OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth

=== Origin of species as myth ===
http://lostborders.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/the-origin-of-species-as-myth/
The Origin of the Species is “myth,” in the way Mircea Eliade uses the word myth – a story that tells how “a reality came into existence.”
Eliade wrote: “To tell how things came into existence is to explain them and at the same time indirectly to answer another question: Why did they come into existence? Eliade explains: “The why is always implied in the how — for the simple reason that to tell how a thing was born is to reveal an irruption of the sacred into the world, and the sacred is the ultimate cause of all real existence.”
The Origin of the Species is, in this sense, a religious story. Although Darwin’s intention was to tell a story that did not involve God, it makes us think of God, not just because it reminds us of Genesis, but because its genre is myth.
In the story told in The Origin of the Species, the species have emerged through a long struggle for survival. The struggle theme is also found in the ancient near eastern myths in which the cosmos emerged from a struggle between a god and a great sea monster, the god representing order and the sea monster representing chaos.
(Enûma Elish) Through the course of history, that myth became part of the western mosaic of myths and became a paradigm that has guided our attitudes and actions, which is what Eliade said myths do. The Origin of the Species is the latest retelling of that myth, but in the retelling the paradigm has changed.
In the new myth, order is not imposed on chaos by a god, but by the organisms of life themselves. The organisms have fought the battle themselves. This is the paradigm that guides our attitudes and actions in modernity.
The ancient myth explained the existence of an agrarian world ruled by kings and queens and emperors. The myth retold in The Origin of the Species explains an industrial world ruled by democracies and free markets. In the retold myth, we do not fight sea monsters, but each other and the world is not one given to us by a god, but one we have won or made for ourselves.
=== Other ===
http://lostborders.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/reading-darwin-with-eliade/
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.talk.creationism/browse_frm/thread/585ce619796dd7b9#
http://lostborders.wordpress.com/
=== myth ===
:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/13/oz_killeroo/ Because of Australia's relative remoteness, marsupials were the only mammal group lucky enough make it there in pre-human days. The lack of competition from others allowed them to diversify to fill niches that might have been occupied by wolves or big cats elsewhere in the world.
NOTES: If something else filled the niche we would have been told the same story, it can't be Popper falsified, neither verifiable or refutable. The proposition is formulated in such a way that in the words of Charles Darwin .... the truth of the propositions cannot be disputed..... and thus it isn't testable and thus useless as an explanation if your premise is testability.
=== post 11 ===
See http://localhost:8080/FalseDichotomy#preview
=== post 12 ===
=== post 10 ===
=== reply to Matt ===
Matt Silberstein wrote:
 
> It kind of depends on what "explain" means. Darwin took us from having
> no explanation at all to knowing that species are formed via descent
> with modification. That was an enormous step. 
It was Halloy not Darwin that wrote a paper about "descent with modification" as discussed here: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.talk.creationism/browse_thread/thread/d138b2c03c35d64f
> "Why" has many meanings. If you are asking for a teleological "why"
> biology offers no such answer. 
The abstract authority Mr. Biology certainly doesn't , which individual are you referring to? 
Biology dictionary definition is 'study of life', but since we don't know what life is lets redefine it as "study of frogs". 
A frog is the result of life but not life itself. In what way does the study of frogs not provide the answers to teleological why's? It all depends on what you define as biology. 
 
> How nice: you now play another rhetorical trick, equating the specific
> supported differential reproductive success (Natural Selection) with
> some story about some different struggle. 
Darwin never said "reproductive success" who are you referring to? 
> This reads like the work of someone who has never actually studied
> biology. That is, there is no actual biology in the analysis.
rephrase:
This reads like the work of someone who has never actually studied frogs. That is, there is no actual study of frogs in the analysis.
=== The Origin of Species as Myth ===
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.talk.creationism/browse_thread/thread/585ce619796dd7b9
http://lostborders.wordpress.com/
The Origin of the Species is “myth,” in the way Mircea Eliade uses the
word myth - a story that tells how “a reality came into existence.”
Eliade wrote: “To tell how things came into existence is to explain
them and at the same time indirectly to answer another question: Why
did they come into existence? Eliade explains: “The why is always
implied in the how — for the simple reason that to tell how a thing
was born is to reveal an irruption of the sacred into the world, and
the sacred is the ultimate cause of all real existence.”
The Origin of the Species is, in this sense, a religious story.
Although Darwin’s intention was to tell a story that did not involve
God, it makes us think of God, not just because it reminds us of
Genesis, but because its genre is myth.
In the story told in The Origin of the Species, the species have
emerged through a long struggle for survival. The struggle theme is
also found in the ancient near eastern myths in which the cosmos
emerged from a struggle between a god and a great sea monster, the god
representing order and the sea monster representing chaos. Through the
course of history, that myth became part of the western mosaic of
myths and became a paradigm that has guided our attitudes and actions,
which is what Eliade said myths do. The Origin of the Species is the
latest retelling of that myth, but in the retelling the paradigm has
changed.
In the new myth, order is not imposed on chaos by a god, but by the
organisms of life themselves. The organisms have fought the battle
themselves. This is the paradigm that guides our attitudes and actions
in modernity.
The ancient myth explained the existence of an agrarian world ruled by
kings and queens and emperors. The myth retold in The Origin of the
Species explains an industrial world ruled by democracies and free
markets. In the retold myth, we do not fight sea monsters, but each
other and the world is not one given to us by a god, but one we have
won or made for ourselves.
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sv07171024 	
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	 More options Mar 15, 12:11 pm
Newsgroups: alt.talk.creationism
From: "sv07171024" <svh_oe...@telenet.be>
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:11:40 +0100
Local: Sun, Mar 15 2009 12:11 pm
Subject: Re: The Origin of Species as Myth
Reply | Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author
"backspace" <Stephan...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:74f54383-be5b-4e17-a7bd-135a79224ba7@q11g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> A while ago I posted that even Scientific American now admits Darwin
> never explained the origin of species.
> http://lostborders.wordpress.com/
> The Origin of the Species is “myth,” in the way Mircea Eliade uses the
> word myth - a story that tells how “a reality came into existence.”
Origin of species is not equal to origin of life. As has been explained here
a zillion times.
Evolutionist reason wins again, fingers in the nose. Creationist mumbles an
excuse "well, I wasn't well prepared, and didn't really know what I was
talking about".
Exactly!
 Reply Reply to author Forward Rate this post: 
=== asdf ===
{{{
here is Wilkins entry on this issue of the origin of species 
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2009/02/myths_about_darwin.php
It is at number one out of 537 000 hits. This thread is at nr.4
"...The notion became common currency amongst scientists and geneticists in particular over the next decades, culminating in a book by Guy Robson in 1928, The Species Problem, in which variation was taken to be an indication that species were not real things, influencing Dobzhansky and others in the "modern" synthesis...."
This "modern synthesis" thing is fraud, it was called Neo-Darwinism in the Journals. One can't by renaming something arbitrarily remove all the journal papers on Neo-Darwinism such as this one:
"There is no canonical definition of neo-Darwinism, and surprisingly few writers on the subject seem to consider it necessary to spell out precisely what it is that they are discussing. This is especially curious in view of the controversy which dogs the theory, for one might have thought that a first step towards resolving the dispute over its status would be to decide upon a generally acceptable definition over it. ... Of course, the lack of firm definition does, as we shall see, make the theory much easier to defend." P.T. Saunders & M.W. Ho, "Is Neo-Darwinism Falsifiable? - And Does It Matter?", Nature and System (1982) 4:179-196, p. 179. 
And if you go to the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis you will note that Neo-darwinism or modern whatever isn't defined. 
 1. All evolutionary phenomena can be explained in a way consistent with known genetic mechanisms and the observational evidence of naturalists. ---- What is an evolutionary phenomena? 
 2. Evolution is gradual: small genetic changes, recombination ordered by natural selection. Discontinuities amongst species (or other taxa) are explained as originating gradually through geographical separation and extinction (not saltation). ----- Or some lived and some died. 
 3. Selection is overwhelmingly the main mechanism of change; even slight advantages are important when continued. The object of selection is the phenotype in its surrounding environment. The role of genetic drift is equivocal; though strongly supported initially by Dobzhansky, it was downgraded later as results from ecological genetics were obtained. 
----- Selection isn't a mechanism but a word we use to communicate consciousness. Note the tautology about slight advantages being important, how could it not be important. 
 4. The primacy of population thinking: the genetic diversity carried in natural populations is a key factor in evolution. The strength of natural selection in the wild was greater than expected; the effect of ecological factors such as niche occupation and the significance of barriers to gene flow are all important.
------ Natural population as opposed to a supernatural population ? What else than "natural" could it be. 
}}}
=== post 15 ===
=== post 16 ===
=== post 18 ===
=== post 19 ===
=== Popper ===
http://www.uncommondescent.com/religion/david-berlinski-and-the-devils-delusion/
Popper says:
"....that historically speaking all — or very nearly all — scientific theories originate from myths..."
".....At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all — or very nearly all — scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles’ theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides’ myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein’s block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning). I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or “metaphysical” (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or “meaningless,” or “nonsensical.” But it cannot claim to be backed by empirical evidence in the scientific sense — although it may easily be, in some genetic sense, the “result of observation.”
........................"
Category:TauTology
Category:Mircea Eliade
Category:Mythology
Category:Popper