Throughout history any unexplained phenomenon has always been given religious significance and therefore must be the work of some magical deity, purely because there was no obvious answer and given the inadequate knowledge of the time.
Science has gradually been able to fill gaps in this knowledge that have become generally acceptable. However they all started off as theories. So many discoveries of the last 150 years would have been considered outrageous. How could you have explained radio waves to Napoleon or nuclear physics or carbon dating to someone that didn't even know they existed ? You would have been considered insane. We now have a theory on evolution that seems to answer nearly all the questions of where we originated and I am quite certain that science will continue to shed more light on the subject than a two thousand year old book written by mostly ignorant peasants through heresay.

To all non-pastafarians who haven't been touched by his His Noodly Appendage.

http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

Could someone, Michael Ruse included, tell me even one single moral principle that can be derived from evolutionary science?

Evolutionary theory, if it does anything, simply tries to describe how things happen to have come about. It tells us nothing and can tell us nothing about how things ought or ought not to be. Evolutionary theory leads only to amorality.

Ruse says that E O Wilson says that we have a "need to keep the evolutionary process moving forward" and this "translates out as a need to promote diversity." Is this supposed to refer to some moral requirement? Would Wilson and Ruse say that someone who deliberately killed all the whales in the world did something wrong?

No, from an evolutionary viewpoint the world is no better or worse off, nor more right or more wrong, for there being whales or there being no whales. Any moral judgments about the virtue of the existence of whales or anything else are made up by people and are not intrinsic to evolutionary science.

very well said, GP. evolution may inspire non-biologists into any manner of tenuous analogy, but that has nothing to do with the science of evolution.

ruse writes:

"Dawkins is today the most popular writer on things evolutionary but this book is a rant against religion, blaming it for all of society’s ills. The moral prescriptions of conservative religion are labelled ridiculous and the teaching of them is labelled “child abuse”. Hence, anyone today who says that evolution is morally neutral is just plain ignorant."

whatever the value of dawkins' arguments on religion, ruse's "hence" is just plain wrong. evolution may be why dawkins started paying attention to religious beliefs, but it has nothing to do with his criticisms of associated moral codes. and this "hence" is at the heart of ruse's tendentious argument

Huh? Evolution has no moral dimension therefor leads to immorality? Yeah That makes sense, GP.

Americans don't believe in evolution because most of them don't believe in science.

Only in America. Let's hope it stays that way.

So why is this article from an American published on an Australian forum?