I examined the non sequiturs in jumping from a description of the way that the natural world operates to a moral 'ought' about how we should or will operate in society. Simple parallels exist to show the fallacy of the logic:
- Science describes gravity
- Gravity causes things to fall down
- Therefore, we ought to cause things to fall down
- Science describes natural selection
- Natural selection causes organisms to survive which are more 'fit' and weaker ones to go extinct
- Therefore, we ought to cause organisms/humans to go extinct whom we deem are weaker [even though we have now started artificially selecting since our criteria for 'fitness' are not natural]
Yet, since so many people love to do what is easy -- namely, to "defeat" evolution by throwing morally outrageous claims against it, it is useful to look at Darwin's own published thoughts on eugenics in The Descent of Man. Let's see what he said about it, although we must all always remember that just as the laws of motion are not equivalent to Newton, so evolution is not solely Charles Darwin, nor general relativity Einstein. These men founded the ideas, did the foundational work, and then died. The science of those things was not the person behind them, and the ideas have expanded and changed and developed throughout time. Nonetheless, let's see what the man thought, keeping in mind that just because the man thought it, doesn't mean evolution requires it.
In Chapter 5, he writes about the problem with vaccinations and how they allow people without natural resistances to survive to reproduce and pass on this lack of resistance:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised 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.It sounds pretty evil, doesn't it? But at the same time, it sounds like he's not yet passing a conclusive ought in here, only saying that it seems that our actions to preserve the lineages of people with serious heredity flaws is "highly injurious to the race of man." So far, he hasn't prescribed any actions, only attempted to describe our humanistic efforts to preserve life. So...what does Darwin think of these actions? Well, the sentences directly after clarify it for us:
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 [emphasis added].Well, you won't hear that from the mouths of the creationists. Darwin here tells us that if we try to preserve our genetic lineage without corruption, it will only be for a contingent benefit at the cost of an overwhelming present evil, and that we will deteriorate the noblest part of our nature.
His only "solution" to the "problem", then, is a very passive one, indeed:
We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.He observes that some of the feeble/retarded/sick are unable to be married and have kids as easily as the mentally competent/healthy, and that there is thus already a natural check in place. He then says that we can just hope for this check to work, notice he says nothing here of enforcing a no-marriage policy.
Darwin's words on eugenics are not those of Hitler, not those of Stalin, not those of creationists. All three of the latter twisted science to serve their own goals and ends in an attempt to justify their immoral beliefs. All three of the latter distort science to preserve falsehoods. The immorality of creationism is its denial of truth, its fight to eradicate scientific fact from our culture, and their refusal to live in reality.
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Technorati tags: Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism
