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

"Steven J." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> "ambrose searle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
>  -- [snip]
> >
> > The book is rife with Social Darwinism.
> >
> > E.g.,
> >
> > "Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a
> > medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring
> > will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as
> > high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the
> > struggle [KAMPF] against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to
> > the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition
> > for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the
> > total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend
> > with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born
> > weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and
> > limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher
> > development of organic living beings would be unthinkable."
> >
> > Hitler, MEIN KAMPF
> >
> This does indeed seem to borrow terminology from Darwin's writings.  

Your honesty is appreciated.

> > You apparently don't know much about the history of the theory. Your
> > comment is highly anachronistic. Only recently have Evolutionists
> > started to reject Darwin's language of "inferior" and "superior"
> > organisms. Darwin indeed saw natural selection as creating a
> > hierarchy. Recent Evolutionists such as Gould would reject it. But
> > Gould wasn't one of the authors Hitler relied upon. Darwin and
> > Nietzsche were, and both of them saw an evolutionary hierarchy created
> > by jungle law.
> 
> One wonders, if Hitler relied on Darwin (or even on Nietzche), why the
> targets of his hatred were so ... traditional.  He hated Jews, an attitude
> found nowhere in Darwin, but quite common in Europe for centuries before
> evolution was heard of (so were pogroms, expulsions, and expropriations of
> Jews -- all precedents for Nazi measures against the Jews).  He hated a
> number of groups (e.g. Gypsies) subject to prejudice and discrimination long
> before Darwin.

I wouldn't state that Darwin was an Anti-semite.

However, Social Darwinism provided the Nazi "scientists" the fuel they
felt they needed to prove the inferiority, even harmfulness, of the
survival of these various groups.

The following is a very informative study on how this happened:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674008626/103-6081121-9392624?v=glance

> It's not clear to me whether you think that Darwin's beliefs (and Hitler's
> worse beliefs) about race followed logically from the theory of natural
> selection,

Darwin SAID explicitly that inferior and superior human groups are the
result of natural selection.

Hitler and the Nazis believed, with Haeckel, that "politics is applied
biology," they were employing the insights of Darwin, Spencer, and
Nietzsche to fit their particular biases.

> and that modern evolutionists ignore the racist implications of
> the theory and try to pretend it implies otherwise,

Some modern evolutionists, many who have been contesting me here, deny
the fact that Darwin himself came to racist conclusions based on the
theory of natural selection.

> or whether you think
> Darwin (and Hitler to a greater extent) misused his own ideas to justify
> ideas that can't logically be derived from them.

Hitler definitely distorted Darwin. Hitler was more in sync with
Nietzsche. I'm not sure I would say that Darwin misused his own ideas.

> Of course, it's not clear
> whether you regard natural selection as a valid theory,

Like most theories, it has its strengths and weaknesses.

> or whether you think
> that its supposed bad effects historically are any reason it might not be
> correct. For my own part, I see the theory itself as incompatible with
> racism, and the "argument from bad consequences" as a fallacy, but you may
> differ.

You may call it the "argument from bad consequences," I know it as the
"reductio ad absurdum," proving a premise false by deriving from it an
absolute contradiction. I believe that Social Darwinism is refutable
through reductio ad absurdum.

> > Anachronism. You're living in 2003, not in the time when Hitler wrote
> > Mein Kampf. What you are referring to is a more recent view.
> >
> I am referring to a view implicit in Darwin's theory of common descent by
> natural selection.  At the very least, if Hitler took ideas from Darwin, he
> read through filters supplied by racist ideas much older than evolutionary
> theory, and understood nothing that might have required him to modify those
> beliefs.

Hitler's filters were likely Haeckel and Alfred Rosenberg, both of
whom drew largely upon Darwin.

> > > How can it be
> > > true (though I grant that both complaints have been made) that evolution
> > > makes the White man superior to the Black,
> >
> > An older understanding of Evolution.
> 
> No, an older understanding of anthropology.

Most current evolutionists don't claim that whites are superior to
blacks.

> It did not take Darwin to make
> Europeans divide humanity into races and arrange the races in a hierarchy,
> nor is such a hierarchy logically implied by evolution or natural selection.

Darwin thought it was.

> > > while making him merely the equal
> > > of the banana slug (or the banana, for that matter)?
> >
> > A more recent view.
> 
> Not really.  Evolutionary theory does not concern itself with questions of
> value at all; it gives no basis on which two species or races may be judged
> as different or equal in value.

Darwin made value judgments of the sort throughout Descent of Man.

> > > Darwin's racial views were rather confused.  In the aforementioned
>  chapter
> > > 7, he remarks both that the physical and mental traits typical of
>  different
> > > races were much more similar than commonly supposed, and quite distinct.
>  He
> > > recognizes culture as something distinct from physically inherited
>  mental
> > > traits, but tends to confuse them in his writings.  He notes (this is
> > > essential to his theory) that there is variation within all human
>  "races,"
> > > and overlap in these traits between "races."  If there is one thing I
>  would
> > > take from Darwin on the subject of race, it is that there cannot be any
> > > trait common to all members of one "race" and absent in all members of
> > > another, such that one race could base a claim of superiority to the
>  other
> > > race on such a trait.
> >
> > What is the point of all this pertaining to Hitler and my claim?
> 
> Note, while you're at it, that the racism was neither unique to
> (nor even commoner among) evolutionists, nor derived from their theory.

Darwin derived racists views from the theory of natural selection.

> > > Natural selection does not produce a "better society,"
> > > it produces populations whose individuals are, on average, better
>  adapted to
> > > a particular environment.
> >
> > You haven't read Darwin very closely. Actually your reading of
> > Darwin's Descent of Man is pathetic. You show absolutely no evidence
> > that you have ever read it at all. Darwing was wont to use terms such
> > as "more noble," "advanced," "more civilized," "the better class of
> > men," in reference to what natural selection does for human societies.
> >
> No, he refers to those as traits of societies, without regard for what made
> them that way. 

Bullcrap, he says clearly that natural selection, via competition with
other human groups, made them that way.

http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/gstimson/socialdarwin.htm

> > You better go back and read it again.
> 
> Did you have some particular passage to recommend, where Darwin says
> otherwise?

There are legions of them.

Here's just one.

Regarding where "civilized people" acquired the social qualities
(sympathy, religion, cooperation, loyalty, etc.) that made them of
superior moral status, Darwin says:

"With civilised nations, as far as an advanced standard of morality,
and an increased number of fairly well-endowed men are concerned,
natural selection apparently effects but little; though **the
fundamental social instincts were originally thus gained.**"

> > I agree. Thomas Jefferson wrote against slavery too. But like Darwin,
> > Jefferson wrote against it, while maintaining an opinion that the
> > Black race is biologically inferior to the Caucasian. Later Southern
> > apologists therefore used Jefferson's words about white supremacy to
> > justify their racism.
> >
> > The same might be said about Darwin, and why his views have been
> > proven to be dangerous.
> 
> The same might be said of Darwin, although in point of fact he did not say
> that the Black race is biologically inferior to the Caucasion.

You're not really being honest.

When Darwin says that those human groups who migrated away from the
equator were forced by natural selection to develop higher intellects
due to the cold climate, one does not have to have a perfect SAT score
to understand how he is implicitly comparing the Africans'
intelligence to the Northern European Caucasian's intelligence.

>  He was
> rarely very specific about which races the "savage" or "less civilized
> races" were (except, as I recall, the Turks seemed to qualify).

It's all in Darwin very clearly

If you read chapter 7 of Descent of Man, the "civilized races" are
clearly set above the aborigenes of America (Native Americans),
aborigenes of Australia & New Zealand, the aborigenes of Africa (who
wander over arid plains, where dangerous beasts abound), etc. He
refers to these groups as "savage tribes."

On the upper end of his heirarchy created by natural selection,
however, Darwin places the WASP Americans:

"There is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful
progress of the United States, as well as the character of the people,
are the results of natural selection; for the more energetic,
restless, and courageous men from all parts of Europe have emigrated
during the last ten or twelve generations to that great country, and
have there succeeded best."

>  If
> establishing a racial hierarchy were important to him, one might suppose
> he'd be more specific about it.

He was quite clear if you read it.

> Note there are no grounds for supposing either that Darwin endorsed this
> elimination of human groups; he merely noted that it did go on, 

He endorsed the use of natural selection to enhance the advancement
and progress of humankind, and he objected to some who would attempt
to interfere with the mechanism of natural selection.

For Nietzsche, the biggest interference with natural selection was the
advent of Christianity with all of its tenets of being charitable to
the poor, the maimed, the leper, the sick, the prisoner, etc.

Nietzsche felt that this kind of morality was entirely counter to the
work of natural selection and he strongly advocated an abolition of
it. Hitler concurred.

> > > > These evolutionist views, which have no scientific basis and are just
> > > > a reworking of the superstition of 'ascribing consciousness to
> > > > nature,' existing in animist cultures, finally reached their
> > > > culmination in the savagery of the Nazis. The theory was put into
> > > > practice in human societies, again in a manner in conformity with
> > > > Darwinism. Wilhelm Reich continues:
> > >
> > > Of course, neither of Darwin's assumptions about his culture's
>  superiority
> > > really follow from his theory. Rather, these ideas were imported into
>  the
> > > theory, and, I would argue, mitigated by it.
> >
> > Poppycock.
> >
> Now, here I really must demand that you defend your position.  In what
> respect does the idea, that indefinite changes in the frequency of various
> hereditary traits in populations over time, can be produced by differential
> survival of variant offspring due to environmental pressures, imply that any
> culture is superior to any other?

Your use of jargon is pretentious (differential survival of variant
offspring due to environmental pressures over time).

Nonetheless, the claim that Darwin's did not derive racism from his
theory ( which is the claim I was responding to above) is simply dead
wrong.

Darwin believed, for example, that the WASPs in the U.S. were racially
superior to the aborigenes in Africa... AND HE BELIEVED IT AS A RESULT
OF HIS THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION:

"There is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful
progress of the United States, as well as the character of the people,
are the results of natural selection; for the more energetic,
restless, and courageous men from all parts of Europe have emigrated
during the last ten or twelve generations to that great country, and
have there succeeded best."

> Darwin, in a later passage, speaks specifically of the English immigrants,
> but in the passage quoted clearly refers to immigrants from all over Europe.
> Note that the process of natural selection consisted, precisely, of the most
> energetic and courageous people moving into a new territory -- the selection
> occurred before any of them arrived in the United States.

For Darwin it is the very courage, will, and determination, which he
believed were hereditary, that sifted out the superior from the
inferior, but it was the process of natural selection (namely, those
who would and could endure the hardships of trans-atlantic travel,
etc.) that made folks in the U.S. "wonderfully advanced" over the rest
of the world.

> > "The inferior vitality of mulattoes is spoken of in a trustworthy work
> > as a well-known phenomenon." --Darwin
> >
> And yet in the same chapter, Darwin speaks of the widespread existence of
> racial mixtures, persisting over time (suggesting no very great lack of
> vitality).  Darwin was considering the question of whether the different
> races of humans were, as some would have it, different species.  His own
> opinion was that they were not, but he noted contrary opinions and the
> evidence they cited.
> 
> "Inferior vitality" meant that mulatoes were regarded as less strong and
> healthy than members of either parent race 

Precisely. And to say such about a mulatto today would be called
racism.

> > The creator of a very dangerous weapon can be a decent man.
> >
> > Such was the case with Darwin.
> 
> What was the "dangerous weapon?"  The idea that some "races" were superior
> to others?

Nope. A "scientific" justification for racism.

> Or was
> the dangerous weapon a justification for Hitler's measures? 

Yes.

Searle