Syamsu's Objection to Natural Selection...

That's however not standard Natural Selection, since it's not about variants. Beneficial variation is not that easy to come by, they are routinely presumed not to exist in any population, except beneficial variation in respect to some genetic diseases. If a Darwinist would describe migration of birds to the south, then it would go like, some variants more efficiently store fat in their body then others etc. The whole point that a great percentage of the birds is going to get killed migrating south is not really subject at issue in standard theory. Same as with sexual selection, also only discussed in relation to variants. I'm pretty sure also that the conception of competition of most Darwinists is that competition is essentially mechanical, and not contingent, because of Natural Selection originally being based around the mechanics between variants. Dawkins the archaic neo-Darwinist, called chance the "ENEMY OF SCIENCE".regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I would still encourage you to read the book since you seem interested in eugenics and it would be better to know the actual history than to think that so and so felt one way or another about the subject. You would actually find out that some very highly regarded institutions i.e. Cold Spring Harbor were deeply involved in eugenics. I also think you are misreading the Descent of Man as a huge amount of that tome was dedicated to sexual selection...as to the language, at the time it was written, some terms were in common usage that we today find offensive...that does not really reflect on the content...maybe 100 years from now the word spam will be seen as a vile and racist insult and people reading todays news will be offended by it.Your comment regarding Galton implies then that you would agree that Islam is the cause of terrorism. Osama bin Laden and others claim to be adherents of Islam and therefore advocate terrorism so by your logic, Islam is terrorism (this gets back to schrafinators example of baseball bats)...my point is, that Galton was to much of an idiot to understand what Darwin meant by fitness niether makes the concept of fitness wrong, nor the theory of evolution responsible for the eugenics movement...a racist will use peanut butter as a justification for their claims if they want to.

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That's however not standard Natural Selection, since it's not about variants.

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So why do some die and others survive?Random chance?Or do you think there may be other factors, such as greater
endurance etc.

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Beneficial variation is not that easy to come by, they are routinely presumed not to exist in any population,

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By whom?And how do you know that beneficial variation is not easy to come
by?Are you privy to the complete genome->phenome(can you say that?)
mapping of every individual organism within every population?Natural selection leads us to seek a reason as to why some
birds survive the journey and others don't.Your ideas lead us to go 'Oh, some died. Shame.' and move on.WIth sexual selection you are clearly ignoring fact. 'Attractiveness'
varies across all populatons ... look at humans, look at canaries,
or fancy rats. Sometimes you just cannot get two rats, dogs,
or (funnily enough) rabbits to mate with each other. They are
all ready to go, but they just don't wanna. Bring the right
couple together though ....'Chance' may be the enemy of science ... but 'randomness' is
fundamental to the way things work ... look at quantum theory.Please elaborate the difference between 'mechanical competition'
and 'contingent competition'.

You are misrepresenting "The Descent of Man" yourself obviously. It's not about vile words, it's about the way the words good and bad etc. are used. Galton was not an idiot in that he did some very fundamental work in developing statistical methods. Galton's work is also mentioned about 10 times in "Descent of Man" where Darwin used him for support on the heritability of genius for instance, and things like that.Obviously you neither want to investigate the relation of Darwinism to Social Darwinism, or the relationship of creationist immutability of species to racist conceptions of racial purity. So I think you should just go away then.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

There you go again implicitly dismissing basic biology as meaningless. How can you say it is only relevant to note that birds get killed migrating south, when there is some differential reproductive success of variants? Is it also not relevant to note what the birds eat if one doesn't eat more efficiently then another? Again, your conception of Natural Selection turns your view on Nature into something almost completely divorced from reality.I use the word mechanical when the outcome is certain, and contingency for when the outcome is uncertain. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty involved in mating. I guess it's possible that when you put clones of the rats that don't want to mate together, you would get different outcomes all the time. This means that the cause why those rats do or don't mate is created there and then as a contingent happenstance probably in the nervous system of the rats.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

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There you go again implicitly dismissing basic biology as meaningless. How can you say it is only relevant to note that birds get killed migrating south, when there is some differential reproductive success of variants?

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When did I mention differential reproductive success?I said that with your view, that we can neglect variation, then
the observation that some birds die while others survive is
as far as you may go. Why look for anything more than the numbers
and survival rates.

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Is it also not relevant to note what the birds eat if one doesn't eat more efficiently then another?

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According to you, no. It's a comparison and comparisons are
fallacious.According to me, that's exactly the kind of relationship between
the individuals and their environment that natural selection
operates via.

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Again, your conception of Natural Selection turns your view on Nature into something almost completely divorced from reality.

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Pots and kettles spring to mind.By neglecting or down-playing variation within a population
YOU are divorcing yourself from reality.That was my point in the OP, that you have still not answered.Natural selection is a description of nature, so how can you
exclude a part of that description?

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I use the word mechanical when the outcome is certain, and contingency for when the outcome is uncertain.

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In which case all major interactions with an environment are
contingent. I don't think Darwin suggested anything different,
did he? Perhaps you could quote otherwise.Perhaps you are confusion the concept of a mechanism or process
with something deterministic?
{Re-reading the above I'm not sure about that myself now).The numbers of variables are so vast that being sure of any
environmental outcome is beyond us at present.

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I guess it's possible that when you put clones of the rats that don't want to mate together, you would get different outcomes all the time. This means that the cause why those rats do or don't mate
is created there and then as a contingent happenstance probably in the nervous system of the rats.

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Anything is possible perhaps we should avoid unsupportable
supposition.[This message has been edited by Peter, 07-16-2003]

The baseball bat thing is an analogy!!!!It runs like this:A creates X to accomplish Y.B uses X to do Z (which is considered anti-social).Is the existence of Z A's fault?Should we ban screwdrivers because a person on a UK tube stations
rammed one into another person's eye?Is it the fault of the screwdriver maker or the person using it?If and only if racisms did not pre-exist ToE you would have a
point.Selective breeding even pre-dates ToE ... and concepts of superiority
of race certainly do.That some factions USE ToE to support their claims (or rather
pervert ToE) is not to do with Darwin or ToE ... they would
use other criterion is ToE didn't exist (and have done in
the past).The Christians decided that they must destroy the Muslims long
before ToE was phrased.The Egyptians enslaved the hebrews (and others) because they were
inferior.The list goes on and on ... blaming Darwin is the simplistic,
unthinking response ... not reasoning about the nature or
racism and concluding that ToE is not connected.

So I will take it then from you non-answer that you equate Islam with terrorism and are in full agreement with that line of argumentation (since you use it in describing science)...a strange view of the world you have S.I give a crap about such flaky concepts as social Darwinism. Galton made some nice contributions in his own field but like Behe, once he stepped out of his expertise he made idiotic statements. I prefer the SCIENCE of evolution...that people like you cannot even understand the very basics of biology and then try to make social commentary based on some cartoonish version of how you think natural selection works makes you both irrelevant to science but seriously dangerous to society...and no I am not going away.And as to my not wanting to investigate the links between eugenics and Darwin...at least I actually actively read about the subject...you merely assert out of ignorance.

Again, what's observed most all times in populations is stasis, which is why professional biologist routinely neglect to mention the birds with some genetic dysfunction when describing birds migrating south. But again this doesn't mean that a definition of selection without variation is incapable of dealing with variation. You did trivialize basic biology again, it's a shame you wont admit that.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

You can't talk sensibly about whether or not variation should be included in selection, and you can't talk sensibly about the relationship of Darwinism to Social Darwinism. You contribute nothing but irate emotionalism to the discussion, you should just go away.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I believe if you continue this line of argument about racism predating evolutionary theory, you will trace back the origin of evil to Adam and Eve and a tree. The tree stands for knowledge of good and evil, which brings us back to Social Darwinists with their quasiscientific knowledge of good and evil.You are insulting scientists in physics, chemistry and scientists in biology like Mendel, who unlike Darwinists, made a passable effort to make their works as objective as possible and free from valuejudgement. If Darwinists would have tried to make their theory neutral, then it would also show in a more technical treatment of Natural Selection, that Malthusian Darwinism has an odd place in the framework of describing in terms of preservation / continuation.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Your projecting Symansu...and at the same time you are unable to address simple questions...way to go! If anyone should go away it is you...go somewhere, actually learn something about science..learn something about natural selection and learn something about the history of the eugenics movement instead of making such an ass of yourself here...are you actually proud of your ignorance? You certainly give the impression.

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Again, what's observed most all times in populations is stasis, which is why professional biologist routinely neglect to mention the birds with some genetic dysfunction when describing birds migrating south

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Genetic dysfunction's are not typically the source of evolutionary
change. They are detrimental, sometimes fatal, and so do not
typically get passed on to future generations except as a recessive
potnetial.What a biologist is interested in is broad sweep, generic behaviours
and patterns. That does not mean that populations are always
in stasis ... if the environment changes, so does the characteristic
of the population ... this has been observed, it is not theory.

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But again this doesn't mean that a definition of selection without variation is incapable of dealing with variation

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I have already agreed that, in theory, variation is not a required
component of natural selection, when natural selection is viewed
as relationships between an individual and their environment
which contribute to their survivability and reproductive output.That, again, you have not answered my question is starting to
feel as though you are evading the issue.Natural selection describes nature, so how can you justify
missing out a part of that description?Natural selection is NOT a theory, it is an observation.

From a fundamentalist christian perspective this is more-or-less
correct.From an evolutionary perspective racism is probably founded in
the 'xenophobic' instincts exhibited by all other extant
creatures on the planet.That we have 'intellect' (supposedly) should allow us to overcome
such primal instincts, realising that in modern societies they
are unfounded. That some people do not do this is about their
psychological make-up not CAUSED by any existing theory of anything.The 'value judgements' in Darwinian evolutionary theory are
about 'fitness' ... 'fitness' is about how well an individual
is adapted to it's environment. A creature that is 'more fit'
to an environment is NOT considered better than other creatures
(or plants!!!) it is just 'better adapted to the environment'.Concepts of racial superiority do not stem from Darwinian
evolution ... they stem from more primal, protective instincts
that have been rationalised by the mis-guided.

But is seems the argument of Darwinists here is done now. It's a baseballbat and variation exists, whatever, so you can go away now. Oh and I forgot you all know much more about everything then me, as if that's some kind of argument.My arguments about how exactly Darwinism influences people's beliefs is not done by a long shot. It still needs to be discussed how exactly Darwinism influences people's opinion on things. And also much can be discussed in how changing the archaic Darwinism by cutting variation from the defintion, sheds new light on competition, and basic biology, and how to save endangered species etc.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu