How I came to believe: More about Darwin (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, October 12, 2015, 14:36 (3329 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: ...and in the next you say that there is no misrepresentation when an author writes that Darwin's theory of evolution purports to explain the origin of life.
> 
> DAVID: And I disagree with your interpretation.
> 
> dhw: You agree that Darwin's theory does NOT offer any explanation as to the origin of life, and yet you agree that Darwin's theory purports to explain the origin of life?-It is a difference in a nuance of thought: Darwin gives an explanation for evolution by common descent. Therefore he implies that first life is prepared for that process. Of course he gives no explanation of first life. No one can. And he obviously doesn't explain evolution in his theory which is a chancey purposeless process. Thus by inference first life was a chance, purposeless event, and atheists love the idea. And theists resent it.-> dhw: As for purpose, the only one you are prepared to offer us is God's intention to produce and feed humans, and of course Darwin does not subscribe to this. That does not make his theory atheistic. Survival is his overriding purpose (to which I would add improvement, substituting my hypothetical autonomous inventive mechanism for his random mutations).-Of course, we are back to the tautology 'survival of the fittest'. Of course anything living has to try to survive until death appears for the multicellular. Haven't you forgotten the first single cell on Earth is still alive in its split-away progeny 3.6 billion years later! Darwin's survival idea does not explain speciation, or multicellularity.
 
> dhw: Darwin on race and slavery 
> commondescent.net/articles/darwin_on_race.htmCached
> In order to counter the smear and innuendo spewed forth by many antievolutionists on the subject of Darwin and racism, here are some of Darwin's actual words ... 
> 
> SAMPLE QUOTE: "As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures." ? Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), CHAPTER IV-Thank you for the clarification. They also seem to blame him for the terrible Eugenics efforts of the early last century.