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From the independent, global newspaper The Guardian – not a Christian publication.
What if Darwin’s theory of natural selection is inaccurate? What if the way you live now affects the life expectancy of your descendants? Evolutionary thinking is having a revolution…
Such talk, naturally, is liable to drive evolutionary biologists into a rage, or, in the case of Richard Dawkins, into even more of a rage than usual…nobody wants to provide ammunition to the proponents of creationism or “intelligent design”, and it’s true that few of the studies now coming to public prominence are all that revolutionary to the experts...
[S]everal recent breakthroughs in the youthful field of epigenetics…[which] studies the epigenome, the protective package of proteins around which genetic material – strands of DNA – is wrapped. The epigenome…in effect…switches certain genes on or off, or turns them up or down in intensity. It isn’t news that the environment can alter the epigenome; what’s news is that those changes can be inherited…
If what happens to you during your lifetime…can affect how your genes express themselves in future generations, the absolutely simple version of natural selection begins to look questionable…
We’ve [also] learned that huge proportions of the human genome consist of viruses, or virus-like materials…new stuff that’s introduced from elsewhere…
It is a decade since the biologist Randy Thornhill and the anthropologist Craig Palmer published The Natural History of Rape…There must be a genetic basis for [rape]…because, in prehistoric times, those men who possessed the tendency would reproduce more successfully than those who didn’t. Therefore, the authors concluded, rape was…”natural”…
[B]y the time [the book] was published there was nothing all that radical about the idea that natural selection might be able to illuminate any and every aspect of human behaviour…
Far more than biologists, evolutionary psychologists…stand to lose far more from advances in our understanding of what’s really been going on…
“What all this evidence shows is that we need a much more subtle and nuanced understanding of Darwinism and natural selection,” Shenk says. “I think that’s inevitably going to happen among scientists. The question is how much nuance will carry over into the public sphere . . .
And then there is Jerry Fodor, the American philosopher [and writer of] What Darwin Got Wrong, the new book he has co-authored with the cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini…He hadn’t just identified evidence that natural selection was more complicated than previously thought…Natural selection, he explains, simply “cannot be the primary engine of evolution”…
Step one: Fodor notes – undeniably correctly – that not every trait a creature possesses is necessarily adaptive….for example…floppy ears, for no evident reason. Other traits are…a polar bear, for example, has the trait of “whiteness”… “being the same colour as its environment”…
Step two: natural selection, according to its theorists, is a force that “selects for” certain traits. (Floppy ears appear to serve no purpose, so…they weren’t “selected for”. And polar bears, we’d surely all agree, were “selected for” being the same colour as their environment…
Step three is Fodor’s coup de grace: how, he says, can that possibly be? The whole point of Darwinian evolution is that it has no mind, no intelligence. But to “select for” certain traits…wouldn’t natural selection have to have some kind of mind?…
The irony in all this is that Darwin himself never claimed that it was. He went to his deathbed protesting that he’d been misinterpreted: there was no reason, he said, to assume that natural selection was the only imaginable mechanism of evolution. Darwin, writing before the discovery of DNA, knew very well that his work heralded the beginning of a journey
What Darwin got right was that if
- natural selection has never been the only imaginable mechanism of evolution,
- but rejection of an intelligent designer Creator was and remains a pillar of the concept,
- the other mechanism of evolution is
Survival of the fittest through intentional measures – Eugenics.
- Through selective breeding among the elite to maintain intellectual power
- and elimination of useless members of society to maximize the wealth of the elite
- and exploitation of the energy of masses of workers for the benefit of the elite.
Eugenics
The Darwins; a Bright Family With a Dark Side
[Charles] Darwin’s grandfather… Erasmus Darwin…was a well-known doctor…his experiments on the origin of life were one of the foundations mentioned and included by Mary Shelley in her novel on the attempt by doctor Frankenstein to generate life from dead human bodies. He also published a book on his ideas regarding the evolution of species, which can be considered the prequel of the “Origin of Species”, written by his grandson… [Emphases added here and below.]
[His maternal grandfather] Josiah Wedgwood, in turn, applied certain “scientific” ideas to the manufacturing process of ceramics and founded a very profitable company. He also has two things in common with Darwin’s paternal grandfather: his interest in experimental science – both belonged to the Lunar Society where intellectuals and industry pioneers met to discuss matters of science…
[O]ne of [Charles Darwin’s] cousins, Sir Francis Galton penned works that gave birth to eugenics as a “science”…which attempted to “improve” humanity biologically and combat supposed genetic deterioration... positive eugenics measures…marriages which were believed to be “better” from a biological viewpoint…
1) “Positive” Eugenics By Selective Breeding
This is apparent in the marriages between Erasmus Darwin’s son Robert and Josiah Wedgewood’s daughter Susanah and in their son Charles Darwin’s marriage to a cousin, Emma Wedgewood, and in Charles’ sister’s marriage to Emma Wedgewood’s brother.
Admittedly, the advent of the knowledge of laws of inheritance, first published by Mendel in 1866, made Darwin question the wisdom of this union made in 1939, and should make any thinking person think twice about the foundations of his family’s new paradigm.
Annie Darwin was born March 2, 1841, the second child of Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma Wedgewood, who was also his first cousin….at the age of 8, the young lass and her two sisters contracted scarlet fever, and her health declined…
Annie succumbed to her illness on April 23, 1851, just a few weeks past her 10th birthday, possibly from tuberculosis…
Darwin had, in his study of biology, come to understand the importance of cross-breeding, which is to say, the value of producing offspring by pairs of parents who aren’t closely related genetically. This biodiversity acts as a hedge against diseases that can be transmitted through inbreeding.
“He fretted that the ill health of his children might be due to the nature of the marriage..He realized that with breeding of any kind, it’s better to cross-breed than to put close relatives together”…
Howbeit, within the mix of hereditary chances the family did produce a dynasty of social elites.
From the fifth to the eighth generation, we find a myriad of grandchildren, nephews, great-nephews, great grandchildren and so on who stood out in several aspects, ranging from military figures and politicians to poets, novelists, film makers, doctors and so on…
the statement attributed to Francis Galton that “genius is hereditary, the proof is my family“. Full confirmation of this would require the discovery of “intelligence” genes, if something of the kind were ever discovered, in genetic studies of the family. Meanwhile, we can be sure that a good family “environment”, prosperity, education, social relationships, convenient marriages and so on played a helpful role in achieving this success…
2) “Negative” Eugenics By Elimination
Francis Galton of the Darwin family “gave birth” to a theory known as eugenics, which attempted to “improve” humanity biologically and combat supposed genetic deterioration… the theory of eugenics defended the use of other “negative eugenics” measures, such as not recommending certain marriages, or even proposing sterilization of genetically inferior couples, which in some horrible cases led to their physical elimination.
3) Exploitation Of The Masses For The Benefit Of The Elite
The voyage of the Beagle was actually part of England’s empire-building effort.
From Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities
Charles Darwin had no training whatsoever for the role he played in developing a “scientific” explanation for the Origins of the Species.
- At Cambridge…at a time when science was not yet a structured profession…a botany professor…invited him to…parties to meet the famous men of the university…
- Adam Sedgwick took him as an assistant for two weeks of summer fieldwork examining the earliest known rocks in Wales.
- Then…Henslow offering him a voyage round the world on a British survey ship, HMS Beagle.
Normally, the British government expected the ship’s surgeon to collect useful information about the countries visited…In Darwin’s case, the elite social network that linked government, naval administration [Britain’s military force], and the old universities…recommended Darwin “not on the supposition of yr. being a finished Naturalist, but as amply qualified for collecting, observing, & noting any thing worthy…”
Today the multimedia fame of the Beagle voyage sometimes makes it hard to remember that its purpose was not to take Darwin round the world but to…promote and exploit British interests overseas.
Charles Darwin was by no stretch of the imagination a scientist. He was simply chosen for the respectability of his connections. He was a pawn of powerful men capitalizing (that’s a pun) on the massive social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution. He was a political front man for underwriting Britain’s latest exploitation of the world’s resources both human and natural during the height of its imperialism, while, if the idea of Evolution was utterly shot down by the Religious Establishment, he could be thrown under the bus with no harm done to any of the prestigious men with careers to protect.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was used to justify… imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality…
Darwin borrowed popular concepts, including “survival of the fittest,” from sociologist Herbert Spencer and “struggle for existence” from economist Thomas Malthus…
[Darwin] appeared to be confirming with science what they already believed to be true about human society—that the fit inherited qualities such as industriousness and the ability to accumulate wealth, while the unfit were innately lazy and stupid.
Spencer applied the idea of “survival of the fittest” to so-called laissez faire or unrestrained capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, in which businesses are allowed to operate with little regulation from the government…
Spencer opposed any laws that helped workers, the poor, and those he deemed genetically weak. Such laws, he argued, would go against the evolution of civilization by delaying the extinction of the “unfit.”
Paradoxically, his ideas were accepted through the collaboration of science, education, politics, the military, by the general public who are destined to be crushed underfoot by the elite. What wins Evolution’s converts over from Creation-based religion is not the origin of life, but the destination of life after death. No accountability to a Superhuman Being who gave life and scrutinizes what we did with it. Freedom to do whatever you want in this life with no negative consequences later.
In 1882 after Evolution was generally embraced, the declaration of God’s death was not based on scientific evidence, but charged as an assassination by rebels shaking off the last vestiges of morality.
The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy, as he put it in Twilight of the Idols: “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole…”
With the old system of meaning gone a new one could be created, but it came with risks—ones that could bring out the worst in human nature…What could the point of life be without a God? Even if there was one, the Western world now knew that he hadn’t placed us at the centre of the universe, and it was learning of the lowly origin from which man had evolved. We finally saw the true world…
His fear of nihilism and our reaction to it was shown in The Will to Power, when he wrote that: “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism…
European culture has been moving with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong…that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.”
What Nietzsche foresaw was simply the outcome of evolutionary belief in action, an upsurge in the baseline experience of the strong dominating the weak.
The Rape of Africa was the invasion, occupation,division, and colonization of African territory by European powers… [in just 30 years AFTER slavery was abolished] (between 1881 and 1914). The 10 percent of Africa that was under formal European control in 1870 increased to almost 90 percent by 1914…
the Industrial societies’ demand for raw materials, especially copper, cotton, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea, and tin…
large native populations were also a source of military power; Britain and France used large numbers of British Indian and North African soldiers…
many atrocities were perpetrated in the Congo Free State…laborers who failed to meet rubber collection quotas were often punished by having their hands cut off…
up to [half] of the estimated 16 million native inhabitants died [in 25 years] between 1885 and 1908…[from] “indiscriminate war”, starvation, reduction of births and diseases… It has been estimated that sleeping sickness and smallpox killed nearly half the population in the areas surrounding the lower Congo River…
Note also the signs of Kwashiorkor, swelling of the gut, caused by a severe form of malnutrition, especially an extreme lack of protein. This results in the inability for osmosis to occur across cell membranes, therefore fluids to accumulate in the gastro-intestinal system, as well as an enlarged diseased liver.
A similar situation occurred in the neighbouring French Congo…brutal methods, along with the introduction of disease, resulted in the loss of up to 50 percent of the indigenous population…
to build the Suez Canal…sources estimate…that 120,000 workers died over the ten years of construction due to malnutrition, fatigue and disease, especially cholera…
In Germany, France, and Britain, the middle class…claimed a “place in the sun”…bolstering nationalism and militarism in an early prototype of fascism…
Germany became the third-largest colonial power in Africa….Weltpolitik(world policy) was adopted by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890 during his Second Reich, with the aim of transforming Germany into a global power through aggressive expansion…which ultimately led to World War I.
The Second World War was the most destructive war in history…Yet the First World War, not the Second, was the single most important event in shaping the history of Europe during the twentieth century...For the First World War differed fundamentally from the wars that had preceded it…
Wilson commented on the eve of American entry into the war, “the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into every fiber of our national life…”
The First World War shattered the hope that civilization in the West was making continuous progress toward a more rational and enlightened world…
Europeans came to the realization that they had not, after all, progressed very far from barbarism; the supposedly civilized men of the twentieth century had outdone in savagery the barbarians of all preceding ages.
conquests of territories were inevitably followed by public displays of the indigenous people for scientific and leisure purposes…”human zoos” could be found in Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York City, Paris, etc., with 200,000 to 300,000 visitors attending each exhibition.
In [1906 at the Bronx Zoo in New York City], Madison Grant, head of the New York Zoological Society…a scientific racist and eugenicist, placed [Pygmy] Ota Benga in a cage with an orangutan and labeled him “The Missing Link” in an attempt to illustrate Darwinism, and in particular that Africans like Ota Benga are closer to apes than were Europeans…
And so Africans, by the Evolutionary processes of “survival of the fittest” would – and should – be eliminated.
If this reminds you – as it should – of the murder of millions of “subhumans,” under Nazi Germany, it because it is exactly the same rationale. Hitler had every reason to believe Imperial England would ally with him.
Rudyard Kiplings’ “The White Man’s Burden,” written in 1899, was both a paean to Imperial England and an exhortation to imperialism to the United States. The US had just ended the Spanish-American War with a treaty that ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States, and placed Cuba under U.S. control. Anti-imperialists quickly responded renouncing the hypocrisy of claiming moral sanction for a policy that originated from greed for military power and commercial markets, continuing racial and gender inequality at home, and the special “burden” [taxation to underwrite the costs] of imperialism to the working people of the United States.
Atheism – whether in the guise of “science” in Evolution – explains that we return to the same nothingness that we came from,
- making collaboration with evil totalitarian governments an acceptable way of life,
- and death an inconsequential, if not welcomed, end to suffering.
Kingdom Come 