Skip to main content

Darwinism’s True Colours?

It turns out that a teenager who killed seven students and one adult at a school in Finland claimed his inspiration came from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Describing himself as "a cynical existentialist, anti-human humanist, anti-social social-Darwinist”, Pekka Eric Auvinen declared, "I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."

A pretty shocking interpretation, but it’s by no means the first time Darwin’s theory has been taken to that kind of extreme. It was Darwin's cousin Francis Dalton who developed the idea of eugenics – the genetic improvement of the human race by selective breeding. This led directly to the Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy and all its offshoots; their attempts to breed a 'super-race' of people in human stud farms, the forced sterilization of at least two million people, and ultimately, the holocaust.

The fact is that if you accept Darwin’s principle of ‘the survival of the fittest’, you can't argue with either Auvinen or the Nazis. Anyone can to do whatever they like to better themselves and strengthen their position. If they are smart enough to get away with it, the god of evolution smiles on them.

Evolutionary ideas are good news for the rich and powerful. They are bad news for the poor – in fact, for anyone lacking jungle survival skills! If your interests and gifts lie in art, music, dance or drama, for example, you had better mind your back – there is ultimately no place for you in the world. In fact, there is no place for culture, civilization, morality or the rule of law; far less for honour, compassion, kindness or selflessness.

It’s dog eat dog and every man for himself.

If Darwin was right, most of us are in big trouble…

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jealousy or Generosity - Which One Wins?

I was struck just recently by the contrast between two particular people who met Jesus, and his response to them. One was a prosperous official who had acquired many possessions. Jesus' advice to him was, "Sell everything you have and give to the poor" (see my post of 27th May for a take on what that might mean). This man could have done so much to help those less fortunate than himself, but when Jesus suggested doing so he went away sad. He was far too jealous of his own wealth to consider sharing it. I would like to think, after he had time to reconsider, he was at least motivated to do more than before. But we don't know. His contact with Jesus and the gospel sources seems to end there. The other person was a poor widow who literally put her last two pennies into the temple offering (Luke 21:1-4). Of her Jesus said, "She, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on". She had no way of knowing how her tiny offering would be used. It might
Post a Comment
Read more

The Birth of Jesus - a Smoking Gun From History?

Some say that Jesus of Nazareth is just a myth and a legend. Others, a historical figure who was born in Bethlehem, probably around 5 BC.  Wouldn't it be great if we could find his birth certificate and settle the matter once and for all?! Oddly enough, it's not such a daft idea. The Roman Empire was assidious about keeping records, and the birth of Jesus would certainly have been noted in its archives. Unfortunately, between the sackings of Rome and Constantinople almost all of them were lost. That wasn't always the case, though. Several times in the first three centuries AD the Empire made concerted efforts to erase the story of Jesus from history. For all this time the records were available - as the Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, was at pains to point out in an open ketter to the Emperor: "Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing
Post a Comment
Read more

God the Omnipotent and Stupid?

One of the questions you will often hear raised about God goes along the lines, "If there is an omnipotent God why doesn't he do X?", where X may be anything from stopping wars or preventing earthquakes to curing cancer. Often there is a deeply personal reason behind the question, which makes a purely rational answer wholly unsatisfying. All the same, it's a rational question and some kind of rational answer is deserved. But two things make it a complex question to which no simple answer is possible. One is the extraordinary diversity of the things that 'X' may represent, all of them having different causes with different and completely unrelated solutions. The other is the sole focus on God's omnipotence. Because God, if he exists, must be so much more than just that. There is an old philosophical conundrum on the same subject, of the kind that philosphers love to pose and to ponder. If God is omnipotent, can he create an object so massive that he himself
Post a Comment
Read more