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

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (ambrose searle) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...

> But the fact remains, in spite of your stomping on the floor about how
> Darwin made concerted efforts to avoid some of Spencer's terminology,
> that Darwin himself believed, advocated, and promoted the idea that
> one race, namely the Northern European Caucasian, has been made
> superior to others through the process of natural selection.

The passage you quoted stated the opposite.  It stated that savages
were more healthy.


> Darwin believed that we should grasp racial evolution so that we do
> not interfere with evolution's work of creating an even more superior
> race. That eventually became Hitler's project.

Hitlers project was hardly the case of disinterested non-interference.
  The holocaust wasn't a natural selection project.   By Darwinian
standards the Jews had migrated to the Germans habitat and were
outcompeting them in certain niches.   In fact I would say that
Hilter's project was Anti-Social Darwinism.  Didn't the Social
Darwinists say let things be and the cream will rise to the top.

>From a different perspective one could say that Hitler didn't want the
rich Jews to take their natural place in the social hierarchy as
dominate over the Aryans.   After all if they were inferior shouldn't
they be easily outcompeted by Germans for jobs, money, and resources.

Hitler adopted the socialist notion of doing things for the good of
society.   He identified the Jews as inferior precisely becaue he feel
they lacked in the nobler attributes of Germans.   Jews were portrayed
as money grubbing parasites on German society that needed to be
elimated as a social good.   So like the socialists he believed having
society work towards a goal.   He just picked a different goal.

Were Jews truly inferior there would be no problem from a Darwinian
standpoint since they would just be weeded out of the gene pool
naturally.

If you read this then you will see that Hitlers racism had little to
do with Darwin and science and much to do with Chrisitanity: 
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/m/mills-mary/mills-00.html
He believed Germans were a pure race produced by God and the Jews a
special creation of the Devil.   That doesn't sound like the Origin of
Species to me.

The Social Darwinists were wrong for other reasons.  For one thing the
disparity between classes are not in most cases due to any genetic
superiority of a particular class.   More often it is due to unfair
advantage due to laws.  Somebodies ancestor just happened to prevail
in the past and the rules are rigged to favor themselves.    
Darwinian selection cannot work on this account either.    It
fore-ordains which line of descent will eventually produce the
superior decendants.   However this is unknowable apriori.

There are other reasons the social darwinists were wrong.   Reasons
that conflict with Darwinian theory.