Moral Darwinism and Genocide:
The acceptance of Darwin’s
implausible theory by western civilization has come with the hidden but nasty
baggage of moral Darwinism. The blame for the steady deterioration in the
dignity and holiness of life as manifested in societal trends such as the call
for euthanasia, abortion on demand, the redefinition of marriage and current
proposals to legalize infanticide of healthy three month old babies at the whim
of the parents, is correlated with the rise of evolution that has been promoted
in the media and academia. E.O. Wilson (Harvard) and Michael Ruse (Florida State
University) write as follows:
The time has come to
take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored
Creation of a Benevolent G-d on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize
our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We
must think again especially about our so-called “ethical principles.” The
question is not whether biology – specifically, our evolution – is connected
with ethics, but how.
As evolutionists, we
see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible.
Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put
in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not
lie in G-d’s will.... In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an
illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without
external grounding. Like Macbeth's dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without
existing in substance.
Michael Ruse provides an
enthusiastic approbation to Rabbi Nathan Slifkin's new book,
The Challenge of
Creation (Yashar Press, 2006). We explore below some of the the ethical
consequences of moral Darwinism ala Ruse.
have pointed out that the three greatest genocides ever were committed in the 20th
century by Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tsung.
I'm now convinced that
Stalin [responsible for the murder of 61 million people] exceeded Hitler [20
million] in monstrous evil, and Mao [73 million] beat out Stalin.
Stalin and Mao were deeply influenced by Darwin’s theories of survival of the
In this compelling and painstakingly researched work of intellectual history,
Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and
morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social
thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional
Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially those pertaining to the
sacredness of human life. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet
simultaneously exalted evolutionary “fitness” (especially in terms of
intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Weikart concludes
that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in
euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately
embraced by the Nazis. He convincingly makes the disturbing argument that Hitler
built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles rather than nihilistic ones.
From Darwin to Hitler is a provocative yet balanced work that should encourage
a rethinking of the historical impact that Darwinism had on the course of
events in the twentieth century.
At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade
Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began
to read Darwin and became an atheist. G. Glurdjidze, a boyhood friend of
Stalin's, relates: “I began to speak of God, Joseph heard me out, and after a
moment's silence, said: “You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.” … I
was astonished at these words, I had never heard anything like it before. “How
can you say such things, Soso?” I exclaimed. “I'll lend you a book to read; it
will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what
you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,” Joseph said. “What
book is that?” I enquired. “Darwin. You must read it,” Joseph impressed
Although Charles Darwin never visited China, his ideas landed there with
force. Darwinism was the first great Western theory to make an impact on the
Chinese and, from 1895 until at least 1921, when Marxism gained a formal
foothold, it was the dominant Western "ism" influencing Chinese politics and
thought. The authority of Darwin, sometimes misinterpreted, influenced reformers
and revolutionaries and paved the way for Chinese Marxism and the thought of
Mao Tse-tung. This study evaluates Darwin's theory of evolution as a
stimulus to Chinese political changes and philosophic challenge to traditional
Chinese beliefs. James Pusey bases his analysis on a survey of journals issued
from 1896 to 1910 and, after a break for revolutionary action, from 1915 to
1926, with emphasis on the era between the Sino-Japanese War and the Republician
Revolution. The story of Darwinism in China involves, among others, the most
famous figures of modern Chinese intellectual history.
Darwinism and the philosophy of its Marxist ally in the air, it was no accident
that scientists and philosophers embraced the bloody politics of
totalitarianism. The Nobel Prize Werner Heisenberg was in charge of the Nazi
atom bomb project, the German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger became
an avid supported of the Nazis and the influential French Hegelian philosopher
and Russian émigré, Alexandre Kojève, paid tribute to Stalin and Mao.
civilization has also been much influenced. The famous Princeton bioethecist
Peter Singer and others now argue that because Darwinism effectively discredits
the biblical conception of the sanctity of human life, therefore abortion,
euthanasia and even infanticide are open to “moral” justification.
justification comes, in part, from Michael Tooley, who is professor of philosophy
at Colorado State University. Tooley’s 1983 work, Abortion and Infanticide, is a
400-page “dispassionate, philosophically sophisticated, tightly reasoned brief
for killing babies”. Tooley argues that it is only at about three months of age
that a limited capacity for thought-episodes first emerges, at which point a
baby becomes a “quasi-person”. Healthy new-born babies are neither persons nor
even quasipersons, and their destruction is in no way intrinsically wrong.
Consider the followings statements that devalue the sacredness of human life:
Racism and genocide:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized
races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races
throughout the world.... The break between man and his nearest allies will then
be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may
hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as
now between the negro or
Australian and the
gorilla.” Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man,
1871, chapter 6.
vaccination because it preserved weak people: “With savages, the weak in
body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a
vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to
check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed,
and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to
believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution
would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised
societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of
domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of
man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads
to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man
himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (2nd edition) John Murray, London,
Vol. I, pp. 205-6.)
for racism may have been common before 1850 but they increased by orders of
magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.
“Evolution teaches that ‘we are animals’ so that ‘sex across the species barrier
ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings’.”
[‘sex across the species barrier’ is a euphemism for bestiality].
Rape is “a
natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary
heritage,” akin to “the leopard’s spots and the giraffe’s elongated neck”.
Believers are wicked:
“It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to
believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but
I'd rather not consider that)”.
Goal of Science
– Nobel Laureate in Physics, Steven Weinberg, stated: “Nothing has been more
important in the history of science than the work of Darwin and Wallace”. He
pointed out that “not only the planets but even life could be understood in this
naturalistic way.” He added: “I personally feel that the teaching of modern
science is corrosive of religious belief, and I'm all for that! One of the
things that in fact has driven me in my life, is the feeling that this is one of
the great social functions of science – to free people from superstition”. …
“The Ten Commandments portray a deity who is self-centered, selfish, jealous,
obsessed with his own importance; this is not a nice kind of person. The
traditional teachings of religion are, from the point of view of the morality
most people share today, pretty immoral”.
Your children: In a book called Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995),
which Dawkins warmly endorsed, Dennett portrayed Darwinism as “a universal
solvent, capable of cutting right to the heart of everything in sight” – and
particularly effective in dissolving religious beliefs. The most ardent
creationist could not have said it with more conviction, but Dennett’s agreement
with them ended there. He despised creationists, arguing that “there are no
forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of
fundamentalism.” Displaying a degree of intolerance more characteristic of a
fanatic Fundamentalist than an academic philosopher, he called for “caging”
those who would deliberately misinform children about the natural world, just as
one would cage a threatening wild animal. “The message is clear,” he wrote:
“those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only
the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged,
reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes
[traditions] they fight for.” With the bravado of a man unmindful that only 11
percent of the public shared his enthusiasm for naturalistic evolution, he
warned parents that if they insisted on teaching their children “falsehoods –
that the Earth is flat, that ‘Man’ is not a product of evolution by natural
selection – then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have
freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of
falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our
earliest opportunity.” Those who resisted conversion to Dennett's scientific
fundamentalism would be subject to “quarantine”.
Here are some further quotations from Peter Singer from his books
Rethinking Life and Death and Writings on an Ethical Life.
Singer argues in favor of infanticide,
euthanasia and (amazingly, at the same time) animal rights! One of Singer's
interesting proposals concerns (see above) is what may be called "fourth
trimester" abortions, i.e. the right to kill one's offspring even after
birth! The Biblical tradition introduced the concept of the value and
dignity of human life to western civilization. Howeever, according to
Singer, we have to get rid of this outdated concept. We should recognize
ourselves as Darwinian primates who enjoy no special status compared to the
other animals. In the animal kingdom, after all, parents sometimes kill and
even devour their offpsring. Singer argues that the West can learn from the
other cultures like the Kalahari bushmen where children are routinely killed
when they are unwanted, even when they are several years old.
On how mothers should be permitted to kill their offspring until
the age of 28 days: "My colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a
period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an
infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others."
On why abortion is less morally significant than killing a rat:
"Rats are indisputably more aware of their surroundings, and more able
to respond in purposeful and complex ways to things they like or
dislike, than a fetus at ten or even thirty-two weeks gestation."
On why pigs, chickens and fish have more rights to life than
unborn humans: "The calf, the pig, and the much-derided chicken come
out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy, while if we make
the comparison with a fetus of less than three months, a fish would show
more signs of consciousness."
On why infants aren't normal human beings with rights to life and
liberty: "Characteristics like rationality, autonomy and
self-consciousness...make a difference. Infants lack these
characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing
normal human beings."