This article about Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, a key figure in the eugenics movement, manages to avoid mentioning Darwin, even though he was clearly among those Victorians for whom racism was a normal point of view:
And by the standards of today, Galton does resemble a monster. He was a brilliant statistician but also a racist (not just my assessment, but that of Veronica van Heyningen, the current president of the Galton Institute). He was obsessed with human difference, and determined to remove from British society those he considered inferior.
Yet as our critical gaze falls on Galton, are we losing sight of just how popular his idea was among so many Britons? In the early 20th century, a surprisingly broad roster of public figures aligned themselves with Galton’s vision. It attracted people on the left and right, prominent writers and intellectuals, leading scientists and politicians. Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, Julian Huxley, Winston Churchill, Marie Stopes – all held eugenic views. Churchill was vice-president of the first International Eugenics Conference, held in London in 1912. Although there were notable critics, to be a eugenicist was to be firmly in the mainstream.
Angela Saini, “In the twisted story of eugenics, the bad guy is all of us” at The Guardian
Okay. How come in a world where nothing is sacred and the bad guy is all of us, Darwin alone is exempt?
See also: Darwin reader: Darwin’s racism
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>Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, Julian Huxley, Winston Churchill, Marie Stopes…
…Calvin Coolidge, Luther Burbank, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Margaret Sanger,…
Why has Leonard Darwin been written out of history?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26391791
Here is a little more biographical information.
https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/5233e3405c2ec500000000da
It’s possible Darwin was left off this list of people who publically supported eugenics in “early 20th century” because he died in the 1880s and never supported eugenics.
Mimus correctly states that Darwin ‘never supported eugenics.’ And while in his personal life Darwin was not a racist, none-the-less, Darwin understood the implications of his own theory.
In short, Darwin was inconsistent in his thinking.
And while Darwin himself may have held to racial equality, (and held to the equality of all men in general), his theory certainly provides no moral justification and/or foundation for his belief in the equality of all men. As the following article points out, “Evolution is based on difference, not on equality.”
In fact, women were also considered to be biologically and intellectually inferior to men, according to the implications of Darwin’s theory:
In short, Darwin, and anyone else who believes in Darwinism, must ‘borrow’ from Judeo-Christian principles in order to justify their belief in the basic equality of all men and women.
The following article states,
And Darwin’s theory indeed provided a supposed ‘scientific’ basis for much of the unmitigated horror that was visited upon mankind in the 20th century,
Karl Marx was deeply influenced by Darwin:
In fact, Lenin himself even kept a little statue of an ape staring at a human skull on his desk. The ape was sitting on a pile of books which included Darwin’s book, “Origin”.
Stalin likewise, while at ecclesiastical school of all places, was also heavily influenced by Darwinism,
Chairman Mao was also deeply influenced by Darwinian ‘morality’:
Adolph Hitler himself stated,
The unmitigated horror unleashed on the world by Darwinian ‘morality’, i.e. by the direct undermining of the Judeo-Christian worldview, is almost beyond comprehension. Here’s what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:
Even today in America, with its strong Christian heritage, and even though America overcame the Nazi and Communist scourges in Europe, has not escaped unscathed from the devastating effects of “Darwinian morality”.
Moreover, the sad irony of all this is that such devastating “Darwinian morality” is based on misleading, even on fraudulent, ‘science’.
For instance, directly contrary to what was presupposed in Darwin’s theory, it is found that the differences between individuals in a population are far greater than differences between races of populations:
In fact, in what would have been a great surprise to Hitler, (and in keeping with the principle of Genetic Entropy, (J. Sanford http://www.geneticentropy.org/properties ), it is found that Caucasians (as well as the other races) are actually genetically inferior to Africans.
In fact, blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, (contrary to what the Nazis thought), are all the result of a loss of preexisting genetic information (i.e. Genetic Entropy). They are not the result of a gain of new genetic information as the Nazi’s had presupposed in their Darwinian racial ideology:
In fact. directly contrary to Darwinian thought, (and also in keeping with the principle of Genetic Entropy, J. Sanford), it is now found that “Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.”
Also of related note: The infamous I.Q. tests, (i.e. “Bell Curve”), that have shown supposed large differences in the intelligence between races of humans, are all shown to be biased by overlooked environmental factors:
Simply put, cultural influences, i.e. the way the child is brought up to think about the importance of his own education, plays a far more important role in a child’s subsequent intelligence than any supposed genetic differences between races do:
Verse:
Contrast Charles Darwin’s veiw of races:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
– Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
with the Catholic Church’s view of races: the Catholic Church, in the face of the challenge presented by the discovery of the New World, had to decide whether the Aztecs were nothing more than savage animals, or, were indeed human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, and worthy of the sacraments of the Church.
It’s decision was historical: indeed, they were humans (as the Spanish Franciscans–those evil people!, wrote to the Church authorities in Spain) and deserving of Baptism. The correspondence between Mexico and Spain forms the very basis of what we know today as “human rights.”
Quite a contrast, isn’t it? Darwin sees these same Aztec savages as disappearing from the earth, while the Catholic Church saw them as deserving full human rights and dignity. This word, dignity, is perhaps the key word in all of this. Darwinism, with its denial of teleology, and hence God, renders human beings as no more than mere animals—except the British upper crust, and, thus, not worthy of protection or care. It’s a preview, isn’t it, of abortion? And who is it that promotes abortion today? Yes, Planned Parenthood, whose founder, Margaret Sanger, was a convinced eugenicist.
Let’s not forget that William Jennings Bryan’s participation in the Scopes Trial in Tennessee in the mid 1920’s was predicated on only one thing: he was afraid of eugenics and what it would bring. Well, in the abortionist’s view, Bryan lost that trial, and we now see the results. Heaven help us!
This oft quoted comment from Darwin is a prediction, no different than KF’s often repeated prediction about the downfall of civilization. In both cases they are making predictions based on what they have observed. Note than Darwin never said that his predictions were morally acceptable.
But what is disturbing is the accuracy of Darwin’s predictions. Although the “civilized” races have not exterminated the “savage” races, they have certainly exterminated, to a large extent, their cultures and traditional ways of life. And we are still well within his predicted time frame.
Bornagain77@ 4
He saw the way that indigenous peoples were being treated by the so-called more civilized (and Christian) races and extrapolated to former’s possible fate. He was stating a prediction not approval.
Once again, Darwin’s theory was explanatory. It didn’t make any moral judgments at all. That wasn’t its function.
Or “Is racism Christian?”
Sev@10, I have always been deeply disturbed by the use of the term “chosen people” in the bible when referring to the Jewish people. Especially since this was referring to their ancestry, not their religious beliefs. As such, I have always had a difficult time arguing that this is not fundamentally racist in nature.
Bornagain77@ 5
Argumentum ad consequentiam again. At no point did Darwin advocate the sort of horrors perpetrated by the twentieth-century dictatorships.
Besides, Christianity has its fair share of atrocities to account for, such as the Massacre at Ayyadieh during the Third Crusade
And let’s not forget the Great Flood in which God slaughtered almost all human life on Earth (along with countless other animals). He seemed to have no moral qualms about killing on that scale. I wonder how many infants, babies and unborn in the womb were among the dead?
Ed George@ 11
I have to agree. And it looks like some of us still haven’t learned the lesson when we see American evangelical Christians arguing that the military and economic successes of the United States are evidence that God looks favorably upon them and that they are now His chosen people.
Hardly. After all, we elected Trump. 🙂
“Those whom the gods would destroy…”
Ed George:
So what? You are a deeply disturbed person.
You are not smart enough to make that case. 😛
seversky:
If Darwin was right then there weren’t any horrors. It was all just part of life.
You are conflating people with a religion. How small of you.
Objective people would wonder why that happened. Ignorant people just blame God.