Evolutionists lighten up

Charles Darwin's, "Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", was published in 1859. Note the secondary title. There followed social darwinism in the english philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) who maintained two kinds of knowledge: that of the individual and that of the race. The phrase “survival of the fittest”, is his. This in conjunction with the theories of individuals such as Count Gobineau and Margaret Sanger led to eugenics (a sort of animal husbandry for people), birth control, forced sterilizations, Planned Parenthood, euthanasia and mercy killings. Hitler believed in the superiority of the aryan race, especially the teutonic german. Anti-semitic laws based on american Jim Crow were enacted and so on.

Yet, people focus on Dayton, Tennessee’s Scopes Monkey trial of 1925 as the victory of the enlightened over the boobs. Was this a victory for free speech and academic freedom or a manipulation of chicanery and media show trial? The ACLU advertised to find someone to allow them to challenge the recently passed Butler Act that forbid the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. A group of businessmen conspired with them to have a school coach challenge the law, so that local business could be drummed up. Scopes never actually remembered mentioning evolution, he was fined $100 and the law stood till 1967, but the public remembers the play and the movie, "Inherit the Wind" and that Clarence Darrow made William Jennings Bryan (the democrat nominee for president in 1896, 1900 & 1908) look like a fool. Bryan died within a few days.

The textbook used, "Hunters' Civic Biology", listed the races (often nations) in hierarchical order. The English race was the most superior and the lesser races descended down to ape level. Clearly all men were not equal. Science shows us the way.

Bryan's undelivered speech, that he was denied to read, at the trial, through a clever Darrow, was a plea for christian humanitarianism against scientific racism and biological determinism and moral nihilism (Nietzsche) and war. Bryan foresaw an individual who would do great harm to the world; were he to enact such a combined program. Bryan who, a generation earlier, advocated what would be, Roosevelt's New Deal, as a corrective to the capitalism of the republican party, now may have described the outline of a future monster -- Hitler.

The use of biology for other than that as a description of the living world is dangerous. Using an interpretation of science as a mandate to describe and govern human society is a formula for dystopia.

People can disagree with scientific theories. We have one camp that maintains their form of darwinism as absolute unquestionable truth and protests any objector with invective and complete disregard of respect, so did the Nazis with theirs. There is another camp that is threatened by any contradiction to their interpretation of their religious views. Some want to create science in their own image, but isn't science always to be tinkering with answers and questions?

There is no current chance for the extinction of the darwinists. Absurd, discredited, political ideas [e.g. gwbushjr and the fascist wing of his party] are often given sway in this society, but absolutist darwinian determinists must be totally free from perceived umbrage and questioning? Whose academic freedom and free speech is in danger? Many who can incorporate evolution into their beliefs see that some of the extreme darwinists are not truly interested in only advocating good science but advocating atheism through the back door. William Jennings Bryan saw the possibilities of the system and advocated a different course, he lost too often.