Darwinian fairytales : selfish genes, errors of heredity, and other fables of evolution

whatever Your Opinion Of ‘intelligent Design,’ You’ll Find Stove’s Criticism Of What He Calls ‘darwinism’ Difficult To Stop Reading. Stove’s Blistering Attack On Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish Genes’ And ‘memes’ Is Unparalleled And Unrelenting. A Discussion Of Spiders Who Mimic Bird Droppings Is Alone Worth The Price Of The Book. Darwinian Fairytales Should Be Read And Pondered By Anyone Interested In Sociobiology, The Origin Of Altruism, And The Awesome Process Of Evolution. --martin Gardner, Author Of Did Adam And Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience "A Ridiculous Slander on Human Beings." That is what the philosopher David Stove concludes in his hilarious and razor-sharp inquiry into Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. But wait! Stove is no "creationist." He is not a proponent of "intelligent design." He is a man of "no religion," a theological skeptic who admits Darwin's "great genius" and acknowledges that the theory of natural selection is the most successful biological theory in history. But Stove also thinks that Darwinism is one of the most overblown of contemporary scientific dogmas. In Darwinian Fairytales, he provides a penetrating inventory of what the "unbelievable claims" of Darwinism, from its classic formulation in the nineteenth century through contemporary variations of neo-Darwinians such as E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins. Every organism has as many descendants as it can. That's what Darwinian Theory holds. But do you know anyone who has a many descendants as he could? In every species, child mortality - that is, the proportion of live births which die before reproductive age - is extremely high. How many friends do you know who have children? How many have died? The more privileged people are the more prolific: if one class in a society is less than another to the misery due to food-shortage, disease, and war, then the members of the more fortunate class will have (on average) more children than the members of the other class. Which comes closer to the truth, this Darwinian chestnut or the old song "The rich get richer and the poor get children"? Any variations in the least degree injurious to their possessors in the struggle for life will be rigidly destroyed by the process of natural selection. Start with the letter "A": Abortion, fondness for Alcohol, Altruism. Are any of these "variations" being "rigidly destroyed"? Darwinian Fairytales is a must-read book for people who want to get behind the doctrinaire can't that characterize both sides in the debate over Darwinism. It is the one book to read if you want to understand the issues behind the most hotly debated scientific controversy of our time. -- from back cover Contents......Page 5 Acknowledgements......Page 6 Preface......Page 7 Essay I Darwinism's Dilemma......Page 9 Essay II Where Darwin First Went Wrong About Man......Page 21 Essay III 'But What About War, Pestilence, and All That?' ......Page 39 Essay IV Population, Privilege, and Malthus' Retreat......Page 47 Essay V A Horse in the Bathroom or The Struggle for Life......Page 61 Essay VI Tax and the Selfish Girl or Does 'Altruism' Need Inverted Commas?......Page 87 Essay VII Genetic Calvinism or Demons and Dawkins......Page 126 Essay VIII 'He Ain't Heavy, He's my Brother' or Altruism and Shared Genes......Page 145 Essay IX A New Religion......Page 179 Essay X Paley's Revenge or Purpose Regained......Page 186 Essay XI Errors of Heredity or The Irrelevance of Darwinism to Human Life......Page 220 Arguing that the evolutionist's view of human life, in particular, is as much an offence to logic as it is to common decency, this study attacks Darwin's theory since it arguably postulated a relentless struggle for life in all species.