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Tag Archive for 'evolution'

Natural Selection and Eugenics

Published

on April 21, 2008

. 13 Comments

Richard Dawkins has posted an open reply to a letter from a Jew deceived by Expelled, who believed the propaganda movie’s absurd claims without any fact checking. I suggest you read Dawkins’ reply in full, of course, but the subject of this post is this part in particular:

Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin’s great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realize that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: “natural selection”, the “survival of the fittest”. Hitler didn’t apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler’s eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.

This, in retrospect, is obvious, but I hadn’t seen it explained so succinctly and clearly before. Eugenics has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution! Animal (and even plant) breeders have known about selective breeding for millennia (indeed, I think it’s even mentioned in the Christian Bible), ages before Darwin or the concept of the evolution of species. Anyone who breeds dogs, horses, birds, etc. knows perfectly well that you can cross specimens with particular characteristics to achieve desired results (say, a new hair or plumage color, or a bigger or smaller animal, or one with other specific characteristics). This can be seen as artificial selection.

Darwin’s new idea was: what if something like this also happens in nature, without intervention? And what if that is how the species in the world today have came to be? In other words: evolution, by natural selection.

Eugenics (the attempt to “perfect” the human race according to one’s beliefs or preferences) has nothing to do with natural selection. It’s simply an attempt to apply the ages old selective breeding of animals to humans.

Of course, I’m not even considering blaming animal breeders from thousands of years ago for the Holocaust. That would simply be ridiculous. But blaming something completely unrelated (Darwinian evolution) for it is even more ridiculous. Eugenics is a disgusting distortion of selective breeding (which is itself blameless for eugenics); it’s completely unrelated to evolution / natural selection.

And, when you should know better than to say such an absurdity (as some filmmakers do), it’s also a dangerous, evil lie.

Does Evolution lead to Atheism?

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on April 4, 2008

in atheism and evolution

. 13 Comments

Many people in the US claim that teaching evolution is a bad thing, because it leads to atheism (and some, like Ben Stein, add that it then leads to Nazism and the Holocaust, but that’s another story). Of course, I don’t think that leading to atheism is a bad thing, because atheism is a “good thing”. However, the question remains: does it?

My answer: in some cases, yes.

The reality of evolution doesn’t preclude the existence of God, much less disprove it. It is certainly compatible with the existence of a supreme being who created the universe, and even with one who also intentionally created life on Earth.

It does, however, affect religious belief in two different ways, either of which can lead one to atheism, and which are why religion often has objections to evolution:

It removes one of the major needs for the existence of God. One can believe that a divine creator exists simply because we don’t see any other explanation for something — in this case, the existence of mankind. Much like in Douglas Adams’s case, it can happen that you come to the conclusion that human religions are logically incoherent and man-made, but you still believe there must be some kind of creator, since you are aware of no other explanation. But evolution provides one, which resolves the “I don’t see any other way it could have been” argument from ignorance.
It reveals the holy books are not inerrant. The major monotheist religions are based on their respective holy books, which include creation stories, usually having something to do with “six days”, with mankind as “special” and intentionally designed, and which totally contradict evolution. To put it bluntly: if evolution is real, Genesis is wrong. While not all sects of each religion teach biblical literalism and inerrancy, many do so, and the fact that evolution shows one part of the Bible to be not literally true leads one to a slippery slope: if this part is wrong or can’t be taken literally, might other parts be wrong or non-literal as well? (One particular resurrection comes to mind…) And how can one then know which parts to trust? This kind of questioning leads some to a more liberal form of religion, but others to one simple, “dangerous” question: what if… it’s all wrong?

And thus evolution is opposed. Because they see what it can do, indeed.

Applying Logic to Creationism / Evolution

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on April 3, 2008

in creationism, evolution and logic

. 11 Comments

A little while ago, and for no apparent reason (I’m like that ), I thought about an Internet poll I’ve seen some time ago, which asked people what they thought was more likely about the development of life on Earth. If I remember correctly, the options were something like this:

God created the species as they are, less than 10,000 years ago (young earth creationism);
God created the species as they are, millions of years ago (old earth creationism);
God created life and directed evolution, starting millions of years ago (theistic evolution);
Life evolved without action from a god (natural evolution).

And it got me thinking…

We can think of the several hypotheses as a series of switches. God (as in “interfering”, not as in “existing”)? Yes or no. Old Earth? Yes or no. Evolution? Yes or no. With these switches, here are the 8 possible combinations (with 0 for “no” and 1 for “yes” — yes, I’m a computer geek. ):

God?	Old Earth?	Evolution?
0	0	0
0	0	1
0	1	0
0	1	1
1	0	0
1	0	1
1	1	0
1	1	1

This is the initial premise. But we can quickly remove a few contradictory combinations. For instance, no God and no evolution means that nothing accounts for the life we have in the world today. In other words, we can’t have a “0″ for both God and evolution. Evolution but no old earth is also impossible: nobody — scientists or creationists — claims that species could have evolved in just a couple of millennia, and both sides agree that man already existed 6,000 years ago. In binary terms, evolution requires an old earth (not the other way around, though).

So, the cut-down table (now with labels for each combination) amounts to this:

	God?	Old Earth?	Evolution?
A	0	1	1
B	1	0	0
C	1	1	0
D	1	1	1

What more can we say about them? Well, for a start: evidence contradicts B and C, so they cannot be true. There is lots of evidence for both evolution and an old earth, and both are accepted by science — not dogmatically, not on authority, but because that’s where the evidence leads. The only reason people still claim B or C is this: it’s what the holy books claim. If you believe they are inerrant, then any evidence to the contrary must be ignored, like covering your ears with your hands and crying “la la la, I can’t hear you”. Of course, such a position is irrational, dishonest, and stupid. Creationism (old earth or young earth) is the denial of reality; it’s not a scientific hypothesis with any merit, because no evidence supports it, and a lot of evidence contradicts it. I can respect people who are honestly mistaken, but not those who lie to themselves, who deny reality, just because it’s somehow uncomfortable or contradicts dogma.

So, if we care the least bit about reality, we must remove any combination with Old Earth=0 or Evolution=0. Therefore, the only remaining combinations are these (keeping the labels from the previous table):

	God?	Old Earth?	Evolution?
A	0	1	1
D	1	1	1

Now, D is obviously theistic evolution, that is, evolution directed by God. This is undisprovable, because it doesn’t contradict the evidence (but, then again, Last Thursdayism, the theory that the universe was created last Thursday, but with everyone having memories of a fictional time before that, and with the world having been created to appear much older, is also undisprovable). There is, however, no evidence for it, either.

A is not necessarily atheistic naturalism; as I said before, “God” here means intervention by God, not just existence. A can be naturalism, but it can also be Deism. Again, it can’t be disproved, and, again, there is no evidence of “no (intervening) God”. The main difference between A and D is that D adds another agent, which is not required, as A has the exact same evidence for and against it, and explains everything just as well. If both explanations are equally satisfactory and substantiated, but one of them has an extra entity, then Occam’s Razor tells us that the other one — with the least number of entities — is the most likely one. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, and the extra entity is unnecessary.

From this, we arrive at A as the most likely hypothesis. All available evidence agrees with it, and it is the simpler (in terms of number of entities) explanation.

Creationism / ID and Evolution

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on May 29, 2007

in christianity, creationism, evolution, religion and science

. 19 Comments

I’ve recently read a comment, and a reply to another comment, in Slashdot, in the “Creation Museum opens” thread. I think both are brilliant. I won’t quote them in full here, but I’d recommend their reading to anyone.

From the initial comment:

I’ve noticed that many slashdot articles about evolution seem to attract a sizeable number of creationists. Because of this, I’ve decided to address the serious (i.e. non-trolling) creationists that frequent slashdot in the hope that I can prevent you from making the same easily avoided mistakes that make so many of your brethren sound like ignorant cretins. Here are some common arguments that creationists use, and why I think that you shouldn’t use them… unless of course you want to be ridiculed. Note: this is by no means a comprehensive list.

(1) “Evolution is just a THEORY”

This is the most common (and the most disappointing) creationist argument I hear on a regular basis. While it’s true that evolution is a theory, this statement is made in an attempt to cast doubt on evolution by implying that evolution is akin to a wild guess that scientists came up with after a night of heavy drinking. Newsflash: it’s not going to work. Most educated people understand that you’re confusing the word “theory” (which means an explanation or model that is capable of predicting future events) with the word “hypothesis” (which means an educated guess). Calling evolution a “theory” isn’t an insult. For the millionth time, I will repeat this: gravity is also “just” a theory (for example, google the “General Theory of Relativity”). I might even add that most scientists would consider evolution to be a better-supported theory than gravity, because of the fact that gravity cannot (currently) be quantized, despite decades of attempts. If you want to debate evolution, fine- but don’t play these childish word games.

Of course, it goes on. Really, read it.

And from his reply, to another user who suggested he participate in a public debate about evolution / creationism:

(2) Creationists often make statements like “Evolution can’t produce new information in a genome” or “We don’t know how old the earth is because carbon dating isn’t useful on large timescales and we don’t know the initial amounts of isotopes and polonium halos disprove old ages anyway”. Answering each one of these statements would require hours of boring, dry lecturing- something that simply isn’t going to happen. And the problem is that creationists don’t just make one of these statements, they make DOZENS of them. Answering this kind of deluge of mis-information in such a way that it can be intelligible to the average person would take an unbelievably long amount of time. As such, even answering questions from the crowd can be a tricky business. How do you explain isochronology and radioactive dating methods in 2 minutes to a young earth creationist? I can barely explain it to a fellow scientist in less than 15 minutes. Now imagine someone standing up and asking two or three of these questions in rapid fire mode, and ridiculing you for not having a snappy answer. This kind of public failure would not look good.

Again, follow the two links and read the entire comments. The first one is “print out and give to friends and family” material, and the second explains the frustration of discussing science with non-scientists to whom “quick, easy answers” (such as “God did it”) often sound a lot better than the inevitably more complex truth.