Posted on 03/18/2009 9:55:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Darwin and eugenics
Darwin was indeed a ‘Social Darwinist’
by Bill Muehlenberg
Poor old Darwin. So misunderstood by his followers. He was actually a nice old chap with fairly tame ideas, but his extremist disciples took his thoughts a bit too far. At least that is the spin being put out by many Darwinists and atheists today.
While more sober minds see a clear line between Darwin’s ideas and many of the horrible social experiments of the twentieth century, including Nazism, defenders of Darwin argue that at best there is no connection, or at worst any such episodes are aberrations or perversions of what Darwin believed.
But is that the case? Most people are not even aware of the full title of his 1859 masterwork: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. That last half of the title, often overlooked, sounds like it could come straight out of a Ku Klux Klan manual.
A very interesting article appeared lately in the decidedly liberal religious journal Commonweal, taking on this notion of the ‘gentle Darwin’.1 The anti-creationist Peter Quinn argues in that Darwin was not quite so squeaky clean when it comes to dangerous social implications of his theory.
Quinn argues that Darwin’s biological theory had very real ramifications for social theory. Says Quinn...
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Ping!
Book of Numbers chapter 5
1 The LORD said to Moses:
2 “Order the Israelites to expel from camp every leper, and everyone suffering from a discharge, and everyone who has become unclean by contact with a corpse.
3 Male and female alike, you shall compel them to go out of the camp; they are not to defile the camp in which I dwell.”
4 The Israelites obeyed the command that the LORD had given Moses; they expelled them from the camp.
You know we burned complete towns from time to time to thwart disease.
The author is either too ignorant to understand the meaning of Darwin's title, or he counts on his audience to be too ignorant to catch his lie.
“Races” in Darwin's subtitle of “On the Origin of Species” refers to genetic variations, not people of different skin color.
The author is an ignorant jackanape who is evidently writing for a target audience that is even more ignorant.
Why is it folks want to quote Darwin when they think there’s some “Gotcha!”, but otherwise think everything he says is wrong? By the way, Commonweal isn’t “decidedly liberal”, it is the oldest Catholic lay journal in the US and the writings within it represent a range of views.
I really cannot see how a true Darwinist could not be a Social Darwinist.
It would be nice if people who criticize Darwin would actually pick up and read On the Origin of Species sometime. It would make them sound less ignorant.
The problem with that is that they might learn something that will challenge their constricted (and restricted) thinking.
That’s simple, evolution is a natural force, social darwinism is not. Once you start tweaking with things to emphasis what you think is best you run into the problem of what if you’re wrong. Just look at the problems pure breed dogs have, any kind of social darwinism runs the risk of doing to humanity what we’ve done to the dogs. The smart “Darwinist” (which of course doesn’t exist but that’s a different discussion) know that the best way to improve the species is to allow evolution to run it’s course without screwing with it.
==“Races” in Darwin’s subtitle of “On the Origin of Species” refers to genetic variations, not people of different skin color.
I hate to break this to you, but Darwin knew nothing of genetics. Indeed, the Darwinists rejected Mendelian genetics for decades before “rediscovering” the same at the turn of the 20th century.
“Races” in Darwin’s subtitle didn’t refers to different variations within a species, not people of different skin color.
Your author is a charlatan writing for the ignorant, and is either a deliberate liar, or just as ignorant as his target audience.
Ahem...
“Races” in Darwin’s subtitle refers to different variations within a species, not people of different skin color.
Your author is a charlatan writing for the ignorant, and is either a deliberate liar, or just as ignorant as his target audience.
...that resulted in an academic paradigm shift of such magnitude it touches virtually every aspect of modern science and our lives. Nice work, if you can get it. Given that you like quoting Darwin so much, let's hear what he has to say, “The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.”
You are actually defending Darwin?? His racism and sexism (he considered women terribly inferior to men, reasoning that natural selection did not operate on them as effectively) is well established. He considered blacks and other aboriginal people to be far inferior to his own race, even to the point of suggesting they were closer to apes then to 'real' men. You are in a losing battle if you want us to dredge up this ugly history.
Spend a little time reading Darwin yourself, or just google the topic and you will quickly find yourself in an untenable position.
A collection of racist quotes of Darwin.
I really cannot see how a true Darwinist could not be a Social Darwinist.
________
At least you take responsibility for your own failure to understand. I applaud that.
And Darwin need not be above personal reproach to have formulated a useful and predictive theory.
The guy who discovered the source of Mad Cow disease was a pedophile. Should scientists discount his data due to the fact that the man himself was a slimy reprobate?
In “the Voyage of the Beagle” Darwin recounted the story of an African slave who killed herself and her child rather than falling again into slavery. The teller of this sad tale said it was just ‘brute animal obstinacy’ on her part; but Darwin stated that if the woman were white rather than black she might have been favorably compared to a Roman matron of old, fiercely defending her and her child's freedom.
This is another piece of empty propaganda that evolutionists love to keep telling themselves. Real science is based on testable hypotheses (which historical models are not, by definition). Even if Darwinism were a working model of origins it would be _irrelevant_ to real science and technological application. This is just another pointless emotional claim that substitutes for actual apologetics. Those of us working as engineers and scientists have no use for Darwinism, none at all.
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