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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The ugly face of Intelligent Design Creationism

Intelligent Design Creationists like to pretend that their particular version of creationism is scientific. They claim they have evidence of an intelligent designer (gods), but 99% of their literature is an attack on evolution and not a defense of a new scientific theory. Those attacks take many forms but the worst ones are the attempts to smear Darwin and associate evolutionary biology with racism and the holocaust.

David Klinghoffer continues this despicable tradition in his latest post on Evolution News & Views (sic): In Explaining Dylann Roof's Inspiration, the Media Ignore Ties to Evolutionary Racism. Klinghoffer discusses the views of Dylann Roof, the man who shot and killed nine people in a church in Charleston, South Caroline (USA). Dylann Roof is reported to be a devout Christian [Dylann Roof was a devout Christian] but that's not relevant.
Of course, no one I've referred to endorses Dylann Roof's murderous rampage. I don't doubt that they are all sincerely mortified by the association, however unintended, with such unapologetic, undisguised evil.

I mention this at all not to blame them for Roof's crime, in any way, but simply to note -- because the mainstream media covers it up -- how certain ideas tend to hang together.

The racial elements in Charles Darwin's writing, the eugenicist implications, are often brushed aside as ugly but incidental, a mere byproduct of his time and place. Yet the myth of European superiority over inferior dark peoples continues to percolate in some evolutionary thinking, a century and more after the close of the Victorian era. It seems to have found an eager student in a disturbed young man named Dylann Roof.


108 comments :

Diogenes said...

Dylan Roof is a product of a long history of creationist racism, going back centuries.

As for Klinghitler, he works for the Discovery Institute, whose main donor is the fascist Dominionist billionaire Howard Ahmanson. Ahmanson's spiritual guru and inspiration was the racist creationist Dominionist ("Reconstructionist") theologian Rousas Rushdoony.

Rushdoony made very crude racist remarks, wrote that eugenics or "selective breeding" were mandatory for Christians and the reason why whites were biologically superior to blacks (whites had been Christian longer, thus their history of eugenics made them genetically superior to blacks.)

Rushdoony wanted to bring back slavery to the United States because slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, and he said certain people were just "naturally slaves" and better off enslaved.

As the cherry on the racist sundae, Rush denied the Holocaust happened and said that the German Christians were the real victims, the target of liberal lies and slanders like "The holocaust really happened."

That's the spiritual guru of the guy who signs Klinghitler's paycheck.

David Berlinski, the Senior Discovery Institute Fellow, once admitted that Reconstructionists (those who follow Rushdoony) work for the DI now. I don't know if that's true, but Berlinski said so.

Confused said...

AIG is still firmly claiming that all evolutionists are racists. In their own words:

"If you accept human evolution, you must acknowledge that some races have evolved "more" than others. However, people are often inconsistent in applying their worldviews. The biblical worldview has a reason to say that all people groups are the same since they were all descended from Adam and Eve and created in the image of God (not apelike animals)."

http://imgur.com/s2nx0lt

What those words actually mean is beyond me.

Diogenes said...

The Discovery Institute has other racist associations. For many years they fell all over Chuck Colson, a prison evangelist who often wrote ignorant pieces in favor of Intelligent Design.

In the 1970's Colson was a thug and wannabe terrorist who worked for Nixon. He was a White House plumber, squelching evidence of the Watergate break-in, and a founder of CREEP.

Colson devised Nixon's "Southern Strategy" whereby the Republicans would pick up the support of all the racist white Southern voters kicked out of the Democratic Party back in '64. The strategy was based on using coded language such as "law and order" which, as strategist Lee Atwater admitted, was intended to be heard as meaning race and racial paranoia.

Of course, Colson's "Southern Strategy" redrew the US political map, and, long story short, led to the conservative Dylan Roof's terrorist murders in Charleston.

Colson wanted to be a terrorist himself: he devised a plan to firebomb the Bookings Institution, a moderate think tank. According to what Nixon himself said in his audiotapes, Colson also had the job of getting the mafia to hire thugs to murder anti-Vietnam War protesters.

After the Watergate Scandal broke, Colson was indicted for his illegal attempts to conceal evidence of the burglary. Desperate, he ran for cover and sought protection from "The Family" aka "The Fellowship", an evangelical lobbying group and cult that runs the Presidential Prayer Breakfast every year (the Family uses the Prayer Breakfast to illegally hook up murderous or genocidal Third World dictators with US presidents, congressmen and military contractors.)

When it seemed certain Colson would go to prison, he suddenly accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, got powerful friends in Congress to defend him, and weeped and cried about how accepting Jesus had reformed his heart.

So he spends a short stint in prison, gets out, becomes a prison evangelist and Intelligent Design proponent. The old terrorist and architect of racist politics was always screaming about how "Darwinism" causes immoral behavior.

About the time he died, Casey Luskin wrote a grovelling, pathetic eulogy praising Colson's Christian faith and exemplary, inspiring life.

If terrorism and racist political strategies are what the Discovery Institute calls morally exemplary, they can keep their Intelligent Design.

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

Brave Dave! Let's make Darwin retroactively reponsible for the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century. The traders obviously adhered to "the myth of European superiority over inferior dark peoples", invented and propagated by Charles Darwin. This monster's influence was so toxic that it had poisoned people's minds long before he was born.

Diogenes said...

Creationists have said many times that whites are superior to blacks because

1. Some races are more "devolved" than others (you know who), aka "degeneration theory"

2. God made them that way-- either the curse of Ham after Noah's Flood, which msde black races "the servant of servants", or at the separation of nations after God punished man over the Tower of Babel (in the Bible, He doesn't actually knock the tower down.)

3. Black races AND APES are the product of humans (whites) cross-breeding with animals. This idea was believed by George M. Price, the creationist founder of Flood Geology, because the "amalgamation of man and beast" was cited by Ellen G. White, the prophetess of the Seventh Day Adventist sect, as the origin of some black races, in her inspired prophecies. It was also embraced by Harold W. Clark, the creationist who concocted "ecological zonation", the idea that the order of the fossils in the geological record was caused by Noah's Flood progressively burying different "eco-zones" with progressively more complex flora and fauna.

Matthew said...

And this in a post that says "Guilt by association is a nasty business."

Diogenes said...

Klinghitler wrote: Guilt by association is a nasty business. It's often very selective, too. It leaves things out that don't fit the desired narrative.

Wow. Irony much? Klingleberry is mad because newspapers accurately reported that the Council of Conservative Citizens (whose website inspired Dylann Roof's mass murder, according to Roof's own manifesto) donated a lot if money to many Republican politicians.

They donated to many Republican creationists, in fact, including Mike Huckabee and... Michelle Bachmann.

And who is it who used to keep the books and handle donations to Michelle Bachmann's campaign?

Yes, our friend Barry Arrington, IDcreationist, moderator of Uncommon Descent, lawyer and CPA.

Arrington must have accepted the check from Earl Holt III, president of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Hey Barry, will Michelle return the racist $$$?

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

Obviously if there are different races, the can't all be spitten images of God. You wouldn't seriously claim that God is black or yella, would you? All the greatest and most inspired artists of the past, such as Michelangelo have for centuries painted God as an elderly North European male with a long grey beard and blue eyes -- not as an Asian woman, an African child, or a bleedin' Mediterranean hermaphrodite (OK, I realise Jesus may have been one, but that's a different story).

Faizal Ali said...

From the Daily Mail story linked above:

Family members have painted a different story, however, and told Daily Mail Online that Dylann was 'raised right' and that he had learned his Catechism as a young boy.

They also said that his father goes to church twice a week, and Sunday was the first chance since the shooting on Wednesday night that he had to pray with his regular congregation.

In fact Dylann's upbringing was steeped in the church and he was baptized into the faith, went to church camp and regularly attended worship....


I'm sorry, but I don't get why this is supposed to be surprising.

steve oberski said...

Think of Darwin as a Christ figure.

Just as those who lived before the coming of Christ* could be saved so could Darwin project the eugenicist implications of his writing into the past.

* Although the Lord seems to give and take away here, this seems to be an offer restricted to circumcised children of Abraham.

Anonymous said...

I predict that before his trial begins Roof will rediscover his Christianity and 'realize' that everything he did was unchristian. He'll then blame evolution and secularism for leading him astray. This could get him sympathy from some jurors and may save him from the death penalty

Diogenes said...

No Steve, Darwin had a Tardis and went back in time to cause Christians to enslave blacks and Muslims.

He also put the idea of eugenics and selective breeding into the minds of Plato, Thomas Jefferson, etc.

Diogenes said...

Let me briefly summarize the creationist discussion regarding racial differences:

Darwinism says some races are more evolved than others, and that's racist! Creationists say some races are more devolved than others, and that's totally consistent with Christianity.

Diogenes said...

You remember that Christian lady who posed for a photo on her Facebook account of her toting an assault weapon and a Bible, standing in front of an American flag? Some wags compared it to a photo of a Muslim terrorist with assault weapon, Quran, and Hamas flag.

Well, she became a conservative star thanks to her Bible-and-gun photo. Very shortly after, she was travelling to these conservative Christian conferences as a big star. In very short order, the married Christian lady had an adulterous affair-- at a conservative Christian conference.

What do you suppose was the Bible-toting, Christian lady's explanation for her adulterous affair? Why, she had lost her faith but only when she was having adultery. When she got caught, her faith came back.

Yes, it was: Yay Jesus! Yay Jesus!

Oh wait, here's a man I'd like to bonk. OK, I'm an atheist for the next couple of hours. Bonk bonk, bonk bonk. Oh god oh god oh god, that was good.

Oh wait, did I get caught? Everybody found out what I did? Oops. You see guys, it's OK because I was an atheist when his penis was inside me. I got my faith back as soon as my orgasm was finished.

Unknown said...

Christians have, and use, the ultimate argument. It doesn't matter how "Christian" Roof was all of his life, a "true" Christian wouldn't do that. Therefore, it was the devil's (aka, Darwin's) doing.

Jass said...

I personally believe that both sides; Darwinists and the main stream Christianity with the Catholic Church leading the way are almost equally responsible for the many, many atrocities done in the name of their... f***ng credo....
I don't think pointing fingers will change the documented history...

Anonymous said...

You're an ass-hole.

John Harshman said...

I'm not sure what atrocities have been done in the name of "Darwinism". Can you elaborate?

Anonymous said...

This is the type of stuff that gives historians of science head aches!

"As historians, we have a social duty to correct error and over-simplification where it is foisted on the public by politically and religiously motivated individuals..."

Some Thoughts on Historians and Contemporary Anti-evolutionism.
https://whewellsghost.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/some-thoughts-on-historians-and-contemporary-anti-evolutionism/

Unknown said...

Really? Please elaborate. What atrocities have been perpetrated by Darwinists? And please don't try to use the Hitler as an example. He was raised Christian and used the Christian anti semetism that existed in Europe to justify his policies.

Dazz said...

http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/148444/1069962.jpg

John Harshman said...

Nope, no Darwinism there. Try again. And please, no Stalin. That doesn't work either. And by the way, belt buckles are not arguments.

Diogenes said...

John, you get Dazz' point right-- the Nazis used religious arguments, that God was on their side, " Gott mit uns."

Robert Byers said...

I don't know about this shooting case as its common enough to not notice these days.
Its rare and thats the point.
if any thought structure like evolution or creation provoked people to muder then there would be a great deal, or a lot more or a bit more then almost nothing.
The rarity proves murder etc is from evil people who are very few.
Who scores racial killings? Whats the stats?

biblical christians created a society where all men came from adam/Eve.
thats why this foundation led to a kinder society like in North america relative to historic mankind.
evolutionism created the foundation for seeing mankind as evolved from inferior intellectual/moral origins . A next step was segregating by race/sex with evolution bringing different results.
Darwin denied race mattered in smarts but insisted women were intellectually inferior.
I understand later MOST paid evolutionists said race made a genetic difference in smarts. i understand most still; do. i'm not sure of stats.
There you are. The truth or why isn't it.

evolutionism affected the educated classes in the old days. not many people back then. A presumption was made of superior/inferior race etc.
Everyone should know that.
yet the holocaust did not come from this. it was a secret.
The allies had also a educated elite who opposed Hitler but liked evolution.
i'm confident evolutionism had nothing to do with the holocaust in killing. Very little to do with presumptions behind the mirdering. tiny or nothing.
investigation would show this if there was interest in these old and foreign problems.

Everybody gets hurt because everybody accuses evil on the big ideas.
christianity is accused freely for every evil under the sun. Evolution gets a bit.
Its all bad research and unkindness and stupid.

By the way murderers should be executed as its justice.

Jass said...

Somebody mentioned Hitler.....
He was a perfect example of "playing" both sides equally to his advantage. Once he got the Catholic Church on his side to eradicate the godless Bolsheviks by signing the concordat, he went on with his plan to implement the natural selection; to weed out the disabled, mentally ill, homosexuals and "the lower races" of the Jews, gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other for the purpose of the purification of the higher race-the Aryan race. There is no doubt where Hitler got his ideas from. They were clearly aligned with Nietzesche’s who worshipped Darwinism.

SRM said...

Bullshit, for which creationists are well known. Darwin was providing a explanation for patterns of life observable in nature. The principle of artificial selection was practised for thousands of years before Darwin. In fact, Darwin's idea of selection in nature was very much informed by his knowledge of artificial selection and the breeding of various domesticated animals with pronounced and acquired traits.

AllanMiller said...

A link to 'Darwinism' follows a mass shooting as surely as night follows day.

Do we get to point to the disproportionate influence of Christian groups on gun legislation, BTW?

AllanMiller said...

The hair-tearing part is the complete misunderstanding of the principle of Natural Selection, whenever Hitler, rape, mass killing or even eugenics comes up. None of those is remotely anything to do with NS - and it's not because of the word 'Natural', nor even 'Selection'. NS defines a particular principle of sorting of genetic variants, independent of supervening choice.

Tom Mueller said...

I'm not sure what atrocities have been done in the name of "Darwinism". Can you elaborate?

... emphasis on ...in the name of...

We are rehashing and both sides of this debate are guilty of repetitious non sequitor:

Guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

There is no debate that turn of the century Eugenics movements were in fact based on “Social Darwinism”. Any impartial reading of the historical record is emphatically clear regarding the atrocities of Social Darwinism as embraced by the reactionary Right

and

…the no less evil Flip-Flop mirror image of Neo-Lamarckianism as co-opted by the revolutionary Left which proved to be no less venal.

Joe summarized it best:
http://tinyurl.com/qzopx7q

Nullifidian said...

I understand later MOST paid evolutionists said race made a genetic difference in smarts. i understand most still; do. i'm not sure of stats.

Byers in a nutshell.

Nullifidian said...

Precisely. I always make the point that if your set of alleles requires mass genocide so that isn't swamped by others, then you can't exactly lay claim to high fitness. Not that I'm actually aware of any unique set of alleles that's responsible for making a person Jewish, a Jehovah's witness, a communist, an anarchist, a social democrat, a Romani, or any of the other groups that were targeted by the Nazis. The only group for which you might be able to make such a case is for homosexuals, but homosexuality wasn't conceived of as having a genetic basis when the Nazis were putting them in camps.

nmanning said...

"The racial elements in Charles Darwin's writing, the eugenicist implications, are often brushed aside as ugly but incidental, a mere byproduct of his time and place. Yet the myth of European superiority over inferior dark peoples continues to percolate in some evolutionary thinking, a century and more after the close of the Victorian era. It seems to have found an eager student in a disturbed young man named Dylann Roof."

Pity that neither Jewish nor Christian theology seems to have been able to put a dent into this 'Darwin'-related bigotry. Likely because Judaism and Christianity are themselves littered with the very bigotry that Klinghoffer decries yet cannot see.

Faizal Ali said...

The hair-tearing part is the complete misunderstanding of the principle of Natural Selection, whenever Hitler, rape, mass killing or even eugenics comes up.

Yes. Eugenics is nothing more than a (mis)application of selective breeding, the latter which humans have known about and used since prehistoric times. Agriculture and animal husbandry wouldn't have existed without it.

Unknown said...

Kevnick, what is your reply to SRM, Thursday, June 25 6:04:00 AM?
(..."Darwin was providing a explanation for patterns of life observable in nature. The principle of artificial selection was practised for thousands of years before Darwin. In fact, Darwin's idea of selection in nature was very much informed by his knowledge of artificial selection and the breeding of various domesticated animals with pronounced and acquired traits.")

SRM: short and to the point, thank you.

Gary Gaulin said...

I'm still not sure how to respond to a picture of a flag burning racist below the headline "The ugly face of Intelligent Design Creationism".

That was certainly childish, and sinister, in a very unscientific way.


John Harshman said...

You might first try to figure out that the ugly face isn't Dylann Roof; it's David Klinghoffer.

Gary Gaulin said...

What I read at David Klinghoffer's website was their asking the question of whether the inherently racist and misconception filled scientific ideology that was once popular in Germany is making a comeback.

Larry should have addressed the primary issue, by giving some words of wisdom science teachers could use right now to help fill knowledge gaps that can lead to the "master race" while others "deevolved to apes" type thinking contained in some of the variations of "evolutionary theory" that are around. I did not deserve to be bashed and demonized with stereotypes just because someone in the ID movement is wondering why experts in "evolution" seem to be so complacent about that.

SRM said...

Its nice to see that ID is so concerned about racism. Perhaps the ID movement should direct their attention to where racism is most rampant... such as amongst the rightwing/conservative factions of the world which, incidently, are the audiences most receptive to religion and religious ideas such as intelligent design.

While they are at it, they might also address the notion that women are subservient to men, and that homosexuality is a moral and biological disorder. The ID movement has a target audience. It seems this audience could stand to learn many things about simple human decency - along side the fact that evolution cannot be correct, of course.

AllanMiller said...

KevNick to implement the natural selection; to weed out the disabled, mentally ill, homosexuals and "the lower races" of the Jews, gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other for the purpose of the purification of the higher race-the Aryan race.

That's nothing to do with natural selection. When will you dweebs learn some science?

AllanMiller said...

Tom, There is no debate that turn of the century Eugenics movements were in fact based on “Social Darwinism”. Any impartial reading of the historical record is emphatically clear regarding the atrocities of Social Darwinism as embraced by the reactionary Right

The term 'Social Darwinism' was applied to these activities long after they had ceased. By people broadly ignorant of 'Darwinism', I'd say, perpetuating this myth that selective breeding is inspired by natural selection.

Jass said...

SRM & Eddie,

It's bullshit for which Darwinists are very well known. All of the sudden some of them pretend to have developed a consciousness...

:" A quote from "The Descent of Man", in a chapter called "The Races of Man.", in which Darwin wrote:

"At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes...will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla" (1874, p. 178)."

No comment necessary....

AllanMiller said...

The ugly face of quote mining. This was not a manifesto. Let's just restore context ... The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

He did rather look down his nose at other races (as did many of the time), but he did not order them killed.

The whole truth said...

Here's something to consider:

'Eugenics' (selective breeding and/or extermination of particular humans) gets a bad rap from many people, while selective breeding of pretty much any non-human life form and/or extermination of particular non-human life forms is just fine with most people. Even many people who would claim that humans are no more 'special' than any other life forms would have no problem with selective breeding of pretty much any non-human life forms and/or extermination of particular non-human life forms (animals, plants, viruses, etc.) but would have a big problem with selective breeding and/or extermination of particular (or any?) humans.

Why?

Theobots claim that 'God' specially created humans and that humans are exceptional and superior to all other life forms. What reason can we non-theobots use to justify placing humans in a 'special', 'exceptional' position?

Think about it.

judmarc said...

Come now Allan, such thoughts about other races and tribes than yourself are shameful, and as we all know:

(1) Anyone who wants to work in the area of evolutionary biology must take the Super Secret Pledge to believe in this same bilge - why, even the math of population genetics is infected with these ideas; you'll become a eugenicist from mere contact with the numbers; and

(2) The Bible of course never says anything laudatory about smiting those who aren't from one's own tribe, nor could it possibly be used as justification for something odious like slavery or oppression of the sons of Ham - oh, sorry, African-Americans.

judmarc said...

What reason can we non-theobots use to justify placing humans in a 'special', 'exceptional' position?

(1) We tend to give humans, as sentient beings, more say in what happens to them - the concept of informed consent (or for that matter, of democracy).

(2) The modern movement is towards giving animals more rights, particularly those with some form of sentience.

So not exceptionalism, empathy, especially toward cute furry creatures and cetaceans with some thinking abilities.

colnago80 said...

The notion that Darwin, who was a vehement opponent of slavery and also of British intervention in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, was somehow responsible for Roof is blasphemy. Klinghoffer is a liar extraordinaire, not surprising as the Dishonesty Institute is a coven of liars. As Diogenes points out above, the close connection of the Dishonesty Institute with Rouses Rushdoony is well documented via their main money man Howard Ahmanson. I was not aware that Rushdoony was a Holocaust denier along with his other intellectual crimes. The fact that Klinghoffer, who purports to be Jewish, allows himself to associate with Holocaust deniers is beyond contempt.

colnago80 said...

Just for the record, neither Hister or Stalin were "Darwinists". Hister specifically rejected common descent in Mein Kampf while Stalin, via his support of Lysenko, specifically rejected natural selection. It's creationists who reject both who are followers of Hister and Stalin.

Diogenes said...

As for Darwin's anti-racism, Colnago left out that Darwin was the most prominent signer of the Memorial to Lord Canarvin, an open letter petitioning the British governor of South Africa to grant citizenship to South African blacks. This was in the 1870's.

Contrast this with the actions of prominent creationists. As late as the 1980's, more than 100 years after Darwin wrote to Lord Canarvin, prominent and outspoken creationists, including Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson and Ted Nugent, were still defending the South African system that denied citizenship to blacks, based on the philosophy called Afrikaner Christian Nationalism.

Ted Nugent's statements on the topic of South African blacks were crude strings of N-words. As for Pat Robertson, he admitted his reasons for supporting Apartheid were economic: the West needs Africa's natural resources. Robertson went on to make a fortune in blood diamonds and conflict gold he helped to mine in Africa by making business deals with African dictators who provoked wars specifically to make it easier to acquire slave labor (orphaned kids) to work in their highly profitable mines.

Gary Gaulin said...

Perhaps the ID movement should direct their attention to where racism is most rampant... such as amongst the rightwing/conservative factions of the world which, incidently, are the audiences most receptive to religion and religious ideas such as intelligent design.

The reaction to someone from the ID movement showing that concern was just witnessed, by Larry's punishing article. Evidence now shows that those who try are demonized in a way that hurts me too.


AllanMiller said...

ID-sympathetic people who are concerned should help to eliminate the notions that Natural Selection means killing people of your choice, or that evolution is NS, or that evolution is necessarily progressive, rather than propagating them. But it often serves their purpose to mischaracterise, the.better to demonise 'Darwinists'. Some people sincerely believe the mischaracterised version, but not all.

Unknown said...

KevNick:
1. Darwin was providing a explanation for patterns of life observable in nature.
True or false
2. The principle of artificial selection was practised for thousands of years before Darwin.
True or false
3. Darwin's idea of selection in nature was very much informed by his knowledge of artificial selection and the breeding of various domesticated animals with pronounced and acquired traits.
True or false

colnago80 said...

Re Diogenes

I was unaware of the issue of citizenship for South African Blacks. More power to Darwin and convincing evidence that he was no racist.

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

To be sure, the proposed equality rule would have been applicable "only to those natives who have qualified themselves for the satisfactory performance of the duties of citizenship" (requiring them to assimilate to the European ways of life), but still,

We think it is of the utmost importance that when a new Constitution is in course of being framed for a country in the position of South Africa, the organic law of the State should embody the principle of an equality of rights, without regard to colour or race...

whereas the Governor of the Cape Colony was entirely against granting the native Africans any civil rights or letting them have a representation in the legislative assembly of the South African Confederation. Hence the petition to the Earl of Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies.

You can find the full text here: Link


Gary Gaulin said...

ID-sympathetic people who are concerned should help to eliminate the notions that Natural Selection means killing people of your choice,

How? By pointing out that the proper Darwinian phrase for "killing people of your choice" is "Artificial Selection" not "Natural Selection"?

or that evolution is NS, or that evolution is necessarily progressive, rather than propagating them.

In my opinion all the generalizations that you and others are prepared to defend with flaming semantic dispute is only more atrocity just waiting to happen.

Focusing on the cognitive science basics of how any "intelligence" works made possible new scientific theory, where living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. There are then computer models to work on, that do way more than "adapt".

I already do all I can to be socially responsible, by not leaving out vital detail that must be there from the start. Information like: human societies needing individuals able to differentiate into a large number of diverse occupations where different sets of talents and abilities that can take much of a lifetime becoming proficient at are intelligently expressed. Also, as in ant and bee colonies it can be expected that there are individuals who benefit society without themselves needing to reproduce, to exist in the population. What "science" has to say in regards to morphological and sexual differentiation is easily enough said, that way.

I found that what "science" has to say in regards to our not all being the same is best covered by a testable Theory of Intelligent Design, where all in biology only makes sense in the light of intelligent cause. And with that being the knowledge that stands the test of time for the ID movement it's now more a matter of waiting for the world to change..

AllanMiller said...

Me: ID-sympathetic people who are concerned should help to eliminate the notions that Natural Selection means killing people of your choice,

GG: How? By pointing out that the proper Darwinian phrase for "killing people of your choice" is "Artificial Selection" not "Natural Selection"?


NO!!! By pointing out that Natural Selection has fuck all to do with killing anyone! And that Darwin did not invent Artificial Selection either.

This is precisely the kind of uncorrectable bullshit version of NS I was going on about. If a hairy form of a mammal survives better in the cold than a bald form, does the hairy form kill the bald form? Or does someone decide to kill more of the bald ones? Do they lash out at random and kill anyone in the vicinity? Christ on a bike, the principle could NOT be more simple.

No, instead you perpetuate the myth, and some dozy bastard nursing his AK47 in his basement says "hey - Natural Selection!" Let's do it!

Gary Gaulin said...

The problem is mainly from the belief that some "races" who look human are better classified as a form of "ape" like a chimp. German WW2 propaganda made good use of depicting Jews with apelike features. Before that the belief made the African slave trade easier to condone.

Instead of wasting time talking about "Natural Selection" I have been working on such things as a better explanation of our origin, which in turn makes it easy to determine who is fully human or not by testing for the presence of a fusion that only humans have. And it's still doing wonderfully standing the test of time.

Chromosome Fusion Speciation (Immediate - Human)

Humans may be the result of a molecular level good-guess called Chromosome Fusion Speciation produced by a large head to head telomeric fusion of two average size chromosomes which became our second largest #2. Although there was not a significant amount of gene code scrambling at the fusion site, even in common much less disruptive fusion events which do not create a new species the rearranging of the chromosome territories can still produce large-scale gene expression (coding remains the same) changes elsewhere.
..........

48 and 48 parents produce a 48 offspring only.
48 and 47 parents produce a 48 or 47 offspring.
47 and 47 parents produce a 48 or 47 or 46 human offspring.
48 and 46 parents produce a 47 offspring only.
47 and 46 parents produce a 47 or 46 human offspring.
46 and 46 parents produce a 46 human offspring only.

The 47’s were a transitional stage that soon led to a stable 46 human design. New traits that may have appeared could have increasingly taken a 46 to find desirable, further accelerating speciation through the species recognition mechanism.

Our human genome design has an easily recognized "signature" in the phylogenetic data where the most obvious feature was produced by a chromosomal fusion/rearrangement speciation event through a progeny born to 48 then 47 chromosome ancestors who were not of the chimpanzee design, they were protohumans. Without our unique chromosome design being expressed they were not yet systematically human. Therefore where fully "human" is operationally defined as a 46 chromosome ancestor from our lineage (the result of chromosome fusion speciation) there is the genetic signature of a man and a woman progenitor couple expressing the new human design who deserve the colloquial name of Chromosomal Adam and Eve, whose descendants preferred to be with their own kind, through time, all the way from them to us..

http://theoryofid.blogspot.com/

All of the interracial marriages (and affairs that at their time had to be kept secret) is evidence that to spite racism humans have always been well able to recognize own kind when they see them. And the full agreement among humans that marrying a chimp or even loving bonobo is just totally weird in a way you don't even want to attend that wedding (unless for the spectacle) helps indicate that there is no problem at all immediately recognizing when the opposite is true.

SRM said...

The 47’s were a transitional stage that soon led to a stable 46 human design.

I will let other more knowledgable people dissect your ideas. But I notice you are fond of the word "design", Gary. Did all of this happen by chance, perhaps with selection playing a role, or do you imagine there was, as the word "design" implies, a designer involved? I presume you can answer this question honestly.

AllanMiller said...

The problem is mainly from the belief that some "races" who look human are better classified as a form of "ape" like a chimp. German WW2 propaganda made good use of depicting Jews with apelike features. Before that the belief made the African slave trade easier to condone.

What the hell does that have to do with Natural, or Artificial, Selection?

Gary Gaulin said...

What the hell does that have to do with Natural, or Artificial, Selection?

That has nothing to do with Natural Selection. Which is why it makes no sense for me to do as you said which is "ID-sympathetic people who are concerned should help to eliminate the notions that Natural Selection means killing people of your choice,"

Natural Selection is only a variable in the paradigm you are defending. It does not even exist in the ID paradigm, where such a thing becomes a black-box to cover (by kinda hiding) "intelligence" and other features of living things that Darwinian theory is totally unable to explain. You are asking the wrong person to promote your Natural Selection based world view for you. My purpose is to get past that 19'th century way of thinking, not get stuck there with you.

Gary Gaulin said...

Did all of this happen by chance, perhaps with selection playing a role, or do you imagine there was, as the word "design" implies, a designer involved? I presume you can answer this question honestly.

Considering how I code models and write theory for explaining how our intelligent designer works: I can honestly say that my science work very much implies a "designer" involved.

SRM said...

Ok. Do you think it is possible that what we observe in nature might not require a designer?

Gary Gaulin said...

Do you think it is possible that what we observe in nature might not require a designer?

The intelligent designer I study is absolutely required, or else what we observe in "nature" would not be able to exist.

SRM said...

The intelligent designer I study is absolutely required, or else what we observe in "nature" would not be able to exist.

Then you understand of course, you are not studying anything at all, but merely affirming your convictions, right?

Its alright of course, you have every right to do this.

Gary Gaulin said...

SRM, are you saying that the following is from scripture?

A behavior from any system qualifies as intelligent behavior by meeting all four circuit requirements for this ability, which are: [1] something to control (body or modeling platform) with motor muscles (proteins, electric speaker, electronic write to a screen), [2] Random Access Memory (RAM) addressed by sensory sensors where each motor action and its associated confidence value are separate data elements, [3] confidence (central hedonic, homeostasis) system that increments (stored in memory) confidence value of a successful motor action else decrements the confidence value, [4] guess mechanism for a new memory action when associated confidence level sufficiently decreases. For flagella powered cells a random guess response (to a new heading) is designed into the motor system by the action of reversing motor direction causing it to “tumble”.

From my experience that's the very basics of cognitive science, summed up to one paragraph. What do you see?

nmanning said...

KevNick pulls out the standard lie of the creationist - confusion observation with advocacy.

Yell us all KevNick - did you pull that one out of malice or stupidity? Or both?

SPARC said...

Denyse O'Leary stepped in. Don't miss the comments of the UD regulars.

Jass said...

Darwin was explaining the patterns in nature? Maybe....

Darwin also made evolutionary predictions due to the patterns in nature and Hitler was just making sure that that prediction in the pattern found its fulfillment sooner rather than later:

"At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes...will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla" (1874, p. 178)."

Who can argue with that? Even Darwinists see the patterns in nature. Unfortunately, Hitler's pattern bothers them for no particular reason I can think about according to the patterns in nature they themselves pointed out.

John Harshman said...

KevNick, one of your problems -- there are many -- is confusion of is and ought. Darwin (and yes, that was a fairly racist statement) was talking about what he thought to be is, while Hitler was talking about ought. Evolutionary biologists tend not to think that we should practice artificial selection on humans beings, and certainly not by murder, or even that we should allow natural selection to happen if we can easily change the environment to prevent it. That's why some of us wear glasses, and why we are generally in favor of vaccination. Oh, and opposed to genocide, as was Darwin.

Of course there is no such pattern in nature anyway. Darwin was wrong about "savage races" being both savage and exterminated. He might be right about the extermination of the other apes, though; time will tell. And the break between "man in a more civilized state" and "Negro or Australian" is a nonexistent bit of Victorian smugness. Of course if we were in a more civilized state, we probably wouldn't go around exterminating species.

Jass said...

@John Harshamn,

"KevNick, one of your problems -- there are many -- is confusion of is and ought. Darwin (and yes, that was a fairly racist statement) was talking about what he thought to be is, while Hitler was talking about ought."
At least one Darwinists had some decency to admit that Darwin was a racist as my quote pointed it out.

Is and ought in this context can only mean one thing; time. Darwin saw what he thought was happening and going to happen in the future because he strongly believed in evolution by natural selection. Hitler influenced by Darwin’s belief, saw the need to speed up what was inevitable according to Darwin. Whether Darwin was right or wrong, it didn’t matter do Hitler. He was able to sell this idea to ALL possibly using Goebbles as his propaganda man. I have no proof of that but that is a very good possibility considering what kind of lies Goebbles was selling to the German nation.

”Evolutionary biologists tend not to think that we should practice artificial selection on humans beings, and certainly not by murder, or even that we should allow natural selection to happen if we can easily change the environment to prevent it. That's why some of us wear glasses, and why we are generally in favor of vaccination. Oh, and opposed to genocide, as was Darwin.

'Evolutionary biologists TEND not to think that we should practice artificial selection on humans beings, and certainly not by murder, or even that we should allow natural selection to happen if we can easily change the environment to prevent it."

Why humans are so special all of the sudden? They are just the higher functioning monkey, so why do you have seconds thoughts about some humans that apparently still behave like the LOWER MONKEAYS? I don't get this....

"Of course there is no such pattern in nature anyway. Darwin was wrong about "savage races" being both savage and exterminated. He might be right about the extermination of the other apes, though; time will tell. And the break between "man in a more civilized state" and "Negro or Australian" is a nonexistent bit of Victorian smugness. Of course if we were in a more civilized state, we probably wouldn't go around exterminating species."

I’m glad that at least one Darwinist admits that Darwin was wrong. Larry ain’t going to admit it. He likes to call IT th new Darwinism….. or whatever Larry thinks he should call it…..

Dazz said...

I was watching this documentary today about a tribe in Angola who didn't eat fish. As it turns out, back in the day when the Portuguese had colonized Angola, members of the tribe witnessed how the Portuguese took their leader to the sea, and never came back. So now they don't eat fish because they think fish ate their leader. How can they not see it? It was not a fish that killed their leader, it was a darwinist!!!!111onee

KeveNick said: "I don't get this...."

Not surprising, you creatards are a special kind of stupid

John Harshman said...

KevNick: Is it that you're unable to spell my name, don't notice you're doing it, or are misspelling deliberately?

Everybody knows Darwin was wrong about some things. Why would that be such a big deal? On the other hand, he was right about a lot of other things, which you don't seem to notice.

Your attempt to link Hitler to evolutionary biology and/or Darwin is transparent and pathetic.

Now, why are humans so special? That should be obvious: we're humans. Home team. Of course we're also trying to prevent some natural selection happening to other species too; it's called conservation.

My advice: think just a little bit before you type.

Ed said...

My apologies for the ad-Hitlerums, but it seems Kev has missed quite a few history lessons.
Hitler in fact was anti-Darwin, many of the people who inspired Hitler were in fact anti-Darwinists.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain was an influence on Hitler's anti-Semitism. In Chamberlain's book, "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century"[12] he wrote of:
“”A manifestly unsound system like that of Darwin ... Darwinian castles in the air ... no tenable position can be derived even from the most consistent, and, therefore, most shallow Darwinism."[13]


In fact it seems Hitler was pro-ID.

"Numerous statements by Hitler indicate that, whether or not he believed in human evolution from animals, he certainly believed in the intelligent design of humanity by God. "

A few further quotes from the same page regarding natural selection:
"In Mein Kampf (1924-25), Hitler expressed his views on the natural world, largely as an analogy and justification for his racialist views on human society (yes, you have to go into this). It is clear that he saw "struggle" for survival, and natural selection based on this struggle, as crucial to the lives of animals, as outlined these excerpts: "

"However, this view of "natural selection" as applied to society has little to do with biological evolution; it has more in common with social Darwinism, an idea originated by Herbert Spencer. Linking social Darwinism with Darwinian evolution simply because the names are similar is just as absurd as linking the Christian Identity movement to Christianity because they both contain the word "Christian.""

This would be like saying all christians are Westboro Baptists, because WBC say they are christian.

And when Darwin mentioned 'the lesser races' it wasn't a concept he had developed, but it was the general idea of the era that whites were superior. A bible I was given when I was a young kid living in New Zealand mentioned a story like this:
"god was busy claying people, the first one he baked, he baked too long and he set it aside in Afrika. The second one, was baked too short and was all yellow. But the third was perfect and white."
And we're talking about mid 1970's.

If we for example take a look at recent American history, 12 years a slave tells us about a black man kidnapped in 1841. The story tells us about whites suppressing the black man because the bible says blacks are inferior. The white slavers murdered, raped, beat their slaves while quoting the christian bible.
At the same time, how ironic you could say, the slaves prayed to the same god to stop their slavers from murdering, raping and beating their kin.
The origins came out in 1859, clearly slavery was a Darwinst concoction.

AllanMiller said...

KevNick - Yeah, it's just bollocks. You quote mine Darwin, then I put out the fuller context, and you quote mine it again! Do you think we don't have goddamned scroll wheels or something? We saw it, we read it, absolutely no need to keep pasting it. It is not advocacy but an explanation of how gaps between taxa may arise.

That's in the interests of accuracy - ie, he wasn't a genocidal maniac. On the contrary, a nice chap by all accounts, even if a little ... uh ... Victorian in his views (quelle surprise!). But so what if he had been? You think a theory is invalidated if its originator had the blackest of hearts? It's a pathetic argument.

Hitler influenced by Darwin’s belief, saw the need to speed up what was inevitable according to Darwin.

I don't often say this online, but you're a moron.

Tom Mueller said...

Hi Allan

Re

The term 'Social Darwinism' was applied to these activities long after they had ceased. By people broadly ignorant of 'Darwinism', I'd say, perpetuating this myth that selective breeding is inspired by natural selection.

The problem here is that different terms with different meanings are being conflated.

When discussing “Darwinism” do we mean:

1 – the views actually held by Darwin whose speculations about inheritance were remarkably “Lamarckian” (for lack of a better phrase)? A better term perhaps would be “soft inheritance” as coined by Ernst Mayer.

2 – Neo-Darwinism as espoused by August Weismann (the so-called founder of Neo-Darwinism) who espoused “hard inheritance” even before Mendel broke on the scene? Neo-Darwinism was indistinguishable from Social Darwinism” and was the bedrock of Eugenics. For example, Weismann himself was president of Germany’s Eugenics society.

3 – The Novo-Neo-Darwinism as defined by William Bateson (the founder of modern Genetics) who advocated a very inflexible “hard inheritance” and took Social Darwinism to new extremes? Bateson and his crowd were rabid racists no less than the traditional reactionary “Christian crowd” who were similarly deterministic in their justification of racial inferiority.

4 – The modern evolutionary synthesis (also often called "Darwinism") which sorted out the shouting match between the anti-Mendelians vs the pro-Mendelians? R. A. Fisher, Theodosius Dobzhansky, J. B. S. Haldane & Ernst Mayer (amoung others) were instrumental with the new synthesis that incorporated a subtler understanding of population genetics. According to my reckoning, they represent a new-novo-neo-Darwinism that still espoused “hard inheritance”.

Meanwhile, Neo-Lamarckians still espoused “soft-inheritance”. Lysenkoism would be a prime example.

As far as I am concerned, anybody who invokes “Nazi” or “Hitler” by way of ad hominem has automatically conceded defeat in any debate. In any case, a better case could be made for a Catholic abbot named Mendel providing the scientific premises for Nazism.

This notion has been discussed already earlier:
http://tinyurl.com/orlq67z

judmarc said...

You think a theory is invalidated if its originator had the blackest of hearts?

Yes, everyone knows that since William Shockley was a racist, transistors can't work.

Topgoosz said...

Did Darwin Promote Racism?

The human heart is a factory for all kinds of evil—including the evil of racism (see Jeremiah 17:9 and Matthew 15:18–19). Still, while Darwin certainly didn’t invent racism, his ideology of evolution has fostered it. Consider the case of Ota Benga—a pygmy from Central Africa, who in 1906 was caged in the Bronx Zoo with an orangutan. Remember the Jews in the gas chambers devised by Hitler to advance the Aryan “master race.” Reflect on the Australian aborigines hunted down in the 1800s by evolutionists in search of the “missing link.”

Descent of Man
The full title of Darwin’s most famous work included some stark words: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin envisioned the spontaneous formation of simple life evolving into higher forms through the pitiless forces of nature selecting the fittest.

Darwin demonstrated how he believed evolution shaped man in his subsequent book The Descent of Man. In it, he theorized that man, having evolved from apes, had continued evolving as various races, with some races more developed than others. Darwin classified his own white race as more advanced than those “lower organisms” such as pygmies, and he called different people groups “savage,” “low,” and “degraded.”

Darwin wasn’t the first to propose biological arguments for racism, but his works fueled the most ugly and deadly racism. Even evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory” (Ontogeny and Phylogeny, 1977).

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

So you have mastered the art of copying and pasting (but not of crediting your source). Apart from plagiarising "answersingenesis", have you got anything to say?

Topgoosz said...

So, what's the problem? Darwin also copied/stole a lot.

Larry Moran said...

The "problem" is that this is my blog and I won't tolerate plagiarism. Just be thankful that I still tolerate IDiots as long as they are honest.

Topgoosz said...

Do you think AIG would make a problem of it when i used it as information against Darwin? I guess not. The fact is, i wasn't ready yet with my reply.
But thanx anyway for your tolerance. You are very kind...Dr. Moron.

judmarc said...

So, what's the problem? Darwin also copied/stole a lot.

Please provide citations to any successful claim of plagiarism against Darwin.

This is just to find out if you are capable of anything but empty insults regarding Darwin. It doesn't change the fact that you have been dishonest and when you are found out, tell us you have no problem being a liar.

Topgoosz said...

Evidence Shows Darwin Plagiarized Prior Discovery of Natural Selection


http://thedailyjournalist.com/theinvestigative/experts-who-claim-evidence-shows-darwin-plagiarized-matthew-s-prior-discovery-of-natural-selection/

http://www.fungimag.com/winter-2011-articles/DarwinLR.pdf

http://britsoccrim.org/new/volume14/pbcc_2014_sutton.pdf


Have Fun.

Peter said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Matthew

Bullshit byTopgoosz, as expected.

Topgoosz said...

Bullshit? Wikipedia? The most reliable Darwininian, evolution website you can image? Peer reviewed?

Tssss.....

Topgoosz said...

Further reading[edit]
Barker, J.E. (2001). "Patrick Matthew—Forest Geneticist (1790–1874)", Forest History Today.
Sutton, M. (2014). "The hi-tech detection of Darwin’s and Wallace’s possible science fraud: Big data criminology re-writes the history of contested discovery", "Papers from the British Criminology Conference. Vol. 14: 49-64 Panel Paper." The British Society of criminology. ISSN 1759-004.3 Accessed July 2015.
Dempster, W.J. (1996). Natural selection and Patrick Matthew: evolutionary concepts in the nineteenth century. The Pentland Press, Edinburgh.
Weale, M. E. (2015), Patrick Matthew's law of natural selection., Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. doi: 10.1111/bij.12524 Accessed April 2015
Wells, K.D. (1974). The historical context of natural selection: the case of
In case you missed this.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Matthew



Patrick Matthew. J. Hist. Biol. 6, 225–258.
Zirkle, C. (1941). Natural selection before the Origin of Species. Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 84, 71–123.
External links[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Patrick Matthew
Patrick Matthew Biography – UC Berkeley
The Patrick Matthew Project – Links to Matthew's writings
Natural Selection as a Creative Force – by Stephen Jay Gould
"Scottish horticulturalist Patrick Matthew proposed more accurate theory of gradual evolution before Charles Darwin did, geologist argues". New York University (2010, November 9). ScienceDaily. 25 April 2012. Retrieved 2 July 2012.
Patrick Matthew.com - "owned and published by Dr Mike Sutton" headed "The self-serving Darwinist cover up of Charles Darwin's and Alfred Wallace's plagiarism of Patrick Matthew's prior-published hypothesis of natural selection is the greatest scandal in the history of science."

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

Topgoosz, Mike Sutton is a crank with a mission. None of the stuff he's written on Darwin's and Wallace's alleged plagiarism qualifies as peer-reviewed. In particular, his magnum opus, Nullius in verba: Darwin's greatest secret appeared as an e-book published by Thinker Media, which, whatever it is, definitely isn't an academic publishing company.

The number of blogs Sutton has started just in order to promote his book and establish Patrich Matthew as the real discoverer of natural selection only shows how desperately he craves to be taken seriously by anyone at all, and perhaps rise to fame as The Man Who Destroyed Darwin (and Wallace to Boot). OK, he's got you hooked. Anyone else?

You know, no-one questions the pretty well-known fact fact that Darwin was not the sole originator of the theory of natural selection, and that he had some overlooked predecessors who had anticipated his ideas. But Sutton claims that it was much worse: Darwin and Wallace, both of them, stole Patrick Matthew's theory and deliberately copied his ideas, claiming them as their own, and covering their tracks. It's a serious accusation, but I don't think Sutton can support it with serious evidence. If people ask him why his findings have not been published in serious journals, he blames the "Darwinist" conspiracy. Incidentally, neither his witch-hunting zeal nor its target are particularly original.

But let's suppose, for the sake of discussion, that Sutton is right and the true founding father of "evolution by means of natural selection" was Matthew. So what shall we do? Rename Darwinism Matthewism, erect a monument over Matthew's forgotten grave, rewrite some chapters in the history of the discipline, and burn the effigies of Darwin and Wallace, right? But of course Matthewian natural selection will be the same concept as before (nowadays mostly of historical interest anyway), and modern evolutionary theory won't change a damn, since nothing in it depends on Darwin's authorship or his criminal record. Sooner or later it will occur to another crank with an attention deficit to denigrate Matthew in turn (he can't have been 100% original, can he?). And of course creationist imbeciles will call mainstream biologists "Matthewists" and accuse them of practising a quasi-religious cult of Patrick Matthew.

Joe Felsenstein said...

@Piotr: Well said.

If you want predecessors, there are people who gave the argument for natural selection all the way back to the ancient Greeks. You can play the predecessor game forever. Of course almost all of those people just made one passing argument and did not think to make this into a comprehensive explanation for the evolution of living forms. Matthew did more than most, and certainly has priority.

Dysology said...

Actually, I do have new hard evidence (100 per cent proof) that Darwin lied and it is in fact peer reviewed - despite what conspiracy theorist trolls might desperately claim.Here is the hard evidence for both

1. My article on the topic was peer reviewed (refereed) by a respectable journal:: http://britsoccrim.org/new/volume14/pbcc_2014_editorial.pdf

2.The independently verifiable hard facts of Darwin's lies about Matthew - and more: https://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/mike-sutton?tab=blog&blogpostid=22935

3. The naturalists who DID read Matthew's ideas pre-1831 - an Original discovery by ...."a crank"? Really. When does uniquely discovering original dis-confirming facts in the history of the discovery of the most important theory ever make the discoverer a crank? Answer - when the mocker is a frightened crank. A word of advice for "Piotr" "The wise man mocks the mocker. The mocker mocks the man"

Conspiracy? No just desperate pseudo-scholarship by individual Darwinists daftly deifying their namesake.

John Harshman said...

Well, the British Society for Criminology is certainly the first source I would turn to for cutting edge research in the history of science.

Anonymous said...

Mike Sutton,

I read your paper, and it's bullshit. You accuse on the basis of your gut. You cherry picked "quotes" the same way a creationist charlatan would. You just want to be famous, and your strategy is to shit on Darwin and Wallace. You would have done a much better job had you presented the case for Mathew as an important pre-Darwin discoverer of the principles of natural selection, etc. Even better if you had researched the history of ideas leading towards what Darwin wrote in "On the Origin." But instead you decided this plagiarism accusation.

Not only that, your blog is a joke. Scientists don't think that the ideas presented by Darwin came from nowhere "(immaculate conception" is powerful but misleading rhetoric). We just don't see the plagiarism that you so forcefully want to be there.

That makes you a Diva-status seeker, a crank, a kook, instead of a serious researcher. Now you have to live with your mistake.

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

My article on the topic was peer reviewed (refereed) by a respectable journal:: http://britsoccrim.org/new/volume14/pbcc_2014_editorial.pdf

You got your conference talk published in "Papers from the British Criminology Conference", which calls itself an online journal but is in fact what the title says: a series of edited volumes containing collected conference papers. I'm sure its editors are great and honourable experts in criminology. Nevertheless, it's dubious practice to publish collected conference papers as a periodical. Although it's often done (because the current academic system requires people to produce journal articles rather than book chapters), there's something Potemkinesque about such books disguised as journals (by acquiring an ISSN).

If a really serious journal decides to publish a bunch of conference papers, they publish a "special issue" which doesn't qualify as a regular one. Why? Because something that has already been read at a conference cannot by definition undergo the standard double-blind peer-review process. That's also why not a single journal on the JCR list, with an IF larger than zero, has the word "Conference" in its title.

If you start with an inflated claim, don't be surprised that it doesn't inspire much confidence in whatever else you have to say.

judmarc said...

Oooh, "daftly deifying." Gosh, and here I thought alliteration in public discourse was dead after William Safire drafted "nattering nabobs of negativism" for the intellectual giant Spiro T. Agnew.

Anonymous said...

Ugh. One of the most telling things about Sutton's "quality" as a "researcher" and / or "historian" is that he insists on calling those who reject his charges "Darwinists", and then builds a rhetorical discourse around the implied idea that such people's careers, or lives, depend on that "namesake."

Well Sutton, I'm not a Darwinist. I could not care less who described natural selection first. Yet, I see your charges of plagiarism as the rhetorical bullshit that they are.

Live with it.

AllanMiller said...

Darwinists daftly deifying their namesake.

It hardly requires deification to take a gentleman at his word. Of course he could have lied, and not been a gentleman at all. Never seen in the same room as Jack the Ripper, for a start.

On another, quite unrelated topic, do you think this potentially twice-plagiarised theory is true?

Dazz said...

Fine, so Darwinism is now Matthewism right?.

Let's move on to the next rip off then:

Jesus's resurrection is a rip off of Osiris mythology.
The garden of Eden and the Noah's ark are rip offs the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Now that we know Jesus was a liar too, are all Christians gonna call themselves Osirists?

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

If you believe random cranks on the Internet, Copernicus plagiarised some Islamic astronomers (not to mention Aristarchus od Samos). The greatest intellectual criminal of all time was Einstein, who never had a thought of his own but stole everything from Poincaré, Lorentz, Hilbert, Samuel Tolver Preston, his own wife Milena, and an old lady who lived next door. Newton stole the calculus from Leibnitz (or vice versa, depending on whose side you take). Mme Curie stole her husband's work and then, one rainy day in Paris, pushed him under a heavy wagon loaded with military equipment (she wanted the second Nobel Prize all to herself).

judmarc said...

one rainy day in Paris

I see movie potential here, Piotr. ;-)

judmarc said...

Never seen in the same room as Jack the Ripper, for a start.

Thus, obviously, the Society for Criminology's interest.

Joe Felsenstein said...

If, instead of making accusations of plagiarism, Sutton had explained the complex history of the idea of natural selection, going back centuries before Darwin, he would not thereby become famous. Why? Because historians of science have been treading that path for decades.

When I was a graduate student, the standard account was that before Darwin, scientists were all creationists, and natural selection had never been thought of. But about that time, historians of science started exploring the work of Matthew, and of others like Blyth. Evolution was in the air when Darwin was working, particularly as a result of Lamarck's arguments. Arguments using natural selection can be found back as far as Ancient Greece. But they were usually one-off comments, and their authors never really followed through and made an attempt to rewrite the history of life,

Patrick Matthew went much farther than almost anyone. But in the end he was not successful at bringing natural selection to public notice. The support for evolution ("transformationism") among many scientists did little to displace creationism from public awareness. (Robert Chambers's Vestiges ... did have some effect).

The appreciation of Wallace has also gained a lot of ground since I was in graduate school. Creationists love to point to Wallace because in his later years he made more and more moves toward some form of divine intervention. They love to argue that "Darwinists" have deliberately tried to rob Wallace of credit.

The opposite is more the case. There has been increased appreciation of Wallace's achievement in discovering natural selection, independently, and his great work in founding the field of biogeography. Textbooks of evolutionary biology are more likely to discuss Wallace than they were a few decades ago.

It is much more satisfying to have an account of evolution and natural selection that makes it the result of large-scale intellectual trends in Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, than it is to have it portrayed as a Great Idea that popped into Darwin's head without warning.

AllanMiller said...

It's always amusing when people try to denigrate Darwin by accusing him of plagiarising the theory they think is wrong, or 'Darwinists' for their supposed suppression of other discoverers of this wrong principle.

Ed said...

"The appreciation of Wallace has also gained a lot of ground since I was in graduate school. Creationists love to point to Wallace because in his later years he made more and more moves toward some form of divine intervention."

While actually ignoring the fact that research Wallace did on (the distinct difference between) species of animals in Asia and Australasia, the so-called Wallace line, destroys YEC.

Dysology said...

It's fascinatingly hilarious to see here that so many misunderstand where the term Darwinist comes from. It was first coined as a positive term in 1866 by Huxley (Darwin's bulldog). What is so funny is that Darwinists themselves think its a term coined by daft-as-a-brush creationists to mock them (amongst other things) for being self-serving Darwin deifying pseudo-scholars of the history of discovery of natural selection.

The degree of frightened of the independently verifiable new dis-confirming facts - and afraid, or else too lazy, to actually read the work they are writing about.

It's good for you that that write such desperate nonsense here you are anonymous (for the most part) because you must surely realise what you write here is now data for social scientists to use in our work on the myth and fallacies n science and how the busting of them is received by the wider public.

So for that, may I thank you for making me laugh this morning. Of course, my comments here are also data. I put my name to mine. Dare you?

Dysology said...

Darwin lied. The facts of what he was told by Matthew and what he then wrote are plainly published by both men. Lies are lies. Darwin convicts himself with his own dishonesty abut Matthew and his book.

Darwin lied about the readership of Matthew's book. He did so in order to self-serving corrupt the history of natural selection by denying any possible 'Matthewian now ledge contamination route' between Matthew's original ideas and explanatory examples and his replication of them years later whilst surrounded nd influenced by men who had read and also cited (it is newly discovered) Matthew's original work on natural selection.

For the hard facts that prove Darwin lied try Googling "Loudon naturalist blindness". Read the independently verifiable facts.

Bear with me if you suffer from it. I'm working on a cure for you.

Dysology said...

Actually, very poorly argued.

They argument is not at all about the worth or content of the theory of natural selection it is abut the historical veracity of the story written about it by Darwinists (Darwinist being the term coined by Huxley in 1866) . Top Darwinists (i.e. Royal Society Darwin medal winners, Sir Gavin de Beer and Ernst Mayr (amongst others) have done no more than credulous parrot the deliberate lies written by Darwin (Matthew told him the truth in print in 1860) that no naturalist (Darwin (1860) or else - [Darwin (1861 onward] no one at all, had read Matthew's original ideas on natural selection prior to 1860.

Now if you are happy to accept absolute nonsense on stilts for your history of scientific discovery what does that say about you?

Try Googling "Darwin lied to corrupt" for the hard and independently verifiable nonconforming and dis-confirming hard facts for the nonsense on stilts written by Darwin and the World's leading Darwinsits.

Dysology said...

A point of correction. In fact it was Vogt - not Huxley in 1866 - who coined the word "Darwinist". Here is the evidence: https://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/mike-sutton?tab=blog&blogpostid=23394

Dysology said...

Piotr Gąsiorowski - if you pretend newly discovered - independently verifiable - disconfirming absolute facts, which puncture the fallacious premises that support the Darwinists unevidenced faith in their namesake's independent discovery of a prior published theory then you are most certainly a crank. And a crank with a randomly misfiring mouth and brain to boot. Don't you agree?

Read the newly discovered facts and then try to get the embarrassingly random-ranting on the internet brain fixed so you can understand their significance. A crank-handle might help? Here is a "random internet?" paper given in person at my Sunday lecture to the London Ethical Society at Conway Hall: http://conwayhall.org.uk/ethicalrecord/a-dreadful-discoery-big-data-proves-wallace-and-darwin-counterfeit-discoverers/



Gary Gaulin said...

And 1000 years before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jahiz#Kitab_al-Hayawan_.28Book_of_Animals.29

Piotr Gąsiorowski said...

Mike Sutton,

Why should I agree? I think you have a bee in your bonnet about this priority business -- a matter of historical interest only. I do not worship Darwin and do not describe myself as a Darwinist. If all you desire is to bring Darwin down from his pedestal and place Matthew there as the discoverer of evolution by natural selection, go ahead by all means.

So, as of now, we shall have Matthevians (will the adjectve do?) instead of Darwinians. Which leaves me indifferent: since I haven't been a Darwinian so far, I won't be a Matthevian after the Suttonian revolution.