Nature is, as Tennyson lamented, red in tooth and claw, but Darwinism turned death and bloodshed into a virtue. It is evolution’s natural selection that makes way for the more fit by killing off the less fit. Natural selection did not, indeed it cannot, induce better mutations. But when by chance they luckily arise, then they propagate at the cost of the lesser designs. Spencer’s phrase “the survival of the fittest,” which Darwin adopted, is more optimistic sounding but no less telling. With evolution, death is the engine of progress. Or as Matt Ridley explained today, … Read more