Link to Uncommon Descent

I’ve always been reluctant to demonize cdesign proponentsists, particularly those rare individuals who seek genuine debate. So it is a pleasure to report that Uncommon Descent has a genuine debate in progress, and that one of its senior bloggers has something intelligent to say.

jjcassidy

Only with Darwin did extermination become advancement of the species and death improvement of the race.

That is a fallacy and Schloss rightly pointed it out. It was well known and practiced in animal husbandry long before Darwin came along. Darwin’s only real significant contribution to science was coming up with the notion that the well known principles of artificial selection to improve breeds of animals had a working corollary in nature which he termed natural selection and further that natural selection operating over millions of years led to the emergence of new species.

I made the exact same argument that Schloss made months ago. It’s painfully obvious to anyone who hasn’t made it a mission in life to demonize Charles Darwin.

In point of fact Darwin was right that new species come about in this manner. The mistake is in thinking that the same mechanism which can cause new species to emerge can account for all of phylogeny. It’s an unjustified extrapolation. Mike Behe in the “Edge of Evolution” explains this very well and tentatively puts the limit of Darwinian evolution’s capacity for change somewhere between class and family IIRC.

Dave was on a roll. Too bad he mistakes Behe’s “tentative” limit for an actual testable hypothesis.