IAP Political Forum

These days most Darwinists are very reluctant to admit to the racist and anti-Semitic history, and the anti-individual rights policies, of social Darwinism. They seem to want people to think that eugenics does not go back to Darwin, or to think that since many of Darwin’s kin were leading early eugenicists, there  is no current support for their kinds of ideas among today’s Darwinists.

Thank you, Johnjoe McFadden, a professor of genetics at the University of Surrey, for using the controversy over the views of Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, to re-expose this reality.


A shameful history (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2196468,00.html)

Yeah yeah, guilt by association.  Don't forget the link between atheism and paedophilia.

This is just a pathetic attempt to try and get back at atheists. 

Then you agree with me that it would be a bad idea to attempt to identify, isolate and remove the "God gene" from the human gene pool?

Go figure, Reasoned Faith is eventually showing his true colors...

You do a great impression of an ignorant creationist who doesn't realist that what "is" is not necessarily what "ought" to be and so he think that saying Darwinism leads to eugenics means Darwinism isn't true.

Bravo.

1. Help me identify where I pretend to be ignorant of the Darwinian premise?

2. Tell me where I state or even imply that this flaw in the Social Darwinian concept of eugenics means that Darwinism isn't true?  My purpose here is to have a discussion of this flaw in Social Darwinism only.  Perhaps though there are some that don't see it as a flaw?  Clearly Dr. Watson does not.  Callum seems to think that racism and the concept of eugenics is independent of Social Darwinism.  This editorial makes the argument that they are not.   I tend to agree with the editorial but perhaps you can show me my error.

Cultural marxist egalitarian rubbish. Eugenics and darwinism go hand in hand to the building of an intelligent, civilized, rational and humane society. The one eternal and immutable fact of life is that of human inequality.

OswaldTheOsprey

http://www.eugenics.net/

I always thought Dawkins's (?) point was great: compare the Priests of Xianity and the "priests" of Science and see which has more pedophilia in their ranks.

Likewise, lets compare Watson and a few other against the KKK or Jesus.

Although, I am happy to see that RF is trying to fight back. His faith has been under attack and eroded so, like a trapped animal, he is lashing out.

Welcome to the dark side, RF! Feels good to express your anger, doesn't it?  ;)

Then you agree with the editorial that there is a link between Social Darwinism and eugenics and you agree it is in error? You agree with the editorialist that Darwin's points in the Descent of Man are in error?  Am I reading you correctly?

You do not agree with Oswald that eugenics is a simply an extension of natural selection.   Instead you agree more closely with the idea that the process underlying natural selection should not be promoted.

I haven't read it and don't care. It's not a religion to me and I don't need to justify the opinions of various people when it comes to scientific facts.

Let me be clear: I am praising you for getting dirty and attacking people, to let the dark spirit of anger fill your soul and lash out.  You may be irrational at this point, but you are getting into the spirit.

Now you understand why people attack Xianity: they see problems with it and feel the need to speak out.

I am not making any claims on the validity of either side in this post, I am simply praising you for being skeptical and being like an angry atheist. (After all, there are many posts that say people should respect peoples beliefs, and RF is not letting that phase him.)


Remember, RF, what is good for the Goose.... ;)

I'm sorry barney, but I am not angry.  I am anxious to hear a good explanation.  I am also anxious to discuss wether the concepts of Social Darwinism are having a lasting impact on our present society.

Social Darwinism is not Darwinism. Actually we may suppose Darwin would be quite appalled at "Social Darwinism". You know, one of my favorite quotes of all time is this:

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

It pretty tells much of who was Charles Darwin and what abuse on the word comitted those who called their branch of reactionarism as "Social Darwinism". You may meet the man Charles Darwin further if you read his work "The voyage of the Beagle"... where he clearly states his opinion on issues like slavery. Nowadays Darwin would be a "bloody liberal" and he would be bashed by roughly the same kind of people who bashed him back in 1859, as the world has changed but these people haven't... ;)

Barney would call that an "ad hom".  ;D

Perhaps you missed what I said about Darwin and his kin  Have a look at this part of the article:

After the death of his young daughter, Charles Darwin lamented natural selection's "clumsy, wasteful, blundering and horribly cruel action"; but perhaps man could do better. Darwin did not suggest this step himself, but in the 1930s six of his family were members of the British Eugenics Society, and his son was president from 1911 to 1928. The Galton laboratory at the University of London is named after Darwin's cousin, the geneticist Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics and advocated perfecting the human race by breeding "those only of the best stock" so that the "feeble nations" could give way before the "nobler varieties of mankind".

I suppose you would include his son and cousin as two that Darwin might have been appalled over.

Is man a natural being?  Darwin would state as much.  Therefore the natural selection that occurs in humanity (or hamanities environment also called society), ie eugenics, does indeed play a pivotal role in societal natural selection, since man reacts to his environment just as animals do (on a more complex, but still darwinian approach).

Hitler was a vegetarian, so all vegetarians are evil!

I think you have the reverse.

Eugenics, social Darwinism is indeed the ideal that the strongest group (and you can translate race) does best.  It therefore defines much of the philosophy of many racists as well as providing justification.

Vegetarianism on the other had has no such causal linkage.

Eugenics is smeared and misunderstood. It is a civilized and rational approach to the building of a more humane and intelligent society.

OswaldTheOsprey

http://www.eugenics.net/

Sure, ask the Spartans, they were big proponents of it.

Sure, ask George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger. So were they.

OswaldTheOsprey

Can I assume from this you believe that eugenics is an evil concept?  Do you object to the author's claim that eugenics had its beginnings in Darwinian concepts and the followers and kin of Darwin?  If you do object, do you suggest it is purely coincidental?

Can you show me in the article where the author makes the non-sequiter construct that your analogy implies?

Yes, they were, and today they are generally considered incorrect in their support for it, though it seems to be making a comeback, particularly among Darwinian materialists.

Here is another article that raises this point. 

Human race will 'split into two different species' (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=489653&in_page_id=1965)

Perhaps you feel eugenics might prevent this.

Eugenics, both positive and negative, aims for a civilization that is intelligent, civilized, rational and humane. The world described in the article is one of uncontrolled breading by the stupid, the ignorant, the criminal and the greedy.

OswaldTheOsprey

Eugenics, as it is commonly understood, is not practical with Humans, and the old style was based on and used pseudo-scientific concepts. You cannot breed humans effectively in any short period of time, ethically, to get a set of characteristics or traits you want.

The concept behind eugenics in general--breeding or modifying organisms for desirable traits in a population--is sound, though. It's basically artificial selection and what we do in animal husbandry. If you do it voluntarily, you lack any sense of control, which makes it even more impractical, even though that would certainly be more ethical.

Neo-liberal eugenics, however, is something different, more practical in it's goals of bettering society, yet it's only vaguely related to Eugenics. That's more along the lines of genetic screening, gene therapy, genetic engineering. There's nothing wrong with encouraging them, but it's not going to make huge population changes quickly. It's more an individual quality of life improvement by removing or manipulating certain traits found desirable or undesirable. It just doesn't involve forced breeding.

Eugenics was an outgrowth of evolutionary thinking and applications in the 19th century by some people, but it was hijacked, again, by pseudo-scientists along the way. However, evolution is hardly to fault, and even if it were tied to it, it doesn't refute evolution one bit.

So continue with uncontrolled breeding? You must want more inner city hellholes like the South Bronx, South Central LA, Cabrini Green, Herman Gardens, et al. Eugenics, combined with Social Fascism means a better world.

OswaldTheOsprey

It's interesting how you assume if someone doesn't like X, then he must like y. That's a non-sequitor. The solution you propose is simply unworkable and bad. That I don't agree with your form of Eugenics doesn't mean anything other than that.

There really is no alternative to "uncontrolled" breeding, as there is no practical programme of going about doing anything by force that is also ethical. Any mass programme that prevented people from breeding would not be worth it. The suffering would be considerable, it wouldn't work in any reasonable time frame, and there's no way to effectively implement it sans a completely totalitarian regime anyway. That's unacceptable. You wouldn't want to live in the world you wish to create. We've been there once already. It's worse than the problem.

It's a non-answer to a problem. The best you can hope for is education, decreasing poverty, and voluntary methods. Poverty and education are the primary problems with cities and the urban ghetto. What do you suggest? Killing undesirable? Forcing them into sterilization? Locking them all up? Do you know how much suffering that will create? How much that will cost? You haven't thought this through.

Hope for the best is all we can do?

OswaldTheOsprey

Basically. You need to increase education, decrease poverty. Technology and medical procedures, including healthcare, must be made available to the masses so they can better themselves. Treating your population like farm animals isn't going to fix the problem, and it will likely make it worse.

What you suggest has been tried and has failed.

OswaldTheOsprey

Indeed it has.  Making costly, valuable products available for very little cost does not better society and encourage smart choices.  What it does do is cause people to waste the product and cause the product to loose both quality and value while making people even more ignorant, more dependent, and more like farm animals.

Why then do many evolutionists deny this connection? They don't seem to want to admit any connection between evolutionary thinking state controlled selective human breading.  Look at barney's response for example.  Clearly it hit a raw nerve as he presumed I posted this topic to strike back.  He presumed I did it out of anger.


It does show that extension of evolutionary thinking into the social realm, Social Darwinism, is faulty.  It indicates that the principles are not universal beyond physical biology.  It also raises a question about the efficacy of natural selection to bring improvements.  If eugenics (guided, selective breading) is needed in order to "improve" human society, as those on both sides of the eugenics argument seem to acknowledge, this is evidence that natural selection may not be as capable of driving permanent significant improvement as Darwin supposed.

That is why new approaches are needed. Bold approaches such as Eugenics and Social Fascism. Intelligence can triumph over stupidity and venality.

OswaldTheOsprey

"Evolutionists" don't deny a connection between the concept of selective breeding and modification. They deny that evolution = eugenics or that it morally justifies it. Eugenics was also filled with a lot of bullshit racism or nonsense that had nothing to do with genetics, so tying evolution to it can detract from Evolution by making it seem like it promotes the pseudoscience that was part of Eugenics of the period. In principle, yes, Eugenics is sound science. It's merely animal husbandry. Why do you think we have so many varieties of dogs today? It's eugenics...just not for humans. The problem is that Eugenics is unfeasible and unethical to apply.

I do support genetic engineering, parental rights to disability screening and selective abortion, technological modification and integration (as it becomes available), etc, which is considered under the umbrella of neo-eugenics. You might encourage it individually to better individual lives, but there's no way you can force, mandate it or get results in any timely fashion.

As I mentioned before, most problems are caused by lack of education and poverty, not genetic problems. Poor people won't disappear suddenly because of lack of breeding. It's not a genetic problem. It's a social one that can be remedied through social welfare, education, and increasing the standard of living. That's far more pragmatic, although it will never be 100% effective.


No. It implies no such thing. Natural Selection does work, and so can artificial selection. The problem is that forced artificial selection (not natural selection) is WRONG and leads to horrific social results no one wants. That's not a flaw of evolution at all, because evolution was never a normative theory. The only thing it means is that trying to turn evolution into a moral system is flawed, not evolution, which is purely descriptive. Natural Selection already has shaped humanity--it's why we are the way we are today. We are basically an African Ape.

Technocrat

I must say that I hate the back-slapping hi-fiving of the theist tag-team here, but I just have to congratulate you on the clarity and moderation of your responses.   You express exactly what I would woish to, and far better than I could.

Personally, I think it ironic that people who would squeal like stuck pigs if their beliefs were so intentionally misrepresented can try every rhetorical shyster trick in the book to discredit other views.  Probably accounts for the long life of the religion meme - hypocrisy and distortion deflects lethal attacks.

I am amazed that 'reasoned' faith, confronted with the simple "Darwinism is NOT Social Darwinism" hasn't fallen back more often on 'but look some of Darwins relatives were involved'.  About the level of argument his whole point aspires to.

One is left to wonder what level argument you aspire to.


I take offense to your accusations.  First off you rarely see Oswald or myself squeal like stuck pigs (I suspect you could not come up with even one example), and second I have not misrepresented anybody's view.  If you disagree please point it out.  Please identify the hypocrisy, the shyster tricks and the distortion that I have saddled you with.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Callum.  I suggest you review the circle jerks you zealot atheists post.  Congratulating each other for the fine job you do in attacking peoples belief systems.

So far as I'm aware, genetics had not been discovered at Darwin's time. So Darwin's contemporaries would not have known that there is no gene for criminality (as Oswald still seems to think) or whatever other negative traits you wish to remove.

Genetics isn't that simple. A gene that may contribute to criminality in one circumstance (e.g. poverty) way have a positive effect in another circumstance.

Coupled with that is the fact that anyone who expects nature to have morality all laid out for them is an idiot. Darwinian evolution and free-market capitalism (which both work on similar principles) are not necessarily the most moral system - they are just the way things are (at least until we bring in Socialism).

Can anyone explain why a society that chooses to carry out a darwinian process (ie survival of the fittest), is not darwinian?

Eugenics can defeat criminality in all levels-the inner city and the board room. As to socialism-what I propose with Eugenics is non-marxist socialism i.e. Social Fascism. Marxism is merely the hand maiden of internationasl capitalism.

OswaldTheOsprey

Could you try backing something up? How can eugenics defeat criminality? In what sense does Marxism go hand in hand with capitalism?

Also, what exactly do you mean by Social Fascism? Is that not essentially equivalent to Stalinism - since Fascism is a despotic system?

I'm a Social Democrat and I see the Democrat part as being essential in maintaining checks and balances.

Maybe because Darwinism is a explanation and not a regulation? Nothing in Darwinism makes "Social Darwinism" a requisite or a unavoidable consequence... blaming Darwin for what others read in his theory is nonsense.

Democracy is ridiculous. The purest form of direct democracy in action is a lynch mob. Social Fascism is not Stalinism. It is the joining of the Motherland with her citizens with the Motherland's good coming before individual gain. As to crime, one positive action would be to sterilize anyone and everyone convicted of a felony.

OswaldTheOsprey

That is meaningless rhetoric, tell me about the actual structure of the government.


How do you know that this would be a positive action?

1. Structure of government: Complete nationalization of all high finance, heavy industry, utilities, medicine, commerce and agriculture. Extensive program of public works to provide full employment. Restoration of pride in the Motherland and the withdrawal of all military from overseas. Free education from kindergarten through college-but with strict educational standards. Rigorous program of Eugenics after offering those targeted a chance to leave with reparations. A citizen armed forces and minimal foreign involvement.

2. Sterilizing those guilty of felonies will nip future crime in the bud by preventing unwanted breeding.

OswaldTheOsprey

LOL. That's the dumbest fucking society ever devised to date. Why don't you strap a giant "lolz I'm a neo-nazi" sign on your back and go join the Klan already, kid.  White Power International needs you. Get real, grow up, and leave your parents' basement and enter the real world where your "lolz fascism's cool" will meet reality.

On second thought, I love it. Just so long as you're the first person to be sterilized for your genetic deficiency. See how great it is then when we cart you off to Gestapoland.

You seem to have an inexhaustible supply of wornout cliches at your disposal. Please point out one time I mentioned race in my description of Social Fascism. The Klan would not fare well under Social Fascism. Eugenics will see that they do not breed little kluxers or else they will be deported. You must have missed where I said we would rid society of the stupid, the ignorant and the criminal-the Klan in a nutshell.

OswaldTheOsprey

a) Who will decide which traits are to be got rid of?  Who will decide what is 'stupid', etc?

b) Do you really believe that complex human behaviours are genetically replicated?

Natural selection describes (Major's great use of words!) how a species adapts to its environment.  It happens over long periods, by small steps favouring beneficial
adjustments.  It has no 'end' in view.    The basic misunderstandings that you and the godders have are that NS is teleological and that environment includes the cultural. 

Cultural adaptation is a selected human characteristic that has served us well in recent times.  Cultures can change rapidly, and those who can adapt will flourish. But the actual changes and adaptations are not genetically transmitted.

You're a fascist; The shoe fits. Your whole "social fascism" is a cute way of trying to disguise your ideology and what it really is by playing the renaming game and making it sound like something cute and fuzzy. By that logic, I can reinvent Communism by calling it "Happy Times." That can't be bad, right? It's happy. There's virtually no difference in what you advocate and normal Fascism. Except, of course, for the bullshit language games.

You want to forcefully prevent people from breeding, sterilize people, or whatever else (perhaps even kill them/imprison them if they refuse) so you can create your social darwinist utopia. Sounds familiar. Been there, done that. Didn't work.

If you are interested in getting rid of stupidity, you should take your own ideology's advice and don't breed, because only a flaming retard would support fascism and think it's a "good" society.

A. The intelligent and the civilized.
B. Yes.

OswaldTheOsprey

I am a Social Fascist. I revel in the outrage of people like you.

OswaldTheOsprey

So you won't have a say.... as proven by your second response.

 :sleepy: :sleepy: :sleepy: Yawn!  :sleepy: :sleepy: :sleepy:

OswaldTheOsprey

Just curious... who are "the intelligent", Oswald? How are they defined?

Darwinistically, Lee would not have been allowed to live.

Luckily the west has a christian attitude.  :'(

Standards. Unlike in today's cultural marxist rotgut society.

OswaldTheOsprey

Ozzy, boyo, there are times to argue your case and times to walk away....  you just chose the wrong option, you poor ignorant, unintelligent, uneducated, uncivilised plonker.  Now everyone can see just how stupid, unworkable and groundless your ideas are.

But at least you are giving the Darwinists the opportunity to show just how ludicrous Faith's opening sentence was.

Thank you Callum for showing all of us how arrogant, condescending and self-righteous you are. To borrow from Claire Boothe Luce: You have the soul of a meat axe and the mind of a commissar.  :P

OswaldTheOsprey

Standards? But, what standards? How you tell who is intelligent and who is not.... objectively, scientifically?

For an advocate of eugenics you are surprisingly ignorant of genetics.

To start could you please link or cite a study showing the link between crime and certain genes?

Socially this eugenics model may have some value even if genetics has no effect on crime. Poor people commit more crimes than average. If a poor criminal gets sterilized they raise fewer poor children to be tempted into crime.

Because traits of offspring are a low priority in choosing a mate free market breeding is an inefficient way to mass produce offspring. However a proper understanding of genetics a commitment to rational choice and concern for the future should be able to raise the priority of offspring traits in the opinions of those who matter to the eugenics plan (smart folk) without the need for a bureaucracy of sterilization.

Tests, observation, past histories. For starters.

OswaldTheOsprey

Thanks for youruse of a treasured reference.   However, I wasn't indulging in personal insults, I was cmmenting on the way the ideas you hold reflect on yourself.

"you poor"  - to be ptied and helped
"ignorant," - not knowing what you are proposing, either in detail or in general
"unintelligent," - trying to derive general principles from things you do not understand
"uneducated," - granted this is an assumption on my part as to why you don't know what you say
"uncivilised" - show us a 'civilised' proponent of your daft ideas
"plonker" - a common term that summarises the above

The ideas?
"stupid"  - lacking in intelligence - both theoreticsl snd prscticsl
"unworkable" - you cannot propose a 'jury', nor the basis or fiding one. You cannot propose the principles on which these people could reach decisions. You cannot propose the means by which this scheme could come about - apart from violence which would simply confirm the 'uncivilsed' judgenment.
"and groundless" - your underlying 'science' is non-existent.

I may be arrogant, that doesn't make me wrong.  I may be condescending, that neither makes me wrong nor even unhelpful (style does not affect intention).  I am certainly not self-righteous, I find it most useful to be shown that I am wrong. But you haven't argued that.

So sterilize the poor. That's one way to beat poverty.


And who decides who 'those who matter' are?

Here is a scholarly article dealing with the subject. Please read it with an open mind.

OswaldTheOsprey

http://www.eugenics.net/papers/Gottfredson.htm

I am not a member of your society (I don't think - I assume that you choice of a paper focused on the USA indicates you are american). Therefore the appliation of this paper to your society is not of direct interst to me - that far I have an open mind. So far as I can see, your choice of this paper indicates that the basis for 'those who matter' as requesated by IamMe is ... white people.    The paper from 1994 itself does not answer directly the question IAmMe asked, but inveighs against a 'liberal fiction'.  So, are we to assume that 'those who matter' comprise a group that excludes 'liberals'?

And if the group of 'those who matter' is to exclude people on the grounds of their political opinions, or their race, then could you eplain on what basis people are to be INCLUDED in this group?

Butt hen you knwo that there is no sicentific deifnition of inteligence... so tests prove nothing. Tests sya thta thye emasure itnelligence, and they define itnelligence as the thign measured by intelligence tests... but nobody has ever demonstrated that inteligence is quantifiable as a magnitude.

The claim "intelligent people" is ALWAYS based upon arbitrary concepts -arbitrary measurements of intelligence, arbitrary comparisons and so it produces arbitrary results that match previous prejudice... to demonstrate that the people doing them is the one qualified to determine over the right to breed of the ones they already thoguht that shoulnd't breed, but lacked a "respetable" excuse to do so.

The whole eugenics scam is based upon circular thinking; first the eugenist determine who they dislike and then figure a "scientific" reason for such arbitrary decission. It is very typical of certain authoritarian thinking to resource to a biological excuse for their prejudice...

But it's just prejudice in a "logical" disguise. It is not Science and it is not objective. It's pesudoscience of the worst kind, the one that uses its fake "facts" as an excuse to deny human dignity to certain human beings based not in their use of their free will, but in what "they are born" and so "can't be changed".

Exactly. (applauded - you kinda need them anyway)

IF there is a logical connection between Eugenics and Darwinism it is neither representative of its validity and ultimatly is dependant upon personal ideology.

---------------------------------------------
Just to show the transparency of the arguement I would like to reverse it to show the implied alternative, Christianity.

 

These days most Christians are very reluctant to admit to the racist and anti-Semitic history, and the anti-individual rights policies, of Christian doctrine. They seem to want people to think that ignorance and hatred does not go back to the Bible, or to think that since many of Jesus' kin were leading in their ignorance of real human problems, there  is no current support for their kinds of ideas among today’s Christians.

You are correct that I am an American. Dr. James Watson and Dr. Lawrence Summers were excluded for their views that ran counter to those of our cultural marxist lords and masters. There is plenty of exclusion.

OswaldTheOsprey

Speaking of scams, the whole egalitarian scam is based upon the ludicrous notion of human equality-a far fetched myth. Human inequality is the constant unchasnging unyielding immutable and eternal fact and law of life.

OswaldTheOsprey

Equality is an aspiration not a fact.

Equality is a myth.

OswaldTheOsprey

Here is an expose of the vile fraud Franz Boas by the late Dr. Samuel Francis, a true non-conformist and Americanist. Boas is a hero to our cultural marxist lords and masters.

OswaldTheOsprey

http://www.vdare.com/asp/printPage.asp?url=http://www.vdare.com/francis/boas.htm

Free men are not equal
Equal men are not free

Intelligent men are not stupid
Stupid men are not intelligent

OswaldTheOsprey

The other is more complicated and less direct.

For instance the Constitution was built on the premise of the statement.

Yes. Equal before the law.

OswaldTheOsprey

Equality of opportunity and equality before the law are not a scam, but a goal.

They are founded upon the conviction that the individual is of most importance and subjecte to interaction with society, and so must be protected from being segregated. Which can only be achieved if society is forced to not distinguish between individuals. So society treats all individuals as equal so no individual is damaged by society due to a dififferential interaction.

Eugenism is merely an attempt by individuals to hijack society with the purpose of harming the individuality of certain individuals.

So basically, you are saying that there should be complete equality and no distinction between the law abiding and the criminal; the intelligent and the stupid; the civilized and the ignorant; and the honest toiler with the greedy, mammonistic capitalist? Up is down and black is white?

OswaldTheOsprey

Genuine eugenicists want to make the world of our (well... some of our) children a better place. It comes with a high price tag (the rest of our children)
Disingenuous eugenicists may exist to pursue power but I'd think you could get more power being disingenuous with some more palatable ideology.

I've never met anyone exactly the same as me, and I'm pretty sure differences are exploitable from either side.

I see it not as a case of harming individuals, but helping society as a whole.

OswaldTheOsprey

The old "break a few eggs to make an omlette" philosophy?  8)

The old "common good before individualism" philosophy.

OswaldTheOsprey

You really do miss the point of the constitution don't you?

"Common good" is an interesting context.  I am sure for the "common good" you too would have endorsed "lebensraum" and all it entails.  ::)

No and I condemn the Holocaust and have contempt for those who deny it. In fact, we have enough land and have no need for foreign adventurism that you seem to like.

OswaldTheOsprey

Its amazing how people who seek "the common good" tend to do it on the backs of oppressed minorities.  I am sure you wouldn't condemn the holocaust if you thought it was for "the common good", now would you?  :laugh:

If we didn't have enough land?  Oh, yeah, kill a few of some minority or other, as long as it isn't your group eh?  Survival of the fittest you know.  In fact, you could argue that your endorsement of social darwinism was freakishly accurate.  I mean really, if the Jews were supposed to have survived, if they were the fittest, they would have defended themselves.

So why would you condemn the holocaust since it fits so well in your personal philosophy?  Really you should have embraced it.

My personal philosophy does not support mass murder. The Jews were slaughtered by the same sadistic swine who murdered Roehm and Strasser in 1934-Goering (who conducted the Wannsee Conference), Himmler and Heydrich. The Holocaust, along the Holodomor (Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33) ranks among the most evil acts ever committed and those who deny it are filth beneath contempt.

OswaldTheOsprey

So you repudiate social darwinism, even if you were to believe (as some of them did) it was "for the greater good".  ;)

Or do you embrace, and regardless of the atrocity, you merely have to be convinced it was for "the greater good".

When did I talked about equality? I talked about the society treating equally all individuals, but this does not mean they're equal! Each one amkes his own decissiona ccordign to his free willl... decission whcih do ntod epend upon hsi identity but upon a compelx ineraction between internala nd external forces, plues the indivdul abbility to decide. I said just thatt he society is negated the abbility to treat individuals differently because of their indivduality; but free will and its consequences are quite another beast. Decissions have consequences, but the cosnequences must depend upon the decisison, not the individual who did it.


BTW, you talked about "common good"... I just have to say, "common good rarely is good for the common...". ;)

 



I don’t understand this viewpoint.  Since it seems clear that survival of the fit and the natural world is in general cold and impersonal, uncaring, and unguided and Darwinian evolutionists accept this as reality, then how could eugenics, a far more pragmatic method motivated by the desire to improve be morally unjustified?  Aren’t those who accept the evolutionary explanation being inconsistent in opposing eugenics?


It is interesting that you have concluded that one previously tried and failed method won't remedy the situation and another previously tried and failed method will.


Animal breading provides direct and observable evidence that artificial selection works to accomplish the intent.  But we have no direct observable evidence Natural Selection does what is claimed of it, so I am surprised you hold so firmly to such presupposition.  In experimental and molecular biology, the observations indicate that evolutionary processes are quite proficient at weakening and breaking functionality in order to defeat selection pressure (drug resistance is an example), but we don’t see evidence that it builds new functionality.   Selective breading targets modified genetic characteristics that are generally neutral and preserves them by sorting the gene pool, thus removing them from selection pressure that would otherwise dilute and obscure the trait.  The idea that nature acts like selective breading only less efficiently over longer periods and with no intent does not follow from the evidence.  Then when you note that those who promote eugenics do so with the argument that selective breading is needed to prevent degradation in the gene pool, it does seem to be an indictment against the capability of natural selection.

Can I therefore conclude that your statement Natural Selection does work is presupposition?  I think so.


By my value system this is certainly true, and I agree that it can lead to horrific social ills if handled poorly, however I am investigating the value system that seems to follow from a materialistic viewpoint such as Darwinism.  In this value system I don’t understand how it follows that this is WRONG.  Can you explain further?

What I repudiate is mass murder.

OswaldTheOsprey