On Aug 27, 6:01 pm, Sound of Trumpet <soundoftrum...@mailcan.com>
wrote:

http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2006/04/03/lstrongglemgdarwinian...

Darwinian Fairy Tales: Aussie philosopher challenges neo-Darwinism
Preface

by Denyse O'Leary

ARN correspondent

Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994), not a religious man
and no defender of any type of creationism, wrote a book Darwinian
Fairytales (Avebury Press, 1995), which is part of the Avebury Series
in Philosophy, that shows clearly why the principal neo-Darwinian
concepts of kin selection and inclusive fitness simply do not conform
to the available evidence - certainly not for humans, and probably not
for many other life forms. This series of blogs briefly introduces the
topics covered in the 11 chapters of the book, with some other links,
as available. This is a brief comment on the Preface.

As the Acknowledgments briefly relate, David Stove died in 1994,
leaving the complete manuscript of Darwinian Fairytales, which was the
concern of the last three years of his life. His literary editor James
Franklin, of the School of Mathematics of the University of New South
Wales, rightly claims the honor of seeing the book through the press
(September 25, 1995). It is divided into eleven chapters, which he
calls Essays.

On reading the book, it is clear that Stove did not start out with
some strong desire to disprove evolution or Darwinian evolution.
Conceding that natural selection probably enables new species to come
into existence, he then says,

I do deny that natural selection is going on within our species now ,
and that it ever went on in our species, at any time of which anything
is known.

He waives the question of how our species came to be what it is now,
because he wants our species portrayed correctly in known historical
time, and "not to be imposed upon by the ludicrously false portrayals
which Darwinians give of the past, and even of the present, of our
species." In other words he has no time for the sham psychology of
"evolutionary psychology."

He admits that his only professional qualification is "40 odd years'
acquaintance with Darwinian literature, and a strong distaste for
ridiculous slanders on our species." But that may well be enough
qualification.

After all, anyone looking for nonsense, need look no further than
evolutionary psychology, the weakest link in the chain of
psychologies.

As I noted in an earlier post, evolutionary psychologists claim to be
able to explain altruism, crime, economics, emotions, infidelity,
laughter, law, literature,
love, marketing, obesity, religion, war, voting conservative why the
United States does not go to war against Canada (which has almost no
military presence),
sexual orientation, what women currently find attractive, why children
dislike vegetables, shoes, and so forth, by what cave guys* supposedly
did.

And this is hardly an exhaustive list. Indeed, no exhaustive list
would be possible, because anyone can interpret any current social
situation (a gruesome baby-killing, a demand to legalize polygamy, US-
Canada relations) in the light of what supposedly happened in
prehistoric times, and then make up a story about how the behavior
arose among cave guys shouting rot into the stalactites of their
caves ....

(*The vast majority of those cave guys were not our direct ancestors,
but, hey, why let a detail get in the way of a good story, let alone
tenure?)

I think Stove, wherever he is, should be laughing now. But steady on.
Hear his key points, starting with Chapter 1: "Darwinism's Dilemma" .
They are worth observing.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary
(www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning
By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the
intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended
Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal
neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual
Brain (Harper 2007).

Denyse, if you would go to www.admin:cam.ac.uk/news which is the
news archives for Cambridge Univerisity pull up May 2007 and see the
final report on the world wide DNA studies by Cambridge University,
the studies were headed by Geneticist Dr. Peter Forster and co-
authored by Dr. Toomas Kivisild, Cambridge dept. of Anthropology.

Their conclusion states that we all, every living person on this
planet decended from a small group (Other sources say 10,000 adult DNA
combinations.) that came out of Africa about 55-50,000 years ago as an
ice age was ending. This ice age, aproximiately 19,000 years long was
helped along by the super eruption of Mt. Toba 74,000 years ago. Mt.
Tambora which erupted in 1815 spewed 100 cubic miles of debris into
the atmosphere. You are aware I am sure of the damage done to the
human population, including the writing of "Frankenstein". 1816 was
the "year without summer.". Mt. Toba spewed 2800 cubic miles of
debris into the atmosphere. For a species that wer hunter-gatherers,
you can imagine the effect of five or six years of winter around the
world. The only known species known to have survived where a few
thousand Neantherthals in Europe. But at their peak, there were
probably never more than 35,000 alive at on time at any point.
The sticking point was always the Austrailian DNA, which was finally
solved. We did not interbreed with any of the species similar to our
own. So tools in Asia have been found above the ash, but if just a
few Erectus, or Hablus survived, it would not have been for long. A
minumum of 500 different DNA combinations are required (I'm not
positive on this as I have been told by a geneticists that five
thousand is a more reliable number as the Amish are finding out to
their dismay.) But that's another story. The point is that we all
came from one small group that in 47,000 years dominated this world.
Something the other species could not come close to matching. We are
not like them. We send men to the moon. We use technology, we are
much more aggressive, violent. How do we know this? By the Giant
Cave Bear War. It took us 20,000 years to make the GCB no more.
Saber-Tooths? A thousand years when we got to America. The other
species except the Neanderthal could not even go north into the
mountians because of the Bears. The last known battle was in the
Balkens about 10,000 B.C.E. Giant Cave Bears lived in clans from four
to eighteen. Eighteen GCB skeletons were found, four modern humans.
They estimated that about sixty humans took part in the attack. What
other species on this world kills it's own in mass quanities. Someone
once told me ants do. I told him to show me their machine guns and
hand grernades. I say all this to show we are not the species that we
are always connected with. They were little better than animals.
They had stone tools, and made the same tools for a hundred thousand
years without changing them. We have found anicent modern humans
flint tool factory remains in France where we mass produced them for
trade. We changed them like we change out clothing styles. I say all
this and the DNA results finally starting to come back in say somehow
we were different. But Darwin was not wrong.
If we all decended from this group of 10,000 adults, than evolution
is right in front of us. We have different colors, shapes, sizes, but
they were all sculptured by the climate and suvival conditions. An
Eskimo has fat on his hands, though you are from Canada, I'm betting
you do not. The reason, an Eskimo that can keep his hands in freezing
water longer is a better bet to survive. The color of your decendents
skin will change in about 20,000 years dictated by where you live on
this planet. So Darwin does have a theory we see working everyday,
even with humans. But the humans popped up with no explanation for
being so hugely superior to anything this planet has ever seen. My
conclusion being that though Darwin was to an extent right, he was
wrong about the humans and we will continue our work as to where
exactly in Africa we came out of, and why we are so different from all
the other species. We are the only sentient being ever to be here. I
mean that in that we realize the Earth revolves around the sun, and
why, we understand that we are on a planet in a solar system and that
solar system is revolving around a black hold (perhaps) in a galaxy.
Ken
--
"Truth does not give a damn what we perceive. We survive or perish
according to our ability to discern the truth correctly and act upon
it." - Ken www.veritasnovel.com

Sound of Trumpet copied from another source:

http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2006/04/03/lstr
ongglemgdarwinian_fairy_tales_l_emg_11

Darwinian Fairy Tales: Aussie philosopher challenges
neo-Darwinism Preface

by Denyse O'Leary

ARN correspondent

Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994), not
a religious man and no defender of any type of
creationism, wrote a book Darwinian Fairytales
(Avebury Press, 1995), which is part of the Avebury
Series in Philosophy, that shows clearly why the
principal neo-Darwinian concepts of kin selection
and inclusive fitness simply do not conform to the
available evidence - certainly not for humans, and
probably not for many other life forms.

So he objects to two ideas that are not Darwin's, but
have been proposed since that time.