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Originally Posted by SRoper  I'm having difficulty understanding the argument that one reason we should reject Darwinism is because it leads to eugenics. It seems that all one needs to justify eugenics is the idea that traits are inheritable. Once you have that, you have the mechanism by which you can improve a species by only allowing those with desirable traits to reproduce. So if we should reject Darwin because his theory justifies eugenics, shouldn't we be consistent and reject Mendel as well? If we aren't willing to do this, shouldn't we just drop the eugenics argument altogether? |
The big thing about Mendel was that he didn't do anything vastly different than what people non-systematically knew before. People always knew that various traits were passed on from parent to child. However there was not a systematic understanding of it. Mendel added that and really changed an art to a science. Also Mendel really does not allow one to write an evolutionary blank check that Darwin tried to write. For example, there are limits to the amount of milk that a cow can produce, regardless of your breeding tactics.
According to the movie: Expelled, the problem with Darwinism is the reduction of humans and human nature to ones genes. This really reduces the intrinsic worth of a person. That added with a Malthusian view of scarcity and you have an almost obligation to eliminate the lesser beings. Why should the higher beings suffer because they are wasting resources on the lower beings?
CT