Darwinism and Eugenics - A marriage of evil and stupidity!

Darwinism and Eugenics - A marriage of evil and stupidity!

Evolution has produced classes of people who are in various stages of development from ape to man?

Darwin believed it.  From the Descent of Man (1874) :  "At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes...will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."

Galton believed it.  Hitler believed it. They must therefore take their place in the roll call of the most evil men in human history.   Do not be easily led into following in their footsteps!

Eugenics … death of the defenceless

The legacy of Darwin’s cousin Galton

By Russell Grigg

Few ideas have done more harm to the human race in the last 120 years than those of Sir Francis Galton. He founded the evolutionary pseudo-science of eugenics. Today, ethnic cleansing, the use of abortion to eliminate ‘defective’ unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, and the harvesting of unborn babies for research purposes all have a common foundation in the survival-of-the-fittest theory of eugenics. So who was Galton, what is eugenics, and how has it harmed humanity?

Francis Galton

Photos Darwin by TFE Graphics, Hitler and Galton by Wikipedia.org

Francis Galton (featured on right in photo montage, right) was born into a Quaker family in Birmingham, England, in 1822. A grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his mother’s side and so a cousin of Charles Darwin (pictured above left), he shared the Darwinian agnosticism and antagonism to Christianity for most of his adult life.

As a child, he had learned the alphabet by 18 months, was reading by age 2½, memorizing poetry by five, and discussing the Iliad at six.¹ In 1840, he began studies at Cambridge University in medicine and then in mathematics, but, due to a nervous breakdown, succeeded in gaining only a modest B.A. degree, in January 1844.² When his father died that same year, he inherited such a fortune that he never again needed to work for a living.

This gave the wealthy young Galton free time not only for ‘amusement’, but also to dabble in a number of fields, including exploration of large areas of South West Africa, his reports of which gained him membership of the Royal Geographic Society in 1853, and three years later of the Royal Society. In that year, Galton married Louisa Butler, whose father had been Headmaster at Harrow School.

As an amateur scientist of boundless curiosity and energy, he went on to write some 14 books and over 200 papers.³ His inventions included the ‘silent’ dog whistle, a teletype printer; and various instruments and techniques for measuring human intelligence and body parts; and he invented the weather map and discovered the existence of anticyclones.

Interaction with Charles Darwin

The publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 was undoubtedly a turning point in Galton’s life. In 1869 he wrote to Darwin, ‘[T]he appearance of your Origin of Species formed a real crisis in my life; your book drove away the constraint of my old superstition [i.e. religious arguments based on design] as if it had been a nightmare and was the first to give me freedom of thought.’⁴

From Nott, J.C. and Gliddon, G.R., Indigenous Races of the Earth, J.B. Libbincott, Philadelphia, USA, 1868. Pseudoscientific illustration of alleged evolution of human ‘races’. An allegedly ‘scientific’ illustration from 1868 showing that blacks were less evolved than whites by suggesting similarities with a chimpanzee. Even the famous evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould commented that the chimpanzee skull is falsely enlarged and the ‘negro’ jaw falsely extended to suggest that ‘negros’ rank even lower than apes. This demonstration was not from racist or ‘fringe’ literature but from one of the leading scientific textbooks of its time. Today’s militant evolutionists like to conveniently evade the social implications of their ideas, but history demonstrates otherwise.

Galton ‘was among the first to recognize the implications for mankind of Darwin’s theory of evolution.’⁵ He believed that talent, character, intellect, etc. were all inherited from one’s ancestors, as was also any lack of these qualities. Thus the poor were not hapless victims of their circumstances, but were paupers because they were biologically inferior. This was contrary to the prevailing scientific view that all such qualities were due to environment, i.e. how and where a person was brought up.⁶ Galton believed that humans, like animals, could and should be selectively bred. In 1883, he coined the term ‘eugenics’ [Greek: εύ (eu) meaning ‘well’ and γένος (genos) meaning ‘kind’ or ‘offspring’] for the study of ways of improving the physical and mental characteristics of the human race.

Galton’s views left no room for the existence of a human soul, the grace of God in the human heart, human freedom to choose to be different, or even for the dignity of the individual. In his first published article on this subject, in 1865,⁷ ‘He denied … that man’s rational faculties are a gift to him from God; he denied that mankind has been cursed with sinfulness since the day of Adam and Eve’; and he viewed religious sentiments as ‘nothing more than evolutionary devices to insure the survival of the human species.’⁸

Concerning the sense of original sin, he wrote that ‘[this] would show, according to my theory, not that man was fallen from a high estate, but that he was rapidly rising from a low one … and that after myriads of years of barbarism, our race has but very recently grown to be civilized and religious.’⁹

In Hereditary Genius (1869), Galton enlarged on all these ideas and proposed that a system of arranged marriages between men of distinction and women of wealth would eventually produce a gifted race. When Charles Darwin read this book, he wrote to Galton, ‘You have made a convert of an opponent in one sense for I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work … .’5 Galton’s ideas undoubtedly helped him extend his evolution theory to man. Darwin did not mention Galton in his Origin, but referred to him no less than 11 times in his Descent of Man (1871).

Three International Eugenics Congresses were held in 1912, 1921 and 1932, with eugenics activists attending from Britain, the USA, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Mauritius, Kenya and South Africa. Notables who supported the ideas pre–World War II included Winston Churchill, economist John Maynard Keynes, science fiction writer H.G. Wells¹⁰ and US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge. Galton received the Huxley Medal from the Anthropological Institute in 1901, the Darwin Medal from the Royal Society in 1902, the Darwin–Wallace Medal from the Linnaean Society in 1908, and honorary degrees from Cambridge and Oxford Universities; he was knighted in 1909. Despite these ‘honours’, in life Galton was not his own best advocate for his theories. He had many long-lasting bouts of illness, and notwithstanding his and his wife’s good intellectual pedigrees, they produced no children of their own to carry on his name and heritage. After his death in 1911, his will provided for the funding of a Chair of Eugenics and the Galton Eugenics Laboratory at the University of London.

Eugenics in action

Image Wikipedia.org

Eugenics congress logo.
Click here for larger view

The concept of improving the physical and mental characteristics of the human race may seem admirable at first glance. However, historically the method of achieving it has involved not just increasing the birthrate of the ‘fit’ by selected parenthood (‘positive eugenics’), but also reducing the birthrate of those people thought to impair such improvement, the ‘unfit’ (‘negative eugenics’).¹¹

For example, by 1913, one-third (and from the 1920s on, more than half)¹² of the US States had laws allowing for the compulsory sterilization of those held in custody who were deemed to be ‘unfit’. This resulted in the forced sterilization of some 70,000 victims, including criminals, the mentally retarded, drug addicts, paupers, the blind, the deaf, and people with epilepsy, TB or syphilis. Over 8,000 procedures were done at the one city of Lynchburg, Virginia,¹³ and isolated instances continued into the 1970s.^14,15

About 60,000 Swedish citizens were similarly treated between 1935 and 1976, and there were similar practices in Norway and Canada.¹⁶

In Germany in 1933, Hitler’s government ordered the compulsory sterilization of all German citizens with ‘undesirable’ handicaps, not just those held in custody or in institutions. This was to prevent ‘contamination’ of Hitler’s ‘superior German race’ through intermarriage.

Then from 1938 to 1945, this surgical treatment of such ‘useless eaters’ was superseded by a more comprehensive solution—the eager genocide, by Hitler’s Nazis, of over 11 million people considered to be subhuman or unworthy of life, as is authenticated and documented by the Nuremberg Trials records. Those killed included Jews, evangelical Christians,¹⁷ blacks, gypsies, communists, homosexuals, amputees and mental patients.

This was nothing other than rampant Darwinism—the elimination of millions of human beings branded ‘unfit/inferior’ by, and for the benefit of, those who regarded themselves as being ‘fit/superior’.
The core idea of Darwinism is selection.¹⁸ The Nazis believed that they must direct the process of selection to advance the German race.¹⁹ Galton’s naïve vision of a ‘eugenics utopia’ had mutated into the Nazi nightmare of murderous ethnic cleansing.

Sadly, ideas of racial superiority and eugenics did not die with Hitler’s regime. David Duke, America’s infamous anti-black and anti-Jew racist, developed his views from reading the eugenicist writings of Galton, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Keith and others, as well as the early writings of modern sociobiologists such as Harvard’s E.O. Wilson.²⁰

Eugenics in the 21^st century.

Following World War II, eugenics became a ‘dirty word’. Eugenicists now called themselves ‘population scientists’, ‘human geneticists’, ‘family politicians’, etc. Journals were renamed. Annals of Eugenics became Annals of Human Genetics, and Eugenics Quarterly became the Journal of Social Biology.²¹ However today, some 60 years after the Holocaust, the murderous concept that Galton’s eugenics spawned is once again alive and flourishing, and wearing a lab-coat of medical respectability.

Doctors now routinely destroy humans, who were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26), by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, as well as in fetal/embryonic stem-cell research.

A. Abortion

According to the UK’s Daily Mail, ‘women are increasingly eliminating their unborn children because of non life-threatening deformities such as deformed feet or cleft lips and palates’, and ‘more Down’s Syndrome babies are now killed than are allowed to be born.’²² Dr Jacqueline Laing of London’s Metropolitan University commented, ‘These figures are symptomatic of a eugenic trend of the consumerist society hell-bent on obliterating deformity.’ ‘This is straightforward eugenics,’ said UK’s Life Trustee, Nuala Scarisbrick. ‘The message is being sent out to disabled people that they should not have been born. It is appalling and abhorrent.’²²
Globally, there are an estimated 50 million abortions each year. That’s one abortion for every three live births, so any child in the womb, on average, worldwide, has a one in four chance of being deliberately killed.²³

B. Infanticide

China is famous for its coercive one-child-per-family policy. In practice, most families want a boy, so if a girl is born, she can be at risk. Sometimes the same grisly principle is followed, but before birth. In India, it’s common to find out the sex of the baby, and a vast majority of abortions are of girl babies. It makes the feminist support of abortion distressingly ironic.
And disabled babies are at risk as well. ‘Ethicist’ Peter Singer has advocated legalization of infanticide to a certain age. He writes: ‘[K]illing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.’²⁴

C. Euthanasia

In May 2001, Holland became the first country to legalize euthanasia, with the law coming into effect from January 2002. Euthanasia was tolerated in Belgium until May 2002, when it was legalized. It is tolerated in Switzerland, Norway and Columbia.²³

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Eugenics and the Scopes Monkey Trial¹

Photo Bryan College

Clarence Darrow (left) and William Jennings Bryan

The textbook from which Scopes taught evolution, A Civic Biology by George Hunter,² and its companion lab book³ were blatantly eugenic and offensively racist. Hunter divided humanity into five races and ranked them according to how high each had reached on the evolutionary scale, from ‘the Ethiopian or negro type’ to ‘the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America’.⁴ A Civic Biology asserted that crime and immorality are inherited and run in families, and said that ‘these families have become parasitic on society. … If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.’⁴

This is the book that Darwinists of the day insisted that Scopes had a right to teach!

All this is documented by Dr David Menton in the DVD Inherently Wind: a Hollywood History of the Scopes Trial (right).

References and notes

1. The 1925 trial in Dayton, Tennessee, USA, of high-school teacher John T. Scopes, charged with violating state law by teaching the theory of evolution.
2. Hunter, G., A Civic Biology Presented in Problems, American Book Co., New York, USA, pp. 195–196, 1914.
3. Hunter, G., Laboratory Problems in Civic Biology, American Book Co., New York, USA, 1916.
4. Ref. 2, pp. 261–265.

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Judgment at Nuremberg

Perhaps the most frequently asked question concerning the eugenics-inspired genocide of the Holocaust is: ‘How could it have happened?’ In the 1961 MGM film Judgment at Nuremberg, about the trial of four Nazi war criminals, judges who had enforced Nazi decrees,¹ one of the defendants (Judge Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster) cries out to Chief Judge Dan Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy): ‘Those people—those millions of people—I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it!’ Haywood’s response was eloquent: ‘It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.’

Likewise today, eugenic killing of innocent preborn babies because they are thought to be less than perfect began the first time a doctor consented to kill a handicapped child in the womb. The rest is history.

1. Based on the third Nuremberg Trial (1947), also called the ‘Judges’ Trial’ because it tried Nazi judges and prosecutors for imposing the Nazi ‘racial purity’ programme through the eugenic and racial laws. There were a total of 13 Nuremberg Trials.
   
   The photograph (above right) comes from the first Nuremberg Trial (1945–6), the most famous and significant of them because it tried the main German leaders.
2. 
   Front row (left-to-right): Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel;
   Back row: Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel. (Courtesy Wikipedia)

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The "progressive" end of the anthropological crowd believes it.  They believe that people of color are not as evolved and that native culture should not be disturbed or altered.   How many boneheads have fought against the modernization of tribal peoples to "save their culture", as if they were exhibits in a zoo?

ab·o·rig·i·ne

 (b-rj-n)

n.

1.

a. A member of the indigenous or earliest known population of a region; a native.

b. often Aborigine A member of any of the indigenous peoples of Australia. See Usage Note at native.

2. aborigines The flora and fauna native to a geographic area.

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[From Latin aborgins, original inhabitants (folk etymology of a pre-Roman tribal name) : ab-, from; see ab-¹ + orgine, ablative of org, beginning; see origin.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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aborigine [ˌæbəˈrɪdʒɪnɪ]

n

(Social Science / Anthropology & Ethnology) (Social Science / Peoples) an original inhabitant of a country or region who has been there from the earliest known times

[back formation from aborigines, from Latin: inhabitants of Latium in pre-Roman times, probably representing some tribal name but associated in folk etymology with ab origine from the beginning]

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Aborigine [ˌæbəˈrɪdʒɪnɪ]

n

1. (Social Science / Peoples) Also called native Australian Aboriginal (Austral.) native (Austral.) Black a member of a dark-skinned hunting and gathering people who were living in Australia when European settlers arrived

2. (Linguistics / Languages) any of the languages of this people See also Australian [3]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Thesaurus 

Legend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms

Noun	1.	aborigine - an indigenous person who was born in a particular place; "the art of the natives of the northwest coast"; "the Canadian government scrapped plans to tax the grants to aboriginal college students" indigen, indigene, native, aboriginal individual, mortal, person, somebody, someone, soul - a human being; "there was too much for one person to do" Levantine - (formerly) a native or inhabitant of the Levant Mauritian - a native or inhabitant of Mauritius Filipino - a native or inhabitant of the Philippines Russian - a native or inhabitant of Russia Seychellois - a native or inhabitant of Seychelles
	2.	Aborigine - a dark-skinned member of a race of people living in Australia when Europeans arrived Abo, Aboriginal, Australian Aborigine, native Australian ethnic group, ethnos - people of the same race or nationality who share a distinctive culture Aussie, Australian - a native or inhabitant of Australia

Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2008 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

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Darwin and Galton were so wrong in so many ways. The rather simplistic method of ranking people to an extent based upon color is ridiculously wrong, because we are all colored people and in fact:

"Surprisingly, all humans, regardless of the shade (“color”) of their skin, have approximately the same number of melanocytes per square inch of skin. "

Melanin—Umbrellas of Our Skin

The sun would kill every one of us if we had no protection. Sunscreen and parasols are not enough. Thankfully, God provided our skin with millions of miniature umbrellas, filled with melanin, to guard our bodies from the sun’s most deadly ultraviolet rays.

Umbrellas are not just for rain; they can also shade us from the sun. As Jonah sat sulking over God’s mercy toward Nineveh, God prepared a large plant—like a big umbrella—to shade him from the beating sun (Jonah 4:6). Just as our merciful God protected Jonah, He has provided our skin with millions of tiny umbrellas to protect us from the sun’s damaging rays.

Dangerous Ultraviolet Rays

In addition to visible light, the sun produces invisible light called ultraviolet (UV), which has a greater effect on our skin. Depending on the amount of exposure, UV light can be either beneficial or damaging. With moderate exposure, UV promotes the production of vitamin D in our skin, an essential for building strong bones and teeth. In larger doses, however (and especially at a certain wavelength), UV light can damage our skin, producing burns, premature skin aging, wrinkling, mutations, and skin cancer.

Melanin to the Rescue

Like all good sunshades, the umbrellas in our skin are darkly colored. The dark pigment in our skin, called melanin, is typically black or brown. This protein is produced by special cells, called melanocytes, which are located in the lowest level of our epidermis (the surface layer of our skin, Figure 1).

MANUFACTURING MELANIN (Figure 1): Melanin is the pigment primarily responsible for our skin color. Melanin is produced in special cells, called melanocytes, located in the lower layer of our epidermis (the surface layer of our skin).

Melanocytes themselves are not the umbrellas of our skin. They merely produce the melanin for our skin, in the form of tiny granules called melanosomes.

Our skin contains millions of tiny umbrellas containing melanin. These “umbrellas of the skin” protect us from burns, skin aging, wrinkling, mutations, and skin cancer.

Then they transfer the granules to certain epidermal cells in the lowest layer of our epidermis, where they block the damaging UV that penetrates our skin. In other words, melanocytes are like pigment factories that ship pigments (melanosomes) to other cells where the pigment is needed.

The mechanism to transfer the granules is itself amazing. The melanocyte is a highly branched cell with long, slender projections, or processes (Figure 2). The melanocyte makes the melanosomes which then move out to the tips of the cell processes. The epidermal cells then “bite off” the tips of these processes, bringing the granules inside their cell.

Once inside, the melanosomes are moved and arranged to form a dark “cap” over the epidermal cell’s nucleus. This pigmented cap serves as a tiny umbrella for the nucleus, specifically blocking the most damaging wavelength of the UV light (Figure 2).

DISTRIBUTING MELANIN (Figure 2): Once melanin is manufactured, it is packaged into tiny granules, called melanosomes, ready for shipment to nearby cells in the epidermis (epidermal cells). The granules first are shipped to tips of long, slender projections, which branch out from the melanocyte like tentacles on an octopus (A).

The epidermal cells then “bite off” the tips of these projections (B). Once inside the epidermal cells, the precious melanosomes are moved and arranged into dark “caps,” or umbrellas, over the cell’s nucleus (C). These caps protect the nuclei from harmful ultraviolet light, especially when the cells divide.

UV radiation is most damaging when the epidermal cells are dividing to produce new cells. At this critical time, UV can damage the DNA (genetic information) in the nucleus, resulting in mutations and skin cancer.
The only cells that face this danger are the stem cells, the only cells in the epidermis capable of dividing. These cells reside in the deepest layer of the epidermis. And amazingly, only these vulnerable stem cells get the precious melanosomes.

There Are No “White” People

Human skin is normally never truly white, though some people have less melanin in their skin than others. Surprisingly, all humans, regardless of the shade (“color”) of their skin, have approximately the same number of melanocytes per square inch of skin.

Even albinos have melanocytes, but they produce colorless, rather than pigmented, melanosomes. The granules are colorless because the enzyme necessary for producing melanin is either missing or defective.
Interestingly, these colorless melanosomes are still taken into the epidermal stem cells, where they form an umbrella just as in normal skin. The result, however, is something like a clear plastic umbrella—not very good for warding off the sun.

Some people have darker skin than others, not because they have more melanocytes but because they retain a greater amount of melanin after the cells are no longer able to divide. People with lighter shades of skin break down most of their melanosomes.

While DNA is less vulnerable to UV when the cells no longer divide, retaining more pigment is still advantageous. People with darker skin are more resistant to sunburns and skin cancer. Yet people with very dark skin face another problem—they may not be able to produce enough vitamin D.

Like the miraculous plant that God provided to shade Jonah, each umbrella in our skin is a miracle for which we “have not labored, nor made it grow” (Jonah 4:10). We are no more deserving of this merciful, God-given shade than Jonah was.

Let us then give thanks for all the undeserved provisions that God has given us through Christ, who protects and sustains both our body and soul from all that might harm us. Truly, “He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27–28).

Dr. David Menton holds his PhD in cell biology from Brown University and is a well-respected author and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Menton has many published works and is one of the most popular speakers for Answers in Genesis–USA.

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Even my good friend Bob R, who is an albino, has the cells that color our skin.   His melanosomes are not pigmented.   But that is okay, he is a lot of fun and tells good jokes.   Bob is taller than most people and paler as well.   Does that make him a superior human?   Of course not.   Scientific Darwinism is completely wrong and does great harm.   Social Darwinism is completely wrong and does great harm.  

Differences in skin color should not divide us.  Differences in economic condition should not divide us.  Challenges in physical or mental conditions should not divide us or define us.  Every human life should be seen as equally valuable.  

Man is greatly mistaken when he begins to see himself as being capable of assigning differing values to different lives.   When man does this, he is not merely denying God but also has the temerity to take God's place!  Such presumption has led to the death of hundreds of millions of lives since one Charles Darwin came back home from a sea voyage and spearheaded the liberal atheistic assault on human dignity that is Darwinism and Eugenics.