murdered Jew, would it? Darwin was a racist, but the reason his supporters don't llike to admit it is because it makes him almost untouchable, and as Denyse said, disgusting. If you want to believe in Evolution that's okay, but let's not hold Darwin to a different standard because some are emotionally invested in him.gleaner63
March 12, 2009
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Here's a nice story Ota Benga: the pygmy put on display in a zoo http://creation.com/ota-benga-the-pygmy-put-on-display-in-a-zoo One Scientific American article said: ‘The personal appearance, characteristics, and traits of the Congo pygmies … [they are] small, ape-like, elfish creatures, furtive and mischievous … [who] live in the dense tangled forests in absolute savagery, and while they exhibit many ape-like features in their bodies, they possess a certain alertness, which appears to make them more intelligent than other negroes …butifnot
March 12, 2009
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Kris @ 60, I make no such argument that evolution is approximating to a goal or anything else--what I am saying is that it comes from something--leads out of something--and leads in a direction from that something. It is not necessary for me to talk about the destination, in order to know that some are farther ahead on the road from the origin. I make no claims about any pre-ordination in evolution. My argument is that evolution can only exist by comparison to those who are close to others. To see the similarities is by comparison to say that they are closely related, and to see the differences is by comparison to see how one is evolving from the other. And once that determination is made, it is discerned that the one is either more or less evolved than the other by comparison. Evolution cannot escape this comparison; it's inherent in the very framework. Evolution is explained, after all, as the struggle for life and fitness is an environment, emphasis on struggle.Clive Hayden
March 12, 2009
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No, you're right Rude. It began with a character assassination and an attempted ultimatum, as I addressed above in [27]. It just seemed a natural place for a slanderous urban legend.David Kellogg
March 12, 2009
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