Does Darwinism cause genoside

Does Darwinism cause genoside

en.wikipedia.org

While the term has been applied to the claim that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection can be used to understand the social endurance of a nation or country, social Darwinism commonly refers to ideas that predate Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species. Others whose ideas are given the label include the 18th century clergyman Thomas Malthus, and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton who founded eugenics towards the end of the 19th century.

Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

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[edit on 29-1-2009 by invisibleman11]

ive often wondered if Darwinism breeds genoside. for example: the nazis during the 30's and 40's attempted to create a perfect or aryan race by breeding what they considered to be the perfect people while executing the rest in concentration camps. they killed millions of jews, gypsys, blacks, ect. inorder to breed "perfection". the question i pose is, does evolution and darwisim influence evil to commit genoside

en.wikipedia.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

I think stupid people cause genocide.
I'm pretty sure that humans can't actually be aware of which evolutionary traits will become necessary to thrive in the future.
For example, maybe we will need to become marine mammals in order to be safe and get food in a few million years. So, we should keep the people who have webbed toes.
Genocide doesn't really consider those things.

The answer to the silly question is: No.

And secondly, this isn't news, certainly doesn't belong in the Breaking Alternative News forum.

Additionally, you are quoting a wikipedia entry.

no, but can you argue that darwinsim and proponets eugenics didnt influence the nazis to kill millions.

The title of your thread is misleading.

Darwinism and Social Darwinism are not the same thing.

Social Darwinism refers to various ideologies based on a concept that competition among all individuals, groups, nations, or ideas drives social evolution in human societies. The term draws upon the common use of the term Darwinism which is a social adaptation of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection which explains speciation in populations as the outcome of competition between individual organisms for limited resources or "survival of the fittest"

While the term has been applied to the claim that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection can be used to understand the social endurance of a nation or country, social Darwinism commonly refers to ideas that predate Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species.

well dont think its just a little odd that darwins cousin created eugincics?

Originally posted by invisibleman11
well dont think its just a little odd that darwins cousin created eugincics?

AH, so this is about Darwin after all.

When do your attacks on Evolution start?

its not evolution itself, which i belive in, but some of evolutions proponets using it for the frame work for eugenics programs and genoside.

reply to post by invisibleman11


Not really, it's seems likely thy discussed both of their ideas with each other.

Darwin was interested by his half-cousin Francis Galton's argument, introduced in 1865, that statistical analysis of heredity showed that moral and mental human traits could be inherited, and principles of animal breeding could apply to humans. In The Descent of Man Darwin noted that aiding the weak to survive and have families could lose the benefits of natural selection, but cautioned that withholding such aid would endanger the instinct of sympathy, "the noblest part of our nature", and factors such as education could be more important. When Galton suggested that publishing research could encourage intermarriage within a "caste" of "those who are naturally gifted", Darwin foresaw practical difficulties, and thought it "the sole feasible, yet I fear utopian, plan of procedure in improving the human race", preferring to simply publicise the importance of inheritance and leave decisions to individuals.

However, Darwin had more of a focus on morals, while Galton wanted to "thin the heard" so to speak.

Really, it's more Galton taking Darwin's idea and removing Darwin's morals.
In that vein, it's the same as what eventually became of Einstein's work.
Galton is to blame for eugenics.
However, his idea is much older than himself or Darwin, with India being a good example.

Originally posted by invisibleman11
the question i pose is, does evolution and darwisim influence evil to commit genoside

What exactly do you mean by Evolution? Do you mean the process or Darwin's Theory of Evolution? It's irrelevant anyway becase neither of those things apply to your argument.

Evolution is a natural process that occurs, and Darwin's Theory of Evolution is just that, a theory of how that natural process works.

As another member pointed out, it's up to people what they do with information.

Terrorist organizations use the Internet to communicate, organize, recruit and show videos of their deeds to the world. Does the Internet influence people to do terrorism?

Since the wikipedia entry was good enough to introduce the topic, perhaps it's good enough to refute it as well?

Social Darwinism has many definitions and so it is hard to be either for or against it, as several definitions are opposed to the other. John Halliday & Iain McLean state that "Part of the difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection and to ‘survival of the fittest’ entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for political doctrine. A ‘social Darwinist’ could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenist."

Source

1) Evolution is a natural process, not a prescriptive suggestion. Change in species occurs because individuals have different reproductive success, depending on genetic differences. That did not start happening with Darwin, it started happening with reproduction.

2) The application of Darwin's theory of natural selection to societies is problematic at best, and as the above quote suggests, does not lead to any coherent theory. People have tried to use it to rationalize all sorts of policies, both benign and decidedly malignant. That doesn't mean it caused any of them.

3) A rational application of the theory of natural selection to societies would at least have to recognize that it suggests that societies will evolve without deliberate interference and that any interference serves only to prevent the "most fit" from being the one to survive.

Genocide has been going on since the dawn of man. Competition over scarce resources and all that.
Trying to blame this on Darwinism is just silly.

reply to post by invisibleman11


No, I would say that it doesn't. A misunderstanding of Darwin's theories, however, could possibly lead one to those conclusions. Darwin never suggested a "survival of the fittest", which many social darwinists seem to hang on. He advocated "survival of the most well adapted to their environment". However, he also recognized the dangers inherent in such thinking and warned against what that would come from humans treating each other in the same manner in which they breed animals.

It never fails to amaze how many people simply stop at the end of that quote, yet fail to present the text in context. I would have thought this particular vein of the quote mine had run dry....

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

Indeed, if you notice by studying evolution, life is strengthened via diversity. What is a deleterious trait in one environment could be a benefit to a new or change in the configuration of the environment. It keeps a system from becoming too stagnant and redundant, and keeps potential dangers from propagating throughout the entirety of a set of systems because each unit in that system is slightly different from the other. This ensures that a fatal catastrophe will leave some survivors to propagate the system anew.

Think about how easy it would be for someone to take down the internet if the ENTIRE net was comprised of only ONE OS for all PC's and Servers that share the same strengths, but also the same security vulnerabilities. The diversity of the hardware and software which runs the net ensures that even if 90% of it is taken down by attacking flaws in Microsoft's server OS's, we still Linux, Unix, NetWare, etc who can keep things moving. Indeed - the internet is the ONLY machine which humanity has ever built that has NEVER gone down once in it's entire history.

So no... I think that anyone who understands evolution and has even a modicum of human compassion will not embrace ideals of social Darwinism. They certainly wouldn't support eugenics.


However, I do think a clear distinction should be made between eugenics and designer babies. There's a huge difference between modifying a potential child's genetic code before the cells are even fertilized, and the killing or sterilizing of human beings for displaying "undesirable" traits.

Originally posted by Lasheic

However, I do think a clear distinction should be made between eugenics and designer babies. There's a huge difference between modifying a potential child's genetic code before the cells are even fertilized, and the killing or sterilizing of human beings for displaying "undesirable" traits.

How about between eugenics and deliberate abortion of babies with "undesirable" traits to keep those out of the gene pool?

Or using a combination of genetic testing and in vitro fertilization to ensure that only babies with certain genes are implanted?

OK, I know that goes off topic – Darwinism doesn't have anything to do with any of those things. But you brought up the "designer babies" question

reply to post by americandingbat


I don't believe it's legal to force an abortion due to the fetus carrying undesirable traits. It's currently the mother's choice, as per all abortion, up to a certain developmental time period. Modifying it's genes would, I believe, fall under the same banner as abortion. It's a decision for the parents as custodians of the child, not the state or the government. There's a LOT of grey area here... for instance, fixing a gene that causes the child to be predisposed to breast cancer my be rigorously pursued by her doctors - but it's the parent's choice whether or not they want to "fix" the extra chromosome that could give their child down syndrome, or to fix the gene that would cause them to be born blind.

It might sound like a simple question - "If we can fix your child's blindness before they're born, would you want to do that". However, it's really not that easy. Being born blind would be a HUGE factor in how they develop their personality. There's entire sub-cultures built around blindness, deafness, lameness, etc. You would be denying the child access to those cultures.

Cancer is a bit different. I really think you'll find a good portion of parents who would not cure their child's deafness in the womb, but would most definately modify their genes to make them nearly immune to HIV. Especially if the parent themselves are HIV positive.

reply to post by Lasheic


I agree there's a lot of gray area, and there are certainly things that I'm not sure about my own position on.

For instance, I believe in a woman's legal right to abortion. I'm not so clear on a woman's right to abort a fetus based on certain genetic traits. If the trait is something that guarantees that the child will have a very short, very painful life; or that could threaten the health of the mother, I think she has the moral right to choose to abort based on that.

If the issue is something like a serious mental disability which will make raising the child extremely difficult, I think she probably has the moral right to choose to abort based on that.

If the issue is something like the predisposition to get breast cancer before the baby turns 50, I have serious reservations about a decision to abort based on that.

If the issue is that the baby is a female, I think it's wrong.

But where do you draw the line? Maybe we'd be better off letting Darwinian natural selection make the decisions after all?

And I'm not aware of any genetic disorder that we are currently able to fix, either in an embryo or in a sperm/egg cell. All we can do is make lots of embryos and toss out the ones that have the undesired characteristic.

And honestly, that doesn't make me real happy, even if the characteristic in question is something that I can pretty easily agree is undesirable, like a susceptibility to cancer.

reply to post by americandingbat


Again, not that this will quell controversy, but I believe the ultimate decision in how a child's genetic structure is modified before birth should lie with the parents - and the mother in particular. I don't mean to imply a "clean slate" policy where genetic testing is used to map out the child's genetic future and abort or preserve the fetus based on that. I mean, we can actually go in to the developing embryo and change it's genetic structure. We can do it to our own. We're rapidly coming to a time where we're not just going to have designer babies - but designer baby boomers. That's profound.

We're not quite there yet... but the field of genomics is juuuust about ready to boom and really mature. One of the biggest benefits of this in the field of Designer Medicine. Right now, we're just tossing chemical components at a problem and seeing what works with the most tolerable side effects and for the largest segment of people. We're trying a very "hit or miss" method of emulating what we COULD be doing in our genetic structure in a very precise and tailored manner. It's called designer medicine, and eventually you're going to be able to just give your genome to a pharmacist and have them synthesize a drug for you that changes your DNA in a manner as to actually FIX the problem - rather than just cause chemical reactions that hopefully have a beneficial effect.

Barry Schuler can explain it much better than I could.


[edit on 29-1-2009 by Lasheic]

reply to post by Lasheic


This thread probably isn't the place to take the discussion too much further – we're probably off topic as is.

But I think it's probably fair to say that we would agree on one thing: Darwinism does not cause genocide.