If Darwin or the FBI had less than 15% of the data for a case

[Augustus]

Surely you jest.

Well, Darwin thought enough of Galton's biology bona fides to discuss some of his ideas in The Descent of Man.

Perhaps he was in on the jape too.


As a struggle may sometimes be seen going on between the various instincts of the lower animals, it is not surprising that there should be a struggle in man between his social instincts, with their derived virtues, and his lower, though momentarily stronger impulses or desires. This, as Mr. Galton has remarked, is all the less surprising, as man has emerged from a state of barbarism within a comparatively recent period. After having yielded to some temptation we feel a sense of dissatisfaction, shame, repentance, or remorse, analogous to the feelings caused by other powerful instincts or desires, when left unsatisfied or baulked. We compare the weakened impression of a past temptation with the ever present social instincts, or with habits, gained in early youth and strengthened during our whole lives, until they have become almost as strong as instincts. If with the temptation still before us we do not yield, it is because either the social instinct or some custom is at the moment predominant, or because we have learnt that it will appear to us hereafter the stronger, when compared with the weakened impression of the temptation , and we realise that its violation would cause us suffering. Looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance. In this case the struggle between our higher and lower impulses will be less severe, and virtue will be triumphant.

... In the case of corporeal structures, it is the selection of the slightly better-endowed and the elimination of the slightly less well-endowed individuals, and not the preservation of strongly-marked and rare anomalies, that leads to the advancement of a species.

...In regard to the moral qualities, some elimination of the worst dispositions is always in progress even in the most civilised nations. Malefactors are executed, or imprisoned for long periods, so that they cannot freely transmit their bad qualities. Melancholic and insane persons are confined, or commit suicide. Violent and quarrelsome men often come to a bloody end. The restless who will not follow any steady occupation—and this relic of barbarism is a great check to civilisation.

-The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin



Given these passages, why do you consider it laughable that anyone could have seriously used Darwin's ideas as an intellectual foundation for Social Darwinistic perspectives?

 

[metis]

Piltdown man? chimp teeth stained to look old? ground down to look human? put under lock and key for 40 years to escape scrutiny? I can help you with that.... its not science.

And it was an anthropologist who discovered that it was a fake.

And, using your approach, should we declare Christianity as to be invalid because there's been many dishonest pastors over the centuries?

 

[metis]

How about Nebraska man... on a smaller scale?... a tooth of an extinct pig used as evidence in the Scopes trial that apes became human.... and that would be rather poor science also

And when did that take place? Fossil study was at its infancy when that occurred and, yes, many mistakes were made. I can guarantee you that any major hoax could not end up like Nebraska Man or Piltdown Man because of the procedures used today.

OTOH, crooked pastors still "milk" their congregations all over the world even today.

 

[jonathan180iq]

since Darwin had less that 15% of the mammal species to examine and no genetic information or theory to go on, does that warrant a fresh look or reexamination?

And another great interview looks like it's giving Darwin a headache ... poor Charles ...

Interestingly Darwin himself in his original edition spoke of virtually all eminent scientists disagreeing with him and so Darwin would be the first to say you should not make the current scientific consensus the bar of truth

and yes there are myriad problems with Darwin. Animals symbiosis together being just one of many which he admitted another being social Darwinism which he was a proponent and most people recognize as flawed

In the end, survival of the fittest doesn't explain the arrival of the fittest. It just doesn't

I see you're well-versed in the art of beating a horse that died before A/C electricity was invented...

Darwin got a few things wrong. Congratulations. You're a champion of astute observation.

You could make better arguments if you'd get off Youtube and spend more time studying the current state of biological understanding.

 

[gnostic]

And oh by the way... latest evidence is Lucy was a guy monkey
Now Cro Magnan... now are classified as part of Homo.... those would be human

Cro Magnan are humans, whirlingmerc; they are Homo sapiens.

Its actually rather amazing when evolutionists look at evidence they see darwinism darwinism darwinism no matter what. Its like an inkblot experiment....

First. “Darwinism” is not the official name to theory of evolution.

It is not called Darwinian Evolution; what Darwin discovered and wrote was Natural Selection, an evolutionary mechanism (1 of five of them), which was also not called Darwinism.

Second. There are no “evolutionists”. Evolutionist is not officially a job position. There are no such thing as evolution. There are just “biologist”.

I don’t see people being called a “gravitationist” or “relativitist” or “quantumist” or “big banger”, just because they used Gravity or General Relativity or Quantum Mechanics or Big Bang.

What would they those who proposition String Theory? “Stringer”, “stringist” or “stringian”?

Gee, creationists are so silly and hypocritical.

And lastly (but not least), you are the one who brought up Charles Darwin up in the first place in your OP, so it is rather absurd and silly that we don’t talk about Darwin.

Did you know that Darwin was a Christian and theist, and later in life, an agnostic?

Even when his life was near its end, he didn’t renounce himself as a Christian. In his letter, he denied that he was ever an atheist. His works, his researches and his books have nothing to with theism or with atheism.

And most of those (Darwin’s contemporaries) who accepted his theory were Christians, with the exception of Thomas H. Huxley, who was the guy who coined the term “agnosticism”.

 

[Set Free]

For example at the time of the association of John Kennedy, the FBI had about 15% of the information for the case that exists today. Does that warrant a fresh look or reexamination

And by the same token, since Darwin had less that 15% of the mammal species to examine and no genetic information or theory to go on, does that warrant a fresh look or reexamination?

Many think that the standard evolutionary theory needs re-examined.

 

[Augustus]

The only association I will agree with is the corruption of Darwinism and evolution as a 'false appeal' for name tag coat tail support. Genetic selection for to create a superior human is far older than 'Darwin's' proposed Theory of Evolution , and it probably first was recorded was in Greece, used in Germany in the 17th-18th century to develop and army o giants. Eugenics originated in an and organized 'science' in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Just because such ideas predate Darwin, this doesn't rule out the influence of his ideas on the eugenics movement, indeed his son Leonard was the chair of the British Eugenics Society.

While Charles was not a proponent of eugenics, his writings in the Descent of Man (including his discussions of Galton and Spencer) clearly overlap with those of many eugenicists and Social Darwinists (in the broadest sense of the term).

He viewed as inevitable the replacement of the "savage races" by the "civilised" despite not being an advocate for this to happen, and also raised concerns about the fecundity of the lower ranks of society. That said, I think he considered it better to live with the latter than actively try to prevent it.

His ideas though were certainly influential among biologists and others in the eugenics movement. And while sometimes it was seized upon to buttress existing prejudices and political ideologies from Marxism to Naziism, it was also influential among those acting in good faith for 'progressive' reasons. An example of the latter would be this 'Eugenics Manifesto' published in the prestigious journal Nature (one notable signature: founding President of the British Humanist Society, Julian Huxley).

 

[Set Free]

mountains of evidence on the subject. Turned out that Darwin's theory was supported by the vast majority of objective facts and evidence.

Mountains of evidence for variation within the same species.

 

[Set Free]

Darwin's theory is settled science in the scientific community. No other opinions matter, including those of us who happen to agree with the scientific consensus. It wouldn't matter to the scientists if we didn't, so why would they care what the creationists' objections were? If those objections were valid, one of their own would have made them themselves.

You might want to get your basic science right before attacking it. The scientists themselves agree that Darwin's theory is falsifiable - just not falsified, which is a strength of the theory. It's been falsifiable since its inception over a century-and-a-half ago, but has still never been falsified.

Right on, it’s hard to falsify mountains of anecdotal evidence and guesses that have never been truthified in the first place.

 

[Set Free]

Bizarro dishonesty!?!?!!?

Did you know Charles? Many who did passed down testimonies of his poor character and participation and belief in Social Darwinism. Many also passed down testimonies of him being a saint of morale. Whose is more accurate and what is the determining factor other than bias and faith in human testimony if you didn’t personally know Charles?

 

[Set Free]

We have re-examined it as that is what science does and Darwin passes with flying colors. In the nineties they started mapping the entire human genetic genome and since then we have done that and slowly add more to the list, chimp etc. not believing in evolution is just denial anymore these days.

What do genes do for evolution theory? Nobody denies that codings for protein building are passed from the living to the living.

The way many talk about genes, may as well start calling them genies. Where did these codings evolve from, and from what source of power places them in action? Where did this power evolve from?

 

[Set Free]

The scientific community has been vigorously testing Darwin's theory for over 150 years now. It has been 15 decades of continuous reexamination and taking a fresh look. That's how the scientific method works.

The scientific method doesn’t work on a bunch of anecdotal evidence that cannot be examined to start with, and there barely is enough funding to examine in the first place, let alone re-examine stuff that was never and cannot be examined to start with.

 

[Set Free]

This never happened. Nothing remotely resembling this ever happened. He didn't "order" this, he didn't request it, he didn't suggest it.

Did you know Charles, personally too or just go off of eyewitness human testimonies to his character?

 

[Set Free]

It's actually the flourishing and reproduction of the most fecund that matters, which depends on more than survival. The fittest are those who transcend merely surviving and go on to reproduce most prodigiously. Surviving without competing successfully for fertile mates and being fertile yourself is not good enough.

Unless you’re going around having sex with as many people as possible to pass down your genes and have as many offspring as possible, you’re unfit to explain a theory that excludes your reality yet makes you a product of it.

 

[Augustus]

actually ordered some australean aborigines to be captured and brought back to England live for taxidermy later.

The Captain of the HMS Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, captured 3 people from Tierra del Fuego (South America) and took them back to England (although not for taxidermy). Darwin met them on board the Beagle.

If you think Origin of Species contained a discussion of the relative standing of human races, particularly the superiority of the English and the inferiority of blacks and Chinese, you have obviously never read the book, or even seen a halfway decent summary of its contents.

The Descent of Man is full of talk about "savage" and "civilised" races though. To be fair, the discussion is a bit more nuanced than the crude racialism being projected. While it not surprising that he was very much a man of his time and some of his views sound horrifically racist compared to modern PC norms, he often spoke quite compassionately about those he encountered and some of his views regarding them could probably have been considered at least relatively progressive for their time.

 

[ajarntham]

Did you know Charles, personally too or just go off of eyewitness human testimonies to his character?

If there were any record of Darwin doing anything at all resembling this, it would have been endlessly trumpeted by anti-Darwin/anti-evolution authors. It would have become far, far more notorious than the quote about the "savage races" being on the route to extinction, which itself is cited religiously by such authors. (If I told you that Donald Trump was on record recommending the nuclear annihilation of Mecca, would you need to know him personally, or even have any faith in his character, to conclude -- correctly -- that this had to be an invention?)

 

[sayak83]

Unless you’re going around having sex with as many people as possible to pass down your genes and have as many offspring as possible, you’re unfit to explain a theory that excludes your reality yet makes you a product of it.

The first question here is are you willfully ignorant or have been misled into ignorance by the faith community you have been surrounded by. If the latter we could have a discussion where I will show that the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology is as well grounded in evidence and experiments and scientific validation through successful predictions and testing as any discipline in physics or chemistry. If you are willfully ignorant and you reject evolution on theological grounds regardless of scientific evidence, then I won't waste my time and will wish you good luck.

One final thing. I am a Hindu and a scientist and am least bothered by atheist Christian bickering that often goes on here. So please leave your theology and scripture behind if you wish a discussion, as I have scripture and theology too.

So.... do you wish a discussion?

 

[shunyadragon]

Just because such ideas predate Darwin, this doesn't rule out the influence of his ideas on the eugenics movement, indeed his son Leonard was the chair of the British Eugenics Society.

While Charles was not a proponent of eugenics, his writings in the Descent of Man (including his discussions of Galton and Spencer) clearly overlap with those of many eugenicists and Social Darwinists (in the broadest sense of the term).

He viewed as inevitable the replacement of the "savage races" by the "civilised" despite not being an advocate for this to happen, and also raised concerns about the fecundity of the lower ranks of society. That said, I think he considered it better to live with the latter than actively try to prevent it.

His ideas though were certainly influential among biologists and others in the eugenics movement. And while sometimes it was seized upon to buttress existing prejudices and political ideologies from Marxism to Naziism, it was also influential among those acting in good faith for 'progressive' reasons. An example of the latter would be this 'Eugenics Manifesto' published in the prestigious journal Nature (one notable signature: founding President of the British Humanist Society, Julian Huxley).

All this is fine and good, but it does relate to Darwin nor the science of evolution except for the misuse of science.

 

[ajarntham]

. . . The Descent of Man is full of talk about "savage" and "civilised" races though. To be fair, the discussion is a bit more nuanced than the crude racialism being projected. While it not surprising that he was very much a man of his time and some of his views sound horrifically racist compared to modern PC norms, he often spoke quite compassionately about those he encountered and some of his views regarding them could probably have been considered at least relatively progressive for their time.

My impression is that he believed "savage" to be judgment about the present cultural state of a population, not about genetic inferiority. After some comments about the face painting and (lack of) clothing of the natives of South America, he added "such were we, once" (or something like that), where "we" refers to God's Englishmen. Obviously then he didn't think that "savagery" was an inborn and unalterable inheritance.

 

[metis]

My impression is that he believed "savage" to be judgment about the present cultural state of a population, not about genetic inferiority.

It also was uses as a clich'e. When working on an anthropology paper on the Huron, I read the diary of a woman who was a missionary with them, and she used the word "savages" a great deal and yet really found many things she liked about them. Much like the word "Negro" was commonly used decades ago, it seems strange to us today.

Darwin had many words to say about the indigenous in S.A., and he admired some of their qualities while sometimes demeaning his own English culture, such as how their children seemed free and joyous while English children were stuck in restrictive and boring classrooms back in not so "jolly old England".