Darwin is now blamed for environmental destruction

Fulfilling not “for filling” Ugh AaronS1978

Aaron, "Natural Selection: an opiate for people that don’t wanna believe in God." Now that ought to be a bumper sticker! :) bornagain77

The article is more about discrediting in the ideology that followed it It wasn’t humbling in fact to be honest with you people that toted that crap are just arrogant. Believing that they have some kind of nugget of truth that allows them to see the bigger picture, and they probably get off to thinking that they are an intellectually superior because they wrestle with this nugget of supposed truth And as for the credibility of Darwinism as I can actually use natural selection to explain the existence of a toaster I kinda feel that in its self discredits the theory The theory can explain whatever and that makes it kind of a bad theory because it’s not refutable, you can’t test against it, really because no matter what you find, you can explain it with natural selection. name me one thing that can’t be explained by natural selection other than God and even God can be explained by natural selection But it’s a humbling intellectually for filling theory Or Opiate for people that don’t wanna believe in God AaronS1978

The article is essentially an extended argumentum ad consequentiam. Even if you could show that it was a belief in "Darwinism", rather than any other factors, that led to adverse ecological outcomes (which that article does not) it still would not say anything about the soundness of Darwin's theory. Seversky

There are, as usual, a few major problems for the atheist with his worldview in which man is, basically, a parasite that must be prevented, at all costs, from making any changes to the environment. Number 1, the environment, and/or natural selection, is now found to be grossly inadequate as the supposed 'designer substitute' that atheists had falsely imagined it to be.

The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17 John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner Excerpt: The program Mendel’s Accountant realistically simulates the mutation/selection process,,, Given optimal settings, what is the longest nucleotide string that can arise within a reasonable waiting time within a hominin population of 10,000? Arguably, the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer), for a single point mutation is not timely adaptation in the face of any type of pressing evolutionary challenge. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. This represents at least 75 million nucleotide changes in the human lineage, many of which must encode new information. While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution. In this light, we suggest that a string of two specific mutations is a reasonable upper limit, in terms of the longest string length that is likely to evolve within a hominin population (at least in a way that is either timely or meaningful). Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect), in terms of the evolution of modern man. It is widely thought that a larger population size can eliminate the waiting time problem. If that were true, then the waiting time problem would only be meaningful within small populations. While our simulations show that larger populations do help reduce waiting time, we see that the benefit of larger population size produces rapidly diminishing returns (Table 4 and Fig. 4). When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573302/ “Darwinism provided an explanation for the appearance of design, and argued that there is no Designer — or, if you will, the designer is natural selection. If that’s out of the way — if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.” Richard Sternberg – Living Waters documentary Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics – Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson – (excerpt from Living Waters video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q

In short, since natural selection and/or the environment cannot possibly function as a 'designer substitute', (as Darwinists had falsely imagined for well over a century), then the environment cannot possibly be Bob's creator. (No matter how much Bob may desire the environment to be his god substitute.) A second major problem with Bob's worldview, in which the environment itself functions, basically, as a god substitute, is that the environment itself gives every indication of being intelligently designed by God, Moreover, it gives every indication of being Intelligently designed by God specifically for man to inhabit.

Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire & Transform Our Planet - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an98jVCyApo A Reasonable, but Incomplete, Account of How Humans Mastered Fire - Michael Denton - August 4, 2016 In short, the discovery of fire, our subsequent mastery of it, and the road it opened up to an advanced technology were only possible because of our inhabiting a world almost exactly like planet earth, complete with atmospheric conditions exactly as they are, along with the properties of carbon and oxygen atoms (and indeed many of the other atoms of the periodic table), and because we possessed a unique anatomical design (including the hand) uniquely fit for fire-making. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/08/a_reasonable_bu103048.html Life and Earth History Reveal God's Miraculous Preparation for Humans - Hugh Ross, PhD – video (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Y496NYnm8

A third major problem for Bob's worldview is that man's mastery of the planet has been brought about, not by brute force, (as is presupposed in Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' thinking), but man's mastery of the planet has instead been brought about by man's unique ability to communicate information, and more specifically, by man's unique ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates. Moreover, it is man's unique ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates that provides one of the most powerful evidences that man is, indeed, made in the 'image of God'.

“The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.” Vlatko Vedral – Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College – a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics.

In short, directly contrary to what environmental catastrophists have a-priori assumed, 'human exceptionalism' is beautifully and wonderfully true. I recently defended this line of evidence for 'human exceptionalism' here:

Oct. 2020 The attack on human exceptionalism, i.e. the attack by Atheists on the specific belief that we are ‘made in the image of God’ is twofold. First, Atheists appeal to the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, to argue that we are not special in the universe. And secondly, atheists appeal to Darwinian evolution to argue that we are not all that different from the animals here on earth and therefore we are not made in the image of God. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/space-aliens-if-we-can-see-them-they-can-see-us/#comment-715541

Thus in conclusion, Bob's Darwinian worldview, in which the environment itself functions, for all intents and purposes, as a 'god substitute', is a false view of reality. A false view of reality in which a pessimistic, even nihilistic, view of climate catastrophism has essentially become the default religion for today's secular humanists. That it is a religion for them is abundantly testified to by the fact that the left is willing to spend ten's of trillions of dollars trying to advert what they falsely imagine to be a impending climate catastrophe. Verse:

Romans 1:25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.

bornagain77

Bob O'Hara, a Darwinist who is a professor at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), and who self admittedly 'tortures date until it confesses',,,,

Bob O’Hara Professor at NTNU “I torture data until it confesses. Sometimes I have to resort to Bayesianism” – 2016 “I tortured data, mainly in ecology and evolutionary biology.” – 2009 https://de.linkedin.com/in/bob-o-hara-93b0a210

,,, Bob O'Hara's work is heavily laden with ecology and environmental studies,

Robert Brian OHara Professor Department of Mathematical Sciences https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/bob.ohara

The interesting thing about a Darwinist being heavily committed to environmental studies is that, since "Natural selection depends on the environment"

Darwin, evolution, & natural selection Excerpt: Natural selection causes populations to become adapted, or increasingly well-suited, to their environments over time. Natural selection depends on the environment and requires existing heritable variation in a group.,,, https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/natural-selection/natural-selection-ap/a/darwin-evolution-natural-selection

And since, in the Darwinian scheme of things, natural selection functions as a supposed 'designer substitute' that "overwhelmingly impress(es) us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker,,,"

"Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning." - Richard Dawkins - "The Blind Watchmaker" - 1986 - page 21

Then, in effect, again since natural selection depends on the environment, that means that the environment is what ultimately created Bob instead of God creating Bob. i.e. The atheist believes that the environment created us, and does not believe that the environment was created FOR us to use and enjoy by God. In effect, the environment is Bob's god, and thus Bob study of the environment is, in practicality, no different than a Theologian studying God. i.e. A Theologian studying his Creator. One can easily see how Bob's worldview, where the environment itself functions as a god substitute, i.e. as an idol, leads to a apocalyptic view of reality where any impact of man on the environment will inevitably lead to 'climate catastrophism',

The root cause of climate catastrophism Excerpt: I believe that the root of today’s environmental catastrophism is a framework of false, anti-human assumptions and values. Catastrophists,,, believe that long-term human survival requires that we human parasites refrain from impacting the delicate, nurturing Earth. If we do that, the Earth will supposedly be a stable, safe, and sufficient place to life. Thus, minimizing our impact on our environment—being “green”—is a proper goal. None of this is true. https://industrialprogress.com/the-root-cause-of-climate-catastrophism/

In short, 'being green' turns out to be a religion for the atheist since, in defending the environment, the atheist is, for all intents and purposes, defending the god which he falsely believes created him. bornagain77

Darwin didn't humble us. He entertained us with his grandiose delusions. ET

That's weird. The article doesn't show any direct connection between what Huxley wrote about fisheries and evolution. The quotes are all about ecology, and what Huxley describes is pretty much what happened on the Grand Banks. Bob O'H

In discussing the changes that happened in the late 1800s, I don't think Darwin or any philosophical ism caused the difference. Humans have always been prone to overfishing and overhunting and overfarming and overmining and overlogging. When a commodity is especially valuable, the extractors always try to take MORE THAN ALL of it. What changed in the late 1800s was technology. Steamboats and cultivators and harvesters and factories and railroads made it possible to overfish and overfarm and overhunt and overmine on a vastly more massive scale. polistra

Ooooh this is rich I’ve been saying this for years and that stupidity of their HUMILITY What trite I’ve also said this on multiple threads here at UD but making the most powerful intelligent creatures on the planet no different then the bug in a bush was quite possibly the stupidest thing they could’ve done so much for their wisdom in their humility more like epic amounts of stupidity AaronS1978