Posted on 06/13/2007 11:59:38 AM PDT by LUMary
Eugenic Darwinism by: Wendy Cook, June 04, 2007
Charles Darwin is partly to blame for eugenics, according to Discovery Institute senior fellow John West. Merriam-Webster’s defines eugenics as “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.”
Darwin said that because of our sense of compassion we couldn’t simply follow the dictates of reason and get rid of the unfit, “but he certainly provided the logical basis for why we should do so and later the eugenicists quoted this passage and they weren’t quoting it out of context, because in The Descent of Man Darwin really did argue that our progress as humans is dependent on a struggle for survival and that we were really impeding human progress by trying to undercut that struggle for survival,” Dr. West explained to an audience at the Family Research Council recently.
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health,” Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man. “We civilized 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; 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,” Darwin wrote. “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 any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”
Darwin was not alone in his conception of a “supreme” or “perfected” human:
• Harvard Biologist Edward East felt nature eliminates the unfit but we are very capable of getting rid of “fools.”
• Charles Davenport, head of the Biological Research lab in Cold Spring Harbor and the Eugenics Record Office, thought man was nothing less then an animal: “Man is an animal and the laws of improvement of corn and of racehorses hold to true for him also.”
• Alexander Graham Bell thought that “The laws of heredity which apply to animals also apply to man, therefore the breeder of animals is fitted to guide public opinion on questions relating to human heredity.”
“Dressed up in quasi-religious terms, eugenicists promised to create a utopia through the magic of human breeding,” said Dr. West. “One eugenicist was even quoted saying, ‘The Garden of Eden is not in the past, it’s in the future.’”
Connecticut enacted the first marriage law in 1896 and by 1914 more than half of the states also imposed them, Dr. West noted. These laws were a way of regulating who can marry, to make sure “inferior” people were not breeding, he claimed.
One target of the eugenicists was American Immigration law. “They thought America was being overrun with biological defectives primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe—they weren’t [as] ‘biologically helpful’ as Nordic stock,” said Dr. West.
Immigration quotas were set so that only a certain number of people were allowed to come to the U.S. from certain countries. These laws were extremely harmful during the 1920’s when the Nazi’s were moving into countries such as Poland and starting concentration camps.
Poles, then, could not come to America because the quota on Polish immigrants was reached, while Norwegians, for example, still had plenty of open spots under U. S. restrictions. Nonetheless, beyond marriage laws and immigration rules, eugenicists were concerned with the “defectives” already in America.
Indiana enacted the first forced sterilization law in 1907 and, by the 1930s, 30 states had similar statutes on their books. Some of these states still have the law in place today, but not enforced.
Eugenicists promoted this policy as the answer to the looming welfare crisis. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, felt very strongly that sterilization was the answer to all sorts of problems.
“In 1923 over 9 billions of dollars were spent on state and federal charities for the care and maintenance and perpetuation of these undesirables, year by year their numbers are mounting and year by year their costs are increasing,” she said at Vassar in 1926. “The American public is taxed, heavily taxed to maintain an increasing race of morons, which threatens the very foundations of our civilization.”
“Our eyes should be opened to the terrific cost to the community of this dead weight of human waste.”
“The revolution of the Nazi Germany experience is what really killed off forced sterilization more than anything else,” said Dr. West. Some of their extermination and sterilization laws were modeled after American laws; only they did things much more rigorously, sterilizing hundreds of thousands of people just within a few years before they started killing them.
During Dr. West’s presentation he showed some of the German propaganda used to promote eugenics to its citizens, one of which had a bunch of flags on it (the American flag was located top center) to show “this is what the world is doing.” According to Dr. West, eugenics may not be explicitly happening but you can find the idea of it still implicit in other ideas hidden by new verbiage.
“If you were a eugenicist post-World War II you had a problem, because eugenics was a bad word,” said Dr. West. “But if you believed in it, you didn’t just go away.”
He believes eugenics has sort of morphed into other areas today such as, “freedom of choice” on abortion. This is evident from writings of pro-eugenicists who thought renaming it freedom of choice in parenting was a way to keep the idea alive but avoid the controversy, Dr. West argues.
If you would like to comment on this article, please e-mail mal.kline@academia.org
And again my answer is the same. It doesn’t MATTER if it’s natural or not. Because there’s no possible way we can know now which traits held by which groups of humanity are good and deserve to be perpetuated any attempt to steer our own evolution is doomed to failure.
If you’re trying to clue me in on something you should start by reading what I wrote and ONLY what I wrote and not iserting other things into it that I’m not saying.
There’s nothing to get, you’re trying to assign to me a position I did not take, have never taken, and will never take. I will not defend a position that is not mine, and you’re repeated attempts to say I’m saying something I’m not shows YOU’RE the one that needs to get it. I haven’t waffled on anything, I am following my own reasoning, and I am defending it meaningfully. What I’m not doing is following your deliberate misinterpretation of my position and defending the strawman you have erected on my behalf.
I’m glad it’s frustrating you. People that try to assign people positions they didn’t take and whine when they won’t defend them deserve to be frustrated.
“The problem you’re having is that you’re trying to assign morality to a scientific theory. Scientific theories aren’t about morality, their (they are) about understanding what happens.”
“There’s no morality in the theory of gravity, there’s no morality in the thermodynamic laws, they’re just attempts to describe how things work. And there never has been, nor ever will be, room for crediting God in scientific theories. God is, scientifically speaking, a fuzzy concept without definable aspects or actions, scientific theories are about definable things with definable aspects doing definable things.”
I think the problem you are having is that you are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand you want to say that eugenics is “immoral”, “racist”, etc. and a perversion of Darwinian theory. Yet, on the other hand you keep saying that “scientific theory” is outside the realm of morality. It is, as you say, about “understanding what happens”.
But, I’m kind of confused by some of your previous statments. When I described naturalistic evolution as the idea that the universe came about by purely naturalistic process that was purposeless, mindless, random chance, and unguided - you stated,
“It (the universe) doesn’t exist by random chance, it
exists by a process of constant improvement as species
make themselves more fit for their environment.”
So, are you saying that although the evolutionary process does not work by random chance, are you also saying that this process has purpose and is “guided” somehow?
The answer to the question is the whole point of my taking issue with the statment that Darwinian theory cannot be blamed for eugenics any more than Jesus being blamed for atrocities committed in his name.
Does Darwinian theory teach that the mechanism or process of natural selection is “designed” or not? If not, then how the universe came to be is by pure chance, and without purpose (other than survival). Should someone want to, based on this Darwinian worldview, they could, without any logical contradiction, by default, rule out the existence of God or moral absolutes - since the idea of God or a creator is outside of science.
The proponent of eugenics would agree that science and scientific theory has nothing to do with morality and that if a purposeless, naturalistic process could maniuplate human development - then why could we not also, through the “scientific” process - use experimentation and obsevation to produce “better” human beings. I think they would accuse you of imposing your own version of morality on their scientific freedom.
I do agree with you that morality is not involved in the idea of gravity or the law of thermodynamics. That’s because their existence really does have no bearing on the existence of God. However Darwinism does have a definite bearing on morality. It very obviously can and does allow for the removal of God (and by inference - all moral absolutes). I would agree that it doesn’t have to imply that, but it certainly allows for it philosophically.
Again, I’m not advocating eugenics in any way, I’m just demonstrating how Darwinian theory opens itself up to this type of eugenic logic when it removes the designer (creator) from the process of scientific inquiry. Darwinism, by definition, removes any possibility of supernatural influence in the design of the universe. Therefore, it leaves open the door to all kinds of moral interpretations and actions.
Jesus, on the other hand, in none of His teachings, could ever remotely be used as justification for atrocities committed in his name.
You must be friggin joking. Darwin was a eugenist through-and-through.
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. 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; 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 civilised 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 any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. [Darwin, Descent of Man, Ch.5]
People can take scientific knowledge and use it for good or ill, just because people use it for ill doesn’t mean the science is bad. How much of Nazi Germany would have been impossible had the internal combustion and hero engines never been invented? Does that mean the science that led to these inventions is bad?
Problem here is you’re creating a false dichotomy between random chance and intelligent guiding force. It’s not an either/or proposition. Most seemingly random things aren’t actually random, they’re guided by knowable properties of the physical world. Take rain water on a window, it rolls down taking certain paths, clumps up in areas, some of it never rolls down but instead stays there until it evaporates, the whole process seems very random. But it isn’t, your window has certain physical properties that include imperfection in the surface, water has certain properties including surface tension, these two things combine to decide which water droplets will roll down and what path they’ll take. They are guided, but not by some intelligent force (I’m guess God has better things to do with His time than mess with the water droplets on every window during rain), but by knowable physical properties. If you take the time to study these physical properties and their interaction you can look at your window during a rainstorm and figure out which droplets will fall and their path, of course by the time you’re done with the math it will all be over, but you could at least check your results.
Darwinian theory teaches that the process of natural selection is there and measurable, and if we learn enough about it will be predictable. Designed or not is immaterial, that’s outside the realm of science. And no someone using the Darwinian theory could not rule out the existence of God or moral absolutes, because it is outside the realm of science. Part of a logical process is keeping things inside their own realm, once you hop outside that realm you’re committing logical fallacies.
The problem with eugenicists trying to make better human beings is we don’t know what’s better. We have used natural selection, even before Darwin, to improve species, servitor species mostly live stock. But in those circumstances we knew what better was. We wanted cows that made more milk, because cows primarily exist to serve us cows that made more milk were inherrently better, so we bread them more vigorously and got the modern dairy cows. Now in the wild we have no idea if cows that make more milk are better, the situation in the wild has too many variables, we don’t know what other side effect producing more milk has and how that interacts with the variables outside of farms, but cows basically don’t exist in the wild so it doesn’t matter. Human on the other hand do exist in the wild, there are too many variables, we simply aren’t smart enough to declare what’s better.
But again, Jesus’ teaching, with serious editing, HAVE been used to commit atrocities. A lot more atrocities than Darwin, though that’s largely owing to him having a 1850 year head start.
Of course part of the discussion is taking teaching in whole. So we need to keep in mind that later he said “nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature... we must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.”
Is the capacity to practice eugenics an evolved trait?
Strictly speaking that would be a yes. Somewhere along the lines we evolved to the point of having enough intelligence to figure out selective breeding, even before Darwin put labels to it all we were practicing forms of selective breeding with livestock and even ourselves (Sparta and others). The problem comes in at scale, both in width and length. Spartan breeding habits wouldn’t really work across the bredth of humanity, they weren’t that good at breeding anything but fighters. And of course for the problems inherent with long term selective breeding just look at what’s been happening to purebred dogs the last couple of decades, and if I wanted to I could throw in a dig on the British royal family here too but I won’t ;) So we really do have to consider whether or not we’ve really developed the ability to perform eugenics yet, I don’t think we’re there yet when it comes to dealing with non-humans and I’m not sure we’ll ever develop the ability with humans. Which is probably a good thing, life is more interesting with imperfect people.
[Darwinism] very obviously can and does allow for the removal of God.
Nonsense! Darwinism is not remotely sufficient to allow for the removal of God (albeit many have viewed it as such).
Lets be a little more precise. We both know we have the ability. You are addressing our level of competance.
But why should a lack of competance mean we should avoid exploiting this ability? Maybe we will all die if we don't. But maybe we will all die if we do. As you said we don't have the ability yet to decide which traits are good and which are bad.
There are some things in this world that if you can’t do them right they shouldn’t be done, especially not in a large scale. If you can’t build small dams compitently then you shouldn’t build the Hoover Dam, if you can’t build a five story building compitently you shouldn’t build the Empire State Building, and if you can’t breed German Shepherds compitenty you definetly shouldn’t try focused breeding on the whole human race. And the other side of trying to control evolution is that we know there’s already a natural system in place that can do it. With 6 billion people on the planet and growing we can be pretty sure we’re not aiming down a natural path towards extinction (unless we find a way to outbreed our food but that’s still a ways off inspite of what Toffler said), there’s no reason to try to guide our development when unguided development is going fine. The normal forces of natural selection have proven to be more than effective is sorting out the good traits and bad, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, especially if you’re just guessing at what the fix is.
It doesn't matter. Eugenics, fundamentally, is no different than predation. The fact that we are aware of our role within the system, and the Tiger is not, is irrelevant form the perspective of evolution.
Do we actually have a choice not to follow natural selection? How could we, when everything we ever thought or did, or will think or will do is just part of the process?
Have not the normal forces of natural selection created eugenics itself, as well as all human endeavors throughout all history? Have they not created music and art? Have they not created the horror of the worst human atrocities? Are not the occasional acts of pure heroic selflessness? Are not the most senseless acts of cruelty? The best as well as the worst -- and the scale upon which we judge the difference?
If you believe that "hard reason" is "urging" you to let the weak, imbecile, the maimed, and the sick die of smallpox or whatever, then you are a eugenist.
This is true. Eugenics is just another kind of selection. If, by eugenics, you cannot eliminate poverty, prostitution, chronic unemployment, imbecility, etc, and promote morality, skill, intelligence, etc, then neither can natural selection. Furthermore if adaptations arose by natural selection then they can be eliminated by artificial selection. But of course this is a delusion because both Darwinism and eugenics rely on a false model of heredity. Eugenics does not work, and therefore neither does natural selection.
In this case the science is simply bad. Here's an example of bad science (eugenics) built on a foundation of bad science (Darwinism). It comes from the chapter on biology from An outline for Boys and Girls. It was written by John R. Baker, who was a noted Oxford cytologist and author of Race, Foundation for Human Understanding. I don't think you can accuse this guy of misunderstanding Darwinism.
EUGENICS
All the hundreds of thousands of kinds of animals have evolved from very simple forms of life, and presumably from inorganic matter originally, without the existence of any mind to plan them. Mind itself is one of the products of evolution, and now at last one kind of living thing only has got the ability to control and plan the course of evolution. That one kind of living thing is the human kind. For centuries men have selected certain types of domestic animals for breeding, and have thus created all the variety of horses and cattle and sheep and pigs and dogs that exist to-day. They have improved all these animals for the purposes for which they require them, but they have not improved themselves. There is no reason at all to suppose that the inborn mental capacity of man has increased since prehistoric times.
When men were just evolving from ape-like ancestors, they evolved because the best individuals survived and had young ones, whilst the worst died oft and had none. That does not happen in civilisation. With us the weakly are looked after by the strong. If the weakliness is an inherited character, it is unfortunate that the people who have it should have children, because they will pass it on, generation after generation. On the average, the most successful people have the fewest children in most civilised countries to-day, and the least successful the most. It is possible nowadays for ordinary people to arrange whether they will have many or few children, or none at all. It would certainly be better if the most successful people had most children, because success in life is partly due to inherited qualities. Many people with excellent inherited qualities never get an opportunity to show them, from lack of a sufficiently good education. If we wanted to improve our race, we should give everyone an equal chance in life as far as possible. We should then encourage the most successful to have a lot of children. Many people are what is called feeble-minded. Their brain never develops beyond that of a child of six. Often this is a character which is inherited in the same way as blue eyes. If two such feeble-minded people marry, all their children will be feeble-minded. If a feeble-minded person marries a normal person, the children will be normal, but some of their descendants will be feeble-minded. It would be a good plan to prevent people who have inherited feeble-mindedness from having children, because feeble-minded people are not happy themselves, and they are not useful to other people, and they cost other people a lot of money. Unfortunately, they are increasing rapidly in numbers in Great Britain. Before long they will form quite a large proportion of our population, unless we decide not to allow them to have children. Members of Parliament, who decide these things, think it best to let them go on multiplying. When they were young, Members of Parliament did not have An Outline for Boys and Girls.
IIRC, G.K. Chesterton described this whole development of history as an uprising of the rich against the poor.
Yes actually, that’s what eugenics is, not following natural selection. Natural selection says let the people, all the people, regardless of their flaws, breed as they are able. Eugenics is third parties deciding certain groups don’t get to breed.
It might be a “naturaql” thing, again just like I said to the other guy I’m not taking a position on whether eugenics is natural or not, but it is NOT natural selection because that doesn’t involve 3rd party delcarations, and most importantly it is NOT a good idea. The problem with eugenics is that it’s ego driven, it’s always group A declaring they’re better than everybody else but most especially group B and subsequently group B shouldn’t be allowed to breed and group A should be encouraged to breed more. The day I see group A declared that group B is better than everybody else and should be encouraged to breed more I’ll be willing to consider the possibility that human have maybe gotten close to being smart enough to pull off eugenics without it resulting in the destruction of mankind. Prior to that day there is no possibility, eugenics is ALWAYS a mistake because it is ALWAYS spawned from racist roots and not from any kind of logical analysis of what traits are superior.
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