# Darwinian Fairytales



## Peairtach (Oct 29, 2009)

Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution: Amazon.co.uk: David Stove: Books

This is an excellent book, and quite funny in places, showing the erroneousness of tenets that Darwinian sociobiologists hold dear.

It was written by a late professor of philosophy, David Stove.

Sadly he wasn't a Christian and some of the book's blemishes are due to that. 

We could do with more such work that challenges the simple truth and logic of the extravagant claims made by Darwin, and his followers, for his theory.


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## Confessor (Oct 29, 2009)

Philosophical objections to evolution are awesome.


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## Jon Peters (Oct 29, 2009)

Richard Tallach said:


> Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution: Amazon.co.uk: David Stove: Books
> 
> This is an excellent book, and quite funny in places, showing the erroneousness of tenets that Darwinian sociobiologists hold dear.
> 
> ...



I'll check this out. Thanks! Do you think it would be helpful to read Dawkins The Greatest Show on Earth before I read it. You know, sort of set the stage.


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## steven-nemes (Oct 29, 2009)

David Stove also wrote about how most racist stereotypes are actually true. He's well known for his polemical and cynical attitude in his writing.

-----Added 10/29/2009 at 08:26:25 EST-----

Also, David Stove's criticisms are not against evolution as such, because he believed it.


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## he beholds (Oct 29, 2009)

Could you (anyone) give an example of what some of his arguments were?


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## Peairtach (Oct 30, 2009)

Jon Peters said:


> Richard Tallach said:
> 
> 
> > Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution: Amazon.co.uk: David Stove: Books
> ...



He deals with Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene", and to some extent, "The Blindwatchmaker" and "The Extended Phenotype" 

You could read either of the two books you mention first. I suppose if you read even the first few chapters of this one, you'd be better prepared for Dawkins' abuse of the English language and overblown claims for what Darwinism can predict.

-----Added 10/30/2009 at 09:24:12 EST-----



steven-nemes said:


> David Stove also wrote about how most racist stereotypes are actually true. He's well known for his polemical and cynical attitude in his writing.
> 
> -----Added 10/29/2009 at 08:26:25 EST-----
> 
> Also, David Stove's criticisms are not against evolution as such, because he believed it.



Yes.

By the way he talks at times, you'd think he didn't believe it. He certainly didn't believe that it accurately predicted human behaviour. After having read the book, I don't know how he thought the theory accurately pertained to animal behaviour.

Maybe he was just arguing that people like Darwin and Dawkins should moderate their language and even moderate their theory.


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## Peairtach (Oct 30, 2009)

he beholds said:


> Could you (anyone) give an example of what some of his arguments were?



E.g. In the first chapter he contends that the widely held Darwinian opinion that there is a "free fight" for food and reproduction within species, when challenged on the basis that there is not such a "free fight" ,among human beings at least, today is countered by Darwinists in one of three ways:-

(a) Those like Huxley, who used the "cave man" theory, that there was such a "free fight" once, but there is no longer. Stove's answer to this is that mankind would never have survived such a "free fight." Huxley, unwisely, said that there may have been traces of it during the English Civil War. Stove amusingly wonders why then Cromwell didn't eat Charles I's head for extra nutrition for survival.

(b) Those who are the Darwinian "Hard Men" like the eugenists, who believe we should take Darwinism seriously and eliminate the weak, unhealthy, unfit and biologically inferior. Stove says that these "hard men" tend to keep quieter these days, especially after the hardest of Darwinian hard men, Hitler.

(c) Those who are Darwinian "Soft Men" who do not see the contradiction, or are willing to go along with it.

Stove keeps saying that Darwinian ideas such as a free fight between individuals of the same species for survival don't hold up in the case of Man, but also gives some examples of where they don't hold up in the case of animals. I'm sure there must be many more cases in which they don't hold up in the case of animals.

He also debunks the idea of "inclusive fitness", that a species attempts to preserve its own genes rather than the individual member of the species, and Dawkins idea of the selfish gene, which attempts by a verbal fiction to locate the teleology of Darwinism in the genes attempts to survive.

He also points out that it is impossible or virtually impossible to remove the language of purpose and teleology from discussions Darwinism, even although atheistic Darwinism is meant to be a completely unconscious, natural and determined process. 

Towards the end of the book Stove gets slightly tedious and repetitive as his opponent is already lying on the mat bloodied and beaten.

Here are a few reviews:-

*"Darwinism: A ridiculous slander on human beings"*


> "I believe that neo-Darwinism, though a very good approximation to truth and completeness for many of the simplest organisms, is an extremely poor approximation in the case of our own species. Or rather, to tell the truth, I think that it is, at least in the hands of its most confident and influential advocates, a ridiculous slander on human beings."
> 
> This is how late Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994), having already made the all-too-necessary clarification "I am of no religion", explains his reasons for writing Darwinian Fairytales, a collection of 11 essays in which he attacks the views of such evolutionary luminaries as Darwin himself, Thomas Malthus, T.H. Huxley, Alfred Wallace, R.A. Fischer, E.O. Wilson, R.D. Alexander and Richard Dawkins, to name just the ones I remember. In the above quotation, I have already given away what grates with Stove more than anything else on this topic: that Darwinists transfer their theories from "pines and cod" to people and then, when the theory wildly fails to predict the facts, blame the facts. He accepts descent by modification from a common ancestor, but denies that random variation + natural selection can account for that modification. His main complaint is that natural selection has been grossly overstated in the higher animals.
> 
> ...



*A powerful analysis of Darwinian dogma by a master of philosophy*


> David Stove is not a creationist nor is he religious, he is a Scientific Philosopher and he meets Darwinism, Neo-darwinism and Dawkinsian pseudoscience on their own ground. He examines suppositions on which Darwin based his theory and demonstrates that as far as humans are concerned,the conclusions drawn by Darwin are just not tenable.Stove is precise in his use of the English language, and illustrates very clearly how Darwinists are very imprecise to the point of deceit in their own use of it.Stove cuts through the arrogant dogmatism of Dawkins like a hot knife through butter,while at the same time exercising a wicked sense of humour that could only come from a down to earth Australian. The book is an excellent read and should be mandatory for every socio-biologist before writing another word.




*An intriguing contribution to the debate about evolution*


> This was a very interesting read. The late David Stove was not a creationist, or even a Christian - he describes himself as "of no religion". However, he lays various charges at darwinism - both as it was presented by Darwin and his contemporaries and as it is presented today by neodarwinists. The heart of these is that, insofar as it is used to explain humans, it is "a ridiculous slander on human beings." He points out that:
> 
> - human life is not a "continual free fight" in the sense that Darwin envisaged necessary as a driver of natural selection;
> 
> ...


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## T.A.G. (Nov 21, 2009)

Thanks for the suggestion!

I just bought the book, so I will give it a read this week and give my two cents!


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## Pergamum (Nov 21, 2009)

I just bought the book and am 1/3rd through it - AWESOME!


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## David (Nov 21, 2009)

Should I jump right into this book, as somebody who knows very little about evolution and the arguments behind it? Or should I learn a bit more about evolution first?


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## Peairtach (Nov 24, 2009)

David said:


> Should I jump right into this book, as somebody who knows very little about evolution and the arguments behind it? Or should I learn a bit more about evolution first?



Probably worth reading more basic literature on creationism/evolutionism first.

E.g. Bone of Contention: Amazon.co.uk: Sylvia Baker: Books

The Creation, The: Discovering God in Creation Mentor: Amazon.co.uk: Douglas Kelly: Books

Maybe others have suggestions for this.

-----Added 11/24/2009 at 02:06:49 EST-----



Pergamum said:


> I just bought the book and am 1/3rd through it - AWESOME!



His arguments are in a sense very simple and basic but maybe all the more devastating for that.

More of this type of material could/should be developed for the popular (non-scholarly/philosophical) market, if it's not "out there" already.


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## T.A.G. (Dec 3, 2009)

I am going to try to finish this book in the next couple of days, and let me say so far it is a really good read. Definitely worth the buy.


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## Peairtach (Dec 3, 2009)

I think Stove's arguments in tackling Darwinism and more specifically "The Origin of Species" and Dawkins' books could be developed by someone like a creationist or ID-er with a knowledge of biology. Stove's book is highly suggestive of further lines of enquiry and argumentation.

Maybe there's other material of this kind out there. It certainly needs to be popularised as widely as possible. 

Also there also needs to be further thought on a Christian approach to the underlying purpose of animals and plants. Clearly it's not all about survival and propagation, although that will be one purpose that is subordinate to their ultimate purpose - to glorify God. Maybe since the Fall, survival and propagation has become more of an underlying imperative in the development of animals and plants?

In this connection how does teleology get into atheistic evolution in the first place when according to the atheistic evolutionists we're living in a universe conditioned by random meaningless chance and irrational determinacy?

The atheistic Darwinist is forced to admit that - according to his own basic presuppositions - his smuggling in of teleology into evolution is a fundamentally erroneous mental construct that he is imposing on individual animals, families of animals, genes or whatever.

If there is no God how can there be a purpose to evolution outside the fevered imagination of Darwinists. Indeed how can there be purpose anywhere, including in the fevered imaginations of Darwinists.


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## T.A.G. (Dec 8, 2009)

Malthus adding morality to the additional war/famine for having reasons for not reproducing according to food supply, is this so big because it shows darwin's whole reason for evolution and where he got it from was recanted? Can you explain it more, and is there any other reason why this is a big deal?

Also with the whole cod having a mortality rate of like 80 plus percent, Darwin kinda took this and explained this for majority of species? But in reality this no way could describe humans or birds etc. What more did Darwin say about this mortality thing and why the mortality part is a big deal?

I usually have a knack for understanding hard written books but for some reason I am having a hard time comprehending it, so if I ask more questions sorry


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## Peairtach (Dec 12, 2009)

Basically Stove demolishes the Darwinist explanation of evolution with a few very simple arguments showing how the claims of Darwin, Huxley, Dawkins and others are false.

Stove, who died a number of years ago, was an atheist and oresumably some kind of evolutionist. He demolishes Darwin and yet does not explain how one could still hold on to some kind of evolutionary theory.

The book seems somewhat straightforward to understand, apart from the point about Stove I mention above. 

If Darwin and co. can make such glaring errors in the claims about the basic planks of their theory and these glaring and easily refutable errors are not noticed by modern biologists, what is left of the theory but a tissue of self-delusion?

I've never read _the Origin _ but this book gives me greater encouragement to get round to reading it.

I think the point of Stove tracing Darwin's view of population to Malthus may be that Darwin gleaned some of his basic views not from nature, nor directly from humanity - which he treated in many of his statements as an integral part of nature - but from the demographer, Malthus - who was dealing with humanity rather than nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

In Essay One, Stove refutes Huxley's contention that human life was once a "continual free fight" between individuals.

In Essay Two, Stove refutes Darwin's contention in the Origin that "Every single organic being around us [including human beings] may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers.''

In Essay Three, Stove refutes Darwin's claim that if a species or population has plenty of room and food it will certainly increase. 

In Essay Four, Stove refutes Malthus and Darwin on the above.

In Essay Five, Stove refutes Darwin's sweeping assertions about the small proportion of individuals that survive in any species.

If more individuals survive in a species survive, this will affect the power and rate of natural selection, in weeding out the weak.

In Essay Six, Stove refutes the selfish theory of altruism.

I'll leave it up to yourself to work the rest out.

Stove does such a hatchet job of Darwin and Darwinism. 

I don't know what kind of theory of evolution he held to as an atheist, but maybe he didn't claim to know how we got here.

I don't know what's difficult to understand. Some of the main planks of Darwin and Dawkins, are rubbish, and can be refuted with almost childishly simple arguments. That's the message I get from Stove's book.

I hope this helps somewhat.


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