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To: Tailgunner Joe
Associating evolution with eugenics. Hummm.

Kind of like associating Christians with Jim Jones.

7 posted on 09/29/2005 2:39:28 PM PDT by narby
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To: narby
The standard story runs something like this (if we might be afforded the literary luxury of slight caricature): In his famous Origin of Species, Darwin presented a purely scientific theory applicable only to the realm of biology, a theory that was immediately accepted by all men of good will and functioning intellect. Unhappily, a little before World War II, intellectually low-caliber types in Germany—different intellectually low-caliber types than those who rejected Darwinism—hijacked Darwin’s pure science for their own morally malformed projects. As opposed to Darwin himself, these Nazi thugs applied the notion of survival of the fittest to human beings, and thereby illicitly co-opted Darwinism to serve their malicious eugenic urges.

In 1871, after others had publicly drawn out the implications of evolutionary theory for human beings, Darwin published his Descent of Man. If we just read the Origin we can believe the standard story. If we read the Descent, it is all too clear that Darwin reconceived ethics on the basis of survival of the fittest, and that the unfit individuals and races were evolutionary dross and should be left behind for the good and purity of the human species. The Descent is full of the most startling eugenic and racist quotes, softened at times by Darwin’s illogical appeal to sympathy. ...From the first appearance in German of Darwin’s Origin of Species, the intellectual elite understood quite clearly the eugenic and racial implications. ...Darwinism as applied to the moral sphere was a movement not of brown-shirt thugs, but of the intellectual upper class—the top medical doctors, chemists, economists, botanists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, ethnologists, jurists, and even geographers in Germany’s best universities. The call for eugenic elimination of the unfit and for war as a means of evolutionary purification did not ring from the beer halls but from the halls of academe.

And so, against the standard story, in which ignorant Nazi eugenicists and racists had illicitly borrowed from Darwin,...“Nazi barbarism was motivated by an ethic that prided itself on being scientific.” Given the acceptance of evolution as an established fact in biology, the German intelligentsia drew the logical consequences: a new ethic, with a new definition of good and evil.

The evolutionary process became the arbiter of all morality. Whatever promoted the evolutionary progress of humanity was deemed good, and whatever hindered biological improvement was considered morally bad. Multitudes must perish in this Malthusian struggle anyway, they reasoned, so why not improve humanity by speeding up the destruction of the disabled and the inferior races? According to this logic, the extermination of individuals and races deemed inferior and “unfit” was not only morally justified, but indeed, morally praiseworthy. Thus Hitler—and many other Germans—perpetuated one of the most evil programs the world has every witnessed under the delusion that Darwinism could help us discover how to make the world better. - LINK

18 posted on 09/29/2005 3:03:35 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe (Millions for defense but not one penny for tribute!)
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To: narby
You missed my point completely about Jim Jones.

Evolution is a scientific theory. That's it. Like a gun, evolution doesn't kill people, people kill people.

Your associating evolution with eugenics is an irrelevant slander equivalent to associating Christians with Jim Jones.

There *are* people who's first thought after hearing the word "Christian" is Jim Jones, and David Koresh, and "the inquisition". Just because you associate eugenics with Darwin is as irrelevant as those people who think evil about Christianity.

You are both wrong.

44 posted on 09/29/2005 3:53:43 PM PDT by narby
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