Okay, I did forget that a main theme of the movie was that Nazism was somehow based on the Darwinian evolution. And since the moderators haven't jumped in, I guess we can conclude that a discussion on this issue is on topic.
First, an obvious fact: whether or not people draw the wrong conclusions from the theory of evolution has nothing to do with whether or not it is factually accurate. Either all known species evolved from a single ancestral species through natural selection acting on heritable variations, or they did not. That some people will draw unwarranted racist conclusions has nothing to do with the accuracy of this theory. Its accuracy can only be determined through the examination of the evidence.
Another obvious fact: whether or not some unpleasant conclusions can, in fact, be logically deduced from the theory has nothing to do with its factual accuracy. Whether or not genocide can be justified by evolution, and whether or not you and I find genocide undesirable has nothing to do with whether or not the theory of evolution accurately describes the history of life on earth; its accuracy can only be determined by examining the facts.
Now the theory of evolution does not, in any way, in and of itself, imply any course of action, no more than the theory of gravity says that people should crawl on their bellies and avoid tall buildings. The theory of evolution takes the obvious observations that some organisms survive and produce many offspring, and other die after producing few or no offspring, and that this difference in reproduction is due to heritable characteristics, and uses these to explain the patterns we see in the diversity of the species.
Eugenics, on the other hand, involves arbitrarily choosing some physical characteristics (and some social characteristics assumed to have a heritable basis) as desirable and other as undesirable, and using selective breeding to promote the desirable characteristics and eliminate the undesirable ones.
In fact, this has nothing to do with the theory of evolution, at least not the part that is accepted by, say, creationists. Eugenics is applying to humans ordinary, mundane animal husbandry that has been practiced for thousands of years. People already knew that if one allows organisms with certain characteristics to breed and preventing others with undesirable characteristics to breed, one will achieve a population with more desirable characteristics and fewer undesirable ones.
The theory of evolution is an explanation for patterns in diversity; eugenics is a policy of eliminating diversity.
Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
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M. Alan Kazlev
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