User talk:Philip J. Rayment/Evolution

From Conservapedia

This is the continuation of a discussion begun on the evolution talk page, and now archived at Talk:Theory of evolution/Archive 12

This post is a response to ATang's post there.

ATang wrote: "They accept that their religion is not explanation for everything, while Abrahimic religions simply states "this is the truth, there is no more to it". Because of the inherent unknowns of the universe, I am very hesitant to say "this is it" (about anything, science, religion or otherwise)."

Okay, so you are hesitant. That doesn't mean that others have to be, or that any criticism of those who are not hesitant is justified. However, I don't agree that the Abrahamic religions state that "there is no more to it".

"If you want to be hypothetical - why not in the case all religion is wrong? That is not a solid argument!! No one would use that in court. "What if I'm right?""

There's nothing wrong with being hypothetical to make a point. The point is that your attitude that people are unjustified in being certain of their beliefs does not allow for the case where their beliefs are correct. You have not explained why someone is unjustified in being certain if they are indeed correct.

"A viewpoint is more like a methodology, an operating procedure to handle truths - which are facts, what one considers as undeniable and cannot be altered."

No, a viewpoint is like a framework into which you put your facts. It's a starting point for how you understand the facts.

"You say my viewpoint is "never take anything as the one and only, undeniable truth", and that's correct. My viewpoint is not a "fact", or a "truth", and the case is same vice-versa."

Should I consider your viewpoint to be true or not? If it's true, then surely it's a "truth"? The point is, it's a self-refuting statement, as if I'm not supposed to take anything as the one and only undeniable truth, why should I take that statement as being true?

"Later you say my fixed view is that I cannot have a fixed view - a distortion of my idea. One can have a fixed view, but if that view says "Take A as fact, everything else is wrong", then that is a view I reject."

First, I assume that by saying "everything else is wrong", you are not talking about matters that have no bearing on the matter in hand. To be specific, if it is your view that fixed views are wrong, then either (a) that view of yours is fixed (which means that you condemn yourself for having that view), or (b) your view is not fixed, which means that you can't say for certain that fixed views are wrong. So which is it?

Your explanation regarding survival of the fittest misses the point. You go to considerable lengths to explain how the "fittest" might be determined, pointing out that it might be a complex set of factors, but none of that changes that "survival of the fittest" has the corollary of "non-survival of the less fit", which means "survival of the fittest at the expense of the less fit". If the less fit don't die out, then evolution stagnates. Thus survival of the fittest is the opposite of the golden rule.

"In reference to "greater good", I thought it was intuitively obvious that survival of an individual is good.".

It is to me, a Bible-believing Christian, but not to evolution, which can only work by the non-survival of many. In other words, in the evolutionary view, non-survival of many individuals is arguably "good", because without their non-survival there is no evolution. The other point is that you haven't explained why any survival is necessarily good. Claiming that it is "intuitively obvious" is not an explanation. I believe it is, of course, because that's what God intended. But that rationale doesn't apply to evolution.

"Based on the evidence, I see that co-operation between individuals suggests it may have evolutionary roots. It may also be because God designed it that way, but because of absence of physical evidence that God designed co-operation between men, the former explanation is more likely."

First, yes by "working together", I was referring to co-operation. I don't see any physical evidence that co-operation has evolutionary roots. You see co-operation in real life being beneficial, and you believe that evolution is how these things came about, so you ascribe the origin of co-operation to evolution. But there's no physical evidence of that.

Similarly, I see co-operation, and I believe that God created everything, so I ascribe the origin of co-operation to God. However, you reject that, on the grounds that there is no physical evidence of it, yet you have no physical evidence of evolution being the cause. And whilst I have no physical evidence, I do have eye-witness evidence (the Bible). You don't even have that, so on that basis, I consider my explanation more likely.

"Your accusations of my preconception clouding my judgement can be applied to you as well. Bias in inherent in any debate, and such accusations could only waste time and space - that's why I've try to avoid it all together! Each person of course believes that they're non-biased, while the other will beg to differ."

There's nothing wrong with pointing out that a person's preconceptions are clouding (distorting) their judgement if there's grounds for doing so, as I believe there is here. It's not a waste of time if the result is that the person becomes aware of that. I for one don't believe that I'm not biased—I know that I am—but there's nothing wrong with being biased if the bias is correct.

"I wasn't aware that the books of the Bible were written by a divine hand. I thought each of them has a mortal author (Luke, etc.)."

Then you've learnt something! God used human authors to write the Bible, much as a celebrity might use a "ghost-writer" to pen their autobiography.

"You say that my statement was contrary to the Bible's own claim - but that's just like an article referencing itself as proof of its correctness!"

No it's not, because that's not how I presented it. That is, I did not say "The Bible is written by God because it says that it is". What I said was that the view that the Bible was written by God is not agreed nor self-evident, given that acceptance of such is widespread and that the Bible itself claimed this.

In effect, what you have done is argue, "Because the Bible is not written by God...". I've jumped in and said, "That is an unjustified assumption". Your response is, "I don't accept your evidence that the assumption is wrong, so it is right". However, I wasn't offering evidence that the assumption was wrong. I was arguing that the onus is on you to justify that assumption, and you've failed to do that.

"It does not stand under my viewpoint (and the scientific method, because it is not peer-reviewed)."

There was no formal peer-review process in those days, so of course there won't be what we today think of as peer-review, but the Bible was accepted as accurate by readers who were witness to its events, so there was a peer-review type of process.

"Is there a third party "reference point" that points at the authorship of God?"

Numerous authors have pointed to various factors in the Bible other than the Bible's own claim on the matter indicating God's authorship. These include such things as the consistency of the book written by numerous human writers over a period of going on for 2000 years, and the prophecies which have come true.

"If my statement is contrary to Christian belief, then of course, it will not make sense to a Christian. To a non-Christian, however, this argument does not stand. Christianity is a point of contention in this debate."

Again, this is not an argument for Divine authorship. It's an argument that there is an onus on you to justify the assumption that all those Christians are wrong. You can't argue that because it is a belief of Christians, it can be ignored and doesn't need to be refuted.

"A quick study of ancient mythologies, and examination of each of the deities, will show that they were in fact made up. That's what "history" tells us. You may argue that this does not apply to Christianity, but it's perfectly acceptable practice to draw parallels between past and current events."

Drawing parallels is one thing. But coming to firm conclusions on the basis of a loose parallel is unjustified. But if you want a parallel, remember that forgeries exist because there's a real one to make a forgery of.

"I attempt to use common ground - and I thought the scientific method, and the use of physical evidence is the agreed rules of the debate. Maybe that's why there's such divide! Religion is incompatible with the scientific method!"

The scientific method works on physical things in the present. It doesn't work on non-material things (such as ideas, beliefs, the soul, etc.), and it doesn't work on past events. It's not that "religion" (whatever is meant by that) is incompatible with the scientific method, but that the scientific method is incompatible with studying historical events (although it can help by being used in the study of historical artifacts).

Furthermore, I'm quite certain that you don't do all the scientific studies yourself. Instead, you rely on reading the accounts of studies done by others. You assume that in most cases their accounts are accurate, particularly if others have reviewed them and not disagreed. And I'm sure that you do the same for accounts outside the area of science, such as recent history. What scientific studies have been done on, for example, World War I? I'd bet that essentially everything that you know, and accept as true, about World War I was as a result of reading (or seeing on TV, or hearing on the radio or direct from someone who was there) the accounts of those who were there and witnessed the events, or others who themselves rely on those accounts. I do the same, including for the Bible. That is, when studying history, the best source is eye-witness accounts, not laboratories, and that is why I rely on ancient documents such as the Bible rather than the non-empirical (non-scientific) ideas of (generally atheistic or agnostic) scientists for learning about history.

"That's why trying to attribute motive in a court case is so difficult - because it's hard to get inside someone's mind."

Yet courts often do just that. It depends on how well you (get to) know the person.

" Basically, it's irresponsible to attribute something to God if we only have a partial understanding of it - because if we find out something that seems to go against the nature of God (the part we know anyways), we can always attribute that to the part of God we don't understand."

That's basically an argument to say that if we don't know everything about someone, we can't explain anything. That argument is nonsense.

"How do you explain stillbirths? If the parents are bad people, then yes, it's easy to justify that by saying God is trying to punish them. If the parents are good Christians, who try their hardest not to sin? How do we explain that? Do we just say "God works in mysterious ways"?

If anything, that's an argument as to why agnostics should not use this sort of argument. That is, atheists and agnostics claim that because they can't explain why God would do something, nobody else can either. Stillbirths? The result of a deteriorating creation, itself the result of us (mankind) rejecting God. It's actually quite easy to explain, and your inability to do so is no justification for arguing that others are incapable of doing so.

"The proof of miracles that I ask is anthropological, scientific proof."

Then you are being unreasonable, because, as I have explained above, you can't scientifically study past events.

"The fact that I exist, you argue, is proof of God - but it could be proof of a million other things. Why isn't my existence the proof of Hindu Gods? Allah? How about extraterrestrial aliens who brought life to Earth? One could just as easily say my existence is proof of evolution! This is why my existence isn't proof of ANYTHING!"

No, I did not argue that. Not at all.

"If I right about events A, B, and C in a book, then provide historical proof that A and B occurred, would you simply believe that C occurred as well?"

Yes. Given that the author has been shown to be accurate on A and B, and assuming that there was no reason to believe that C did not also occur, it seems entirely reasonable to also believe that C occurred. And I have no reason to assume that the miracles did not also occur.

"An argument by continual existence is as weak as it sounds - would you say that Scientology is true because it's still existent today? I will peruse the page you've provided when I have time, and write up an appropriate response."

A rebuttal to an argument that you've not read is likely to be just as weak. But notice that I said "likely", not "is", as you did.

"Actually, I've never explicitly stated what my Mr. Good/Bad book was going to be published as. If I published it as history, 2000 years later one cannot see the difference! Furthermore, my intention was that the book was written NOW, not 2000 years later. The examination of the work is what occurs in 2 millennia."

Why would nobody bother examining it for 2000 years? Answer: They wouldn't: There would be people examining it from the day it was published.

"I've added no additional physical events, so one cannot know if it was God who actually created Katrina."

A miracle is a physical event. Your disagreement is about ascribing a source to the miracle, not to the veracity of the account of the miracle itself.

"These books cannot be effectively refuted by the masses, because they don't have the information highway that we do today."

That sounds like a bit of chronological snobbery to me. Of course they could be refuted by others. People did disagree with others in those times.

"You say proof of God is in the Bible, while I disagree that the Bible is a factual account of history in all aspects."

No, I didn't say that proof of God is in the Bible. I said that the Bible contains evidence for God. Okay, you disagree that the Bible's always accurate. But do you have good reason (physical evidence?) that it's not always accurate?

"... my questions regarding the authenticity of the Bible is not satisfactorily answered!!"

I think mostly we've been arguing about assumptions and starting points, and haven't really discussed much the reasons that the Bible is authentic history. So that criticism is somewhat premature.

"... since I've repeated stated my distrust of the Bible, why use it as an argument when you know it wouldn't stand from my viewpoint?"

I've not used the Bible as an argument. I've argued that your reasons for dismissing it are not justified, and pointed out some facts about it (such as it claiming certain things) but that's about all.

"The Bible states God created everything (including the Bible). This self-referencing is suspicious."

Suspicious? So if a book says that it was written by Joe Bloggs, you would be suspicious about that book? This sounds like a classic time-wasting bibliosceptic tactic of trying to find any possible criticism of the Bible that can be made to sound at least half plausible, no matter how little rationality it has.

"Further exploration for direct physical evidence yields inconclusive proof of God's existence..."

Perhaps you are looking at it the wrong way, such as trying to find experimental proof of a past event?

"The believes of Christianity (and religion) inherently dismisses all other believes without reason."

Huh? Another ridiculous bibliosceptic argument. Christians have offered plenty of reasons for rejecting (not dismissing) other beliefs.

"This is an obvious ploy to ensure continual perpetuation of the religion, and it's also why it is so enticing and easy to believe."

A conclusion based on a faulty premise is unsound, and in this case, wrong.

"Because of the lack of conclusive proof of God outside the Bible, and the suspicious "Bible as the proof of itself" circular logic, I reject Christianity as a logical, reasonable, and scientifically correct viewpoint to take on."

Of course, what you consider sufficient evidence as "conclusive proof" others may not, and as I've pointed out the problems with the rest of your arguments, I see no grounds for your conclusion.

"I truly believe that religion is created as a "God of the gaps" ..."

Yet you've put no compelling argument for that view.

"Christianity may satisfy the people of past times, when there is considerably less understanding of the physical world; it will no longer appeal to the increasingly educated populous - at least when the stories of the Bible is interpreted literally."

Well, bibliosceptics have been claiming similar for centuries, and have yet to be proven correct, so I take that with a grain of salt. And it has a touch of chronological snobbery and evolutionary belief in it. To explain, as a Christian, I believe that man was created without defect, but that we have deteriorated since. So I am not more intelligent than Adam, but less intelligent. Sure, we as a civilisation have more accumulated far more knowledge than Adam had, but are inferior in most other ways.

In contrast, the evolutionary view is that we are better (smarter, wiser, etc.) than our predecessors.

So to suggest that people of past times would be satisfied with something that we would not be satisfied with today is to presume an evolutionary view of us being smarter than those in the past.

"Already, young-earth creationism, as told by the Bible, is doubted by the majority."

You have that back to front. Young-Earth creationism was all but dead as a viewpoint until the early 1960s, when it was revived with the publication of the book, The Genesis Flood, by Morris and Whitcomb. It is not losing ground, but gaining it, from that low point of acceptance. Sure, acceptance of it has a long way to go yet, but it is increasing, and it is increasing (in my opinion, and ignoring God's role in this) mainly due to the strength of the evidence and arguments in favour of it. That is, people are accepting it (when they do) because it makes sense, and rejecting it (when they do) because of an atheistic ideology and/or peer pressure.

Philip J. Rayment 00:44, 29 August 2007 (EDT)

My response to your essay

I'm glad you wrote this. It provides a good platform on which to discuss evolution and also sets out your views in a clear way conducive to debate, so thanks. I'm going to go through it bit by bit.

First of all:

The argument is often made that evolution just is; it has no meaning, or, to put it another way, it is not prescriptive. Therefore evolution could not, for example, be said to be a racist idea. We really have two questions here:

• It is proper to use the "facts" of evolution (or any idea for that matter) to derive meaning, purpose, or justification for actions?
• If it is proper, are any particular given claims the correct or incorrect meanings, purposes, or justifications?

I really do not think those two questions can be derived from that first couple of sentences. The question it would be reasonable to derive is this:

• Can the "facts" of evolution (or any theory; 'idea' if you insist) make political, moral, or social statements (and the like) inherently?

The answer to this question is 'no'. Gravity does not tell us falling is good, thermodynamics does not insist that it would be immoral for heat to pass from a hotter object to a cooler one, and evolution does not deride or condemn species that are less fit. With regard to your two questions, they seem to me to be a bit vaguely phrased, but specifics are added in the following sections so I'll deal with them as they arise.

"Is it proper to derive meaning?"

You provide a number of examples of people deriving 'meaning' from evolution. No problems there; in fact, it put me in mind of another example of someone drawing meaning from facts. Obviously, people can and do use evolution to support their views. I don't really think anyone has argued that it cannot be used in that way; rather people have been arguing that it should not, or not in the way that it has been anyway.

Your examples demonstrate how broad 'drawing meaning' is. I would be willing to bet that I could 'draw meaning' from quite literally anything whatsoever. The question of how appropriate my inference would be is (as you rightly distinguish) completely seperate, but honestly, overall this first section seems a little pointless.

"Are particular meanings proper to derive? "

As a general question my answer is a resounding 'perhaps'. I might be wrong about what you would consider constituted a derived meaning, but it seems to me any derived meaning would be, to one extent or another, a personal viewpoint. Take Carl Sagan's observation on the insignificance of the earth in the universe. This seems to me to be a reasonable statement, but insignificance is relative and ultimately up to anyone to decide for themselves. Another example. Scientific statement: the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Derived meaning: That is an extremely long time. Most people might agree with that, so you could say it was a 'proper' meaning, but it isn't 'true' in the same way the original statement is either true or false.

However, I could state more strongly that some meanings are (clearly) not proper to derive. If I looked at cellular structure and thought it meant I should become a travel agent, this would be illogical and an inappropriate way to think about cells and jobs.

"Moral values in general"

I pretty much agree with this, although I find the last two paragraphs to be a little strange.

So at the very least, even if evolution doesn't provide justification for given acts, neither does it provide any objection to those acts.

Replace the word 'evolution' there with 'chemistry' or 'astronomy' and the sentence remains correct. It would even be correct if you stuck a noun like 'a table' into it. Scientific theories have no obligation to contain moral precepts.

If a person murders and claims that it was the Christian thing to do, the person is clearly acting inconsistently with the belief he claims to follow, as the Bible considers murder to be wrong. But if a person murders and claims that it was the geologically correct thing to do, the person is not acting inconsistently with the belief at all, as geology provides no objection to murder.

"Racism"

You still have yet to provide any foundation whatever for the statement "evolution is a racist idea". Even if it caused many people to become racists, this would not make evolution a racist idea. Evolution cannot be racist any more than paleontology can be socialist. Scientists observe phenomena, form hypotheses, and then subject the hypthoses to rigorous tests to attempt to determine how valid they are. There is no room in this method for a subjective judgement about racial superiority or anything of the sort.

Your section on consequences doesn't add anything significant to your argument.

"Conclusion"

Even taking everything in your essay as valid, it certainly does not demonstrate that evolution has terrible social consequences. All that you can demonstrate is that a consequence of evolutionary theory is that racists used the theory to support their ideas. Show me a case of someone studying evolution and then becoming a racist based on that.

You'll note that Stephen Jay Gould, very importantly, does not say evolutionary theory resulted in more racism. He says it resulted in more 'biological arguments for racism' - this is entirely different and also completely sensible. Racists started to use more biological justification for their beliefs; but did more people become racist? I don't believe so, and you have offered no evidence that they did.

My own conclusions on this essay can be summed up as follows:

1) Your argument does not really address the matter raised in your opening paragraph (the prescriptive or descriptive nature of evolution).

2) Like all scientific theories, evolution is descriptive and offers no social or moral judgements, and you make no arguments to the contrary.

3) And although it is a secondary matter, you do not provide an argument that evolution has caused people to become racist; merely that racists use evolutionary rationale.

I hope I have not blathered too much, and I look forward a great deal to hearing your thoughts.Sam99foster 18:19, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

Thanks for your well-stated response, Sam99foster.

Regarding what is the "right question", I believe that I was correct in deriving the questions I did. We humans are not computer programs or robots that will provide clearly-defined outputs according to the inputs, but are, by our very nature, creatures who see meaning in things. My first derived question was deliberately broad because asking the question that you derived ignores this point that people do derive meanings from facts. Perhaps to some extent my question presupposed the answer, but I think yours does too, and it's often the case that you have to know the answers in order to know what the right question is to ask.

True, gravity does not tell us falling is good, but you've heard the saying that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it? That's because you learn things from history, and not just learning what happened, but learning that particular ideas have consequences. That is, you learn, for example, that people who get absolute power generally end up abusing it. Does that mean that abuse inherently and unavoidably follows from absolute power, like water unavoidably follows from combining oxygen and hydrogen? No, but it's not sufficient to say "it doesn't inherently follow" and then ignore that things do follow anyway.

I'm at work at the moment and can't view the Youtube link, so I'll comment later on that if I feel the need once I've seen it.

Yes, people have been arguing that meaning should not be drawn from evolution, but who's to say that it should not? That doesn't inexorably follow either, does it? Simply by saying that it "should not" follow, they are themselves not talking about whether meaning is inherent, but expressing a view. And the view of many others is that meaning can be drawn from evolution.

Yes, insignificance (or other meaning) is up to people to decide for themselves. I agree with that, and would therefore argue that racists who use evolution to justify their racism cannot thereby avoid responsibility for the views. They decided to go along with that idea. Nevertheless, when you have (a) experts (e.g. evolutionists) claiming that evolution means such-and-such, and (b) large numbers of people accepting those claims because they appear reasonable, it's kind of missing the point to dismiss that by saying that they have to decide for themselves.

I disagree that "the Earth is 4.6 billion years old" is a scientific statement, but that's beside the point for this discussion, so I won't comment further on that now.

I totally agree that some conclusions are improper to derive. That's half the point of my second derived question (the other half is that some meanings are proper to derive).

As to whether chemistry, geology, or etc. is different to evolution, it is different because evolution is tantamount to a religion (unlike chemistry, geology, etc.).

Shallis said:

It is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose, as Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless, as Steven Weinberg has done. Both statements are metaphysical and outside science. Yet it seems that scientists are permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. This suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing).[1]

Michael Ruse commented:

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.
‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.[2]

And that's the point: evolution is not merely the study of something; it is a substitute for Christianity. As Christianity has moral values, evolution replaces those moral values (with nothing). Perhaps I do need to elaborate on that point in the article itself, however.

Evolution is racist because it contains the idea that some people are less advanced than (or inferior to) others.

My article does show that evolution has had terrible social consequences. Your dispute is whether people acted properly in basing their views on evolution or not. But whether properly or not, they did base them on evolution, with terrible consequences.

When you ask for an example of someone becoming a racist by studying evolution, you seem to be asking for an example of someone who was not a racist but became a racist as a result of studying evolution. I have little doubt that such examples could be found, but off the top of my head I can't think of any. However, the main factor in this regard would not be people becoming racists from non-racists from studying evolution, but growing up as racists as a direct and indirect result of evolution. For example, a teacher who may have been a racist to begin with studies evolution, finds "biological arguments" there to support his racism, and then teaches that to his students. Without the biological arguments he may not have had much to say, and his students may not have been all that convinced, but with those biological arguments, his case is stronger and his students more likely convinced. Of course this is not limited to teachers, but anybody who has influence on others, including parents and journalists. Evolution-based racist ideas were rife in the early 20th century, including in textbooks (see the George Hunter quote in the article) the mass media, and publications of the Ku Klux Klan[3]. Do you really think that all these things had no influence except on those who were already racists? Many of these things would have been seen by children who were still forming their ideas about humanity. They may never have been non-racists, but that doesn't mean that evolution played no part in them becoming racists.

My argument doesn't really address whether evolution prescribes moral values. But my argument was that even if it technically doesn't, it still effectively does.

Philip J. Rayment 23:32, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

Instead of going through your response (which you made admirably swiftly by the way, it takes me forever to get round to doing this sort of thing) point by point, I'd like to concentrate on what I consider to be the most important area of the discussion, hopefully without ignoring or shrugging off what has gone before. First of all I want to clarify what it is precisely that you are trying to demonstrate with this essay. Here's how I interpret it:

The matter under discussion is whether evolution is or is not a racist idea. To come to a conclusion about that two things must be established - whether meaning can be derived from facts, and whether this meaning can be 'correct' or not. Having established the first, you try to show that not only do people derive racist ideas from evolution, but that they are correct in doing so because of the nature of evolution. Therefore evolution is a racist idea.

This is the problem with your essay - you really want to say two things, and the essay does not clearly distinguish between them. You want to say a) evolution is a racist idea, and b) evolution is a cause of racism and the problems that follow from racism. Maybe you consider this distinction to be a technicality (as I gather from the final sentence of your response), but I want to stress that it is vital to make it clear. This is because if we reject a) and accept b), the blame for racism falls upon people, by their representation of science, rather than the science itself. At that point, by all means criticise racist scientists and racist 'evolutionists', and racists who use biological justification for their beliefs, but do not criticise the science (evolution itself).

If evolution is not a racist idea, then logically it follows that anyone becoming a racist after studying it has done so in error - they have falsely derived meaning. If Darwin or anyone else had their racism strengthened by evolution, then they must have been wrong in their interpretation of the science. This is why point a) is so important, and yet your support for it in your essay and in your response has been limited to this sentence: "Evolution is racist because it contains the idea that some people are less advanced than (or inferior to) others." All your other argument has gone towards showing point b).

I will now attempt to show why we should reject forever the notion that evolution is a racist idea, and if you accept my argument we can discuss evolution's consequences with regard to racism later.

Others before me have explained why evolution does not describe any species as inferior or superior to the others, and I will do so again. First of all, because of common descent all lifeforms have been around for about as long as each other, so in that sense they are all equally advanced because they have spent as much time as each other evolving under natural pressures. Another perspective would be that because bacteria go through generations so quickly, they have had far more opportunity to evolve than larger organisms like humans, and so we could legitimately describe them as the most 'advanced'.

If you thought that complexity equalled 'more advanced', this could in a sense be true, but complexity certainly does not necessarily confer survival advantages. Humans might be 'more advanced' than malaria by several orders of magnitude, but it is not proving simple to defeat malaria. Is it superior to humans?

The point I'm trying to make is that notions of superiority or inferiority can only be applied to evolution in a hopelessly arbitrary way, and it's meaningless to try to speak of some species as superior to others in a way comparable to notions of racial superiority.

Two more things. Firstly evolution has nothing to do with showing that "people are less advanced than (or inferior to) others." From an evolutionary perspective, all people are equal, since the differences between races have been shown to be entirely superficial. Secondly all the accusations you level at evolution are just as applicable to natural selection, because none of them concern mutations. Natural selection is a process accepted by creationists, and regardless of the direction of genetic change, creationists still seem to be comfortable with this apparently racist idea.

I do not accept that evolution is a cause of racism, but before that can be discussed we need to talk about how evolution is racist itself, and I think this is something missing from your essay and from your response.Sam99foster 15:48, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

Philip, is this discussion still active? I would like to continue to talk this through, although please do not feel obliged. Sam99foster 09:47, 16 October 2008 (EDT)