Posted on 05/06/2014 5:19:14 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
Wade never said that genes are the only decider of how people live. But they are a major driver. If genes played little or no role in people's lives/futures, then there would be little or no disparity in how different people live or what they earn within a society. You are putting the cart before the horse. In a free society, people determine their culture...not the other way around.
Spot on! See here on the Jews & the Chinese:
http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2014/05/06/the-chinese-and-the-jews/?singlepage=true
Right wing Darwinism. How charming . . . not!
I see what you did there!
Doesn't The Bell Curve advocate abortion and birth control (for certain populations)?
Sounds absolutely "Sangerian."
That was uncalled for.
'Ashkenazim are German Jews just as Sefaradim are Spanish Jews. 'Ashkenaz is Germany, Sefarad is Spain.
A lot of Leftists claim to admire Darwin, and yet adhere to very anti-Darwinian notions of human equality (both among individuals and among groups of people) and blank slate models for the human mind. I guess they believe that human beings evolved, but then evolution just stopped and we all became equal.
You can make a case for the origin of institutions and ideas (i.e. the start of agriculture, the Industrial Revolution) being matters of luck and circumstance. When Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had high civilization, northern Europeans were savages, but eventually they caught up when exposed to Roman institutions. Similarly, northeast Asians managed to adopt Western science and technology in no time once they were exposed to it through colonization and traade.
In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa has had more than adequate exposure to modern technology, science, and institutions (as did the Asians), and they have yet to make any significant contribution to technology, science, or business. That suggests that there's more going on than luck and culture.
Ah yes, Confucianism is an outgrowth of slanty eyes. Without Darwinism we wouldn't have known that.
Not all Arabs fail. Diaspora Lebanese Christians are some of the world's most successful businessmen. They dominate the economies of Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and various Latin American countries (Carlos "Slim" Salem being the most famous example.
So in the case of Arabs, their backwardness is more a result of culture than genetics, since Christian Arabs seem to do quite well. In contrast, there are other groups of people who do badly regardless of their religion.
Yep. That's about it.
Though of course "right wingers" who make an idol out of inequality to the point that they throw A-mighty G-d out of the picture and choose to deify genes and chromosomes are just as bad.
Nice job of completely avoiding the rest of my post where I explained that human societies are formed on human behavior, which is fundamentally determined by genetics. Also, nice job of injecting a racist statement.
It doesn't.
It does, however, discuss IQ among different groups in a very clinical fashion.
The fact that it is very clinical and doesn't talk about abortion is why the other two posters didn't want to touch the subject.
From their posts on this thread I'm thinking that they believe any discussion about differences between race automatically means we want to exterminate the 'lessor' races. Shallow 'thinking'.
You also said "size of the human brain has been shrinking". It's one thing to say that small-brained people walk among us and live out their lives: all kinds of people do. Do I need some evolutionary "explanation" for that? No.
This has nothing to do with selection of mates or anything else.
Come now, if women didn't prefer small-headed men then how do you imagine human noggins are shrinking? So it must be that they do prefer them. But despite the assurances of science, I find it hard to believe that there is a general preference for small-headed men among women, even if it is subconscious. As far as I know, Zip the Pinhead wasn't successful with the ladies. But no doubt an evolutionist could argue that Zip was an isolated case and provide numerous examples of pinheads who are reproductively successful and have pinheaded children and so on, etc., etc.
It takes more energy to maintain a larger brain, which can be a problem when food is scarce.
Indeed, as we all know, smart people are the first to starve when times get tough.
those with slightly smaller brains have a survival advantage.
You started out by saying that small brains are "not a disadvantage" and this assertion slowly but surely evolved into small brains are an advantage. Such is the nature of these Darwinistic explanations, it makes no difference if a trait is advantageous, disadvantageous, or neither: the fantastical natural selection narratives people fantasize about simply must be true no matter what the case.
So, according to this, Nazi society was formed on german behavior which is fundamentally determined by german genetics. Chinese culture and society is formed on chinese behavior which is fundamentally determined by chinese genetics, and so on. Personally, I think astrology sounds more sensible than this.
It is also notable that most cultures that evolved independent of each other are still remarkably similar.
You also said "size of the human brain has been shrinking". It's one thing to say that small-brained people walk among us and live out their lives: all kinds of people do. Do I need some evolutionary "explanation" for that? No.
I said nothing about variable sizes of brains of existing people. Since I said nothing about that, why do you bring that up? (You give a perfect example of a straw man argument: bring up something that was not said, and then argue against that instead of what the other person actually said.)
Once again, what I said was that the size of the human brain has been shrinking. Over the last 10,000 years, the human brain has shrunk about 10% in size.
Come now, if women didn't prefer small-headed men then how do you imagine human noggins are shrinking? So it must be that they do prefer them. But despite the assurances of science, I find it hard to believe that there is a general preference for small-headed men among women, even if it is subconscious. As far as I know, Zip the Pinhead wasn't successful with the ladies. But no doubt an evolutionist could argue that Zip was an isolated case and provide numerous examples of pinheads who are reproductively successful and have pinheaded children and so on, etc., etc.
Selective pressures consist of many more factors than merely which mates the opposite sex finds more attractive. Some traits may be extremely attractive to a mate, but carry with them a distinct survival disadvantage. Go back and reread my previous post, #59--my example there contained both positive and negative effects.
As a dramatic example of the difference between mate preference and survival advantage, consider this: many male birds put on elaborate displays of plumage to attract females. They have very bright and large feathers, and they puff themselves up to look very pretty for the females. Unfortunately, the more puffy and colorful they look, the more they capture the attention of predators. So the males who are the most attractive to females rarely get a chance to reproduce and the males that reproduce are those that are balanced between being just attractive enough for the ladies, but not so much that they draw the predators.
BTW, quit bringing up things I never said.
Indeed, as we all know, smart people are the first to starve when times get tough.
Under normal circumstances, the brain uses ~20% of the body's total energy intake. Under periods of starvation, the brain's energy needs do not decrease. In a situation of a limited food supply, people with higher energy needs--those with the largest brains and those with the most rapid metabolisms--have a distinct survival disadvantage.
You started out by saying that small brains are "not a disadvantage" and this assertion slowly but surely evolved into small brains are an advantage. Such is the nature of these Darwinistic explanations, it makes no difference if a trait is advantageous, disadvantageous, or neither: the fantastical natural selection narratives people fantasize about simply must be true no matter what the case.
I seriously doubt you've ever taken vector physics, but the progress of evolution over time is very analogous to the movement of an object subjected to many forces, whose trajectory and speed is determined by the vector total of the applied forces. Many selective pressures act on a species, and the characteristics of that species reflect the vector total effect of all the selective pressures. Also, as illustrated in the bird example above, traits are rarely purely positive or purely negative in their effect on survival. If higher intelligence, roughly correlated with larger brain size, confers a distinct survival advantage, then larger brain size also confers a distinct survival disadvantage for the large-headed baby trying to exit its mother's birth canal.
BTW, your use of the word "Darwinistic" rather than the correct term "evolutionary" tells me that you are making the mistake of trying to dismiss science as just another religion, equivalent to Christianity, Creationism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. I know that the creationist websites constantly try to denigrate science in this manner. The fact that they compare science to religion in order to "bring down" science tells me that they have a very low opinion of religion, most specifically Christianity. My advice is to stay away from those websites; they have *nothing* of value to offer. They lie about science *and* Christianity.
The shape of any human society you pick is fundamentally determined by genetically encoded human behavior traits. Environment plays a role, but it is the interplay between environment and genetics that ultimately shape the society. Also, given the same genetic imperatives for human behavior, geographically isolated societies can develop in dramatically different ways, even while still exhibiting the basic human behaviors common to all societies.
There is a reason no culture, ever, has spontaneously become extremely socialist--it is because it is not in human nature (determined by genetics) to work for the benefit of "society" and expect to receive nothing more than minimal survival requirements in return. There is a reason that gay "marriage" has never spontaneously developed in any society--it is because the survival of the species requires mating pair-bonds to form in order to maximize survival of children--again, genetically determined behavior. The fact that the left must force these behaviors on us is pretty strong evidence that neither socialism nor gay mating pair-bonds occur naturally--meaning that these behaviors are *not* encoded in our genes.
Agreed and along those lines within those cultures race is overwhelming the same.
Blacks have been in this this country for about 400 years. Yet they still maintain there own ‘culture’ even though they have been inundated with all kinds of Western influence for all those years and in particular the last 100 years.
Apparently some FReepers get so excited about their precious natural racial inequality that they throw their morality out the window.
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