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"'The combination of fascism plus fear of evolution leads to the idea that deadly government intervention is necessary and justified for stopping evolution.'

That's a bit of a non-sequitur: if you don't believe in evolution, then you don't believe there's a need to stop it."

You misunderstand, and I apologize for not being clearer. I'm not talking about people who disbelieve that evolution accounts for the material origins of life. I'm talking specifically about people who believe evolution accounts for the origins of biological life and for mankind, but who believe that evolution itself is evil. See my previous posts on this thread about Dawkins. Also see Dawkins comments in the article. Also search for his various interviews over the past 16 years or so. Also check out _The Extended Phenotype_. Also see Peter Singer's writing on ethics. There are people who believe in evolution, believe it is evil because of the way in which, in their beliefs, it is related to pain. They aim to use government to stop it. That will get very ugly if it is allowed to happen.

"I've already mentioned what happens when a fascist discovers christianity: he decides that heretics should be burned for their own good. That would probably include evolutionists, but they'd have to get in line with the wiccans, queers, low-church Anglicans..."

Philosopher-king systems, fascist or socialist or whatnot, will always tend to do this. The problem is having all the power of a society (especially a modern, technological society) in the hands of a few. With that structure, there is no safety mechanism against a handful of people getting into the top positions and killing millions, or enslaving millions, or literally destroying life on earth, or any number of other extremely evil things.

"'It is crazy to think that in an industrialized modern society, with all the wealth that creates, that you gain much anything by killing weak people instead of letting their relatives provide them with basic food, clothing, and shelter.'

I think even arguing that point means you're playing by the madman's rules. Feeding your sick parents isn't about whether it's cheaper to whack 'em--sometimes, it is. You feed them anyway."

Yes of course, but that wasn't my point. Your comment here is the non-sequitur.

First, my point (as should have been clear from context) was that if you are talking about people designing social systems, and they claim to be designing them with goal X, and instead they are pushing for things with no serious relation to goal X, suspect that they are actually working toward some other goal, goal Y. (In my previous post, the X is "evolution" and Y eventually proposed as being "power to kill those they envy".)

Second, yes of course you feed your sick parents, and yes of course that is good in essentially all circumstances (what if there is famine and you must chose between feeding your one sick parent and your hungry child?), but I think it is worthwhile to investigate why this is. I do not, unlike C.S. Lewis and other Christian thinkers, believe that by thinking about the source of the fact beyond "God says so" I am opening the door to evil. Of course being reckless and attempting to change things in this area is going to leave to evil. Trying to understand it is not the same, much as it might help bolster your belief system if it were the same.

My suspicion is that it has to do with game theory and social relationships (look up the work of John Maynard Smith, the work of E.O. Wilson, especially _Sociobiology_, and look up "evolutionary psychology"), but "vertically" through time, and in a context of cooperation for individuals' interests rather than for genetic interest. This may or may not be correct. At any rate, we know that, excepting extremely unusual circumstances (really - what do you do if there is a famine, and you get your hands on just enough food to ensure that either your kids or your parents, but not both, survive the famine? I'm not saying this because I'm interested in starving parents, I'm saying it because I don't think that anyone would apply your rule as absolute in all circumstances), it is of course good to feed your sick parents (leaving aside the admonishing of certain personages that parents are to be left in order to enable oneself to live carefree and untethered as a sparrow). To imply that thinking about the "why" of this is going to lead to people starving their sick parents (as you seem to do, and as other Christian thinkers I am aware of do) is really just going to lead, instead, to those who are a tiny bit more intellectually honest and investigative--the people who bother to put out arguments on these issues beyond "God says so," (like, really, many leftists in many philosophy departments)--convincing more educated people of their position than yours, and thus setting the ideological course of the society, for better or worse for the human beings in it.

You might be happy with that. I'm not; I don't think building walls in one's mind out of fear ever leads to much good in the long term, for oneself personally or for the world around oneself and the other people in it. As far as the matter of God's will, insofar as that is a concern, I am a deist, and I expect it to work in terms of discernible law, not in terms of mystical fiat. That seems to be how he has authored the rest of the world, so I will, until I see evidence to the contrary, assume it is probably how he authored the goodness of feeding one's sick parents.

"Eugenic Marxist Luddites love Emerald Nuts" placemark

Thanks for the clarification. On one point:

First, my point (as should have been clear from context) was that if you are talking about people designing social systems, and they claim to be designing them with goal X, and instead they are pushing for things with no serious relation to goal X, suspect that they are actually working toward some other goal, goal Y. (In my previous post, the X is "evolution" and Y eventually proposed as being "power to kill those they envy".)

...I would once again dodge the entire question by pointing out that "designing social systems" is essentially an authoritarian exercise, and anyone who tries to do it is already the enemy--his precise goals are irrelevant.