Your favourite, Dawkins, got there first.

He called it 'memes'.

No, No. No. It's not biological evolution, it's cultural evolution. Biological evolution would take millions of years, as the genes for greater or lesser reproductive drive selected in or our of the pool.

This is Spencerian evolution. The folkways and institutions favoring reproduction propagate themselves qua folkways and intitutions. Let us not bore ourselves with trivial objections to the effect that breeding like rabbits doesn't help us survive, for that is not the choice. The choice is between culturally favoring reproduction, taking modern medicine and modern warfare into account, or culturally favoring death and extinction.

Lou is right, of course. It can hardly be a matter of biology that a collective belief in Darwinism leads to extinction. The funny thing is it is impossible to get Darwinists to even consider the idea that that fact alone may be a reason to question a theory that purports to explain survival, even on its own terms. They just prattle on about the glorious beauties of objective truth as they watch society crumble around them.

Peter:

1) What's the crumbling of society got to do with the evolution, for example, of the earthworm? Or the brontosaurus?

2) Natural selection isn't just about explaining survival. It's also about explaining extinction. Nearly every species that ever lived is extinct.

Brit:

And a very happy day to you, too. May all your dreams come true.

Brit:

Yes, I find Darwinists are especially good at undermining Darwin. Mayr, Gould and Dawkins between them leave it in tatters.

Brit:

A follow-up. I assume you do not question that this is a cultural, not a biological development. If the part of society that believes in, and lives like it believes in, a strict darwinist perspective is in decline while the part that doesn't is growing, what does that have to do with biological extinction? Or do you guys just think it would be cool to give the process a little cultural push?

Peter:

Brit has it exactly right. What does the reproductive behavior of the only known organism to have a concept of the future have to with the origin, and extinction of every (nearly all) other species on Earth?

Secondly, let's take as stipulated that some deus ex machina is responsible for it all. How intelligent could it be to originate a self-extinguishing species (all post-industrial societies have birth rates below replacement)?

It is a singular stretch to connect some purported degree of social decay with belief in Evolution--most religious sects, including Catholicism, have no problem with the Theory of Evolution.

Your question to Brit is telling for your implicit assumptions. What precisely is a "strict darwinist perspective" that some in which some live like they believe? (wow, was that sentence ever hard to not preposition end in)

If OJ were to perform the same kind of selective, out of context, citation on the Bible as he does on those he cited, he would leave religion in tatters. Which doesn't say anything about religion or evolution, but does rather point an accusatory finger at quote mining.

Jeff:

The Bible is Creationist, as is Catholicism and all of Judeo-Christianity. That's not incompatible with Evolution, but it is with Darwinism. Christianity is growing--Darwinism shrinking. Darwin fails the test of Social Darwinism, as it does of Reason.

Jeff said, "Secondly, let's take as stipulated that some deus ex machina is responsible for it all. How intelligent could it be to originate a self-extinguishing species (all post-industrial societies have birth rates below replacement)?"

You can't say that God is the stupid one if those people who believe in the "deus ex machina" and follow His commandments are fruitful and multiply, but those who refuse to believe in Him die out.

Can you?

If Larson is right, then all those evangelicals ought to be Mormons.

Larson's book, 'Evolution,' the third in his trilogy, is worth reading, though it would make Orrin squirm

Harry:

Why? I thought it was quite good.

It contradicts your notion of bearded god-killers handing out marching order to robotic secularists.

How? It presents the faith and the prophet which mindless secularists chose to follow in prose clear and concise enough to demonstrate why the illusion is so attractive.

Go back and read the chapter on Haeckel.

Harry:

I'm afraid you've lost me. Why would I mind that he demonstrates how much Nazism relied on Darwinism?

You lost yourself.

You've never honestly engaged darwinism, and I understand why you cannot.

You do yourself no credit, though.

Harry:

I love darwinism The direct tie to Nazism that you just cited is only one of the more amusing facets.

The tie is more direct than you think--Nazism was found by natural selection to be catastrophically unfit.

Jeff:

They got rid of their Jew and Gypsy problems.

So did the Spanish.

Yes, but Christianity was selected for, and Spain became great, that's the point. Its decline coincides with the rise of secularism.

"... but Christianity was selected for ..."

Passive voice is the bane of English.

Selected for by whom?

And has been noted here frequently, Spain became great through thievery, then tanked, and stayed tanked, until some years after the death of Franco.

Where did Spain figure among the European economies through the 1980's?

Natural selection.

The ability to thieve from others is sign of selection. Avoiding the war and maintaining their population was a sign of selection.

One of the reasons Franco was able to maintain power so easily was because of how well the economy did.

http://www.spain-barcelona.com/general/history/q-rule-of-franco.htm

Perhaps you could list the great Spanish contributions since 1492.

Other than torching heretics by the thousands, that is.

During Franco's reign, just where did Spain's economy finish with respect to the rest of Western Europe?

In a fight for the cellar with Portugal and Ireland, that's where.

They Christianized and developed much of the Americas, parts of Africa and parts of Asia. It's a monumental achievement.

During Franco's reign, just where did Spain's economy finish with respect to the rest of Western Europe?

The record of the ex-Spanish colonies is equally pathetic.

The Spanish colonies are all democracies, except Cuba which we took from them.

The Spanish economy was Europe's best in the 60s.

Europe's best in the 60's?

By what measure? Because they surely had to tank to become the worst by the '70s.

What were the Spanish colonies up until 15 years ago? You clearly don't mind at all putting centuries of failure on disregard.

They evolved into democracies rather easily.

If you can call 250 years of caudillos easy. But then you always have had a very, uh, elastic approach to meaning.

Jeff:

Look around you--how many regions got there more easily? Only the Anglosphere.

Sorry, I thought you had said easy as an absolute term, not a relative one.

Because you did.

As an absolute term, they developed quite easily and rapidly into democracies after the colonial period ended.