re: “Blaming Darwin for the Nazis is like blaming Newton for the communists - the Utopian principles of engineering a perfect society can be vaguely traced right back to Newton’s vision of a clockwork, mechanistic universe. Same with Einstein and moral relativism. All are silly arguments.”
I’m not blaming Darwin for the Nazi’s. But, you say the natural world doesn’t involve value judgements and, I’m assuming, that you believe the naturalistic, evolutionary view of the universe is the accurate one - that there are natural explanations for the existence of the universe and no God is needed as an explanation.
I’m also assuming that the Darwinian view that all organisms are the result of random mutation and thousands of transitional forms that had no outside influence (i.e. “intelligent design”) on how these organisms became what they became. I’m also assuming that you believe the Darwinian view that all organisms, including human beings, carry no inherent “value” beyond the fact that they exist. Organisms are just different in some ways, but regarding human beings, they are just another form of animal life.
Please explain why the Nazis or other eugenics advocates are “wrong” to treat human beings with any more respect that any other animal? Explain why experimenting on human beings, from embryo to full grown adulthood, is any less moral that experiment with fungi or plant life or any other animal life?
Whether you want to admit it or not, Darwinian ideas have moral consequences beyond just mere explanation for the universe.
If it really is true that the universe just is, that matter and energy just always existed, or appeared from nothing, and all that exists in the universe are simply evolutionary “flukes” of physical and evolutionary “laws”, if morality is simply that which promotes the survival of organisms, then why is it wrong to manipulate or experiment with ALL animal life (the human animal included)? Why are the eugenics advocates wrong to make a “scientific” judgement to rid “useless” organisms from society? Why is that wrong, immoral, or a “silly” argument?
You say that Newton’s vision of a “clockwork” mechanistic universe could be just as valid an “argument” for the communist idea of a utopian society as Darwin for nazi eugenics. The problem with your analogy is that Newton’s ideas did not imply a “Godless” universe, in fact it implied the opposite.
The Darwinian view of the how the universe came to be implies a naturalistic, purposeless, undirected, random, always changing universe with all the implications that that idea comes with - no “God”, no transcendent values/morality - the universe just is. In fact, there could just as easily been no universe. The fact that the universe does exist is, well, a big mystery.
“The Darwinian view of the how the universe came to be”
There is no “Darwinian view of the creation of the universe”.
Darwin didn’t talk about the origins of life only how it develops and adapts while here. Your questions about the Nazis have no bearing at all on discussions of how the Darwinian model explains biological adaptation. It’s two seperate discussions. And, as mentioned above, Darwin doesn’t presuppose the absence of God.