Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: Another reason "we scream and run around in circles" on ID

We can't, as you so quaintly suggest, "apply evolution to humans".
Mary Anne — (archived)

Evolution is a biological process that operates in a species on many levels. It is random and systemic.

We can institute eugenics policies that are closely tied to a political strain of thought called "social Darwinism", a false interpretation of Darwin's theory based on scientific illiteracy and closely tied to racism and other bigotry prevalent at the time of its inception. Cf. "white man's burden", "three generations of imbeciles are enough".

Eugenics is the activity to which you refer, an activity that was practiced (though not so named) long before evolutionary theory was first formulated and discussed. Eugenics is practiced whenever one social or political group persecutes or promotes another based on inheritable characteristics. Predicating someone's right to have children predicated on skin color or killing somone for being Jewish, for instance. These activities are not Nazi inventions, nor are they unique to 20th century dictatorships.

If people had understood evolution, and science in general, better than they did, they might have seen social Darwinism for the fallacy it is. To understand evolution, by receiving a better education in what it really is and how it really works rather than considering it a moral or political philosophy, will not change the nature of brutality, but it may make people less easy to fool when science is used badly for political ends.

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