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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
Oh, when you say "Darwinism" you're referring to Leonard Darwin. I misunderstood.

Let's see what Charles Darwin had to say:

"We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws;"

"Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind."

654 posted on 01/29/2009 5:04:25 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
Let's see what Charles Darwin had to say:

Thank you for making the dishonesty of your presentation so apparent. Darwin often used the literary device of posing the kinds of statements critics of his theory might make, and then answering them. Anti-evolutionists are fond of quoting just the initial statements to imply that he had no answer. So let's see what he really had to say:

We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

That makes it clear that Darwin held pretty much the opposite views of what you're trying to ascribe to him.
664 posted on 01/29/2009 5:29:54 PM PST by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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