Darwinism, Racism and Eugenics

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Darwinism, Racism and Eugenics

• Raymond G Bohlin, Ph.D.
• President, Probe Ministries
• Discovery Institute Fellow

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The Complex Mr. Darwin

• Darwin was a strong abolitionist
• Ties to the abolitionist Wedgwood and Wilberforce
  families
• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
  Selection, Or the Preservation of Favoured Races
  in the Struggle of Life.
• The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
  Sex

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Evolution

• The idea of evolution had been around for quite
  some time
• Darwins grandfather, Erasmus, published Zoonomia
  in 1794 an international success
• Lamarck publishes in 1809
• At Edinburgh, Darwin spent more time with
  transmutationist Robert Grant than his studies

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Evolution

• Evolution was definitely in the air before Darwin
  ever set sail on The Beagle in 1831
• In On the Origin of Species, Darwins main
  contribution was applying his idea of natural
  selection to the origin of all living things
• It was a purely natural process

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Darwins Naturalism

• In The Origin, Darwin had said nothing about God,
  making Him superfluous
• There is grandeur in this view of life, with its
  several powers, having been originally breathed
  by the Creator into a few forms or into one . . .
• Darwin resisted all suggestions by Gray, Lyell,
  and others to include God

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Natural Slavery

• In The Origin, Darwin discussed ant species that
  naturally took slaves.
• the wonderful instinct of making slaves
• But human beings were not discussed in The Origin
• In The Descent of Man is where Darwin's views on
  human progress are revealed

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Human Evolution

• Darwin always assumed an evolution from savagery
  to civility.
• Morality also evolved so would the standard of
  his morality rise higher and higher
• When civilised nations come into contact with
  barbarians the struggle is short, except where a
  deadly climate gives its aid to the native race.
  DoM

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Darwins Racism

• At some future period, not very distant as
  measured by centuries, the civilised races of man
  will almost certainly exterminate and replace
  throughout the world the savage races. At the
  same time the anthropomorphic apes . . . will no
  doubt be exterminated.

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Darwins Racism

• The break will then be rendered wider, for it
  will intervene between man in a more civilised
  state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and
  some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at
  present between the negro or Australian and the
  gorilla.

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Darwins Critics

• Eminent scientists of Darwins time like Lyell,
  Wallace, Gray, Mivart, Owens, Sedgewick
  maintained that natural selection was not
  sufficient to account for all of life on its own.
• Further they feared his purely naturalistic idea
  would be perverted by others less sympathetic
  than himself
• if this book were to find general public
  acceptance, it would bring with it a
  brutalisation of the human race such as it had
  never seen before." - Sedgewick

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Darwins Hope

• We civilised men, on the other hand, do our
  utmost to check the process of elimination . . .
  Thus the weak members of civilised societies
  propagate their kind. . . . But excepting in the
  case of man himself, hardly any one is so
  ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
• We could not withhold our sympathy, if so urged
  by hard reason, without deterioration in the
  noblest part of our nature.

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Darwins Hope

• Hence we must bear without complaining the
  undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and
  propagating their kind but there appears to be
  at least one check in steady action, namely, the
  weaker and inferior members of society not
  marrying so freely as the sound

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The Darwin Contradiction

• Darwin was an unfailing gentleman, the kindest of
  husbands, a most loving father, charitable to the
  poor, sincerely and deeply sympathetic to the
  sick, the dying and the bereaved and a strong
  opponent of human slavery
• Yet he claimed originality not his own and
  insisted on a fully naturalistic version of
  evolution that has led to a most inhuman legacy

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Darwins Family

• Darwins half-cousin, Francis Galton formed the
  first Eugenics Society Francis Galton proposed
  the idea of instituting "breeding methods" for
  humans much like those used for livestock and
  other animals.
• Darwins son, Leonard, succeeded Galton as head
  of the Eugenics Society in 1911.

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Early Converts

• Karl Marx From a devoted admirer to Charles
  Darwin
• Leon Trotsky Darwin stood for me like a mighty
  doorkeeper at the entrance to the temple of the
  universe
• Frederick Nietzsche - For Nietzsche, Darwinism
  justified one race eliminating another for its
  own benefit.

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Darwinism in America

• Margaret Sanger The most merciful thing that a
  large family does to one of its infant members is
  to kill it
• We do not want word to go out that we want to
  exterminate the Negro Population, and the
  minister is the man who can straighten out that
  idea if it ever occurs to any of their more
  rebellious members

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Eugenics in America

• Throughout its 284 pages (The Pivot of
  Civilization), Margaret (Sanger) unashamedly
  called for the elimination of human weeds, for
  the cessation of charity, for the segregation of
  morons, misfits, and the maladjusted and for
  the sterilization of genetically inferior
  races. Published today, such a book would be
  labeled immediately as abominably racist and
  totalitarian

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Eugenics in America

• From the early 1900s to the 1970s, thousands of
  people were being involuntarily sterilized. The
  eugenics movement reportedly claimed close to
  65,000 victims in 33 American states
• Three generations of imbeciles is enough Oliver
  Wendell Holmes, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

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Planned Parenthood

• Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned
  Parenthood.
• Planned Parenthood is definitely a racist
  organization - they have a racist agenda, Since
  1970, there has been something like 50 million
  abortions. About 17 million of those have been
  blacks. Its black genocide. They are killing our
  people and fooling us. Dr. Alveda King

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Darwin, Hitler and the Holocaust

• Mein Kampf My Struggle
• Among German historians, theres really not much
  debate about whether or not Hitler was a social
  Darwinist. Richard Weikart

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Darwin, Hitler and the Holocaust

• By reducing humans to mere animals, by stressing
  human inequality, and by viewing the death of
  many unfit organisms as a necessary and even
  progressive natural phenomenon, Darwinism made
  the death of the inferior seem inevitable and
  even beneficent Richard Weikart, From Darwin to
  Hitler

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How May Darwinism Be Used in the Future?