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I've always been curious though...why bother with endangered species if that's what the theory of evolution is all about?
I've wondered the same thing, but I think often, the species listed as endangered are considered to be so due to something humans as a whole did. I think it's that sense of "injustice" that causes people to want to preserve these species, and also the idea that therefore the species' demise was hurried up unnaturally. That would be my guess.
I've always been curious though...why bother with endangered species if that's what the theory of evolution is all about? survival of the fittest....natural selection......why worry about the millions of starving people right? Evolution dehumanizes as much as false religion. Jesus never killed anybody so it makes me angry when people kill for their own selfish purposes and claim they are doing it for God.
you're certainly right imo on the dehumaniztion.
some may even go as for to say it's one racial groups' way of tauting superiority which in turns fosters senses of "brotherhood" which gets into a whole nother area of evolution that has nothing to do with nature.
one thing i've never understood
earth is a sun based planet how on earth would a deduction in melanine be a good thing or evolving?
one thing i've never understood
earth is a sun based planet how on earth would a deduction in melanine be a good thing or evolving?
Well, frankly, as I understand it (scientists here, please correct me), evolution isn't inherently "good" any more than it's inherently "bad". Species can evolve themselves into corners (witness the Neanderthals and their apparent overspecialization which, it's believed, led to their demise once the Ice Age was over). As far as planets (and as far as stars), these aren't necessarily meant to last forever and are not therefore necessarily evolving in what we'd consider a positive or growing way. Suns certainly don't. Suns are all on a journey toward burning out.
A increase in melanine could be quite positive for very un-hairy people who are constantly exposed to the sun since "more" isn't necessarily "better". Millions of years earlier, that skin was covered by more hair than today (or, technically, just thicker individual hairs) and that actually protected those people from too much sun exposure so there you have it...being blasted by more and more sun isn't a positive, not only from the sunscreen companies' ongoing campaigns' perspective, but from biology's perspective. However, we do need a certain amount...hence, that's where a reduction in melanine would be positive: in areas where there is less sun exposure, less melanine that protects against incoming sun rays would be a positive.
Being a "sun-based" planet doesn't mean that the more sun rays, the better as a whole. If that were the case, there'd be tons of life on Mercury. It's obviously a balance, and an ongoing one (hence...evolution).
That said: Evolution isn't something that has its own foresight and a change doesn't necessarily mean good in the broad context for its survival. *Generally* people and things do evolve *more* adaptively but even that isn't a given, because for instance, if I evolve in a way that accommodates a certain climate on the earth, and that climate is eventually bound to change drastically, my temporary "forward" evolution will end up killing me anyway.
Well, frankly, as I understand it (scientists here, please correct me), evolution isn't inherently "good" any more than it's inherently "bad". Species can evolve themselves into corners (witness the Neanderthals and their apparent overspecialization which, it's believed, led to their demise once the Ice Age was over). As far as planets (and as far as stars), these aren't necessarily meant to last forever and are not therefore necessarily evolving in what we'd consider a positive or growing way. Suns certainly don't. Suns are all on a journey toward burning out.
A increase in melanine could be quite positive for very un-hairy people who are constantly exposed to the sun since "more" isn't necessarily "better". Millions of years earlier, that skin was covered by more hair than today (or, technically, just thicker individual hairs) and that actually protected those people from too much sun exposure so there you have it...being blasted by more and more sun isn't a positive, not only from the sunscreen companies' ongoing campaigns' perspective, but from biology's perspective. However, we do need a certain amount...hence, that's where a reduction in melanine would be positive: in areas where there is less sun exposure, less melanine that protects against incoming sun rays would be a positive.
Being a "sun-based" planet doesn't mean that the more sun rays, the better as a whole. If that were the case, there'd be tons of life on Mercury. It's obviously a balance, and an ongoing one (hence...evolution).
That said: Evolution isn't something that has its own foresight and a change doesn't necessarily mean good in the broad context for its survival. *Generally* people and things do evolve *more* adaptively but even that isn't a given, because for instance, if I evolve in a way that accommodates a certain climate on the earth, and that climate is eventually bound to change drastically, my temporary "forward" evolution will end up killing me anyway.
Evolution isn't a linear line forward.
thanks for the reply.
no i know it's not linear line forward; it's mutated quite a bit..
I would think that evolution would help end racism. It explains why we have different colored skin, different hair, why we are different because of the migration of our ancestors.
Darwin wrote his book 150 years ago. Slavery in the US was still practiced then, women were not able to vote until 90 years ago, segregation was ended here less than 50 years ago. What he wrote was a reflection of the society he lived in, the world has changed a lot since then. Even his ideas have been changed over the years as we have proven different aspects right or wrong.
And I agree with the poster who said that just because Darwin was a product of his time doesn't negate evolution.
I think people are reading a little too much into it. "Negro" wasn't a racist term 150 years ago. "The civilized races" has been taken out of context... "of man" is the rest - I would say Darwin means Man (men and women) is the "civilized race", not civilized races within mankind.
Darwin was as racist,sexist and evil as they come. read.edify and research please.
Typical ignorant creationist. Did you even check your source. It's from the Institute of Creation Research. Maybe you should check a source that doesn't have an agenda. Have you even read anything by Darwin or even researched anything about social/moral norms of the time period? You're the only one here who needs to do their research. As others have said, the fact that Darwin accepted the morals that the vast majority(christian, atheist, agnostic etc. alike) accepted does not make evolution false.
Darwin was probably a little racist because most people in the nineteenth century were a little racist. From the evidence we have though he seems to have been less racist than most and more anti-racist too.
The other question "did evolution push racism" is a bit complicated to answer. However IMO evolutionary theories were used, more like misused granted, to advance racism and advance it in more violent directions than it had previous. One of Germany's leading Darwin-promoters, Ernst Haeckel, had some influence in scientific racism circles. He stated, "This species [meaning whites] alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilization which seems to raise men above the rest of nature." Alfred Ploetz, coiner of the term "racial hygiene", was apparently of a Darwin/Haeckel discussing group called Freie wissenschaftliche Vereinigun. That said creationists of the era were also quite racist. In the beginning of William Jennings Bryan's autobiography he states his good fortune to belong to "the best race, the Caucasian race" and Louis Aggasiz had his own racist theories. Racism was in the air among scientists and non. I do think evolutionary racism was worse because it seemed to give more justification to the idea of killing rather than enslaving "lesser races." However some may feel slavery is worse than death.
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