I’ve not read the entire thread but the main question surprised me:
“Does evolutionary theory provide any useful scientific benefit?”
Every scientific theory is an explanation of what is observed. Explanations are beneficial. Obviously. So I don’t really understand the purpose of the question.
Perhaps it implies the question of whether all scientific theories provide practical scientific benefits? Maybe benefits in terms of inventions?
A new scientific theory might not yet have produced many derivative inventions or life-changing breakthroughs. But evolution theory has been around for a very long time and has produced more benefits than we could ever list here.
Let’s see:
Flu vaccines.
Lower-cost insulin, growth hormones, blood factors.
Light-producing bushes and trees which will eventually light sidewalks and streets.
Food crops which are productive in higher CO2 conditions.
Genetic counseling.
Perennial crops which are based on traditional annual species and therefore mean less water, less soil erosion, less gasoline/diesel costs.
Disease resistance.
Surely nobody would deny these benefits. Instead they will probably say that evolution doesn’t exist and therefore it is impossible for evolution theory to bring these benefits.
Yet, denying the science doesn’t stop it from being valid. And it doesn’t stop scientists from continuing to generate more benefits from the theory. So I am curious as to what the originator of this forum topic had in mind. What is the PURPOSE of this “useful scientific benefit” question? Was it intended to make fun of evolution theory or to make fun of the lengths that evolution scoffers will go? Or was it a sincere question? Just asking. I don’t think I know.
This is a slur, of course. But that’s not the real problem. It is an outright lie to suggest that this is about deniers of science, or by implication that those who deny the definition would deny evolution, or that those who deny evolution would deny science. With that type of logic, it is no wonder that you see no problems with the abbreviated, incomplete, and inaccurate definition. Debating the definition is not the same thing as debating the science.
Thanks for asking a thoughtful question. When we talk about benefit, particularly scientific benefit, we are implying a medical benefit, or a benefit to food production, or a benefit to our physical environment in some way. You mention a list of things, but the question is whether they could have occurred without a grand theory of evolution. If evolution never happened, could we still develop disease resistance? Could flu vaccines still be developed? Could there be food crops that are productive in higher CO2?
It is a sincere question because we know that denying evolution does not mean denying science. Many of the great scientists that discovered natural principles, were not evolutionists… ie. Mendel, Newton, Bacon, etc. Yet they had great discoveries. So genetic counselling does not depend on evolution to be valid; it only depends on laws of heredity, which were around long before evolution was postulated, and is how many domestic breeds of horses, dogs, cats, and cows were developed. The Holstein dairy cow was developed 2000 years ago, for example.
There are already various food crops that are more productive with higher CO2, and have been for many years, which is why greenhouse operators often inject CO2 into greenhouses to stimulate growth.
As dcscccc keeps repeating, none of the flu vaccines depended on evolution in order to be developed.
GMOs take strips or pieces of dna from one species and inject into another, but certainly this has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution. It is only associated with similarities in pieces of dna. It could easily be done and has been done without considering evolution whatsoever. Dr. Sanford, one of the inventors of the gene gun, had no difficulty with genetic modification, even though he was convinced that evolution (from microbe to men) has not happened.
Disease resistance happens through natural mechanisms within an individual, and within a population. Antibiotic resistance within a population of microorganisms is generally caused by the death of the susceptible organisms leading to the resistance and growth of what remains. Of course, this does not evolve the organism, but merely changes the proportions of the population. It is still a bacteria, and of the same species.
[quote=“johnZ, post:210, topic:548”]
It is a sincere question because we know that denying evolution does not mean denying science. Many of the great scientists that discovered natural principles, were not evolutionists… ie. Mendel, Newton, Bacon, etc."[/quote]
Hello John,
This is sophistry. You can’t use them as cases to support your claim that “denying evolution does not mean denying science,” because none of them denied evolution.
But they didn’t deny evolution like you do.
“Laws of heredity” is hopelessly vague. Darwin published his book at the same time that Mendel was doing his pea experiments. That’s not “long before.”
Artificial selection is evolution and it works.
This makes absolutely no sense.
The latter is evolution.
That’s evolution, man.
Of course not! Organisms don’t evolve. Only populations do. This is a common falsehood pushed by evolution deniers.
It changes allele frequencies. That’s evolution.
[quote] It is still a bacteria, and of the same species.
[/quote]“It is still X,” when X is the name of a higher taxon, is absurd. Also, there’s no such thing as “a bacteria,” as “bacteria” is plural. And it’s not necessarily the same species.
So let’s get to simple facts: we agree on the definition of “allele.”
You claim that “changes in allele frequencies in a population over time” is “the abbreviated, incomplete, and inaccurate definition.”
You claim that a better definition is, “the ongoing change in frequencies of alleles and other genetic changes.” So holistically, what functional genetic differences are allelic and what fall in your undefined “other genetic changes” when you consider the actual facts: the differences between you and a mouse? No speculation, just facts that are the same whether you hypothesize that the differences were caused by evolution or by special creation.
The topic I’m raising is the proportion of the latter that fall into the category of the former. It’s highly relevant, yet you prefer meaningless analogies and claims that you know the assumptions made by others over facts and science.
-[quote=“benkirk, post:212, topic:548”]
It’s highly relevant, yet you prefer meaningless analogies and claims that you know the assumptions made by others over facts and science.
[/quote]
Yes. But it is fun to imagine that all of the world’s PhD scientists are wrong and are even “fraudulent” about defining evolution. Yet someone with no such knowledge (but greater honesty??) can nevertheless rebuke and scold them.
It is part of the appeal of conspiracy theories, whether it is “9/11 was a controlled demolition”, “Apollo astronauts never landed on the moon”, “Climategate debunks global warming”, or “Chemtrails are proof the government is poisoning us”, I know better than the experts because they are over-educated frauds with ulterior motives while I know better and the only reason I’m not among the experts is because all of the world’s universities are biased and discriminating against those of us who dare speak the truth.
For some it is not enough to say “I’m right and all of those PhD experts are wrong”. They must also be “fraudulent” so that those on the other side can claim the moral high ground. It is yet another reminder that propaganda depends on an entirely different set of tools.
Meanwhile, anti-evolution ministries like AIG, CMI, and ICR claim that bias and discrimination keeps them out of the peer-reviewed journals. Yet, have you ever noticed on
their websites the many full-length papers they tried to read at academic conferences and submitted to leading scientific journals but were unfairly “discriminated again” and kept out? Me neither. Not one.
@benkirk, I’m impressed by your patience in exposing the errors one by one. Like this one:
Touche! Every now and then we get another blatant reminder that evolution-deniers have no idea what evolution is and that they regularly use scientific terms for which they’ve never learned the definition.
Notice also what a wise observer wrote about anti-evolution literature: Watch for the “merely”. Merely is a word they use in hopes of dismissing something, but it is often the very heart of what they are missing. There is nothing merely about “merely changes the proportions of the population.” That’s what evolution is!
Of course, it also helps explain the next blooper:
Yes! It is still a Bacteria is like saying “It is still an animal!” or “It is still a plant!” Some deniers even know that, but they are so accustomed to recycling the kind of meaningless mantras that work so well with science-illiterate audiences that they forget for the moment just how funny it sounds who has actually studied high school level science. They don’t stop to consider that if that change in allele frequency within the population did produce a “non-bacteria”, it would be a powerful argument against the theory of evolution!
Of course, these are the same people who never stop to consider that when Genesis speaks of each reproducing after its own kind, it is agreeing with an essential truism of evolutionary theory. If an organism ever failed to reproduce after its own kind, that would be yet another powerful argument against the theory of evolution.
It gets tiresome to have to repeat the obvious, but yes. Sometimes it has to be done, not for the sake of the evidence-denier but for the sake of the readers who do want to understand the topic.
There is a big difference between “alternative interpretations of the evidence” and ignoring the evidence. I think a lot of people assume that somewhere within the bowels of AIG, ICR, and CMI are “creation scientists” carefully examining the scientific evidence and presenting “alternative interpretations”. But there are not! The pattern is a traditional one: (1) Focus on 0.1% of the evidence and ignore the rest. (2) Try to create doubt in the audience concerning the scientific explanation of that 0.1% of the evidence. (3) Declare the issue settled, even though the other 99.9%, the vast consilience of all scientific evidence, has been ignored. That’s why the same people who ignore the evidence for the theory of evolution also focus on obscure papers from decades ago about radon halos in granite or C-14 levels in diamonds (while ignoring more recent papers which settled those questions and the textbooks which explain the proper methodologies to students), all while ignoring most of the evidence real scientists actually notice.
Yes. As we might expect, there is very real fraudulence at work. It is not hard to spot.
Benkirk, I congratulate you for your patience and willingness to flag the sophistry as well as the flagrant scientific and terminological errors. Your patience far exceeds mine.
[quote=“Mr.Molinist, post:213, topic:548”]
Touche! Every now and then we get another blatant reminder that evolution-deniers have no idea what evolution is and that they regularly use scientific terms for which they’ve never learned the definition. [/quote]
Hello Mr. Molinist,
Here’s what I just can’t understand: if evolutionary biology is so existentially threatening, wouldn’t the threatened person be extremely highly motivated to truly understand the threat, the better to neutralize it? Yet it’s all third-hand presented as first-hand all the time.
Yet this enormous violation apparently occurs all the time in the bizarro version JohnZ finds so threatening.
Yet we constantly hear the claim that it’s just alternative interpretations of the identical set of evidence, from people who’ve never looked at the evidence themselves!
Exactly. But then people like JohnZ become complicit in the deception when they pretend to be familiar with the evidence. Clearly, his reluctance to discuss the proportion of differences between him and a mouse that are allelic reveals that at some level, he knows that he is faking it.
How is it that “new” strains of flu virus keep appearing?
To a public health official, this is a crucial question. If she assumes that this year’s “new” strains are really just millenia-old strains that became more prevalent, then she might conclude that some time soon our public health programs are going to knock out the remaining strains worldwide. (The way we knocked out smallpox, for example.) If she assumes instead that the “new” strains evolved from strains identified in the past decade, then she will conclude that we will be producing flu vaccines indefinitely (or until a better solution appears). Which assumption is correct could be important to questions of funding for research and operations. It could even be important in deciding which novel manufacturing approaches to support, which strains to include in this season’s vaccine, which research projects are the most promising, etc.
I’m sure you are aware that I am not a public health expert. I think I have as much expertise in the field as our friend dcsccc, however.
Then there’s the question of science vs. engineering. If engineers can get their jobs done, do we really need the science? Let’s think for a minute:
My dad had a 45 year career as a mechanical engineer without once needing to understand relativity, quantum mechanics, or particle physics.
It wasn’t until 1995 that relativity gave us a useful economic application (GPS).
Quantum mechanics still haven’t delivered the big computing leap forward that Wired magazine keeps predicting.
So I guess we should have pulled the plug on relativity in 1920; it just wasn’t providing any benefit then. And we should pull the plug on quantum physics research today.
Finally, I note that you phrased the question that started this thread in terms of scientific benefit, not economic or medical benefit. I’m not sure why scientific explanatory power would not be a benefit in and of itself.
Good point. Moreover, we were able to knock out smallpox because it is a DNA virus that evolves far more slowly than influenza virus, which evolves rapidly as a consequence of its segmented RNA genome.
So speed of evolution predicts which viruses are candidates for eradication.
Of course, careful phrasing is essential when using propaganda tactics. Let’s be honest: Many creationist ministries harp on the “evolution theory doesn’t provide any useful scientific benefits” because they know that to science-illiterate people, such nonsense seems persuasive. (It bolsters there “evolution is false and worthless” feelings.) Even a sixth grade science class student learns that scientists explore the universe to understand how things operate as they do, even though practical applications of that knowledge may not be at all apparent. That is so obvious that I shouldn’t have to mention it. Yet, some people who play games with such topics require us to repeat the obvious.
How pathetic that some people pretend that “No! Evolution doesn’t help scientists solve problems!” would somehow make evolution theory less true. The Germ Theory of Disease would be valid regardless of whether it led to disease-fighting discoveries.
I often feel torn: Yes. Somebody has to speak up against pathetic arguments because some people are so poorly informed that those pathetic arguments may sound persuasive to them. On the other hand, every time we have to deal with pathetic arguments, we give attention to pathetic argument purveyors. And attention is their goal. (Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and so many other “origins industry entrepreneurs”—I love that term— live for attention. Of course, donations and sales fuel the propaganda industry and attention is the name of the game.)
And while the entire focus is placed on pathetic arguments against established peer-reviewed science, the same ministry leaders promote “flood geology”, young earth cosmologies, no death of any kind before the fall, and countless other claims without evidence without anybody questioning “What are the scientific benefits of flood geology?”
And this vital information gives public health officials in the CDC, etc. the knowledge of where to direct funding to get the biggest bang for the buck.
He said - she said. Cows became cows. Cows changed into cows. Evolution? I think not.
Because it does not support your assumptions.
Only by an absurd and truncated definition.
Here you display your inability to read and accurately transcribe or understand even the most obvious. You have truncated what I said, and thus there is no point to a response.
Really? So you are then arguing that evolution would never result in a change of species, nor in the the development of new species, or genera, or families? That’s a new one.
As many have stated before me, pretending to have 100% confidence in a belief is easily mistaken for Biblical faith in some quarters. I certainly learned that tactic when I was a big fan of creation science. Pretending to be familiar with the evidence seemed to be effective when dealing with the people around me, so ijt was very natural to apply that tactic when dealing with the outside world. Of course, it had zero chance of fooling an evolutionary biologists. But we were told that they were blinded by Satan to the facts which God had revealed to us. We were “children of privilege” (We even sang a hymn with the recurrent line, “I’m a child of the King!”)
I just got a friendly reminder from the software: “It’s easier for everyone to read topics that have fewer in-depth replies versus lots of small, individual replies.” Huh? Yes, I suppose lots of things in life are “easier” if there are “fewer in-depth replies”. Even after re-reading it several times, that is a very bizarre sentence.
This is a good point, and a good question. You have pointed out an apparent difference between bacteria and viruses. However, even so, the development of new virus strains can be easily understood without depending on evolutionary theory. The development of new viruses is not equivalent to the development of new bacteria, and does not necessarily translate to a general principle of development of new species at every hierarchical level of the animal kingdom.
I equate medical benefit as subset of scientific benefit. By scientific, I mean medical, or food production, or something that benefits the physical welfare of humans. But it also includes the ability to do useful scientific research that otherwise would be impossible.
@JohnZ, how is “Artificial selection is evolution and it works.” a case of “He said, she said”?
Frankly, JohnZ, what you think or I think is irrelevant to the realities of how the scientific method operates and how the scientific academy has established the theory of evolution as among the most tested and validated theories in all of science. Endless denials are not helping your case.
How about you submit a paper to an scientific journal explaining why the entire science academy got it wrong and you know better? (Cue the “not all scientists agree with the academy” protests and pretend that “science is not a democracy” doesn’t ignore the fact that the consensus is due to the evidence, not the other way around. I do hope you won’t try to play the “the world-wide conspiracy is afraid of me and would never publish my research” card.)
Evolutionary biology isn’t based upon “assumptions”. It is based upon EVIDENCE.
Yes. One more time: All of the world’s biology textbooks promote “an absurd and truncated definition.” How do we know this? JohnZ, a non-scientist lacking a basic knowledge of the processes underlying evolution, says so. Yes, there is absurdity at work here. I doubt that the absurdity is coming from all of the world’s biology textbooks and PhD biologists.
JohnZ, your insults against those with better grasps of the subject matter would be less tedious if you started focusing more on EVIDENCE and less on the tiresome repetition of how the scientists got it wrong (and are fraudulent) while you are qualified to chastise and tutor them.
I’m curious, JohnZ. Why did you post the question:
“Does evolutionary theory provide any useful scientific benefit?”
…when you think you already know the answer, “no!”, and whenever anyone tries to educate you on the subject, you simply deny that the theory brought any benefits. So what was your purpose? Can you say with honesty that you wanted to learn or find flaws in your thinking?
You employed the popular tactic of quoting one scientist who served your purpose, while ignoring the medical school professors who actually teach evolutionary biology to medical school students. “Evolution actually hinders medical discovery.” is absurd on its own, as scientific journals tell us DAILY.
To deny the benefits of evolution theory also denies the obvious fact that EXPLANATION is in and of itself enormously beneficial.
Meanwhile, what are the “useful scientific benefits” of the various claims of the evolution-denial industry?
If you have evidence-based reasons for denying the Theory of Evolution, post them. But the “the scientists are fraudulent and wrong and I’ve got it right” is tedious when you don’t understand the subject matter and make no attempt to engage it. Do you deny that you posted “Does evolutionary theory provide any useful scientific benefit?” and the silly (but popular on science-denialism websites) Kirschner quotation in hopes of convincing someone to agree with you?
I’m curious: Do you feel that you have a calling to campaign against the educational goals of Biologos? Do you consider Biologos a dangerous and damaging enterprise? What is your purpose in reposting arguments (like with this thread) commonly found on young earth creation anti-evolution webpages?
It is bad wording. The idea is it is better to have longer posts that quote and respond to several people in one post than lots of short posts responding to one person at a time. (A small number (fewer) of in-depth replies is better than the same content presented in a larger number of short replies - not “fewer in-depth replies are better.”)
Since replies are not nested, it can become difficult to track the conversation if there are lots of short replies to different posts one right after the other. If you are quoting what you are replying to, it takes care of the problem and it’s all good. We just want to avoid scenarios where people swoop in with a bunch of de-contextualized one-liner posts to half the people on the thread, which makes everything hard to follow. Feel free to use your human judgment if the computer is reprimanding you unnecessarily.
