(Social) Darwinism?

September 21, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

In my last post I made the comment that "Hitler was using
Darwinism as an ideological weapon to control the minds of
people into believing that his was the superior race." Some might take exception
to my choice of words, that I should have said "Social Darwinism," which has been
thoroughly discredited in the public’s eyes by such noted evolutionists as
Steven Jay Gould.
The discrediting usually takes the form of demonstrating that the data used in
such works as The
Bell Curve were incorrectly used, or disassociating it with Darwin,
e.g., "These ideas are
older than Darwin’s." What they do not and cannot do is demonstrate that
social Darwinism is not Darwinism in theory. Social Darwinism does not suggest
merely that one group of people is superior to another based on culture or
society. Racism has no basis in culture. That could be changed. Instead, social
Darwinism at its roots promotes that one group of people is superior to another
for survival, based on heredity. Is not that one of the fundamental principles
Darwin was attempting to string together in his blockbuster book–you know; the
one that no evolutionist or public school biology textbook would fail to
mention, and yet none ever sites the

full title of the book? This is not a bait-and-switch. Darwin’s intention of
the word "race" was just as it is today–a
subspecies. A subspecies is
a group within a species that carries certain characteristics sometimes present
in all others of the species, but in concentration that make it distinct in some
way. It must be believed that such concentrations give survival and reproductive
favor to one subspecies (race) over another, or there is no "survival of the
fittest," and thus no advancement of a species into a new species. Charles
Darwin never advocated the persecution of other races. In fact he abhorred it,
mentioning in numerous writings his disfavor of slavery. But he did believe that
some races (not his own, of course) were "primitive" and on their way to
extinction naturally. Regardless, the point is unavoidable to the honest and
logical mind that takes Darwin’s theory to its natural conclusion: One cannot
support the idea that evolution occurs by the survival of the fittest subspecies
(race), while denying that one subspecies (race) must be recognized as superior
to another. I am certainly not here advocating segregated races. I am advocating
integrated thought.

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