Re: Social Darwinism; was: So Long Judge Moore, We'll Miss You

ambrose searle wrote:
> Dick C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> 
>>ambrose searle wrote in talk.origins
>>
>>
>>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (maff) wrote in message news:
>>>
>>>>But Bible Belt fundamentalists, Confederates and the Klan didn't
>>>>beleive in Darwin or evolution. THey wre murdering and torturing
>>>>people even before Darwin.
>>>
>>>So what? How does that change the fact that Darwin was also a racist?
>>
>>How racist was he, especially when compared to others of his society?
>>Why condemn someone's thinking when it reflected the then current societal
>>attidudes?
> 
> 
> He was not only a racist, but he promoted the idea that racial
> superiority was a product of natural selection. Thus, those who lived
> in colder climates (like white Northern Europeans) were forced by
> natural selection to evolve into more creative races that had the
> ingenuity to build fires and houses, while those living closer to the
> Equator (like Black Africans) remained inferior in their mental
> capacity.
> 
> This is the "science" that ultimately led to Hitler's project of an
> Aryan super-race, via natural selection.

The Nazis distorted Darwin's ideas beyond recognition, and drew their 
conclusions from preconceived notions. The pseudoscience is *theirs*, 
not because they were wrong (Darwin was also wrong on numerous 
accounts), but because they did not use fair examination of *all* 
evidence. They totally violated all agreed-upon standards of scientific 
investigation, at least when it came to a basis for their ideology 
(Curiously, the science involved in military technology did not suffer. 
I wonder why...). In case you didn't notice, they also had some 1000 
years of Christian anti-Semitism in Europe to build on. And your claim 
is in direct contradiction to the Nazi depiction of jews as "cunning" 
and "insidious", which I, for good reason, take to imply *high* 
intelligence. And the jews in Germany weren't typically charcoal black 
either, so there goes your obvious "jews-savages" link.

But I already see it's no use debating you. You're an ideologist like 
any other, you have your conclusions, and now you work your way back 
from them to selected evidence. No one claims Darwin was infallible. No 
one claims he saw "savages" as equally intelligent as people of European 
heritage. It's just absurd to conclude from this that he:

a) was a bad person. (historical context!)
b) was a bad scientist. (historical context!)
c) was in favor of "Social Darwinism" a la "Let them eat cake!".
d) would have been in favor of Nazi ideology.

and of course it's an even further stretch to conclude what you're 
really up to:

e) The modern Theory of Evolution is wrong.

> Searle