yygke

Also...I NEVER said that evolution was responsible for racism! That is a prime example of people putting words in my mouth.

What I was saying (asking), is that evolution seems to be an example of racism, at least theoretically. Of course each person can decide for himself whether or not to be racist, but to believe in a theory that puts one race below another, no matter how subliminally so, is technically racist.

Bialar Crais

But evolotuionary theory (I suppose you mean common decent here) doesn't put any 'race' above/below another. Dividing things into more or less evolved is not a part of ToE, it is only a part of the Cartoon Version of Evolution. I mean, what part of "change in allele frequencies in a genepool over time" is racist?

What is racist about "in the 'struggle' for resources, the most fit survives and breed, thus passing their genes on to their offspring, which, due to mutations and other factors may be a bit different from their parents, and can be more fit, and thus have a bigger chance of survial and breeding, etc.."?

What about common ancestry is racist?

Racism is a political and a moral (immoral IMHO) stance. It has nothing to do with science. Chemistry might tell us the exact composition for LSD, and how to manufacture said drug, but it doesn't tell us to either make nor use such drugs. It doesn't tell us not to either. Only how. And with a bit of neurological science why the drug affect people as it does.

Using your reasoning, I could claim that chemistry must be banned, becasue not only does it tell people to make, sell and use drugs, it tells people to make, sell and use explosives as well.

Duck!

You're quite wrong. It's only your particular strawman version of human evolution that attempts to make value judgments on the various ethnic groups or races around the world.

Africans didn't stop evolving when some people left Africa tens of thousands of years and spread and evolved round the world.

Africans continued to evolve as well. I'm European, and I'm descended from (or evolved from if you like) people who lived in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

And here's the punchline - so are modern Africans! They're descended from (again, you could say evolved from) people who lived in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

The gene pool in Africa continued to change when the people(s) who went on to become Europeans, Asians, Amerindians, Aboriginal Australians etc. left Africa.

So you see, neither people native to Africa or people native to anywhere else have been evolving for any longer or less longer than each other. Evolution in one group doesn't stop just because some other group breaks off from them.

Non-Africans aren't descended from modern Africans. Both modern Africans and non-Africans are descended from people who lived in Africa tens of thousands of years ago. It's just in the case of modern Africans (who cover a huge range of peoples, I don't mean to imply that all of the hundreds of millions of people living in Africa today constitute one lonely ethnic group), the evolution took place on the continent of Africa, whereas for all the other "races" around the world, they continued to evolve on other parts of the globe.

Now perhaps you would care to remind me what's racist about the above idea. Nowhere does it imply that any race has been evolving for more of less than any other race or that any of the so-called "races" is any better or worse than any of the other ones.


Duck!

Arrowman

<coming back to this thread after a while, noting that yygke is our earlier poster "Yep....". That explains a lot. But I'll have a shot anyway>

No-one has accused you of being a racist. The fact that you think so, speaks volumes on the depth of attention you are paying to the responses (education) you have been given.

(This was in response to Rufus' ...Just because Europeans are descended from Africans does not mean that Africans are less evolved or more primitive than Europeans. What ingredient are you missing? The fact that all humans, including Africans, are continously evolving. Thus since the out-of-Africa bottleneck, both African and non African populations have been evolving with considerable gene migration between most ethnic groups.)

Define "primitive"? There are many meanings for this word; the most relevant is
10. Biology. Occurring in or characteristic of an early stage of development or evolution.
Granted, Rufus used the words "less evolved" which was a bit loose of him, and an invitation to the YEC to misunderstand, but -
1. Modern day monkeys and apes are indeed not "more primitive than humans". Why? Because they are modern day monkeys and apes.
2. The common ancestor of humans and apes, on the other hand, was "more primitive" by definition.

But really, that whole line of discussion is pointless because it just allows you to maintain your delusion that evolution is somehow about "advancement" and "improvement"; until you can dispel that notion it will be impossible for you to grasp what is being discussed here.

Well I think it should be pretty apparent to all but the skim reader that no-one is saying "the more you evolve, the smarter you get". So your question is pointless.

No, it wouldn't be, actually. So again your point is - er, pointless.

Yes, we are the "continuation of other species". So are Malayan Tapirs, Red Bellied Black Snakes, Snow Peas and (my personal favourite) Meerkats. It has nothing to do with "inferiority".

Have you been listening at all?

- I was going to patiently explain the errors in your next post, but I see others have done that for me.

Duck!

Well, my answer to it is that I've just reread the entire thread and no-one claimed or even implied that something that has longer to evolve is smarter than something that has less time to evolve.


Duck!

optimist

"Let me clear something up. I am not a racist."

I think we all know this, your trying to discredit evolution by associating it with racism. No one is accusing you of being racist, they are just getting pissed off with people trying to attack evolution. Calling you a racist is a joke/insult.

"using that same logic, monkeys are not more primitive than humans. Hmm..."

Is that "hmm..." suppose to be an argument. So maybe monkeys are not less advanced then us. Maybe all life is equal. However, I do agree that humans are more advance since humans can survive, and survive better, in any environment a monkey can. What he means by "no species is more evolved then the other" is, that a fish is not less evolved then a monkey. A monkey would die in the fishes environment, and a fish would die in the monkeys environment. So neither is better, they are both fit for their respective environments. Humans however can survive in many types of environments, and so I would argue are more evolved.

"than why aren't insects (or any other earlier-evolved species) ruling the planet?"

Because they evolved into us. We ARE the manifestation of all that time. Secondly, it is not time but adversity. A tree did not evolve consciousness because it doesn't have to hut for food. A tree just sits there and absorbs the suns rays. We have to hunt and so we evolved better and better brains. It is not a time issue, but an adversity issue. A tree didn't have the "hunting" problem, we did.


"Your answer to this will be: we (humans) are the continuation of other species.
So then those other species are inferior, and therefore so would other races of a species that came earlier."

Well you definitely guessed my answer but I think you take it in the wrong spirit. Yes I think humans are more advanced, and yes we did come from other species...but so did a lot of other equal and lesser species. Humans are more advanced, but not all later evolve species are more advanced. Most are simply equal. A fish may evolve into a monkey over millions of years but neither is better. Simply different, for different environments. Time does NOT imply betterment, only change.

I think me and Arrowman disagree a little on evolution. I would say, a species can be more advanced relative to a particular environment. What do you think Arrowman? Maybe humans are less advanced then other species because we will all end up killing ourselves… we are not fit to survive in any environment because we will destroy ourselves! (hopefully not)

"Of course each person can decide for himself whether or not to be racist, but to believe in a theory that puts one race below another, no matter how subliminally so, is technically racist."

I agree that IF that where so, but evolution does not lead to racism. Race has little or nothing to do with evolution. You have given no reason for why evolution leads to racism other then your "time" thing which I think we all refuted. Is there any other connection you can draw?

Oh, and I doubt ANY logically consistent belief system can lead to racism, and so, "no matter how subliminally so, [no one] is technically racist" All theories fail to lead to racism, any that would violate logical reasoning.

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: optimist ]</p>

RufusAtticus

<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> Please quote where someone called you a racist.

Well, monkeys are not more primitive than humans. They have been evolving just like us. No living organism can be considered "primitive" since it is extant. However, traits of organisms that found in common ancestors are considered to be primitive traits. Traits not found in ancestral forms are derived traits. For instance, permanately swollen breasts are a derived trait. Having a head is a primitive trait. Should I consider you primitive because you have a head?

Here's a thinking exercise for you, Yep. Compare a human and a rhesus monkey and explain, citing the types of traits discussed above, which one has retained a larger number of primitive traits. But don't expect to beable to claim that one is more primitive than the other, just because of the number of primitive or derived traits.

Actually, the answer is that there has not been any evolutionary reason (i.e selection pressure) for insects to be smart. Incests don't even have any of the preexisting traits, such as high metabolisms, to develop a mammal level of intellegence. You don't need to be smart to pass on your genes.

I don't see how this pertains to the thread. Maybe you don't yet comprhend what superior and inferior indicate to evolutionary biologists.

-RvFvS

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

I mostly agree with your post, but there is no such thing as ‘more evolved’, even for humans. There are no standards against which to judge ‘more’ and ‘less’. Just because humans can live in a wide range of environments does not make them more evolved. By that criterion, sea otters, crocodiles and penguins are more evolved than either a fish or a monkey, since they can live both on land and in water; cormorants even more so, since they can fly too; and some bacteria are more evolved than anything else alive, able to survive anywhere. Is an orchid, tied to one location by soil type and a particular obscure pollinator, less evolved than something as adaptable, wide-ranging and successful as the brown rat?

This should not be confused with ‘more primitive’ and ‘more derived’ features, whereby characteristics are present in living species similar to those present in ancestral forms (eg reptile limb posture, hoatzin chick wing claws), or features are changed and/or added to compared to ancestral ones (eg bird wings, mammalian ear bones).

I suppose an argument could be made that humans are passing or have passed through a transition to a different level of evolution, in much the same way as the first multicellular organisms did, in that our culture (dare I mention memes? ) means that through technology (eg clothes) the effects of the environment are more under our control. Multicellular organisms have heaps of advantages over unicellular ones, yet biomass-wise, one could argue that single cells are easily more successful. So I think the human situation isn’t a case of ‘more evolved’ -- it’s just different.

Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

Well given the prevalence of malaria (nice thing for your god to create, btw), the fact that swarms of mosquitoes have been known to exsanguinate a caribou, and the huge importance of arthropods to so many ecosystems, one could argue that they do. But who mentioned 'smarter'? Things adapt to their niches. Simple as that. If intelligence is not a premium item, there's not much need to have it. Following your logic, the coelacanth should be ruling the seas... or bacteria ruling everywhere. Hey, they do (since apparently only about one in a hundred of the cells in your body is actually a human one)...

Olympic gold here in freestyle being a dork, I reckon. Go re-read the posts above, especially my last to Optimist. 'Inferior' and 'superior' as you're using them are value judgements, not something applicable to the natural world.

Evolution isn't about progress, it's about survival and reproduction in a given environment. That's from Evolution 101, but I guess not even postdoctoral Creationism teaches that.

Oolon

Jayhawker Soule

Only to the grossly misinformed. Go read something!