Amazon

<a href="http://www.suntimes.com/output/letters/cst-edt-vox1111a.html" target="_blank">web page</a>

This one-sided piece of garbage appeared in yesterday's (2/11/02) Chicago Sun-Times, complete with pictures of both Lincoln and Darwin. Underneath the pictures was a nice little summary caption attributing the saving of the world to Lincoln and evil and horror to Darwin.

I must do a little more research in the evolution vs. social Darwinism category before I respond, but I SHALL respond. It would be delightful if anyone else who feels outraged by this nonsense would also voice their displeasure.

Happy Darwin Day!!!

Quetzal

Suggest looking up "monism", the theory that got the social Darwinists started. Of course, it's been discredited since the 1920's, and only revived occasionally by would-be despots and dictators (e.g., antebellum Germany) desparate to find some way of rallying the peasants to slaughter their neighbors. Doesn't have a thing to do with evolution.

[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: Morpho ]</p>

bluefugue

Lincoln was directly responsible for a great deal more death and destruction (though he had his reasons of course) than Darwin, that paunchy middle-Victorian bourgeois citizen, puttering around with his pigeons and his barnacles, ever would have dreamed of.

Amazon

Would you care to elaborate? I'm trying to dig through Lincoln info right now, and there is almost too much to sift through just to write a brief rebuttal to the above article. Any help you are willing to give would be greatly appreciated.

Oolon Colluphid

Funny that, if human life is so important, one in three pregnancies miscarries. You’d have thought He could make a better system. How many billions of natural abortions is that? And what of the (presumably proposed) alternative, creation? Just how many billions have been killed by all those little nasties that god created? Rather more, I reckon.
At its core, what's wrong here is the naturalistic fallacy, that how nature is is a guide to how we ought to behave. It doesn't matter a tuppeny puck what mangled version of Darwin's ideas some warped people did or didn't use to their own ends. Evolutionary biology is science -- and so should rightly 'infest' every schoolchild's curriculum.

I suspect a blockage in the writer’s rectum.

Oolon

bluefugue

Well, I just mean that Lincoln chose to wage the Civil War, leading to the deaths of 600,000 Americans. I am not saying this was necessarily a bad thing, as he had compelling reasons to do it (the preservation of the Union and, later, the abolition of slavery). I don't mean to bash Lincoln, and if you did so in your letter you would probably not get a favorable response. I just mean to point out that Lincoln was a player on the world stage, a man who re-forged a nation out of blood and iron, and so was more directly involved in "evils" than Darwin, who was a pleasant country gentleman who wrote a book on biology. (Though you could obviously also argue Lincoln's actions led to more good than evil overall; that is the judgment history has reached, anyway.) It is certainly unfair to blame Darwin for the distortions that others put onto his work, or for the moral lessons they presumed to draw from it. Darwin was just trying to solve a scientific problem, nothing more.

bluefugue

I wonder whether the ancient Greeks, who practiced infanticide, were influenced by "evolutionary disrespect" for human life? Oh wait -- they hadn't found Jebus, so that would explain their horrific practices. Serves them right for not having been born 500 years later...

Coragyps

I just yesterday found <a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4119.asp" target="_blank">this piece of dreck</a> from Ken Ham on how Darwin was allegedly to blame for racism, in addition to having caused all other ills from which our modern world suffers. Can any of you history buffs shed some light on Ham's claim that "race" didn't mean "color" before 1859? I, for one, don't believe it: I have a several-great-grandfather who wrote a catechism in the early 1850's that was subtitled "Particularly for the Instruction of Colored Persons." It reminded them of how they should be submissive to their masters, like Paul said to do.
Also, he claims that maltreatment of native Australians dates to Darwin. Why am I dubious?

UnaffiliatedOld

Another point you might want to make is that in Mein Kampf when Hitler referred to evolution it was regarding the German nation, not natural selection.

Hitler actually believed it was divine right that made the Aryans superior, that they were closer to god and that all others were sub human, so it was all right to kill them.

In short Hitler was following the teachings of the catholic church.

Amazon

Wow, Coragyps, that article upset my digestion. Good catch.
I wish there was a way to make sure that people who read that sort of tripe were required to read other perspectives to draw informed conclusions on issues.


By the way, I just sent in a very brief rebuttal to the Sun Times. It was really only a paragraph or so, applauding Lincoln's tenacity in keeping the country together despite the religious fundamentalists who nearly tore the country apart to protect their prejudices.
Then I paraphrased some comments by Oolon Colluphid and IesusDomini about where direct responsibility for loss of human life could be placed, when speaking of Lincoln and Darwin. I added that his "evolutionary disrespect for human life" crack was just a disguise for his displeasure that science, reason, and humanism were replacing ancient superstition and rage against progress in modern minds.
Boy, I hope they print it, and I hope it doesn't do more harm than good if they do.