10 Evolution Is A Lie: Theory of Evolution Implies Death And Evil Are Good

Chalnoth

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I am not sure i understand your last arguments, can you incubate? The notion that we evolve has been falsified - Not all indviduals are better fit
All individuals aren't expected to be better fit. That statement doesn't even make sense.

What evolution says about this particular issue is that some individuals will be better at reproducing than others, and that their ability to reproduce partially depends upon things they pass down to their children. This is hardly "falsified", it is an irrefutable fact of nature.

Dogs can ventriloquy... They are very wicked!
Now you're just jerking my chain. You can't be serious. Dogs are evil because they bark?
 
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Incariol

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I am not sure i understand your last arguments, can you incubate? The notion that we evolve has been falsified - Not all indviduals are better fit

Time to review High School biology.

Evolution occurs at what level of organization? - Yahoo! Answers

Evolution occurs at what level of organization?

a)organism
b) molecule
c) organ
d) population
e) ecosystem

I think the answer is d b/c inmy textbook it says evolution is heritable change in a line of descent over time. Does any one else agree or disagree?

"better fit" doesn't even make sense.
 
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What evolution says about this particular issue is that some individuals will be better at reproducing than others, and that their ability to reproduce partially depends upon things they pass down to their children. This is hardly "falsified", it is an irrefutable fact of nature.
Isn't that the theory behind the Nazi death camps? Kill everyone that is not a part of the master race. Is it a good idea for us to step in and help mother nature to make us all more perfect?
 
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VehementiDominus

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Isn't that the theory behind the Nazi death camps? Kill everyone that is not a part of the master race. Is it a good idea for us to step in and help mother nature to make us all more perfect?

Not quite. There's no "Master race", if anything, eugenics is a result of misunderstanding evolution by natural selection.

Having the diversity of so many different races within our species, each with strengths and weaknesses, makes our whole species stronger and more adaptable to an ever-changing environment.
 
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Insane_Duck

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Isn't that the theory behind the Nazi death camps? Kill everyone that is not a part of the master race. Is it a good idea for us to step in and help mother nature to make us all more perfect?
Not really no. The idea was that the Jews were a race of sub-humans that needed to be exterminated. (as they were ruining everything, apparently) The idea wasn't to improve the genepool persay, but to destroy a hated enemy. (which wasn't Hitler's aim anyway, he just needed as scapegoat)

That being said, nature has nothing against genocide, and commits it frequently. (genocide is the killing of a race, what is killing of a species?)
 
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Chalnoth

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Isn't that the theory behind the Nazi death camps? Kill everyone that is not a part of the master race. Is it a good idea for us to step in and help mother nature to make us all more perfect?
You cannot derive "ought" from "is". That is, evolution is a description of the way life is. It isn't a prescription for what we ought to do.

And even more damning, evolution makes no statement whatsoever about which is "better". Natural selection only says that that which is better at reproducing reproduces more.
 
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Natural selection only says that that which is better at reproducing reproduces more.
So does that make rape or incest or anything that produces a baby a good thing? They do not think it is a good thing to have a baby in China. They boast about how they have prevented as many as 600,000 babies from being born. Also war tends to kill a lot of people before they are able to reproduce. You would think that all the pro war people would have been killed in those wars and natural selection should have eliminated it by now. Anti war people tend not to go off and fight, so they would be around to reproduce.
 
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Insane_Duck

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So does that make rape or incest or anything that produces a baby a good thing? They do not think it is a good thing to have a baby in China. They boast about how they have prevented as many as 600,000 babies from being born.
Rape often doesn't produce a baby and causes trauma. When/If the baby is born it will often be in a single mother home and therefore not as successful. Rape is also a less favorable way than normal sex to raise a successful child. Incest has a high deformity rate therefore causing evolution to select against it. (why most people don't get attracted to immediate family) In reproduction, best isn't always most. :p

Also war tends to kill a lot of people before they are able to reproduce. You would think that all the pro war people would have been killed in those wars and natural selection should have eliminated it by now. Anti war people tend not to go off and fight, so they would be around to reproduce.
1. Not all pro war people go off to war.
2. Many of our genes were developed before civilization and formal war was around. (10,000 years isn't a long time for evolution)
3. Something like affinity for war will often be developed societal, through parents, upbringing, and their experience.
4. If a (way back when) tribe refused to fight at all (there needs to be a balance) the tribe would often be wiped out.

I think you need a better understanding of evolution and biology at large. Come back when you've learned a little. (try Wikipedia, it will actually bring you far far above the knowledge level regarding evolution you currently achieve)
 
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Chalnoth

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So does that make rape or incest or anything that produces a baby a good thing?
Why would it? Evolution doesn't say what is good or bad. It just says what is. As I said before, you cannot derive ought from is: evolution cannot give any moral prescriptions one way or the other.

But I should mention that incest is quite damaging for future reproduction, because it causes concentration of genetic defects, leading to all sorts of nasty problems. This is, fundamentally, why incest is taboo: it doesn't make for successful offspring.

As for rape, the nasty thing there is that in many situations, rape is an effective reproductive strategy for the males of a species. It is particularly popular among many insects, some of which perform what is known as "traumatic insemination", where the male actually stabs his mate, injecting the sperm directly into the abdomen. But again, evolution doesn't say what is good or bad (we humans generally consider rape to be very bad indeed). It just says what is.

Also war tends to kill a lot of people before they are able to reproduce. You would think that all the pro war people would have been killed in those wars and natural selection should have eliminated it by now. Anti war people tend not to go off and fight, so they would be around to reproduce.
Evolution isn't magic, and cannot produce a "perfect" organism. There are all sorts of suboptimal aspects of various organisms, because species frequently get sort of trapped in an evolutionary rut where getting rid of a trait tends to affect other things, so effectively that trait can't be removed (or at least it can become very hard to do so).

But what's more, war is actually a pretty effective strategy for reproduction, because if you kill off the people who have different genes than you, then your genes now have more room to propagate.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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So does that make rape or incest or anything that produces a baby a good thing?
"Functionally better" is not the same as "morally good".

They do not think it is a good thing to have a baby in China. They boast about how they have prevented as many as 600,000 babies from being born. Also war tends to kill a lot of people before they are able to reproduce. You would think that all the pro war people would have been killed in those wars and natural selection should have eliminated it by now. Anti war people tend not to go off and fight, so they would be around to reproduce.
Likewise, anti-war people are also killed more frequently when war comes to them. People are anti-war for largely cultural reasons, not genetic reasons. For a large part of human history, armies were made of conscripts, not volunteers - anti-war or not, you had no choice.
 
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Naraoia

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Thus we can see that not all indvidual are better fit according to evolution, and we have something that speaks otherwise!
This statement doesn't make sense. If every individual is "better fit", then what are they "better fit" than? "Better" is relative. You need to have variation in order for some individuals to be "better" (at whatever we are measuring) than others.

Natural selection is just a fancy expression for the fact that some individuals have more descendants than others for genetic reasons. And natural selection is just ONE way evolution can happen. Other mechanisms (I see someone linked genetic drift) don't require any difference in fitness at all. Genetic variation is enough in itself to cause evolution.

(Just how much interesting change you can achieve without selection is a different question)

I am not sure i understand your last arguments, can you incubate?
English language lesson: "incubate" is what female birds do to their eggs. You want him to elaborate.

Dogs can ventriloquy... They are very wicked!
(a) Really? (b) How does ventriloquy make something wicked?

Isn't that the theory behind the Nazi death camps? Kill everyone that is not a part of the master race. Is it a good idea for us to step in and help mother nature to make us all more perfect?
Haha, the problem is, what we do changes what is "more perfect" (in quotes because evolution doesn't ever deal in perfection). If the Nazis kill off all members of certain groups, then being a member of those groups ain't much of an evolutionary advantage. But if there are no Nazis to slaughter them, I'd say Jews (and the Romani people, another target of the Nazi madness) are pretty good at keeping their genetic heritage alive.

The point being, evolution knows no absolutes (well, strictly speaking it doesn't "know" anything, being an inanimate phenomenon). We can't "help mother nature to make us all more perfect", as the very act of our trying changes the definition of "more perfect". Fitness is always context-dependent.

In other words, the Nazis misunderstood evolution, or chose to misunderstand. Which is not really a surprise, considering the number of people that still do. (You being one of them right here, or I wouldn't need to write this reply)

So does that make rape or incest or anything that produces a baby a good thing?
Like so many people, you are ignoring an important distinction between different meanings of "good". Anything that produces a baby* is a "good thing" in the sense that it propagates the parent(s)'s genes. That's something different from being morally good, which is a value judgement imparted by humans (or gods, whichever you prefer).

*It is also way more complicated than that. Yeah, a baby is "good". A baby that has a chance of growing up and producing babies of its own, that is. Which is why rape by a random stranger is in no way a good thing for a woman, even if we include "good things" in the "increase fitness" sense. (1) Mr Random Stranger is probably not the (genetic) dad she would've chosen for her babies, or he wouldn't have to force himself on her, (2) Mr Random Stranger's unlikely to stay around and help raise the kid, (3) Her mate/husband, if she has one, is unlikely to help as much with Mr Random Stranger's kid as he would with his own. Ergo, the baby is less likely to increase her reproductive success than a baby born from her pair bond/marriage would be. And she's just wasted months or years of her fertile life, depleted her body's reserves, and, if we're talking pre-modern times, risked her life with childbirth. From the rapist's point of view, all that doesn't matter. If the baby lives, he wins. If it dies, all he lost is a squirt of sperm.

There are two parents behind any baby, and what's "good" for one isn't always "good" for the other. It's a huge area of research since biologists realised that reproduction isn't all "you like me, I like you, let's make babies together!" (See entire book written on the subject)

Of course, rape can happen within a pair bond. Which makes the whole issue even more complicated.

(This turned into something of a rant. Sorry for that... take home message is still that "good" is always relative in evolution.)

They do not think it is a good thing to have a baby in China. They boast about how they have prevented as many as 600,000 babies from being born.
They do not think it's a good thing to have many babies, and they have a good reason for that. China has something of a population problem.

Of course, the whole one-child policy is beginning to seriously bite their demographics in the [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse], but that's a different issue again.

Also war tends to kill a lot of people before they are able to reproduce. You would think that all the pro war people would have been killed in those wars and natural selection should have eliminated it by now. Anti war people tend not to go off and fight, so they would be around to reproduce.
Nah, anti-war people would end up massacred or enslaved when the pro-war tribe next door exterminates their own pro-war fighters that their anti-war sentiments prevented them from helping.
 
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Naraoia

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Likewise, anti-war people are also killed more frequently when war comes to them. People are anti-war for largely cultural reasons, not genetic reasons. For a large part of human history, armies were made of conscripts, not volunteers - anti-war or not, you had no choice.
I've got to wonder how much choice you had in a prehistoric hunter-gatherer society. Most of human history is prehistory, and so long as there was opportunity for people to act on their genetic inclinations with regards to fighting, selection could shape those inclinations.
 
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