Denyse O'Leary continues to look for ways to give away a few copies of the Expelled DVD. In order to win you have to write a 400 word essay on a particular topic and Denyse will pick the one that best conforms to her personal criteria.
This time Denyse is worried about Rob Day (aka Canadian Cynic) so she asks ... [Uncommon Descent: Contest Question 7: Foul anonymous Darwinist blogger exposed. Why so foul?]
Why do so many of Darwinists spout so much filth, hostility, and aimless detraction?Realizing that she might get the wrong answers she adds another rule to the contest.
Note: Entries that merely claim it isn’t happening will not be judged. Too many people here know otherwise.On a completely urelated topic, here are some interesting quotations from Conservapedia ...
Dr. Josef Mengele's evolutionary thinking was in accordance with social Darwinist theories that Adolph Hitler and a number of German academics found appealing.[15] Dr. Joseph Mengele studied under the leading proponents the "unworthy life" branch of evolutionary thought.[16] Dr. Mengele was one of the most notorious individuals associated with Nazi death camps and the Holocaust.[17] Mengele obtained a infamous reputation due to his experiments on twins while at Auschwitz-Birkenau.[18]And here's an interesting posting from Denyse O'Leary herself: If you accept the argument in Descent of Man, you accept a racist argument . Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the creationists are being mean and hostile by accusing evolutionists of racism and genocide. No siree, not me. I'm sure they wouldn't do that.
Prominent evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins stated the following regarding Adolf Hitler in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."[19] The interviewer of Richard Dawkins wrote the following regarding the Richard Dawkins comment about Hitler: "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own philosophical position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."[20]
In addition to greatly influencing Hitler's Nazism, evolutionary ideas influenced the thinking of the Communists, including Marx, Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.[21] Marx wrote, "Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history."
...
As noted earlier, evolutionary ideas contributed to the scourge of racism. [25][26] Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley contributed greatly to the theory of evolution broadly being accepted in the 1900s. [27] Darwin, Huxley, and the 19th century evolutionists were racist in sentiment and believed the white race was superior.
49 comments :
Well, since racism and genocide clearly never happened before a certain English man made a boat trip the connection is rather obvious. Sadly it is not yet common knowledge that Spanish conquistadores were atheistic Darwinists. Or was it the other way around? I got mixed up already...
The obvious way to consistency is to claim that it is worse to use naughty words than to accuse someone of being a Nazi.
Darwin used his time traveling telephone booth to go back in time and give a copy of his book to the Inquisition. It's locked and sealed inside the Vatican (to protect it from the times that Charles tries to travel through time (he's not dead, just moving a lot) trying to get rid of the evidence.
Dawkins thinks all traits are largely determined by genes. Thus, like many reductionists (Watson), I guess he truly does wonder whether Nazi eugenecis (artificial selection of humans) is a good thing.
Reductionists speak at a gene-molecular level from a "theoretical" perspective with little or no biological realism. Take IQ. The truth is, there are no known genes that have been proven to increase IQ. Thus, selection for increased IQ (for instance, by genocide or sterilization of all people with low IQ scores) would simply not be succesful
The Nazi-Darwinist argument has to be one the most blatantly false, boring and overly repeated claims made by creationists. It's up there with "there are no transitional fossils".
It was also used this past week by Pat Buchancan in another stunning piece of thoughtless journalism attempting to disprove evolution.
The case is most often made that Hitler's Mein Kampf was influenced by his reading of Darwin. Really it's a non sequitur. So what if Hitler read On the Origin of Species? I can think of another book Hitler probably also read which he was possibily influenced by.
I have it here somewhere... let me take a look... there it is, hold on a sec I gotta wipe the dust off the cover... ah yes, it's called "The Holy Bible".
re:Vargas
Where did the slander of Dawkins come from? That was a pure Godwin
Also, while I agree that IQ is likely influenced by many many genes, not a single or few and is influenced by large environmental effects that certainly doesn't mean it can't be affected by selection.
Intelligence, is a phenotypic trait and is therefore controlled by the expression of genes. If there is genetic variation in the population then selection can act on it. If lots of the variation is due to the environment, that just means that the impact of selection will be less effective, not zero.
Vargas: What Dawkins means is that it is difficult to establish an objective criterion for morality. It is a difficult task, and how important you think the effect of genes is on behaviour does not change that in either direction.
I followed the link to conservapedia (I'll have to spend the afternoon scrubbing my computer with carbolic soap) and it's fascinating to see what they regard as reliable sources for their quotes/lies.
Andrew Holmes wrote: "The case is most often made that Hitler's Mein Kampf was influenced by his reading of Darwin. Really it's a non sequitur. So what if Hitler read On the Origin of Species? "
You are correct, of course.
But there is no evidence that Hitler read Darwin. Hitler didn't read many science books. Hitler never even mentions Darwin. Several of Hitler's precursors disparaged Darwin, as did several of his followers.
There is no kind way to say it: Denyse O'Leary is breathtakingly stupid.
I truly wanted to leave a comment at that article, pointing out that it was moderately amusing for Denyse to use Canadian blogger Wendy "Right Girl" Sullivan for support in any argument related to civility, given Wendy's position that Canada's aboriginals "do absolutely nothing except smoke, drink and fuck their daughters" 364 days a year. (Sorry about the language, Larry, but if it's not verbatim, it kind of loses its punch.)
I really wanted to leave a comment pointing out this incongruity but that apparently requires getting a Wordpress account, and registering, and life is too short for that kind of crap.
But if anyone else here has commenting privileges over at UD, hey, knock yourself out. The frantic rationalization that would undoubtedly follow would be hugely entertaining, I'm sure.
"Intelligence, is a phenotypic trait and is therefore controlled by the expression of genes"
An amateur's words. Theoretics-bullshit.
"If lots of the variation is due to the environment, that just means that the impact of selection will be less effective, not zero"
This is a very silly objection. In those situations, where "perhaps a small percentage is due to genetic variation" selection is a failure.
Quite obviously, environment would be the strategy to obtain desired phenotypes.
"What Dawkins means is that it is difficult to establish an objective criterion for morality. It is a difficult task, and how important you think the effect of genes is on behaviour does not change that in either direction"
Believe me, the task is much less difficult when you know what the situation with the genes is. Science does give us a context that helps us with our ethical decisions. It is not indifferent.
Ethics, despite being a complex topic, is not relativistic "whatever it may be". It is complex and very context-dependent, yes. But this does not mena it lacks any "objectivity"
It only menas that you must be well-informed of the context of each case (including, of course, scientific details).
The nice surprise is, when all relevant information is made available, some ethical decisions become amazingly clear...indeed, "objective"
A. Vargas wrote
The nice surprise is, when all relevant information is made available, some ethical decisions become amazingly clear...indeed, "objective"
I'd love to see a worked out example to help understand what this means.
There's thousands of examples. Don't be stupid.
The very case in point: Genocide of people with lower IQ's would not lead to a higher average IQ of society. Don't you think thatinformation could somehow help you decide against this kind of technique as a stratgey for improving IQ?
Another worked-out example: Many people think it is reasonable to consider human life begins at fertilization.
In this circumstance, don't you think it would be relevant for it to be well-know that the main effect of the "morning after" pill is to stop ovulation? Fertilization never occurrs.
If you dedicate yourself instead to spreading "ethical relativism" all you get are ignorant cynics, who will not care for the science.
Thanks for helping me understand what you mean, though your condescending - not to say arrogant - tone is less than helpful.
However, neither of your examples is 'worked out.' They are missing any number of premises, not least among them the assumption that our knowledge is complete.
Our knowledge only needs to be complete in aspects that are reasonably relevant to an ethical question. When knowledge is not available or hard to obtain, we can at least clearly state what kind of relevant scientific information is currently missing and perhaps even what can be done about that.
RBH
A. Vargas' "condescending - not to say arrogant - tone is [always] less than helpful."
A. Vargas writes: Reductionists speak at a gene-molecular level from a "theoretical" perspective with little or no biological realism. Take IQ. The truth is, there are no known genes that have been proven to increase IQ. Thus, selection for increased IQ (for instance, by genocide or sterilization of all people with low IQ scores) would simply not be succesful
I believe that, strictly speaking, this is not correct. You only have to look at genetic "lesions" to see that plenty of genetic disorders accompanied by low IQ. It follows that the genes affected are important for the better IQ of "normal" individuals.
You might be able to say that there is (at present) no examples of single genes whose alleles (etc) correlate with intelligence; this wouldn't surprise me, but it's a quite different statement to the one you made (to my reading).
Also there is a little logical leap between "there are no known genes that have been proven to increase IQ" and "Thus, selection for increased IQ [...] would simply not be successful". What I presume you mean to say is that if there is no genetic variants associated with IQ (something I doubt is true), then selection for IQ... etc. That something isn't proven doesn't imply the contrary case, as it were. (Think: "A lack of proof of something is not proof of anything.")
Reductionists speak at a gene-molecular level from a "theoretical" perspective with little or no biological realism. Take IQ. The truth is, there are no known genes that have been proven to increase IQ. Thus, selection for increased IQ (for instance, by genocide or sterilization of all people with low IQ scores) would simply not be succesful
That's only half-correct. While no genes for high IQ turn up in GWAS and other studies, we know of plenty of gene variants, chromosomal aberrations, etc. that determine low IQ.
Weeding those out will definitely raise the average IQ of society as well as spare it the burden of having to care about those people and not really hurt anyone. It's a win-win situation for everyone. One thing I agree with anti-abortionists is that there is really very little difference between abortion and infanticide, however the conclusion following from that should go the other way, i.e we should not ban abortion, but allow infanticide (and really enforce it if we are ever to solve the overpopulation problem, but I am digressing here)
As far as Dawkins' remark about morality - I think that ethics and morality are elevated to an undeservedly high level of importance in the topics that society should be discussing. There is no morality per se in nature. What counts is whether you make it or not and a lot of our established so called "moral laws" are working against that.
My blood pressure is rising every time I hear people, even scientists themselves, who say that science has no business determining what is moral and what is not. I have yet to hear a good reason why; what is usually brought up is that if you do that you end up with eugenics, mass sterilizations and stuff like that. OK, but what if eugenics is the correct thing to do if we want to maximize our species' chances of surviving? I think that one of the fundamental principle of scientific reasoning is that one should accept the answer that he's getting even if he doesn't like the implications and this is a case where people are breaking that rule. I am not defending eugenics but I am definitely against the position that science should not determine morality because the answers science tends to give aren't appealing. All that means is that nature is ruthless and doesn't really care about our disconnected from reality ethical constructs, and we should deal with that.
Anyway, what I am saying is that we should decide on what our highest priorities are, something like the following list (I can't imagine anyone would argue with these):
1. Prevention of the extinction of our species
2. Preservation of civilization (the "industrial" part usually attached to it can go, but the knowledge accumulated is of utmost importance)
3 and etc.. less important stuff
and then work from that and design an ethical system system that works with those goals in mind. That means that a lot of the current system will probably have to go because it is only compatible with those principles in theory, but not in practice, but again if the answer we get isn't nice, that doesn't mean the answer is wrong.
Stop being silly.
Since over half of mammalian genes are expressed in the brain, then of course there isn't a 'gene' for 'IQ'.
"plenty of genetic disorders accompanied by low IQ"
Yes
"It follows that the genes affected are important for the better IQ of "normal" individuals"
No.
The above only proves that normal copies of said gene are required for developing a normal intelligence. This is not evidence that another version of that gene produces higher IQ's among normal individuals. Similary, some foods are required for the development of normal intelligence. This does not mean that stuffing myself with those foods will make me a genius.
"You might be able to say that there is (at present) no examples of single genes whose alleles (etc) correlate with intelligence"
Genes with independent effects are amore easily selected. Genes with large effects are more easily selected. Since no such genes are known to underlie the variation of IQ among normal people, selection for enhanced IQ's is going to be hard business. This is so regardless of the terrible logical conundrum it seems to be producing in you.
"Weeding those out will definitely raise the average IQ of society as well as spare it the burden of having to care about those people and not really hurt anyone"
No. The improvement in terms of both things would be negligible.
Consider European Jews. They have much higher frequencies of intelligence-impairing mutations. But their average IQ is pretty high. Remember social environment and education?
Another reason why things won't improve much by weeding out these mutations is that they are actually very rare. Further, their effects are often hidden by heterozygosity. The massive eugenics program to simply attempt erradicating these mutaions would very costly and by no means would guarantee success.
@ A. Vargas
The heritability of general cognitive ability is actually quite high (at least 0.5), so there is little doubt that selection for increased IQ will be successful.
That being said, I agree 100% with you that a eugenetic program to increase IQ would be an appalling thing to do, because it somehow suggests that people with a sub-average IQ have no right to reproduce. I think none of us wants to live in a world that enforces such kind of ideas. I also think that improvements in educationial standards will be MUCH more efficient in raising IQ than eugenetic breeding programs.
So you see, even someone who believes that variation in human traits is largely genetic, can come up with the correct ethical thing to do. Science does not tell us what is correct, you have to do that for yourself (contra Georgi Marinov).
Heritability tells us nothing about whether there is a genetic basis to the repetition of a trait at the next generation (this is why actual, molecular genes are dope).
Thinking that way, you would have to admit we could select for democrat or republican since there is a heritable component to the vote.
Perhaps something that might help you out is the fact that a population with the same genetic variation can show different heritabilities (including zero) in different environments. Yes, that's right. Heritability changes with the environment.
That being said, I agree 100% with you that a eugenetic program to increase IQ would be an appalling thing to do, because it somehow suggests that people with a sub-average IQ have no right to reproduce. I think none of us wants to live in a world that enforces such kind of ideas. I also think that improvements in educationial standards will be MUCH more efficient in raising IQ than eugenetic breeding programs.
1. Once again - it does not follow that X is the wrong thing to do just because X is appalling to us (and when I use the word "wrong" I don't mean it in the moral sense). You illustrated what I talked about very nicely - you are letting feelings influence your reasoning.
2. When I talk about how things considered appalling by most may not only be the correct thing to do but in fact absolutely necessary, selecting for high IQ is one of the last things I have in mind
A. Vargas said:
Heritability tells us nothing about whether there is a genetic basis to the repetition of a trait at the next generation
Yes, it does exactly that. It tells us what fraction of the phenotypic variation is heritable. The selection response will be directly proportional to the heritability, as given by the breeder's equation.
I am fully aware that heritability estimates are sensitive to the environment. This is called Gene by Environment interaction. You are correct that large changes in the social environment will change the genetic basis. This is why improvements by social/educational means can still work, even if the heritability is one (100% genetic). In all social environments we have tried measuring the heritability for general cognitive ability, we still detect a substantial genetic component though.
Georgi Marinov said:
When I talk about how things considered appalling by most may not only be the correct thing to do but in fact absolutely necessary, selecting for high IQ is one of the last things I have in mind
I did not mean to suggest that you did. Sorry if I offended you.
However, I specifically meant to address this comment:
OK, but what if eugenics is the correct thing to do if we want to maximize our species' chances of surviving?
this striked me as an odd comment. Is the persistence of our species more important than equal rights to all (including the right to have children)? It is not what I would choose as a first priority and I don't think there is anything in science that suggests it should be.
Is the persistence of our species more important than equal rights to all (including the right to have children)?
I am not intending to offend you, but do you realize how stupid this sounds?
I am not intending to offend you, but do you realize how stupid this sounds?
No offence taken. No, I don't realise how stupid it sounds. Please explain. I am very curious as to your motives.
Well, to begin with, the very existence of the debate we are having right now is entirely dependent on the existence of the species. If the species goes extinct human rights disappear and everything else we value about our civilization cease to exist too.
All of that because we decided to put human rights (entirely cultural concept with zero relevance to the physical world by the rules of which we have to live) above our existence in the list of our priorities. That's not a good evolutionary strategy
Georgi Marinov said:
If the species goes extinct human rights disappear and everything else we value about our civilization cease to exist too.
So that means you agree with me that human rights and civilisation are more important than species persistence. The latter is just a means to reach these goals.
That's not a good evolutionary strategy
Now I am wondering: How many children do you have? :-)
But seriously, following a good evolutionary strategy is not a priority in my book. I would rather go for the sissy things like love, friendship, etc. This is simply because I think that a world in which people pursue these goals would be more agreeable than one in which people care about the optimal evolutionary strategy.
In a world where people care about love and friendship more than they care about the basic laws of nature very soon you end up with no people left to care about such things (or no people who care about such things - we may not go extinct but be reduced to a caveman state)
I definitely don't think that human rights are more important than our survival, and I frankly never expected that someone will come up claiming such an insane thing (at least not on this blog), nature simply does not care about human rights and we better understand that.
Maybe you I will understand if I put it this way: which right is more important - the right not to starve to death or be cannibalized by a starving mob or the right to reproduce without restrictions? I can substitute many things for reproduction, but this is an especially good one.
Georgi Marinov said:
In a world where people care about love and friendship more than they care about the basic laws of nature very soon you end up with no people left to care about such things (or no people who care about such things - we may not go extinct but be reduced to a caveman state)
I don't believe that in a world where people care about love and friendship (IN ADDITION to our persistence as a species) things will take such a grim turn.
In turn, consider this: What exactly is it, we are alive for? From your answer I would guess you think it is civilisation, in particular scientific knowledge. I appreciate that, but I don't think it follows that species persistence is a priority in itself.
True, nature does not care about human rights, but I think humans should. My guess is that it is as necessary for civilisation, as mere survival.
Thank you for your thoughts Georgi. I don't agree, but I enjoyed the discussion.
Yes, people should care about human rights but only to the extent that this does not puts us on the road to extinction. Nature has only one commandment and it is "Thous shall never exceed the carrying capacity of the environment". This commandment collides head on with the most basic instinct of every living being (humans included) which is to maximize the number of your offspring and its chances of survival. Human rights as they exist right now are designed to make sure that we can do the latter but they completely disregard the former.
Any moral system that forms the basis of a long-term stable society has to take the former into account first and then grant as much human rights as possible within that framework.
It is also useful to realize that things like limited having no more children than the replacement fertility rate, infanticide, etc. are only problematic because it is a norms in the society we live in to consider them bad. With a little education and abandonment of certain archaic concepts (religion is one of them) these things become completely acceptable and if they are acceptable nobody would view them as a violation of human rights. So the problem just disappears.
Again, because there are no absolute moral laws (which is where the whole discussion started) all we have to do is collectively accept new moral standards that allow us to happily inhabit this planet for millenia ahead and develop all the cool science and do all the great art we wish.
The problem only exists in the eyes of people today who have been indoctrinated into viewing certain things as extremely objectionable by the culture they have been raised in, which in turn is based on Bronze Age myths (I love that phrase) and scientific and ecological ignorance and illiteracy.
"Yes, it does exactly that. It tells us what fraction of the phenotypic variation is heritable"
It seems you simply cannot tell the difference between "heritability" and "genetic". You really should stop and just think about this.
Not the same thing, for many obvious reasons, only some of which is the environment-dependance of heritability.
If you mean "narrow-sense" heritability in terms of selection differential/response to selection, such an experiment of artificial seleciton has never been done in humans.
well, I guess HAS been attempted. I'm just giving the benefit of the doubt, since all historic eugenicist-selectionist attempts to improve IQ (such as mass sterilizations or the "wonder" nazi children) have been complete failures.
"An amateur's words. Theoretics-bullshit."
Wow - set everyone straight, big guy!
Such unadulterated pomposity is truly something to behold. And it oozes regularly from this thing.
Yup, it wasn't worth carrying on the conversation.
I honestly fell sorry for people who think every phenotypic trait is "gene regulation". They apparently can't tell the how sloppy that actually is. Rather, they think they can just repeat it as a truth engraved in stone! As if this were a detailed mechanism we were talking about here. Pure semimetaphorical reductionist amateur crap, that's what it is.
Vargas,
It is you who are writing crap. Your arguments are vague, and you make assumptions about peoples' arguments to fit your very obvious minority view of how evolution proceeds.
I am not saying that variation is always caused by gene regulation. I'm saying that the products of genes are ultimately responsible for every trait. I'm myself am sympathetic to the role of environmentally induced variation, I work on maternal effects myself, but declaring that there is no genetic variation in a population for a trait is just as incorrect as declaring that all variation in a trait is caused by genetic variation.
Why don't you show me the evidence that there is no genetic variation underlying intelligence and why this trait should be totally genetically monomorphic.
Even mechanisms where the environment plays a prominent role in evolution, such as genetic accommodation, rely on previously hidden genetic variation being expressed in novel environments.
"I am not saying that variation is always caused by gene regulation. I'm saying that the products of genes are ultimately responsible for every trait"
Please explain how is that not a self-contradiction.
"I'm myself am sympathetic to the role of environmentally induced variation, I work on maternal effects myself"
Isn't it funny then, that I actually work with genes? In any case, I can't see how this is a scientific argument. I'm not interested in your bio.
"declaring there is no genetic variation in a population for a trait is just as incorrect as declaring that all variation in a trait is caused by genetic variation. Why don't you show me the evidence that there is no genetic variation underlying intelligence and why this trait should be totally genetically monomorphic"
I have already discussed mutations producing significant decreases of IQ. There certainly IS genetic variation of IQ. The trait is not genetically monomorphic.
What I said is that genes increasing intelligence are unknown. Thus. selection for higher IQ's is unlikely to work.
I turn, were you to select for lower IQ's, there is an abundance of well-characterized mutations that severely lower IQ.
What's your explanation for this situation?
Marinov said:
"OK, but what if eugenics is the correct thing to do if we want to maximize our species' chances of surviving?
That may be so. I'm only making the point that there is plenty of evidence that artificial selection and other forms of selection (sterilization, genocide) would not have this result for the IQ trait.
"I think that one of the fundamental principle of scientific reasoning is that one should accept the answer that he's getting even if he doesn't like the implications and this is a case where people are breaking that rule"
There's yet another way to get confused:, To assume that something we don't like must be true on the pretense of scientific objectivity, without really knowing the subject. It's a common disease among cynics.
You are putting labels on people and using those labels to attack views that are quite different from their actual position.
I don't like that.
All I am saying is that there should be no taboo topics, unthinkable policies and sacred concepts, what we should be doing is base policy making on careful very long-term cost-benefit analysis with the ultimate goals I listed above in mind.
I'm juts telling it how it is. Your "no taboos"' argument may have someone congratulating himself "look, how obejctive I am, I'm defending selection for IQ" when actually, you ignore that would not work. It's not only about what is desirable. It is also about mechanistic feasability. Know the relevant sicece, dude.
One of the things that make you a "cynic" is the realization that productive debate between two individuals of our species is nearly impossible, maybe because of our tendency to act first, rationalize later, maybe because of something else, I don't know. However, I know that the reasoning/reading comprehension skills of the vast majority of people are indufficiently well developed for a constructive conversation to happen.
First, if you read my previous post, it clearly mentions that policy-making should be based on careful cost-benefit analysis. If you read and understood this, you would have never brought up the "selection for high IQ would never work" mantra
Second, I never said that I want this to happen, what I said was that we could and should perform infanticide on children born with mental retardation or various birth defects, congenital conditions, etc. that severely limit the individual's ability to function in society, because this saves society the burden of having to care about these individuals, and because a newborn isn't really a person so no harm is being done.
What I also said was that we should limit reproductive rights and enforce a strict population control, otherwise we will go extinct because we will destroy the carrying capacity of the Earth. This would necessarily involve violation of human rights as we understand them today, however it is absolutely necessary to be done, so we should reconsider what we mean by human rights, how well our moral and ethical constructs serve us and how we should adapt them so that, again, we don't go extinct.
I get very annoyed when I clearly state my positions and they get blatantly misinterpreted the very next moment.
You're overannoying yourself mostly becasue you're imagining things.
My only interest is to make what points I think are pertinent. I'm not interested in making anyone or anything look bad, but I'm not tiptoing not to, either.
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