The Biblical Case for Pro-Choice & Stem Cell Research

[gadgetlady 4]

I have never heard that said in any of my classes, and I am getting a master's in biology. There is no such thing as "more" or "less" evolved. It isn't something you can measure. All evolution is is a change in gene or allele frequency over time and speciation based on that change. You can't look at two species and say that one is less evolved than the other. They have both evolved to fit their particular habitats and ecological niches.

Evolution has nothing to do with culture. Now, some people may use evolutionary theory to excuse their racism and bigotry, but that isn't the fault of evolution.

Then there are some things your teachers aren't telling you, or perhaps they aren't aware of themselves. Darwin is quoted as saying, about a native tribe in Tierra del Fuego, "the difference between a Tierra del Fuegian and a European is greater than between a Tierra del Fuegian and a beast." I don't think you can delve much further into racism than comparing a people to "beasts." This is just one example. Darwin was quite an elitist, a racist, and a sexist as well.

[lisah25 3]

Then there are some things your teachers aren't telling you, or perhaps they aren't aware of themselves. Darwin is quoted as saying, about a native tribe in Tierra del Fuego, "the difference between a Tierra del Fuegian and a European is greater than between a Tierra del Fuegian and a beast." I don't think you can delve much further into racism than comparing a people to "beasts." This is just one example. Darwin was quite an elitist, a racist, and a sexist as well.

Do you have the original source of that? All I could find were site saying he had been quoted as writing that.

This is what I did find:

I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement.

http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Nonfiction/Science/Darwin_Beagle/BeagleC10P1.htm

[anonemouse 1]

Darwin may have said that, but that doesn't mean it is supported by evolutionary theory. We should be making the distinction between what one man says and what the entirety of evolutionary theory says.

[gadgetlady 4]

Do you have the original source of that? All I could find were site saying he had been quoted as writing that.

This is what I did find:

I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement.

http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Nonfiction/Science/Darwin_Beagle/BeagleC10P1.htm

I would be happy to, but I'm currently working on a dial-up connection from my car, en route to Las Vegas :rose:. Give me a few hours and I'll get it to you. My connection is tediously slow.

However, your quote seems to say the same thing with different words. Darwin's book "The Origin of Species" is subtitled "By the Preservation of Favoured Races". Darwin clearly believed that Europeans were favored over Asian and African "races". If you read his book "The Descent of Man" he talks about how the Africans and Asians had fallen behind in the fight for survival and would soon disappear. He compared some "races" to gorillas. In this book, Darwin says that it is necessary for inferior races to disappear and he compares the situation to people who breed animals.

[gadgetlady 4]

Darwin may have said that, but that doesn't mean it is supported by evolutionary theory. We should be making the distinction between what one man says and what the entirety of evolutionary theory says.

Wait, isn't Darwinian evolutionary theory Darwin's idea? Doesn't the mindset of the author of the theory have an effect on the theory and it's development? If later evolutionists re-tooled his theory to make it less offensive, that doesn't mean that the roots of the theory are not racist. I thought, to evolutionists, that "The Origin of Species" was their "Bible."

[green 6]

One has to put what Darwin wrote within the context of his era. Though his theories concerning evolution have been proven to be pretty much on the money according to the body of research that has been performed throughout the following century and a half his personal reaction to "primitives" was born of his time and his culture. Though it would have been ace had the dude been culturally sensitive and politically correct I don't think we can fault him for not being a culturally hip anthropologist in addition to being all that he was.

Social Darwinism is a separate issue, one that has ugly racist implications, and was not what Darwin was primarily on about when he was working out his theory of evolution.

He was a 19th century Brit. Those guys weren't too comfortable around Frenchmen, Welshmen, Scots, the working class or Jews. It should be easy for you to picture his stupefaction when he encountered tribes who had little or no contact with what we will call civilization. To hi-jack his theory of evolution by screaming racism is specious.

[gadgetlady 4]

One has to put what Darwin wrote within the context of his era. Though his theories concerning evolution have been proven to be pretty much on the money

What money? The peso? :faint:

It's not science unless you can duplicate it in a laboratory. Try as they might, scientists have never been able to take one species and turn it into another. Bottom line, Darwin's theory is still just a theory with a heck of a lot of holes.

[green 6]

You haven't done a lot of reading, have you?

[gadgetlady 4]

You haven't done a lot of reading, have you?

No, I'm just the village idiot, really. I never read and I don't have any edumacation at all.:faint:

Perhaps you might provide me with proof of evolution so that I might become a believer like you.

[anonemouse 1]

So wait, what you are basically saying is that we shouldn't believe in evolution because (you say) it can't be proven, right?

[gadgetlady 4]

So wait, what you are basically saying is that we shouldn't believe in evolution because (you say) it can't be proven, right?

I don't believe in evolution because it is a theory which is not even well supported, much less can't be proven. I don't believe any theory about origins can be proven, but I prefer my theories to be consistent with the world we live in. For a start, evolution THEORY violates the 2nd LAW of thermodynamics. Order doesn't come from disorder.

Oops. Perhaps I have read a book or two in my time.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I don't believe in evolution because it is a theory which is not even well supported, much less can't be proven. I don't believe any theory about origins can be proven, but I prefer my theories to be consistent with the world we live in. For a start, evolution THEORY violates the 2nd LAW of thermodynamics. Order doesn't come from disorder.

Oops. Perhaps I have read a book or two in my time.

Many years ago, I watched a TV show (National Geographic, I think) which was discussing sea creatures and how some were related although they looked and acted totally differently. Many years later, after the discover of DNA, it was proven that the statements regarding their relationships were correct.

Order doesn't come from disorder unless there are external stimuli or forces present. There are and were many external stimuli and forces present during evolution.

[gadgetlady 4]

Order doesn't come from disorder unless there are external stimuli or forces present. There are and were many external stimuli and forces present during evolution.

Huh? Evolution theory holds that no intelligent designer interfered and applied external stimuli or forces. If there was external design interjected, it is not evolution.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Huh? Evolution theory holds that no intelligent designer interfered and applied external stimuli or forces. If there was external design interjected, it is not evolution.

The external forces where the feedback of survival or death that all living beings (plant, animal, microbe) face from nature.

It's not science unless you can duplicate it in a laboratory. Try as they might, scientists have never been able to take one species and turn it into another.

There is more than one kind of scientific proof. It would be impossible to make 2 more Earths, and use one for a standard and then subject the other one to varying tests over a billion years.

When you take 1000 smokers and 1000 non-smokers, not every smoker will get cancer and not every non-smoker will be cancer free, but if the smokers have 10 times the rate of cancer than the non-smokers, that is a scientific prof.

Scientists have only been able to change the species of organisms which have extremely short life-spans, since evolution takes place at a very slow pace.

If you have a petri dish full of microbes, lets call them species type A10001 and every one of them have a series of biological traits, one of which is dying in the presence of chemical J above 1 pert per million of petri dish chemicals and if you split the type A10001 microbes into 2 separate petri dishes and administer chemical J in doses of 1 part per billion over a 4 or 5 generation span to the species type A10001, and then over the next 100 generations you increase the chemical J doses, and one day you wind up with a species that not only doesn't die in the presence of chemical J above 1 part per million of petri dish chemicals, but in fact thrives in the presence of chemical J above 1 part per million or even 10 or 100 parts, you have created a new species which may then be called microbial species type A10002 or species type A10001a or A10001b.

[Wheetsin 714]

Hence we know it as the theory of evolution, not the law of evolution.