Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Newsgroups: sci.bio,talk.origins Subject: Re: Evolution vs.(?) Creationism Message-ID: <1262@cybvax0.UUCP> Date: Thu, 11-Dec-86 10:15:33 EST Article-I.D.: cybvax0.1262 Posted: Thu Dec 11 10:15:33 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 15-Dec-86 01:39:59 EST References: <2778@gitpyr.gatech.EDU> <1260@cybvax0.UUCP> <2280@princeton.UUCP> Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Distribution: usa Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 32 Keywords: natural selection Xref: mnetor sci.bio:48 talk.origins:190 In article <2280@princeton.UUCP> wlin@princeton.UUCP (William Lin) writes: > In article <1260@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes: > >Neither of these is natural selection, in that the selection pressures are > >being applied by man. > > I fail to see why pressures applied by man, which is a creature of nature, > should by deemed 'not natural'. I agree with you, however the hoary old human/natural dichotomy (which has no place in science) is important to Christian (often) and some other philosophies. If we want to convince them of our positions, we can still do it by adopting the slight restiction. After that, we can undertake the much more difficult task of convincing them that humans are natural too, contrary to their philosophy. (In cladistic terms, human is a derived group of natural, not a sister group to natural.) Another poster asked why the distinction between artificial selection and natural selection mattered, since the mechanism is the same. The problem is that artificial selection does not constitute proof of natural selection. Otherwise, one might just as well say that because man has demonstrated locomotion by internal combustion, other organisms locomote by internal combustion. -- "Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species." Konrad Lorenz in "On Agression" 1966. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh