I beleive that certain people who have some fundamental misunderstandings of evolution attempt to apply it as a form of social engineering - or rather use it as an excuse for a 100% Laissez Faire society - but I really don't agree with that practice though I feel its inhumane. Ironically the people that support this kind of viewpoint are invariable theistic (and mostly christians).
Perhaps ironically it works very well in science though - hypothesis and theories that don't meet the stringent requirements of the scientific method and peer review eventually die out to replaced by those that fits the facts more closely.
Do you think so? It was the church that opposed the forced sterilisation of the genetically inferior in the 1930s and it was the rational scientists that endorsed it.
The Stalinists and Nazis who were scientifically creating a Godless and "master race" society respectively, were no Christians either; a cursory look at their pamphlets or a trip to the nearest Holocaust museum will prove that.
What I find incredible is that so many people who defend Darwin (and I am not referring to his Origin of Species) appear to overlook that he said things like:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races will almost certainly exterminate, replace, the savage races throughout the world…the break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian (aborigine) and the gorilla.”-Descent of Man
The Descent of Man
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.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.
The Descent of Man
The man was clearly a racist himself or a white supremacist at the least and its no coincidence that people like Thomas Huxley (Darwins bulldog) also held similar views:
“It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smallerjawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest.”
Emancipation-Black and White
I think its dishonest to deny that Darwin and his ilk legitimised racism and eugenics as a scientific paradigm.
