Religion or science?

Originally posted by @wildgrass
Come on. All this and you still haven't bothered to read the wikipedia article?

I'm not ignoring anything. I explained it earlier but I'll try another tack. Natural selection is the process/principle by which heritable variation between individuals/populations/genes leads to differential reproductive success over time. One "variation" that increases re ...[text shortened]... otypes? Did you make it up?

It's all in the wikipedia article. And in grade school textbooks.

I never said they were evidence against natural selection. I said that Hitler followed the concept of natural selection by killing those who nature would have killed off naturally.

Originally posted by @eladar
I never said they were evidence against natural selection. I said that Hitler followed the concept of natural selection by killing those who nature would have killed off naturally.

That's insane logic. It does not follow. My understanding of Hitler's justification for culling the disabled was primarily economic. He wanted to streamline productivity, not evolution. I've said it many times already on this thread... natural selection depends on phenotypic diversity. Using natural selection as rationale for genocide is a perversion of the entire concept.

Originally posted by @wildgrass
I haven't read the Origin of Species in awhile, but I believe there are lots of references in there to worms, for example, with different sensitivities to light depending on their depth, and different digestive tracts depending on the type of dirt they lived in. The mechanism that maintains genetic diversity is the relationship between populations/organis ...[text shortened]... viously we know about genetics now, and more precise molecular mechanisms to maintain diversity.

Worms adapt to their environment - this is what natural selection implies, of course. But the adaptation occurs at the level of individual worms and their reproductive success, not at the level of a certain species of worm.

Originally posted by @kazetnagorra
Worms adapt to their environment - this is what natural selection implies, of course. But the adaptation occurs at the level of individual worms and their reproductive success, not at the level of a certain species of worm.

Aha. Yes. But an individual that produces offspring of diverse phenotypes suited to a wide range of environments has a higher reproductive fitness in a rapidly changing ecosystem. Sexual reproduction is nature's preferred method because it mixes genes to produce a variety of phenotypes. The concept of natural selection predicts and prefers diversity at the species' level as well.

A good example on bet-hedging natural selection for the math heads out there: http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/DonaldsonMatasciEtAl08.pdf

They use an example of frog eggs in a pond which might or might not dry up before the completion of hatching/metamorphosis. The individuals with the highest reproductive fitness produce a phenotypic range of offspring capable of either rapid metamorphosis (which would survive a dried up pond) or slow metamorphosis (with a higher overall fitness if the pond stays put). Diversity traits themselves are positively selected for.

Originally posted by @eladar
I never said they were evidence against natural selection. I said that Hitler followed the concept of natural selection by killing those who nature would have killed off naturally.

NATURE would have killed off anyway? The fact Hilter had millions of prisoners eating almost no food and dying from starvation BEFORE thousands were executed by several means, just exactly how does it follow they would have been killed off by nature?

Originally posted by @wildgrass
Come on. All this and you still haven't bothered to read the wikipedia article?

I'm not ignoring anything. I explained it earlier but I'll try another tack. Natural selection is the process/principle by which heritable variation between individuals/populations/genes leads to differential reproductive success over time. One "variation" that increases re ...[text shortened]... otypes? Did you make it up?

It's all in the wikipedia article. And in grade school textbooks.

While your efforts at insulting are outstanding, the results reveal your true intentions: you wish to injure instead of enlighten.
Is it really your contention that such things as "homologous recombination, heterozygous advantage, de novo mutatgenesis and frequency-dependent allelic selection," et al, are terms which are going to be found in "grade school textbooks"?
Seriously?

Originally posted by @freakykbh
While your efforts at insulting are outstanding, the results reveal your true intentions: you wish to injure instead of enlighten.
Is it really your contention that such things as "homologous recombination, heterozygous advantage, de novo mutatgenesis and frequency-dependent allelic selection," et al, are terms which are going to be found in "grade school textbooks"?
Seriously?

The "insult" wasn't even aimed at you, so I'm not sure why you're commenting.I'm eagerly waiting for your unassailable proof that Darwin caused the holocaust though.

But yea, I probably should have said high school. Sorry. It is frustrating when someone is arguing that a historical atrocity was caused by a scientific concept, yet they have a warped understanding of the concept they are discussing. "Survival of the fittest limits diversity" is not a correct statement. There is an informative wikipedia article out there that could save pages of comments.

Originally posted by @wildgrass
The "insult" wasn't even aimed at you, so I'm not sure why you're commenting.I'm eagerly waiting for your unassailable proof that Darwin caused the holocaust though.

But yea, I probably should have said high school. Sorry. It is frustrating when someone is arguing that a historical atrocity was caused by a scientific concept, yet they have a warped un ...[text shortened]... tatement. There is an informative wikipedia article out there that could save pages of comments.

It is frustrating when someone is arguing that a historical atrocity was caused by a scientific concept, yet they have a warped understanding of the concept they are discussing.
I don't know that anyone claimed that a theory caused anything as much as inspired certain actions.
Of the links between Darwin and Hitler's ideas for societal diversity, there can be no doubt: no matter whether you think either or both were full of crap, or if you think either or both were misunderstood geniuses, the dependence of the latter on the former has been documented extensively.

Originally posted by @wildgrass
That's insane logic. It does not follow. My understanding of Hitler's justification for culling the disabled was primarily economic. He wanted to streamline productivity, not evolution. I've said it many times already on this thread... natural selection depends on phenotypic diversity. Using natural selection as rationale for genocide is a perversion of the entire concept.

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/133p/133p04papers/MKalishNietzNazi046.htm
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a fervent philosopher who was anti-democracy, anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism, anti-socialist and self-acclaimed Anti-Christ, expressed his belief in a master race and the coming of a superman in many of his works. In his unique aphoristic style, Nietzsche wrote in The Genealogy of Morals (III 14):

The sick are the great danger of man, not the evil, not the 'beasts of prey.' They who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken those are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the feet of man, who instill the most dangerous venom and skepticism into our trust in life, in man, in ourselves…Here teem the worms of revenge and vindictiveness; here the air reeks of things secret and unmentionable; here is ever spun the net of the most malignant conspiracy – the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound and the victorious; here is the sight of the victorious hated.

Context is a critical factor to understanding Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietzsche's reference to the sick, their vengeful attitude and conspiracy, and in related writing, the Jews, parallels the concepts and terminology used in Hitler's Mein Kampf. However, I do not propose that the anti-Semitic interpretation of Nietzsche's work began with Hitler. What Nietzsche-biographer Walter Kaufmann calls the "legend of Nietzsche" (Kaufmann, 1) was constructed mostly by Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, through two interventions: by censoring and editing Nietzsche's work to further her own anti-Semitic interest and to reconcile Nietzsche's work with Richard Wagner's. Second, in order to finance the Nietzsche archive Elisabeth exploited Nietzsche's prophetic and radical philosophy to appeal to her preferred political party. After Nietzsche's insanity in 1889, the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany soon drowned the Weimar Nietzsche Archive in a sea of swastikas. Can Nietzsche's theories be considered a foundation for Hitler's Mein Kampf? Hitler's explicit condemnations of the slave race, his ravings about the Aryan elite, and his proposed Darwinist resolution, as well as Hitler's relationship to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Richard Wagner signal a definite connection to Nietzsche's work.

Originally posted by @freakykbh
[b]It is frustrating when someone is arguing that a historical atrocity was caused by a scientific concept, yet they have a warped understanding of the concept they are discussing.
I don't know that anyone claimed that a theory caused anything as much as inspired certain actions.
Of the links between Darwin and Hitler's ideas for socie ...[text shortened]... understood geniuses, the dependence of the latter on the former has been documented extensively.[/b]

You are right. If Hitler's actions were inspired by / dependent on Darwin, the documentation would be readily apparent. I mean, Hitler wrote several books and gave lots of speeches talking about why he's doing what he's doing. Just provide the quote where he used Darwin's mechanisms of speciation through natural selection as inspiration for ethnic cleansing. Then we can move on.

It would probably sound like "Darwin said .... blah .... therefore I was inspired to ... blah ... and blah."

I'm sorry, but it does not make any any any logical sense to me how natural selection can inspire genocide. If there's some connection, it seems like it'd have to be thoroughly nonsensical. "Darwin said baseball bats are made out of wood, therefore oak trees are worse than pine trees and must be destroyed." Something like that?

Originally posted by @eladar
..... his proposed Darwinist resolution....

This Nietzsche piece makes more sense, but where's your Darwinist resolution connection? That's what I don't get.

Originally posted by @sonhouse
NATURE would have killed off anyway? The fact Hilter had millions of prisoners eating almost no food and dying from starvation BEFORE thousands were executed by several means, just exactly how does it follow they would have been killed off by nature?

I am talking about the T4 program.

Originally posted by @wildgrass
This Nietzsche piece makes more sense, but where's your Darwinist resolution connection? That's what I don't get.

Is your question about Neitzche's social darwinism itself, or how Hitler was influenced by it?

Originally posted by @wildgrass
You are right. If Hitler's actions were inspired by / dependent on Darwin, the documentation would be readily apparent. I mean, Hitler wrote several books and gave lots of speeches talking about why he's doing what he's doing. Just provide the quote where he used Darwin's mechanisms of speciation through natural selection as inspiration for ethnic cleansi ...[text shortened]... wood, therefore oak trees are worse than pine trees and must be destroyed." Something like that?

I might be confused--- although I seriously doubt it--- but are you challenging the existence of many scholarly research papers on the correlations thereof?

Originally posted by @eladar
Is your question about Neitzche's social darwinism itself, or how Hitler was influenced by it?

"Social darwinism" is NOT Darwin. Darwin wrote the Origin of Species, in which he very carefully documents and describes mechanisms of natural selection that arise from environmental pressures on diverse phenotypes within a species. Social Darwinism was invented without any empirical evidence, and in my understanding it would not be considered a validated discovery. Is it even science?

I gotta admit though, I know little about Nietzche and "social darwinism". Please educate me on the facts.