Darwin and responsibilty

I think the evolution/Stalin link is the tawdry argumentevolution -> atheism -> communism -> Stalinbut I'm not sure.What's interesting is that a superficial understanding of evolution would seem to promote each individual promoting herself at the expense of others - Social Darwinism, in other words, which is the opposite of socialism and communism. In fact, the religious right tries to blame both Social Darwinism and communism on evolution, which seems to be a contradiction to me; especially ironic is that here in the U.S. the religious right supports politicians and social policies that are Social Darwinistic in nature.The evolution/Hitler link is because Nazism was a bizarre extreme of the already bizarre policy of eugenics. Many eugenicists did in fact claim their inspiration from evolution, although I don't know if the Nazis did. Interesting is that here in the U.S. the Nazis are closely allied with Christian White Supremist movements, which reject evolution in favor of a literal reading of genesis.Even more interesting is if one were to take evolution as a basis for social policy, then evolution would lead to the opposite of eugenics. No matter what you say about "survival of the fittest", the avowed purpose of eugenics is to "purify" the gene pool, which can only mean leaving only a relatively small amount of variation. But evolution shows that it is those species that have a lot of variation that are able to respond to environmental changes and avoid extinction.

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Well the Bible teaches one blood, one race.

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What about the book of Joshua? Where, under orders from Yahweh, the Israelites were to slaughter the inhabitants of Canaan, even the children? It seems one blood, one race doesn't preclude a good Yahweh worshipper from committing genocide.

Joshua chapter 6 is about the destruction of Jericho. Verse 21: Chapter 7 tells the sad story of Achan. The loot was supposed to be devoted to God's temple, but Achan took some of it. In response, God punished the entire nation of Israel. When, by lots, they discovered that Achan was the culprit, they killed the entire family. Verses 24-26: In chapter 8 the city of Ai is finally taken and destroyed. Again, all the inhabitants are killed. Verses 25, 26: All verses quoted are from the New Revised Standard Version.Edited to correct a typo.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 05-29-2004 11:57 AM

To make it easier of Syamsu, here is an online version of The Origin of Species.

Hello, Trixie.In the on-line version to which I linked, each chapter is on a single web-page. So you can search chapter-by-chapter (which is what I did once; there was a debate on another board about when the word "evolutionist" first came up - it turns out Darwin himself used the word!). Most web-browser then have a "search" feature that will allow you to search for words and phrases in the page that is up. I'm using Mozilla (for OS X), and the search is "Find in the page" (and other variations) under the Edit menu.But scientific hypothesis is: "creationists make stuff up."
Scientific prediction: Syamsu's claims will not be found in Origin.

Oh, good! I just read Descent of Man a couple of months ago, so it is somewhat fresh in my mind. Here, again, is an on-line copy of it, suitable for finding quotes and checking context.

Each chapter is reprinted in its entirety onto a single web page. Therefore it would be quite easy to use the seach function in your browser to look for key words or phrases. My guess is that Syamsu is using a very, very old browser without search functions.

How odd. I have provided links to the two most important works written by Darwin. Yet Syamsu continues to post quotations by third parties to indicate Darwin's beliefs. I'm confused Syamsu, what are we debating here? What Darwin believed, or what other people think Darwin believed?

From your post:

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"A writer in the Spectator (March 12, 1871, p. 320) comments as follows on this passage:-

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If there is something about this in Descent of Man please tell me which chapter. I wish to see the context before I comment on whatever Darwin is supposed to believe.

Thanks, jar. I just didn't want to do Syamsu's work for him. Evidently you are the helpful type. I'll look at it at some point to see for myself what is being said.

Sorry for the long cut'n'paste post. Syamsu seems to be trying to portray Darwin as a racist. To prove it, he fails to quote Darwin himself. Instead he quotes: This is indeed a quote from Darwin's Descent of Man (thanks for the heads up, jar). But notice that this was written by an unnamed writer about Darwin, not Darwin's own words. In fact, this passage is in a footnote, commenting on a passage that Darwin himself wrote. Here is what Darwin wrote - the * marks the place for the footnote: So, Darwin was saying this: he claimed that lower animals would never practice infanticed or polyandry. This turns out to be false - lower animals do - but under a naive assumption about what leads to reproductive success, this isn't an obviously stupid assumption to make. Remember, at this time people were just beginning to think of evolution in terms of reproductive success. So my first question is: is assuming that lower animals would avoid polyandry or infanticide in order to increase reproductive success a racist statement?Darwin called the practices of polyandry and infanticide "perverted". Certainly not a scientific term, and even from a purely moral stand-point I would never call polyandry "perverted". But remember that Darwin was living in Victorian England. My next question is: by calling these practices "perverted", does that make him racist? He is commenting on behavior, not people.Now this was from a later edition of the book. In this edition he included a comment from reader of an earlier edition about this section. The writer then seems to be commenting on the fact that there are cultures in which people practice these things. Is this not a fact? And does mentioning this fact make Darwin a racist?Finally, say that we accept the premises (some of which we now, in the 21st century, to be wrong):
(1) Lower animals do not engage in certain actions considered to be morally objectionable.
(2) Some cultures of humans do practice these actions.
(3) Humans evolved from lower animals.
Conclusion:
There has been a moral degeneration that occurred in the evolution of humans.Now, what in all of this makes Darwin a racist? More to the point, where in all of this can Syamsu, a theist who believes in an absolute moral code, make the claim that Darwin was a racist?

I don't even know what this means.

Of course Darwin did have some racist views, being a part of the middle class of Victorian England. He felt that European society, especially English society, especially middle class English mores, were the pinnacle of civilization. All other civilizations were more primitive in the sense that they were still underdeveloped.Reading Descent of Man, he also seems to view other races as being transitional between white European and the ape ancestors; however in making this links it is usually a cultural rather than biological linkage.At any rate, he also very clearly sees the other races as definitely, positively human. Darwin was quite appalled when he experienced slavery in South America on his round-the-world voyage. If anything, in establishing the "darker" races as transitional, he didn't so much view other races as degerate as much as he anthropomorphized non-human species - assuming that they actually acted on human-like motives.

Here is Darwin's theory:In every species, individuals produce more offspring than can possibly survive to maturity.In every species, individual vary from one another, and much of this variation is hereditary.Since individuals vary, some are going to be better able to survive in their environment than others and reproduce.Therefore, each succeeding generation will tend to be better adapted, as a whole, to the environment than others.This is simply not in dispute, not even among creationists, I believe.Then, looking at the great variety among domesticated breeds of plants and animals, and especially how different they are from their ancestral breeds, Darwin came to the follow conclusions:There is source of new variations; individuals can have new characteristics, or have characteristics beyond the range exhibited by their parents.Combining the production of new existence with the natural selection process just explained, species can adapt and evolve and produce dramatically new forms over immensely long periods of time.Darwin, looking at examples of the heirarchical nature of taxonomy, made the final conclusion:All species are descended from a very small number of ancestral species. The great range of species is due to the evolutionary process as just described.No racism. Just very logical conclusions based on established fact.

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You can find Darwin's theory in the opening of "Descent of Man". from memory "Do the races or species of man, whichever term applies, encroach on and replace one another until some finally become extinct, just as with the lower animals?"

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A natural question to ask, to me anyway. Humans are not exempt from the laws of nature. If a person jumps off a roof, that person will fall down. If a person sticks her hand in a fire, she will be burned. If a population of persons increases to the point where the environment cannot support any more increase, then, without modern means of population control, some humans simply will not survive to reproduce. According to the laws of natural selection, the ones that will reproduce will be the ones who are better adapted to the environment.Now, are there significant differences between the "races" of humans to give one a survival advantage over the others? Remember, the only anthropological data to which Darwin had access was collected by others. These, unfortunately, were colored by the racism and ethnocentrism of the researchers. Darwin himself was no anthropogist (if such a field even existed at the time). He was trained as a naturalist, that is, his scientific training was in geology and biology. He simply had no access to other data or theories than was provided by the milieu in which he found himself.Now his theory of common descent by natural selection is a purely scientific theory. It is an objective explanation of observable phenomena, and makes definite predictions. It, itself, contains no hint of racism. Of course, humans are biological entities, and natural questions are to ask how this new theory explains the origin of humans and the future of the human race.Of course, to apply natural selection to humans, one needs to ask what is the range of variation in humans, and what survival advantage to various variations confer. If the data to which Darwin had access was tainted, is that his fault?An interesting point is to be made about Darwin. Despite the fact that, based on the biased, prejudiced anthropological theories of the time, Darwin believed that the non-white races were inferior to Europeans and would eventually be replace by them. Again, is it Darwin's fault that he had no access to other data or theories? But, he opposed slavery, cruelty, and felt that it was important that the Europeans showed kindness and benevolence to the non-whites.Another interesting point about the Social Darwinist beliefs of the British middle class of the time. Darwin did not invent Social Darwinism - it was already the social belief of his class that helping the poor just allowed them to overbreed and degrade the quality of society in general. Darwin himself did misapply his theory (remember, this is the first time that anyone was thinking along these lines!), and he did believe that social programs to help the poor allowed the inferior individuals of the species to breed, when they would otherwise be culled by natural selection, and so the overall fitness of the human species would suffer.Yet, he was still a humanitarian. He contributed money and supervision to programs to help the poor. He advocated help for the poor. He believe that kindness, altruism, and benevolence were part of the essence of what made humans human - he believed that people have a natural instinct toward kindness and empathy that was selected for - and he believe that to squelch these instincts would be to degrade the human species to far greater degree than helping the poor would be.