Syamsu's Objection to Natural Selection...

Maybe you are just "training" me to stay in the 'loop'. Just the same- thanks anyway, if I were a duck S could be the water...back to him.

Well just give me some thousands slaves and I can create a pyramid without much of any effort being involved at all, is there? You are to easy to think that no effort is involved, just because there is no effort involved on your part. Don't pin me down on the word effort, or value here, I use these words loosely just to refer to things that are spiritual. Generally for me the crossover from mechanical to spiritual is where I imagine there to be some effort of choice, where things can turn out one way or another.I notice that your concept of good and bad is relative just as your concept of fitness is relative. Could it be that the relativiness of fitness lends credibility for good and bad to be relative? It's not the point to argue about if good and bad are relative concepts, it's just the point to see if Darwinism gives credibility for them to be understood as relative, as a psychological phenomenon.I noticed that in the discussion about the Grand Canyon,that Terry's appreciation of the thing seemed to be much fuller, then that of evolutionists. I notice this more often that the appreciation of Nature of evolutionists seems contrived. For instance where Dawkins talks about the human eye, he seems to talk about it as though he's selling a hi-fi stereo, or the latest computer. It's certainly a novel way to appreciate the beauty of the eye, but it also strikes me as being contrived, hyped. This leads me to believe that evolutionists have let their judgements be surpressed by Darwinism.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I understand that if you are religious then moral absoloutes can flow form god, but apart form this fairly unwarranted assumption what evidence do you have that morality is anything other than relative?What do you know of how fully any of us appreciate nature? I'd say that if your appreciation of something is linked to not understanding it then your appreciation is pretty shallow.You don't seem to want us to pin you down on your use of any word or indeed any particular part of your argument, this makes any sort of debate somewhat erratic and confusing at best.

But it's not the point whether or not morality is relative, it's the point whether or not Darwinism tends to make you believe it is relative in a similar way that fitness is relative. You haven't answered this question.You can say what you want, but it hardly seems morally safe to assume that all has been evolved without any effort. It's also sucipicious that you are a human being, and you are the only kind of being who apparently is to be done justice for your efforts. It seems prejudicially egocentric. And although it seems proper not to pay tribute to ecoli bacteria for some reasons, it seems also improper to absolutely deny any kind of effort on the part of ecoli whatsoever, and following from that to deny that God had anything to do with making ecoli bacteria.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Even for the E. coli the effort must be pretty small, after all they manage to double in population every twenty minutes at 37 degrees C. As to your following on credits to god, you seem to have accidentally missed out all the steps in your argument and gone straight to the conclusion, again. The E. coli playing a part in no way neccessitates god playing a part, unless perhaps one of my bugs is in fact god.Do you mean does Darwinian theory make me think that my morality is superior to someone elses? I certainly don't find that personally, I feel very much that my views on morality are pretty constrained by my upbringing. I can see that people who advocate the memetic theory might suggest that certain moral principles might have beneficial fitness effects, such as taboos on incest, so societies with certain types of morality would be mor likely to survive than others. Personally I'm not a big fan of memes, I think they are a catchy metaphor which has ridden high on the success of modern genetics but not neccessarily a useful metaphor.In fact the people who most often espose this sort of view are religious fundamentalists who see any adherence to a morality they do not approve of as detrimental to society and a harbinger of doom.Of course what they are really bemoaning is the end of their sort of society.

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You don't have to see this in relation to the holocaust and Hitler

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You don't have to, but consideration of the extremes is often
enlightening.The question, effectively, that you raise is 'Is there a causal
link between Darwinian Evolutionary Theory and racism, nazism,
and atheism?'Atheism: Clearly no link since many church-going, religous
indivdiuals accept ToE.Nazism: Used a perceived wealthy population segment as a target for hatred in order to generate popularity amongst the ill-informed masses. The Jewish people were targetted since many had their own businesses, they were perceived by the uniformed masses to represent
a 'separate' community, and (more critically) Hitler had a pathological hatred of Judaism.Link to ToE ... can't see it.Racism: Racism has existed much longer than ToE, making the link
tenuous at best. Racism is founded in ignorance and a self-superior
attitude (coupled with xenophobia). religions tend to foster
self-superior attitudes...

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In my own mind this first gives credibility to some generic judgementalism, and then some eugenicism.

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Then you either do not understand the concepts, or you need
therapy.You have avoided the question though.If natural selection is a description of something that happens
can you be justified in missing out a part of that 'phenomenon'?

It would be disingenuous to say that there are no links, but the links are not ones of cause and effect. It is true that the nazis and many modern racists attempt to use evolutionary theory to justify their agendas, this does not mean that evolutionary theory gave rise to these agendas or that it actually does justify them. The problem is that evolutionary theory has been a victim of its own success, it is so much a paradigm of our modern times that everyone, apart from creationists obviously, wants to jump on the bandwagon.

It was the causal link (which Syamsu appears to see) that I
was referring to.People use all kinds of thing to justify their actions and
opinions ... often after the fact.For example, The Manson Cult claimed that the Beatles were
angels sent by God to give them messages about who they
needed to elliminate.The Beatles songs!!! Admittedly that may just have been made up
to get an insanity defence going ...Using something to support your position (no matter how erroneous)
is nothing like that 'something' 'causing' the position in the
first place.It is the latter that Syamsu suggests.

Darwin being one of those people who let his values be determined to a large extent by what he considered fit, although he was mentally ill, depressed, so I guess you don't consider it proof of anything that he let his values be influenced by what he considered fit, except proof that Darwin needed therapy. Maybe Darwin just needed to ditch Darwinism, which made him believe he was to blame for his daughter's death, to blame for producing a weak unfit human being which then died, by marrying the wrong person.I have no idea what you're talking about with missing out on anything. As before you can use a definition of natural selection without variation, to different variants. You are excluding things by basing it on variation, not including more things.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

What are you excluding apart from your own hypothetical clonal populations?

The following are people Brad has invoked in recent posts:Galileo, Fisher, Newton, Aristotle, Mayr, Darwin, Gould, Dawkins, Pascal, Lewontin, Russell, Quine, God, Futuyma, Wright, Gish, Parker, Bliss, Provine, Plato, Derrida, Galton, Wolfram, Croizat, Caesar, Levin, Edelman, Mendel, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Cantor, Chomsky, Dyson, Eigen, Feynman, Boscovich, Pauling, Crick, Fox, Maxwell, and of course Einstein.Did I forget anyone?

You just said that good and bad are relative. I don't think this is a very common view among people. I think this view may be peculiar to a high degree to Darwinists. It's simply caused by the use of good and bad in terms of fitness being similarly relative.I think it's unemotional or anti-emotional to say that good and bad are relative, but again, it's not the point, the point is if Darwinism lends credibility to it, or not. It's not a case of good and bad being either relative or absolute, it can be other then relative or absolute.I don't think it's a case of misuse when the original, and most influential works are as polluted with valueladen terminology, and intended valuejudgement as Darwinist literature is.The theory of gravity also influenced intellectual climate of opinion concerning valuejudgements, a big impetus for theory of rights comes from it. But this was not the same as in Darwinism forcing thoughts on people, this was a case of some intellectuals philsophising about ethics based on gravity theory.When you read Darwinist literature you can see that the people writing the books are trying to manipulate the beliefs of readers. Konrad Lorenz writing is slanted to Nazism, Darwin's writing is slanted to eugenicism, libertairianism. Haeckel's writing is slanted to monism (the idea that values and material are one) and eugenicism. Dawkins writings is slanted to atheism and well.. 70's satanism Alice Cooper style. On this forum Darwinists tried to manipulate beliefs by classing human beings together with animals.Now when I read Mendel, I would need to do some very thorough backgroundreading to find any sign of his personal beliefs in the text. It's really completely different. Darwinist science is not this neutral.You have NO justification for including variation in the definition of selection, and yet you include it. Why? Let's see here, letting go of your position would mean to let go of the good bad comparitive talk, which is similar to your value conception of good and bad, in it being relative. That would explain why it is very difficult for you to let go of it. You use the variation part in the theory to sustain your views on morality.How come you don't know what basic biology is described by selection without variation?You simply describe organisms in terms of their reproduction, how they reproduce, and that gives you basics of the organism. Sunlight falls on the leaves of the plant, in which photosynthetic cells use the light for storing energy..... which contributes to reproduction, is selected for.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Syamsu, are you ever going to address how this is somehow different from religion being used to justify the very same crimes? Even the extermination of the Jews by Hitler was approved by the Pope.There's nothing that has been done in the name of science that hasn't been done in the name of religion, a thousand years before. Until you address how you can incriminate science but exempt religion, you're going to look pretty ridiculous.

True for atheists like myself but most evolutionists have faith and would disagree. For my own part I can think of little that offends me more that people who insist they are somehow better or superior to animals. This gives justification for all kinds of intolerable living practices.We all agree with your theory of no variation NS in cases of parthenogenesis, its not inconsistent with NS, so give it up.[This message has been edited by Autocatalysis, 07-11-2003]

substantiate ANY of your statements. Take this statement

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he let his values be influenced by what he considered fit

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Where in the hell did you get this. I have several books on Darwins life and this fits none of them. For His Time Darwin was quite progressive. Yes, he considered blacks inferior, although there is doubt as to whether he truly thought that it was ingrained (ie genetic) or social(ie technology), and in that he was VERY much in line with the European thinking of the time. Unlike many in Europe, he was also against slavery and against many of the practives that were prevelant at the time with respect to the poor, practices which later became a part of group of misguided people who espoused social darwinism, something that was totally outside of the scientitif theory which they obviously did not understand. And Lorentz was not a social darwinian, although he was a nazi sympathiser, and I believe shortely a party member. If you do not believe me as to Darwin please try to read a real biography of the man, and not something in the Islamic Creationit Bookshop.By the way, are you EVER going to answer the theroetical models that deal with REAL biology which you do not understand , and by this I mean both the field biology and the models. Lets start simple, please explain the difference between genetic particulate inheritance (as you said that you read Mendel, which I doubt) and the blending of phenotypic characteristics.------------------
"Chance favors the prepared mind." L. Pasteur
Taz