Social Darwinism: Right or Wrong

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, to be fair, we could conceivably improve upon our overall genetics without any nonsense like culling undesirables or exterminating cultural scapegoats.

[Anomalocaris]

If I didn't believe in God, it seems to me that I would adopt this belief so I was curious how those those that really don't believe in God feel.

So please let me know what you think. Is it right or wrong and why?

It could just as easily seem to someone else that had he not believed in the glory of Buddha or the wisdom of Shiva, he would have led a alternate life of dissipation, depravity and crime. But even if that were so, that does not mean Buddha or shive exists in reality, only that belief in some vacuous tenents would have a similar psychological effect on the weak and ignorant mind as the belief in Santa Clause upon toddlers.

As to whether Social Darwinism is right or wrong, that is also an toddler caliber question. Social darwinism is an inextricable trait of any group of social beings with an survival urge. It is just like gravity is an inextricable trait of living on earth. It is neither right nor wrong. It just is. Everything that you do that effects your chances for advancing either in social status, in wealth, or in reproductive prospects, is social darwinism in action, whether you choose to perceive them that way or not. Whether you deem it right or wrong, there is nothing that you do that does not count towards this darwinian game. You play by beling alive. You play by commiting suicide. You play by being a hermit praying to some silly god, you play by amassing wealth and sleep with a hundred women. You can win, lose or break even. But you can't not play because everything you can conceivably do is part of the game.

What is left to you is to decide whether you would choose to perceive conscious efforts to increase your chances of success in social darwinian competition in whatever aspects as your overriding goal in life, or if your choose some other goal to be more important.

[Edwardo Piet]

Social darwinism ultimately creates a better, stronger human race.

At the expense of all the "weaker" people's well-being huh?

[Mister Agenda]

As an atheist, it's clear that social darwinism is right.

Helping the poor, the disabled and disadvantaged is, ironically, the creation of the religious.

A truly secular world will treat humans according to their own worth. Only the strongest should survive.

In fact, I'm ashamed of atheists on welfare.

So is Neo-Humanism a version of humanism minus the humanity?

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After all, humanistic values ultimately boil down to survival and reproduction.

I dare you to be more wrong.

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It's certainly consistent with the pro-choice position to euthanize children born with down syndrome. We do that already, although before the fetus comes to term (see Rowe vs. Wade).

The pro-choice position is that women shouldn't be forced to carry fetuses to term. Euthanizing children with birth defects is an entirely different issue.

And there is no real difference between a fetus inside or outside a womb for most medical ethicists today.

I don't believe you.

But if that's a problem we can start slowly, by legalizing sterilization first, so that they can't reproduce.

Sterilization is already legal, provided it's voluntary.

The only problem is finding a convenient legal avenue in the American courts. We need 30 years at the most of consistently liberal Supreme Court selections till it's possible to start open, large-scale euthanasia or sterilization of some form in the US.

Have you ever spoken to a professional about your paranoid delusions?

Now that the Republicans have been destroyed in this last election, we are ready to start this chain. Ruth Bader Ginsberg is already 79. Those achy bones need to be replaced with a young, liberal maverick. And frankly it's about time.

Just trolling?

[Anomalocaris]

Social darwinism ultimately creates a better, stronger human race.

At the expense of all the "weaker" people's well-being huh?

In Darwinian evolution, what constitutes "better" is regional and ethereal. The traits that enables a being to better survive over here and today could just as easily doom it to certain death over there and tomorrow.

To say social darwinism will "Ultimately", as if it is a process with a predefined goal and an ability to accomplish it, lead to a "better, stronger", as if what might seem to the likes of this "Vincenzo" to be better and stronger is actually in any meaningful way better or stronger today, much less tomorrow, is pure rubbish.

Anyone sprouting such rubbish is evidently not better and stronger today, so Vincenzo should save Social Darwinism the trouble by jumping out of window now so the rest of us can be better and stronger right now.

[The Grand Nudger]

...but where would our joke-threads come from tomorrow? I think I'd just flat out die....

[Edwardo Piet]

I meant that if social Darwinism is taken to be in any way moral as if what survives and reproduces should survive and reproduce then it's committing the naturalistic fallacy and it ignores the well-being of weaker individuals.

[Mister Agenda]

But I don't think the difference between humans and animals is so substantial.

It doesn't have to be substantial to anyone but us humans.

It appears substantial, but it's ultimately just an unguided evolutionary process. And who says, if evolution just happened to produce a human being therefore it's special, but a cockroach is not special?

Nobody says that. We're not special because evolution produced us. Any specialness we may or may not have will have to be justified by some other reasoning than 'we were produced by evolution'.

At the end of the day it's all arbitrary. Human value is totally arbitrary.

How does our value being arbitrary translate into Social Darwinism being desireable policy?

To hear another atheist who holds to this kind of a position, I suggest you read works by Richard Dawkins. Today he has softened his position a little bit, to make it palatable. But it's not a scientific change, it's more to appease people.

Please provide a quote of Dawkins advocating Social Darwinsim, eugenics, or euthanasia of children with Down's Syndrome.

You questioned the issue of inside vs outside the womb. I point to an article by prominent ethicists in the Journal of Medical Ethics http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03...00411.full If you are short on time, read just the abstract.

Your claim wasn't that some medical ethicists agree with you. It was that MOST medical ethicists agree with you. That is the contention which you're not supporting.

So I think my position is well supported by the academics and sciences.

Your thinking so isn't supported by cherry-picking articles that agree with you.

It's not popular in society today because of Christians, and the ideas of charity and mercy that are really just religious tropes we should not take so seriously.

Social apes display instinctive understanding of fairness and reciprocity. They may be inconsistent about it, but they comfort each other, protect the weak from bullies, and unite against outside threats. Moral behavior isn't limited to the one species that has religion. We had morality before we had religion to codify it.

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Says common sense. Darwinism rewards the fit and allows for the spreading of superior genetics.

Darwinism and Social Darwinism arent' the same thing. Darwinism functions like a 'free market' in which everything can be tried and the current environment sorts the wheat from the chaff. Social Darwinism is like a tightly managed economy that presumes that taking biological evolution as a prescription instead of a description will result in 'superior genetics' and some smart people can figure out what's best to select for and what's best to eliminate. However, genes are only superior or inferior in a given context. The gene for Sickle Cell anemia doesn't do you any good in North America, but it can save your life in parts of Africa and Asia. We lower our genetic diversity at our peril. We are already one of the less genetically-diverse species.

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The reason these ideas were basically abandoned in the 50's is because they were the same ideas Hitler used in the 30's and 40's to justify is extremination of 'inferior races.' And, yep, he started out like you in that he didn't want to outright execute them for belonging to a different race, but he put restrictions on them, restrictions specifically on reproduction for example, but as his war carried on he didn't want to have to waste any more resources on them so when he found a cost effective way to do it, he started executing people.

But, but...it was Christian social conservatism that squashed eugenics in the West, Vinny said so!

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If I became convinced that God did not exist, I feel confident that I would adopt moral nihilism.

What is it about moral nihilism that so attracts you? Why do you associate it with killing people?

[Anomalocaris]

I meant that if social Darwinism is taken to be in any way moral as if what survives and reproduces should survive and reproduce then it's committing the naturalistic fallacy and it ignores the well-being of weaker individuals.

The blood lines of kings, queens, emperors and czars demonstrably show fairly poor rates of long term Darwinian survival. This suggests brutal application of simplistic social darwiniansm is infact self-defeating.

The more viciously social darwinian you are, the harder Darwin seem to swing his hammer upon your blood line.

[Something completely different]

It doesn't make the ape human, I agree. But I'm saying "being human" is not special as opposed to "being a potato" or "being an orangutan".

They are all different categories of living things occupying different regions on the tree of life.


If your claim is that "being human" makes you special, than this is little more than discrimination based on species, no? You treat one species better than another, and the better species is yours.

Do you not know how this is discrimination?

Discrimination????????????? are you serious?
I`m guilty of commiting almoust daily genocide on certain spicies of animals. By eating them. And then you thing there`s something like "discriminating a species?"

The central point of my last view posts was "We have a understanding of our surroundings and ourselves which is way suppirior towards other species"

And I dont think I have to explain more until you can actualy show me a potato or cockroach civilisation with spacestation, religions, housing, inferstructure and all other essential parts which when put together - form civilisation.