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User talk:Philip J. Rayment/Evolution (view source)
Revision as of 19:48, October 4, 2008
, 19:48, October 4, 2008→My response to your essay: an attempt to narrow the discussion down a little
: 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.
: 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.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 23:32, 2 October 2008 (EDT)
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|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.[[User:Sam99foster|Sam99foster]] 15:48, 4 October 2008 (EDT)