Most individuals recognize Charles Darwin as the Father of Evolution, and his book The Origin of Species (1859) with its concept of natural selection among animals via “survival of the fittest,” as the closest thing to a messiah and belief system that science willing embraces as its gospel.
Since elementary school, we’ve all been indoctrinated to evolution’s underlying premise that there are finite resources that all life forms are competing to obtain. If an individual within a given species exhibits a favorable trait that gives it a competitive edge (e.g. bigger brain, stronger muscles, sharper teeth, working thumbs…etc.), then that individual is more likely to survive and pass that trait along to its offspring.
As such, nature then favors or “selects” that random trait, and individuals that accumulate enough of those physiological markers are able to cover the biological BINGO card and beat out all the other competitors that were deselected by nature and chance.
This is a widespread scientific concept that is aggressively believed and taught today.
However, a concept that is no longer widely preached by the scientific brethren was derived from Darwin
This embodies the concept of eugenics – which is defined in Webster’s World Dictionary 4th edition as, “The movement devoted to the improvement of the human species by controlling heredity.”
If you don’t believe that a man of science could be so diabolical, here’s a quote from the modern Father of Evolution and eugenics himself, Charles Darwin, from a reprint of his book The Descent of Man (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981, Part I, chapter six, page 201.)
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous [i.e., most human-looking] apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian (Aborigine) and the gorilla.
Those aren’t my words, they’re Darwin’s. Despite the clunky writing, in that passage he clearly ranked the races; prophesied the extermination of “intermediate” humanoids – which he names in the last sentence; creating a wider gap between “…Caucasians and…low…baboon…” resulting in a more “civilized state” – again, his words which took root and produced a bitter harvest in the ensuing decades.
During the early part of the 20th Century those shocking words and concepts were actively promoted in scientific communities across the U.S. and Europe . By all accounts, the most infamous student of eugenics was Adolf Hitler whose early beliefs and ideas were shaped by the Darwinian concept, and he applied them with a ruthless precision.
You don’t often hear those unseemly facts taught in freshman biology class or world studies courses, because they would undermine the biological bedrock beneath the belief that the most fit should survive.
While that concept does selectively manifest itself within a variety of animal species on a micro-evolutionary level; it runs counter to the concept of personal dignity and individual value when it is extrapolated on the macro scale regarding humanity because its application – as history has shown – results in racism and genocide.
I would rather believe in the diametrically opposite viewpoint, which is no less shocking and is not taught in schools either – but divinely unifies humanity:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek (gentile), slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28 NIV
I know, I know, the scriptures are provocative – but don’t worry, unbiased, rationale science will protect us from such illogical truth. [NOTE: regarding this last sentence, my highly-evolved frenulum linguae is placed firmly within the lateral wall of my mouth.]
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Darwin's Dirty Little Secret....
Dude, that last sentence had me cracking up! Awesome piece, as usual. :-)
ReplyDelete@Cheryl, as my sense of humor continues along its evolutionary trajectory - I'll strive to elevate the comedy level ;-)
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