Does evolution have any practical implications? (This is NOT Creation vs Evolution)

Does evolution have practical implications in science? (Read OP)

  • Yes, we need it to conduct science

    Votes: 73 88.0%
  • No, it is of philosophical importance only

    Votes: 10 12.0%

  • Total voters
    83
Evolution, as in life adapting to it's enviroment, does have practicle applications, and is very useful in biology and other fields, certainly. This is even taught in exclusively Christian biology textbooks. If you're talking about the idea that life evolved from non-life after the Big Bang, not as much.
 
Homie said:
Regardless wheter evolution or Creationism or something completely different is the true theory of how the world came about, does it matter practically or is it purely a philosophical question to help us understand the world and its origins?

Actually, evolution has absolutely no philosophical utility whatsoever, and was never intended as such. There is nothing in evolution that suggests the best course of action in one's life, or the best approach to moral problems. Evolution is notoriously silent on these matters. Whatever you may read from a scientific theory as philosophy is purely your own bias in reading far more into science than was ever intended. This has lead to social darwinism as an abuse of the science.

Evolution is purely a biological principle. It is not necessary for non-biological scientists to know anything about evolution to be successful in their field, because evolution has no connection to them. (This is often why creationists who are scientists are non-biologists.) Evolution has no relationship to physics, chemistry, engineering, or computer science. None, nadda, zippo. Any connection you may draw is purely imagination.

However, ignorance of evolution for a biological scientist is disabling, because it is a common unifying principle. Without it, all the life on Earth is reduced to a vast, meaningless, rote memory catalogue, with no understanding of why life is the way it is. In my own professional life, evolution allows me to understand the emergence of antibiotic resistance. It also allows me to understand why certain genetic diseases are so commonplace, despite them being obviously deleterious.

I would sooner wager that your belief that evolution has any application other than to biology, is a product of listening too much to your priests, and not enough to actual scientists learned in the field.
 
Biology is a large branch of science and it's also fairly relevant :lol:
 
Homie said:
So I challenge you, if you disagree, to show one example of how evolution has practical implications in science by showing one product that couldn't be possible without the belief in evolution.

Most, if not all, medical research is, at a minimum, informed by evolutionary theory and practice.

I only wish all the ID'ers knew how many of the drugs they take (in lieu of prayer, I guess) have been created, or made more effecient, by the knowledge gained by the the broad reaches of evolutionary theory.

"there are no atheists in a foxhole and no true believers in a doctors office."
 
.Shane. said:
"there are no atheists in a foxhole and no true believers in a doctors office."

You are once again implying that religious belief and acceptance of evolution can't go together . . .
 
The OP (and consequent posts) indicates that the only practical implementation of science is consumer products.

That's ridiculous.
 
Homie said:
Are you saying that the accepted explanation in the medical community for germs growing resistant to drugs is evolution?

This was answered already, but I’d like to give a shot at this.

See, when penicillin was first invented, humanity did actually enjoyed a period free of germs. It was announced at the time that the tragedy that was “infection” was a scourge defeated by humane witty.

It was not true… but the potential of the discovery was diminished sensibly because people at the time did not apply evolutionary thinking to the usage of the new medicine.

What happened is that, being inserted in the organism, penicillin changed the environment from friendly to hostile to the germs, killing most of them. However, in a perfect example of micro-evolution, some of the germs – a minority – had different caractheristics which made them less vulnerable, or immune, to these new environmental conditions. So, by living when the other germs died, they faced no competition for the environmental resources, managing to multiply into a new breed, in which resistance of penicillin was the rule, not the exception.

There are several concepts that are fundamental of the ToE in this little tale – Environmental pressure, competition, genetic buoyancy, survival of the fittest.

By understanding these, doctors back them could have done what doctors today do – monitor the infection closely; apply different kinds of antibiotics at once in hard cases; start with old stuff and avoid using new stuff only if extremely necessary to prevent more buoyancy; increase dosage little by little, but do so steadily until the infection is not only beaten, but exterminated.

See, this manner to apply vaccines, which is elementary of modern virology, is a very real and practical application of the understanding brought by the ToE.

It is not the only one, though.

The ToE provided the knowledge necessary to the application of eugenic programs into crops and animals, creating new breeds which are stronger and best suited to our needs. Of course, some madmen tried to apply it in humans to, failing miserably because humane value is subjective, not objective – but ToE, like all applications, is amoral, and works for evil just as well as for good.

In fact, it’s all well known that Darwin’s work, exposing the natural essence of the creature’s traits, have influenced Mendel’s creation of Genetics – and, after that served as a guide on how to apply it. Going through that route, you see that indeed much of modern medicine owes a great deal to the ToE, which truly opened a new horizon as to what should be done to enhance medicine, and most importantly, how this work should be done. Fact is that modern medicine would be a shadow of what it is if it was not for the ToE – so, indeed, it does matter what these people creating new drugs believe.

These practical aspects are just to answer your request… but the greatest importance of ToE is not this – not by a long shot. The most relevant aspect of it is indeed the mindset it generates, the manner it molds ulterior thinking. The ToE is acclaimed in modern science as “the unifying concept of all biology”, and with good cause for that. It is the one idea that found a common reason for all the knowledge that already were possessed, at the time, by what was called “natural science”. ToE is indeed instrumental in understanding, let alone improving, everything we know about living organisms and how to better their living conditions.

It, however, is also useful in reversed circumstances. For example, the same mentality of “preserving the power of antibiotics” is applied in agriculture, to preserve the efficacy of pesticides, and, generally, any form of biological plague-control can benefit from this concept.

This is just the most tangible gain; there are other practical application, particularly dealing with algorithms that were used to advanced forms of calculation, related to engineering in many areas of expertise and related with computer programming.

Sociologically speaking, the dynamic described by the ToE formed a field of thinking called “Sociological Darwinism” which theorizes about competition between human beings in social environment; it has also generated the “Social Darwinism”, this one aiming to explain the peristaltic movements of collections of people, why some groups succeed and others fail, etc…

So, you see, ToE has had application and influenced in a very practical several disciplines ranging in all fields of humane knowledge, making it, quite frankly – and despite the resistance it receives, far worse than it deserves – one of the most relevant and successful scientific ideas of all human history.

Homie said:
I do not know what "fractals" are, I know English as in day-to-day English, but I don't know science english or math english, which was why even basic math last semester at an American college was a headache, because I had to learn a bunch of new math words.

I always knew “fractals” as forms which will, instead of blur, always present new geometrical complexities as you approach to it. Apparently, this explanation is but colloquial, but you can thank the almighty wikipedia for this more technical explanation.

Regards :).
 
How about that three-headed chicken in those farms or that fattened lamb that came as a result of selective breeding? Evolution is the backbone of all biology, without it genetics and selective breeding would not have advanced nearly as far.
 
selective breeding was in place way before the ToE, so was all the sciences, including Biology. Some of the replies here have been helpful, but alot of them are merely showing a religious fervour for the theory, presenting it as alpha and omega, the greatest thing ever to have happened, which is clearly exaggerated.
 
WillJ said:
99% of modern mathematical research has no (known) practical application.
Historically, the turnaround time between theory and practical application in mathematics is about 200 years.

Thankfully, the lag period didn't stop Riemann, Fermat and co. from studying number theory.

On-topic, if evolution is true, one direct application is that those who claim it to be false are wrong. Being able to dismiss a a falsehoods from a true statement is a pretty neat application.
 
newfangle said:
The OP (and consequent posts) indicates that the only practical implementation of science is consumer products.

That's ridiculous.
Hell, if we held religion to the same standard, it would have died 2000 years ago.
 
pboily said:
Hell, if we held religion to the same standard, it would have died 2000 years ago.

Hey, indulgences are a consumer product. :p
 
pboily said:
Hell, if we held religion to the same standard, it would have died 2000 years ago.

It probably did. But then some muppet went and ressurected it.

Homie said:
selective breeding was in place way before the ToE, so was all the sciences, including Biology.

So because people were breeding selectively, and doing stuff they called biology before ToE, that means that today's biology, breeding, etc aren't applications of it? People were running long before biomechanics were thought of, but sprinting faster as a direct result of a better technique due to biomechanical analysis still counts as an application. We might have been doing something before, but doing it better as a result of applying new theories sounds fairly applied to me.
 
Homie said:
selective breeding was in place way before the ToE, so was all the sciences, including Biology. Some of the replies here have been helpful, but alot of them are merely showing a religious fervour for the theory, presenting it as alpha and omega, the greatest thing ever to have happened, which is clearly exaggerated.

Selective breeding indeed existed before evolution, and even before genetics, for that matter. Those techs, however, brought it to a degree of efficacy that is unparalelled by any standards existing before them - finally there were viable explanations as to why sometimes two poor specimens raised a champion, and why sometimes two champions did not raise another of the kin - and, above it all, they have shown what to do to prevent bad results.

Regards :).
 
Homie said:
selective breeding was in place way before the ToE, so was all the sciences, including Biology.
What a strange way to reason. People have been able to throw stones way before Newton came with the theory of gravity. Therefore, the theory of gravity is useless ??
 
Steph said:
What a strange way to reason. People have been able to throw stones way before Newton came with the theory of gravity. Therefore, the theory of gravity is useless ??
I was countering the claim that all the modern sciences are based on evolution and that selective breeding is based on evolution. I thought that was pretty obvious.

You and sanabas are putting words in my mouth, stop it. I did not reason the way you and sanabas said I did, you took the quote out of context of the previous posts I was addressing and applied a reasoning to it and said that it was MY reasoning. You are not being very helpful in this discussion.
 
Homie said:
I was countering the claim that all the modern sciences are based on evolution.

If anyone was claiming that then they are wrong.

The claim I'm making is that most (if not all) of modern biology relies on the Theory of Evolution. ie. The Theory of Evolution is the basis for all of modern biology.
 
What I said was that selective breeding is based on evolution, even though we did not have a model for it at the time. Same thing witht he throwing rocks example, we didn't have a model but it still worked.
 
Homie said:
I was countering the claim that all the modern sciences are based on evolution and that selective breeding is based on evolution. I thought that was pretty obvious.

I didn't see anyone claiming this, but it's wrong. Modern BIOLOGY (for the the 20th time) is based on evolution.

Homie, I suggest you re-read every post because your OP has been answered repeatedly.
 
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