Thursday, April 10, 2008 | Science : Evolution and Biology | print version

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The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

by PZ Myers, Pharyngula

Reposted from:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/the_simple_falsehood_at_the_he.php

I have to make this really, really simple for the "Hitler was an evolutionist" dimwits.

There is a central, incredibly obvious fact in Darwin's insight.

If members of a population die or are killed off, they will leave no descendants for subsequent generations.

It isn't razzle-dazzle genius. Any idiot can figure that one out — and many idiots have. Farmers have known it for millennia, when they set aside particularly fruitful seed stock or especially robust farm animals for breeding, and eat the rest. Nazis used this elementary logic when they decided to exterminate Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals. Eugenicists used it when they wanted to argue for shifting the distribution of certain properties in a population.

It ain't "Darwinism". It's self-evident, obvious, selbstverst�ndlich, apparent, évidente, transparent. The KKK knows it, farmers know it, dog and horse breeders know it, the Nazis knew it, they didn't need Darwin to spell it out for them. Blaming that on Darwin is awesomely stupid.

Darwin's real contribution, the one that had everyone smacking themselves in the forehead and wondering why they didn't think of it first, was the realization that the natural environment does the killing — that natural selection shapes heredity. The idea of culling populations is not only so easy that a hate-mongering cretin can think of it, but that weather, bacteria, viruses, parasites, predators, etc. have been doing it for eons, with no intelligence required, and that mindless microorganisms have been far greater agents of hereditary change than the worst the Nazis ever accomplished; does Charles Darwin also get the blame for that? Darwin realized that the environment has consequences and can shape the generation-by-generation passage of hereditary traits in populations, and that examination of the natural world reveals that it has been doing exactly that. He realized that ubiquitous forces that are so simple we take them for granted have been quietly and slowly sculpting our heredity since the beginning of life on earth.

When clueless creationists argue that Darwin led to Hitler, or worse, throw away buckets of money making elaborate propaganda films arguing such nonsense, it's worse than inane. It's as if they have completely missed the point of the idea they are damning.

Posted: Thursday, April 10, 2008 | Permalink

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1. Comment #158233 by Luthien on April 10, 2008 at 8:41 am

Hehe, that is very well put. I shall have to remember that point next time I hear that silly nonsense from a creationist ;-)

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2. Comment #158236 by Pattern Seeker on April 10, 2008 at 8:44 am

We should all remember though, that IDiots are not as smart as idiots.

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3. Comment #158239 by DamnDirtyApe on April 10, 2008 at 8:47 am

This also is relevant to the Catholic church's 'new sins' - particularly the sin of 'genetic manipulation'. They appear to have forgotten that we've selectively bred crops, cattle and dogs since the DAWN OF FREAKING CIVILISATION.

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4. Comment #158243 by bujin on April 10, 2008 at 8:51 am

I really don't think that the Expelled guys (or any other IDiot for that matter) use the "Darwinism leads to Hitler" argument because they think that is an accurate description of evolution.

They do it simply to scare people (who know nothing of evolution) away from the theory and, hopefully (for them, anyway) back into the arms of creationism.

Articles like this could be posted every day for a year and at the end of that year, there would still be creationists making exactly the same claim.

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5. Comment #158254 by nocreed on April 10, 2008 at 9:00 am

And that folks, is that. (If only)

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6. Comment #158255 by konquererz on April 10, 2008 at 9:00 am

I don't know that he has ever put it better than "awesomely stupid". Great stuff P.Z. they really shouldn't have brought you into this movie, they had no idea what they were dealing with.

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7. Comment #158259 by Double Bass Atheist on April 10, 2008 at 9:08 am

Very well said, PZ. Short, sweet, easy to understand (even for the fundy crowd), and spot on!
I think I'll save the link to this story for the next time I hear this same "Evolution leads to Nazis" bullshit.... which, after 'Expelled' comes out, should be quite soon.

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8. Comment #158269 by barry21 on April 10, 2008 at 9:15 am

Waaaait, a second - when something dies, it's no longer alive?

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9. Comment #158272 by ryanjevansuk on April 10, 2008 at 9:19 am

Bravo PZ. The impossibly crass logic which allows these people to land this charge at Darwin's door needs to be throughly debunked once and for all.

Also, painful as it might be, I really want to watch Expelled to see if it is as bad as the reviews I have read suggest but I certainly don't want to pay to see it. Anyone know when it'll be available online...?

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10. Comment #158277 by jaf on April 10, 2008 at 9:26 am

It's as if they have completely missed the point of the idea they are damning.

There's the rub. Anyone who has even a basic understanding of evolution agrees it's the only way.
Anything else is simply not science.

"If your grandparents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't either."

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11. Comment #158307 by Karlsson on April 10, 2008 at 10:10 am

I don't see why it's important if Hitler was or wasn't a atheist or if Nazism was or wasn't a cause of evolution.

Evolution is a fact and can't be falsified by the claim that it lead to Nazism. Even if it did, even if there where a clear connection between the two, that doesn't make evolution less true.

If Hitler was an atheist, so what? He also was a man, a vegetarian and didn't drink alcohol. Does that mean we all should eat meat, drink heavely and do a sexchange?

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12. Comment #158310 by EvidenceOnly on April 10, 2008 at 10:12 am

Great short and to the point article!

Blaming Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis is like prosecuting Isaac Newton when someone gets killed falling from a ladder or the inventor of the combustion engine when someone dies in a car accident.

Religions claim patent rights to morality and truth but make stuff up and spit out an endless stream of blatant lies.

It' not ignorance. It's much worse: massive organized deceit.

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13. Comment #158313 by rod-the-farmer on April 10, 2008 at 10:21 am

If I might be so bold as to suggest an additional cause of death (besides weather, predators, etc.) that would be stupidity. Uncommon in plants, but more & more common as you move up the intelligence scale.

See the aptly named Darwin Awards

http://www.darwinawards.com/

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14. Comment #158318 by MelM on April 10, 2008 at 10:36 am

I found this from news item NCSE in my email box today.

"Expelled producers accused of copyright infringement" April 9 by NCSE

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2008/US/301_expelled_producers_accused_of__4_9_2008.asp

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15. Comment #158320 by philiproulx on April 10, 2008 at 10:37 am

Isn't it true that since we know about the mechanisms behind Darwinian evolution, and we know how to make our genotype stronger, that we should engage in practices that make our species stronger genetically? This may include promoting interracial marriages (which studies show produce far superior offspring) but may also include such practices as aborting when defects are discovered (like hearing defects, or sight defects or propensity for diabetes, or even asthma). I think if we embrace evolution we need to accept the ethical implications even when we find ourselves conflicted. And I think to a large degree, that's what Hitler thought he was doing...the difference is, we just don't like where he drew the line in the sand....and is it really our place to do that type of line drawing in the first place? So what is it that constrains us to not play "god"? What is it that compels us to not try and make the human genotype stronger, more resilient through advanced genetic manipulation, or unnatural selection?

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16. Comment #158323 by MorbidlyCheerful on April 10, 2008 at 10:41 am

To quote Comedian Ron White, "There's no cure for stupid."

But seriously, Is there a nicer way of saying some one is deluded (other than saying they are religious)? I seem to have this problem. No matter how I debate this, the rents tend to get snippy.

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17. Comment #158333 by julesfkirby on April 10, 2008 at 11:00 am

Philiproulx, Just because we understand the general mechanism of evolution does not mean that we should engage in eugenics. Evolution, in and of itself has no ethical implications, it is the best way of scientifically undertanding how species evolve. Your ethical implications are the result of a major misuderstanding better the knowledge of a concept and some of the applications that a poor understanding of that same idea can lead to.

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18. Comment #158348 by philiproulx on April 10, 2008 at 11:26 am

Jules, if you mean that evolution has no say on what is right and what is wrong, then you are correct. There are no right and wrongs with evolution, and it is not ethically wrong for a species of bird to wipe out a species of insect. Right and wrong only exists because humans have a perspective on life that no other organism has. So, when I talk about ethics, I can only talk about ethics in regards to an ethical framework that humans have constructed. I am merely asking the question, "What prevents us from building our ethical framework on the foundations of evolution, which suggests that we ensure that we are the fittest, and take any means necessary to that end?"

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19. Comment #158359 by Ipsilon on April 10, 2008 at 11:42 am

Philip, to do that would make you one of those dirty, filthy Atheist: cold blooded, merciless and without compassion. Exactly what religious people want us to be....

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20. Comment #158360 by Benjamin P. on April 10, 2008 at 11:44 am

Careful. If the Christians figure out, that Hitler used the breeding technique, they will try to forbit it and pray for faster horses instead.

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21. Comment #158362 by harrylippy on April 10, 2008 at 11:47 am

philiproulx -

You ask the question, "what prevents us from building our ethical framework on the foundations of evolution, which suggests that we ensure that we are the fittest, and take any means necessary to that end?"

As a previous commentor mentioned, you are talking about eugenics. For example, if Down's Syndrome is detected in a fetus, a eugenical response would be to abort the fetus since it is unfit. Seems easy enough. But it isn't that simple. First of all, we don't have the technology to detect all genetic diseases in the fetus - genetics is a statistical science, there are very few guarantees when it comes to genetic diseases. But even if we could - even if we could predict with 100% accuracy that a baby was going to be born with Down's Syndrome, what if we take the eugenical approach and abort the fetus, only to have a brilliant scientist come up with a cure two years later? (I'm using Down's Syndrome as an example here, but I should make it clear that I am not a medical doctor nor a molecular biologist/geneticist, so if my example breaks down for this particular disease, I apologize - but the argument remains valid, I think).

The short answer, for me, to your question would be this - we don't engage in eugenics because it is morally wrong to do so. Evolution, as a process, is extraordinarily brutal - read any of Dawkin's examples of paracitism in The Extended Phenotype for a few examples, and there are millions. It is, in effect, inhumane - it doesn't have a conscience, it doesn't "root" for one side or the other. We, as humans (at least most of us) ARE humane - we CARE about even the weakest of our species, and we seek to make their life as high quality as possible; WE are judged by how we treat our weakest. To use evolution as a guidebook for morality would be disastrous - indeed, it is (one of) the strawman that many creationists construct in arguments against evolutionists.

Shaun

PS - I am reminded of a eugenics talk I attended last year here in Chicago, and one of the speakers made the (sort of flippant) comment that "anybody who has been turned down for a date has been a victim of eugenics".

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22. Comment #158367 by Border Collie on April 10, 2008 at 11:54 am

Birds do it ... bees do it ... even educated fleas do it ...

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23. Comment #158371 by Animavore on April 10, 2008 at 11:59 am

Although I must add hairylippy that I'm sure there's a fair number of people who would abort a down's syndrome fetus if it could be detected early. I for one wouldn't hold it against someone if they did but then again, I don't judge people in general (as a man I'm glad to say I'll never have to make that choice). Can't see how it could be cured though, at least not once the child has developed.

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24. Comment #158376 by Teratornis on April 10, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Comment #158307 by Karlsson:

I don't see why it's important if Hitler was or wasn't a atheist or if Nazism was or wasn't a cause of evolution.

Then evidently you don't rely on hysteria and emotion to determine the truth value of a proposition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion

Evolution is a fact and can't be falsified by the claim that it lead to Nazism. Even if it did, even if there where a clear connection between the two, that doesn't make evolution less true.

It does to people who are what I call "intellectual hedonists."

Hedonism is the idea that we should do what feels good. Since different people get pleasure from different things, hedonism leads different people to different behaviors.

Intellectual hedonism means evaluating propositions according to how we react to them emotionally. Since different people have different emotional reactions to a given proposition, intellectual hedonism leads different people to form different beliefs.

Most people have never learned to think critically, so for the most part they evaluate the truth of things according to how those things make them feel.

You will see this all day, every day in the real world. For example, most people have never heard of peak oil, but as soon as they do, most will instantly reject the idea as preposterous before looking at any facts.

If Hitler was an atheist, so what? He also was a man, a vegetarian and didn't drink alcohol. Does that mean we all should eat meat, drink heavely and do a sexchange?

What's more, he loved his dog and promoted superhighways. Therefore we should definitely not keep dogs or drive on superhighways.

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25. Comment #158378 by Border Collie on April 10, 2008 at 12:06 pm

I don't how many of you had a similar experience, but when I was a kid in the 1960's, Time Life put out one of their little by-mail book club books titled "Evolution". I don't know how it got by my screechingly fundamentalist mother, but it did and I read it. After spending most of my childhood in the woods, fields, creeks, etc., simply observing the vastness of the living world and raising cattle, never being able to grok the Biblical version, it smacked me right between the eyes ... so simple, but so profound, complete and vast an idea. I was somewhere between fourteen and eighteen.

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26. Comment #158382 by Koreman on April 10, 2008 at 12:11 pm

Worse. It seems that Stein & co quietly admit evolution must exist. By pointing at Nazis.

Of course they are wrong. First, what already has been said more or less in the article: although some Nazis saw themselves as a new human species and embraced 19th century political interpretations of 'Darwinism' it had nothing to do with evolution. Trying to breed a human race like -indeed- what farmers do for ages. According to Nazi propaganda this was exactly what the Fuhrer had in mind: bread a pure Aryan race.

Second, Nazi doctors and pseudo scientists were involved in the most awful weird cruel experiments that had nothing to do with even the bare teachings in evolutionary biology. Some even tried to create Frankenstein by transplanting tissue and organs from and to living people. One might say Nazi efforts were an attempt to intelligent design.

For the arguments sake, the claim that Nazis were atheists is not true. Besides its ties with the roman catholic church and being a pseudo religious movement on its own the ideology borrowed many ideas from ancient mythologies. Symbols, rituals. Astrology was an accepted practice. Hitler personally believed in Nostradamus. The supernatural was everywhere.

On topic, there are a lot of straw men involved. Stein must be a scarecrow collector. Maybe he is one himself, trying to make a living with utter nonsense.

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27. Comment #158383 by Raiko on April 10, 2008 at 12:12 pm

The 'highest' Xian worshippers - priests, monks, nuns, - are supposed to practice absolute abstinence. They're trying to keep homosexuals from raising children together, but not from making any the heterosexual way (thus allowing the spreading of any genes that might have to do with homosexuality).

Facing that, it's comes as almost no surprise that they seem to have little to no grasp of the concept of heritage... at least not beyond plants and pets.

No. I am not entirely serious.

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28. Comment #158384 by Animavore on April 10, 2008 at 12:13 pm

I had a similar experience just looking at that now famous ape to man picture when I was a kid. That picture conveyed more to me then an words could've back then. I was only 8-10. It was before my confirmation anyway because faith was destroyed by then. I just wanted the money.

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29. Comment #158385 by Pete_C on April 10, 2008 at 12:14 pm

"Isn't it true that since we know about the mechanisms behind Darwinian evolution, and we know how to make our genotype stronger, that we should engage in practices that make our species stronger genetically?"

First, you're committing the naturalistic fallacy, by arguing:
1) X is a fact
2) Y is a fact
therefore,
3) We should do Z

Hume convincingly argued that we can never make arguments of this nature, since we can't connect the "should" that pops up in (3) to anything occurring in (1) or (2).

Second, you start saying "What prevents us from building our ethical framework on the foundations of evolution, which -" and then add some more words that have nothing to do with the 'foundations of evolution'. You just commit the naturalistic fallacy again.

It is as if you said "What prevents us from building our ethical framework on the foundations of Newtonian gravitation, which suggests that we ensure that we are the most massive".

I suggest you think of it this way: we can use our knowledge of evolution, just like gravity, or chemistry, or ecology, to make more informed choices within an (independently argued) moral framework.

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30. Comment #158386 by Steve Zara on April 10, 2008 at 12:14 pm

I have tried using similar arguments with some people, but it doesn't seem to work. They attempt to quote-mine Darwin on the subject of eugenics (just like they half-quote his words on the evolution of the eye). Their aim is to show that Hitler was influenced by Darwin's character and words. This can lead them to infer that evolution is a tainted theory because it comes from a nasty fellow; to make "Darwinism" seem like it includes both Natural Selection and eugenics. The Hitler/Evolution link isn't always as simple as PZ makes out here, even though it is a wonderful piece of writing from him.

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31. Comment #158388 by MrPickwick on April 10, 2008 at 12:17 pm

I can't help remembering George Carlin and his amazing taxonomy of stupidity. [http://tinyurl.com/6ztshu]

*Some people are stupid
*Some people are full of shit
*Some people are fucking nuts

Where do these ID guys belong?

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32. Comment #158389 by Teratornis on April 10, 2008 at 12:18 pm

PS - I am reminded of a eugenics talk I attended last year here in Chicago, and one of the speakers made the (sort of flippant) comment that "anybody who has been turned down for a date has been a victim of eugenics".

What is sort of flippant about that?

Actually I would criticize the statement as being imprecise. For someone to be a victim of eugenics, he or she would have to be turned down by every available partner. This does happen to a few people in every generation, more commonly to men than women, since sexual selection weighs more heavily on men.

With most dimorphic social mammals, the variation of reproductive success is greater among males than among females. For example, among elephant seals, virtually all fertile females will join a harem, but only a few bulls will get a harem.

Humans are not quite so dimorphic, but even so it is obvious that some men have far less "game" than others. In every generation there will be some men who can hardly buy a date. In contrast, only the most exceedingly deformed young woman would be unable to make easy money as a prostitute if she were so inclined.

Psychologists have found that in random pairings of men and women, the man is twice as likely to be interested in the woman as she is to be interested in him.

It is interesting to observe how our social customs have adapted around this basic fact that men want women more than women want men.

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33. Comment #158392 by Steve Zara on April 10, 2008 at 12:24 pm

Comment #158389 by Teratornis

For someone to be a victim of eugenics, he or she would have to be turned down by every available partner.

That isn't eugenics. Not being fancied much if at all not the same as being the victim of a deliberate and planned attempt to remove your genes from the population. "Eugenics" should not be used to lightly, I feel.

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34. Comment #158393 by alovrin on April 10, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Breeding ha.
I know its off topic but..

Whats so great about having kids, or having kids in the confines of matrimony anyhoo.
Isnt there enough human beenz in the world.

By the by three of the best parents I know are two gay women and and their sperm donor gay man friend.

Nice T shirt Steve I want that one and one that says
Stand Back I dont know how big this science thing gets.

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35. Comment #158395 by jimbob on April 10, 2008 at 12:34 pm

For those who can stand it, you can read Hitler's views on the topic for yourselves:

http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html

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36. Comment #158396 by julesfkirby on April 10, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Well Philiproulx,
Let me make an extreme case in your favour and then introduce a what if. Further, I will construct the case by assuming that we have perfect understanding of a probabilistic event and reduced the probability of error to as near zero as possible.
Case: we find what genetic combinations promote poor health or predisposition to certain genetic maladies. We forbid people from breeding that will result in this combination. I mean if we're going to abort the fetus anyway, why not intervene before it has a chance to be made. Further, we prohibit everyone over a certain age from breeding, again it reduces the chance of disability. Of course we have to mandate that anyone with a current genetic disability from a predetermined list (How it's determined and by who is a problem we can come back to later, but assume for now that it's not based on any form of discrimination rooted in race, creed, class, caste, faith - because humans have never done any of the kind of discrimination, right;)... obviously, this would still be problematic) And of course we start to weed out the weaker members of society (based again on a predetermined and equally problematic criteria). At this point we have successfully reduced the breeding human population to its strongest members, a vaste minority of the entire population. the result, probably if we're successful there is a high probability that the children do tend to be stronger, healthier, smarter (assuming we breed for it), and live longer.
But, doing this we have created a seed of our own demise. We have created an artificial genetic bottleneck, reducing the human population to a predetermined set of genetic characteristics that APPEAR to be the best suited to our survival at the time those lists of traits were made, but in limiting the genetic pool we have also reduced the possibility for human survival should an unexpected event occur, like say a disease that a group of people that did not meet the list of traits above actually had an immunity to. so you see it actually serves humanities survival to not practice eugenics because we are not omniscient. we are not gods because there are no gods and we can not know the future events, good or bad of current choices, so surely limiting probability in the way you suggest is not only immoral, but does not meet the basic goal of your desired aims, to assure the continuance of humanity. It's not only unethical, it's poor planning.

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37. Comment #158398 by al-rawandi on April 10, 2008 at 12:38 pm

jimbob,

I read Mein Kampf in it Hitler says that he owes his entire theory to Darwin. He says evolution is the reason he wants to kill Jews. He also says he is a nihilistic atheist that doesn't have morals because he doesn't believe in God. He said Eugenics is part of his atheist creed, which all atheists believe in....

Oh wait, I meant the exact opposite. I think I was describing David Robertson's position.

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38. Comment #158400 by CambrianExplosion on April 10, 2008 at 12:46 pm

It's a good post from Dr. Myers, but it misses the issue for a lot of religious people - that Darwinism /also/ implies that humans are part of nature and that the same natural process applies to them. Look at all the anti-evolution claptrap where some preacher screams that his parents aren't monkeys. A lot of [Christian] theology states that humans are in a special class outside of the natural world. If you understand this viewpoint, you can see why religious people also like this falsehood that Darwinism leads to Nazis, etc. - in their eyes it is the philosophical continuation of viewing humans as an animal, since also in their eyes, animals exist only to be exploited by humans. It's all cock-eyed over there... I'm glad to be an atheist.

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39. Comment #158404 by black wolf on April 10, 2008 at 12:50 pm

There are two objections I have against eugenics, which come to my mind right now. 1) to be successful on a humanity or even a nation level, it needs to be mandated. That violates the basic human rights that I believe in, as per the Golden Rule. I don't want to be told who to produce children with, therefore I don't tell anybody else.
2) selective breeding very often leads to hereditary gene defects. If you 'breed' a population in a certain direction, sooner or later defects occur because the genetic similarities become too frequent. As selective breeding is a much faster process than natural evolution, the mutation rate and self-correcting mechanisms on a molecular level can't keep up to weed out the 'damage'. You may suddenly find that you're in a dead end of 'clusterfucked' genes. I'm not a geneticist, but I think I'm getting it about right. Of course we may be able to engineer those genes to a greater advantage some day in the future. It 'feels' morally uncomfortable, but I must admit that a reasonable approach with a tested and safe approach to genetic engineering is something that could be considered.
I would not advocate or support late term abortions (i.e. about later than week 22, which is the currently accepted standard by law in my country) based on eugenic ideas.

That said, if anyone wants to select his personal reproduction partner based on that person's phenotype or genotype, why not. As long as his offspring don't get coerced into doing the same, that's okay.

edit: the bottleneck argument brought up by Jules is another good point, so I would add that to it. We'd have to determine an outlet within one reproductive cycle, which is impossible before we know excactly how basically everything in genetics works.

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40. Comment #158407 by adamd164 on April 10, 2008 at 12:53 pm

PZ makes an excellent point. It's precisely because the people who associate Hitler's regime with "Dawinism" do not understand the meaning of the term that it even comes into the equation at all.

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41. Comment #158409 by Wosret on April 10, 2008 at 12:57 pm

This is pretty painfully obvious, I think. Imposing a selection on a population surely isn't natural.

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42. Comment #158412 by black wolf on April 10, 2008 at 1:03 pm

This is pretty painfully obvious, I think. Imposing a selection on a population surely isn't natural.

Well, that turns into a more philosophical argument, as it can be argued that we are a part of nature along with our ability to act contrary to uncontrolled natural processes. There's no natural law that forces us to behave naturally, and so on. The weird thing is, creationists accuse 'evolutionists' of somehow being obliged to behave in accordance with natural selection and therefore to act immoral and inhumane.

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43. Comment #158417 by Steve Zara on April 10, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Comment #158412 by black wolf

The weird thing is, creationists accuse 'evolutionists' of somehow being obliged to behave in accordance with natural selection and therefore to act immoral and inhumane.

I would discourage the use of phrases like this. Natural Selection isn't immoral any more than the weather is.

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44. Comment #158418 by jimbob on April 10, 2008 at 1:12 pm

From Chapter I of Mein Kampf:

On this planet of ours human culture and civilization are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he should be exterminated or subjugated, then the dark shroud of a new barbarian era would enfold the earth.
To undermine the existence of human culture by exterminating its founders and custodians would be an execrable crime in the eyes of those who believe that the folk-idea lies at the basis of human existence. Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise.
Hence the folk concept of the world is in profound accord with Nature's will; because it restores the free play of the forces which will lead the race through stages of sustained reciprocal education towards a higher type, until finally the best portion of mankind will possess the earth and will be free to work in every domain all over the world and even reach spheres that lie outside the earth.
We all feel that in the distant future many may be faced with problems which can be solved only by a superior race of human beings, a race destined to become master of all the other peoples and which will have at its disposal the means and resources of the whole world.

Doesn't sound like a godless atheist to me! (...and what was it the SS had on their belt buckles?).

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45. Comment #158423 by MrPickwick on April 10, 2008 at 1:19 pm

A quote from Hitler's Main Kampf (Thx for the link jimbob) showing his evil atheism.

On this planet of ours human culture and civilization are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he should be exterminated or subjugated, then the dark shroud of a new barbarian era would enfold the earth. To undermine the existence of human culture by exterminating its founders and custodians would be an execrable crime in the eyes of those who believe that the folk-idea lies at the basis of human existence. Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise.

And another nice one:

The two Christian denominations look on with indifference at the profanation and destruction of a noble and unique creature who was given to the world as a gift of God's grace. For the future of the world, however, it does not matter which of the two triumphs over the other, the Catholic or the Protestant. But it does matter whether Aryan humanity survives or perishes. And yet the two Christian denominations are not contending against the destroyer of Aryan humanity but are trying to destroy one another. Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and does not allow God's handiwork to be debased. For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will. Therefore everyone should...

And one more!:

How devoid of ideals and how ignoble is the whole contemporary system! The fact that the churches join in committing this sin against the image of God, even though they continue to emphasize the dignity of that image, is quite in keeping with their present activities. They talk about the Spirit, but they allow man, as the embodiment of the Spirit, to degenerate to the proletarian level. Then they look on with amazement when they realize how small is the influence of the Christian Faith in their own country and how depraved and ungodly is this riff-raff which is physically degenerate and therefore morally degenerate also. To balance this state of affairs they try to convert the Hottentots and the Zulus and the Kaffirs and to bestow on them the blessings of the Church. While our European people, God be praised and thanked, are left to become the victims of moral depravity, the pious missionary goes out to Central Africa and establishes missionary stations for negroes. Finally, sound and healthy �" though primitive and backward �" people will be transformed, under the name of our 'higher civilization', into a motley of lazy and brutalized mongrels.
It would better accord with noble human aspirations if our two Christian denominations would cease to bother the negroes with their preaching, which the negroes neither desire nor understand. It would be better if they left this work alone, and if, in its stead, they tried to teach people in Europe, kindly and seriously, that it is much more pleasing to God if a couple that is not of healthy stock were to show loving kindness to some poor orphan and become a father and mother to him, rather than give life to a sickly child that will be a cause of suffering and unhappiness to all.

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46. Comment #158427 by Jiten on April 10, 2008 at 1:41 pm

harrylippy writes:

we don't engage in eugenics because it is morally wrong to do so.

I don't think so.Morality is to do with harm done to others.Who would be harmed if we for example bred for higher intelligence in a baby by genetic manipulation(if we had the technology)?No,we don't engage in eugenics because we don't have the technology yet.Just wait till we do.
As Dawkins himself has asked somewhere,what is the difference between practicing 8 hours a day to be a good concert pianist and genetically modifying for musical ability?(Dawkins might have used another example,and put it better than me!)

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47. Comment #158432 by emmet on April 10, 2008 at 1:57 pm

It would be an extremely interesting experiment to slightly change those extracts from Mein Kampf so that they appear to denigrate atheism, post them to a blog/website, and see how long it would take to accumulate a following of Fundies.

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48. Comment #158433 by Diacanu on April 10, 2008 at 1:59 pm

Jiten-

Who would be harmed if we for example bred for higher intelligence in a baby by genetic manipulation(if we had the technology)?

The people rendered obsolete by the wave of superbabies.

And then, society at large, when as julesfkirby thoroughly pointed out, the law of unintended conequences comes into play.

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49. Comment #158436 by Diacanu on April 10, 2008 at 2:05 pm

emmet-

Nah, their side relies on tricks and lies, we needn't.

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50. Comment #158437 by RationalFreeThinker on April 10, 2008 at 2:05 pm

PZ Meyers seems to have a laser-like way of making a brilliant point!

Natural Selection: So simple even a caveman can do it - that is, EVOLVE! And must do it, as various natural selections processes (including sexual selection) work their way on the stuff of genes.

However, what seems so absolutely amazing when one looks at human history and our 'collective' decision making abilities is that the hardest thing to kill is a bad idea.

It's seems that really bad human ideas, like religion, creationism, bigotry, genocide, etc. (and the sorrowful history thusly produced) yield in time (but only after much rendering of clothes and gnashing of teeth) to marginally better ideas.

It is for this reason alone that I suspect we are doomed. For unlike George Santayana's famous saying "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it", even those of us who do remember history are doomed to repeat it because most of the idiots in charge don't have a friggin' clue.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy.

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