Dawkinswatch

33 Amazing Facts On Eugenics

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1. Very interesting. From the linked article:

   “2. The term ’social Darwinism’ never came from Darwin himself. It was a term distilled around the notion that in the struggle for survival, some humans were not only less worthy but were actually more or less supposed to die away. Merely acting to help the weak and needy within society became itself an unnatural act. This thinking helped propel the eugenic movement forward during its embryonic stages at the start of the 20th century.”

   Very true. As Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man, “If we were to intentionally neglect the weak and the helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with overwhelming present evil.” In other words, if we neglected people that some considered “unfit” in the possibility some good might come from it, we would be committing an even greater evil in the process. We might or might not gain a fortune, but either way we would definitely lose our souls in the process.

   Hopefully creationists will realize one day that their attempts to discredit evolution by attempting to tie it to eugenics and social Darwinism is just another strawman fallacy.

   

   Leaven

   September 23, 2008 at 12:09 pm

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2. Amazing Fact #34: The Christian church was a strong advocate of eugenics in the early 20th century. A good book on the subject is Christine Rosen’s “Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement”

   

   Elvis

   September 23, 2008 at 12:12 pm

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