From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Fri Mar 14 2003 - 17:40:17 EST
In a message dated 3/14/03 2:38:44 PM Eastern Standard Time,
hvantill@chartermi.net writes:
> One could just as well argue that the denial of group selection serves an
> example of good science being hijacked by one religious worldview (perhaps
> an atheistic one) to give the appearance of discrediting the efficacy of
> other religious worldviews (theistic ones). As such, it would be a rather
> self-defeating strategy, would it not?
>
>
>
>
>
“Evolutionary biologists in the1960s rejected group selection so strongly
that it became heretical tothink of ‘society as an organism’… forhumans or
any other species… the rejection of group selection was hailed byevolutionary
biologists as a major event… the greatest intellectual revolutionof the
twentieth century.”
"In 1962, V. C. Wynne-Edwards published Animal Dispersion in Relation to
Social Behavior, which stated that reproductive restraint enabled groups of
individual organisms to avoid the disastrous population crashes that followed
the exhaustion of available resources. The process was called group selection
in contrast to individual selection because it assumed a certain degree of
altruism on the part of individuals toward a group’s survival. Genetic
variations that did maximize breeding performancewere eliminated by the
extinction of the groups in which they arose.Wynne-Edwards’ theory was so
heavily documented it provoked an intense reaction and an immense amount of
work resulting in some very important discoveries. David Lack, an
ornithologist, soon persuasively argued that breeding restraint was illusory.
W.D. Hamilton’s brilliant concept of an individual’s inclusive fitness
stated that the more genes individuals share, the more likely they are to
behave altruistically toward one another. Hamilton’s theory was a powerful
idea solving problems of altruism and sterile sub populations that had been
around since Darwin’s time. In this extraordinarily productive reaction to
Wynne-Edwards challenge, the significance of group selection was lost."
how does science discredit theism - it doesn't say god doesn't exist - it
says there is no scientific proof - that's like saying I don't see it so it
doesn't exist - one doesn't necessarily follow the other -
rich
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