A state that can stamp out gum chewing ought to be able to promote er, well, uh....

Or am I presuming to much here?

Oh, it'll balance out whether they do anything or not, but they may be happier with the new balance one way than another.

It will balance out when the trendline becomes horizontal--extinction, for instance, means the population rate of change becomes zero. Permanently.

It has been known to happen. Nothing un-Darwinian about that.

Voluntary extinction?

Extinction due to maladaption to the environment. It's the fate of 99.9% of all species (although you'd think that a Designer would have a higher success rate :-)).

But they (we) aren't maladapted--they're perfectly adapted, yet choosing not to survive. It is intelligent design and completely anti-Darwinian.

Orrin:

You don't understand. "We" exercise freedom and choice. Everyone else is in the grip of inexorable, evolutionary forces that are driven by the environment.

Darwinism is not a force, and it does not compel or even encourage anybody to do anything. It just keeps score.

Therefore Orrin's crack is meaningless, except in demonstrating that he does not know what Darwinism is.

Populations vary under natural selection, up and down over time. For humans the only meaningful figure, as far as Darwinism is concerned, is 500-- the minimum popluation required to keep deleterious recessive mutations from building up because of inbreeding.

It will take a while for Singapore to get down to 500.

Humans don't breed well in captivity.

Humans don't breed well in captivity.

China got to a billion even with Mao killing off 60 million.

Mr. Judd;

If they're choosing not to survive, they're maladapted by definition. That's a problem with "soft" systems, they can get out of true much more easily than "hard" ones. Culture is a "soft" system, because it consists of modifiable information. (Genes, in contrast, are "hard" because they can't be changed) Soft systems are far more adaptive, but much more prone to self-reenforcing errors. If you want to take a higher level view, it's the Singapore culture that would go extinct, not the gene mix (since it's basically the same as ours). As long as the overall benefits of culture are greater than local failures like Singapore, culture is an overall win evolutionarily.

What other laws of nature can we overcome simply by the exercise of free will?

Darwinism is not a law of nature. Spencerism was claimed to be, but by philosophers.

Harry:

Obviously.

Fitness is the result of a cross product between organisms and environment. If the environment changes, then previously adapted organisms might not survive.

OJ fails to note that extinction happens to species, not individuals. Harry has mentioned founder events. An example would be free-will. Humans have allegedly possesed it for quit some time. That is the founder event.

Then along comes the Pill, allowing free-will to operate on reproductive decisions with virtually no resistance. That, along with the differing worth of child labor in a post-industrial v. pre-industrial society, means the environment has changed radically in less than 150 years.

The result could well be our extinction, and that would be completely consistent with evolutionary theory.

Jeff:

I agree. All evolution resembles such intelligent design as that you describe.

Based on your so called agreement, you clearly don't understand what is going on.

Particularly the "design" part.

"allowing free-will to operate on reproductive decisions...completely consistent with evolutionary theory"

I agree--evolution is a function of the will and design of an intelligent being or beings, as you said.

some kinds of evolution might be designed.

'natural selection' refers to a kind of evolution which is not designed.

that's what you have problems in understanding.

"some kinds of evolution might be designed"

There you go--it only took a few months.

you can be very childish sometimes.

Yes, some kinds of evolution are designed. Like the evolution of models of car. Or computer programs. They're designed.

But not Evolution. I think that's natural selection (my opinion).

You think Evolution has design in it (fair enough - that's a matter of opinion).

But, even after a few months, you also think natural selection has design in it, which, by definition, it doesn't (not fair enough, that's a matter of conceptual error).

No, I think the fact that because, as you both acknowledge, design looks no different than nature, we must say we have no idea what's driving evolution.

But you're both opening your minds, which is the first step towards a healthy skepticism.

since my position has not budged one iota in conversing with you, i'm intrigued as to how you have reached the conclusion that my mind is 'opening'...

but i thank you for the kind sentiment

"some kinds of evolution might be designed"

"But not Evolution"

But since the two would be indistinguishable you've no idea whether that's true or not.

cars are designed by car designers over a few years and they usually own up to it.

Evolution has taken millions of years and nobody's owned up to designing it yet. Apart from some guy who reckoned he'd got the job done in a week.

I think we can distinguish the different types of evolution.

How?

ah..well the interesting question is: given that we're sceptical about the guy who said he did it in a week, and nobody else has owned up to it...is there any possibility that NOBODY AND NOTHING designed it, and it all happened by natural processes and chance?

darwin thought there was a possibility.

he didn't think "natural selection" designed it.

dawkins doesn't think "selfish genes" designed it.

they all think nothing designed it.

Of course that's a possibility--in fact it's equally possible.

and that's what the theory of natural selection says: that evolution was not designed at all.

'Modern synthesis' adds detail to the theory by incorporating stuff we've learned about genetics since darwin was around.

You don't have to buy the theory that nothing designed evolution. I've just been trying to get you to see that there IS a theory that says nothing designed evolution.

However, some of us see reasons to think that the non-design theory makes more sense than the theory that something did design evolution.

And vice versa. There are two equally plausible theories--because each is wholly self-contained and not a science--and which you choose depends only on your predetermined philosophy. That's what Mayr says too. It's all just a narrative and you choose the one that renders the world you wish existed.