New Levels of Low

[Esquilax]

Equilax, why is it necessary for you to call me a liar? If I misunderstand someone’s point and respond in error that doesn’t make me or, if the situation is reversed, you a dishonest person.

Okay, yeah, sorry about that. I've got a short chain when people start talking about science and racism in the same sentence.

With that said, I unequivocally stated that science was neutral. I believe if you had read my post more carefully you would have seen that I never said anything about science being inherently racist. With respect to the larger point, evolutionary concepts like “survival of the fittest” have been used to justify racism in the form of Social Darwinism.

And here's where we start disagreeing, because "survival of the fittest," in the way you're describing it here, is a misinterpretation of evolutionary theory, for a number of reasons. Fittest doesn't necessarily mean strongest, or most capable of taking from others; within evolution, fitness refers to the ability of organisms to best survive in their current ecological niche. In fact, if we're talking about humans, fitness could be more accurately applied to those of us capable of cooperation and social grouping, since we're a social species whose survival thus far has come down to our ability to form societies and groups.

Hell, even the survival part of survival of the fittest isn't exactly right: it's more down to "survival of the not-lethally unfit." Things that are terrible, yet have no selection pressures, will survive just as well as awesome things that do; the blobfish still exists, for example, and that thing is just gross.

That's sort of my point, when it comes to this stuff; there's nothing in evolution, properly understood, that leads to racism, or can be used to justify it either, and there's simply no reason to hold the theory responsible for the things people get wrong about it.

I sincerely believe that the secular society was not the origin of today’s moral sensibilities. If it was, secular humanism would have independently developed its own moral system. It did not. It rejected God then piggy-backed on the already existing moral system, like how Thomas Jefferson edited out all the NT miracles to leave only the moral teachings of Jesus. Humanism is not responsible for discouraging eugenics, but rather the remnants of unacknowledged religious conscience.

See, you're missing a step here, though: you're missing the first part, where religious moral systems first stole human, evolved morality from people and gave the credit to god.

Of course I already hear the objection that religion co-opted the Man’s evolved moral sense in pre-history. Perhaps. But there is not proof that such was the case. (And we’re all about evidence and proof here aren’t we?). Whereas we can see secular humanists even today trying to rationalize their acceptance of traditional morals without giving credit their Judeo-Christian source.

But your last sentence is begging the question when applied to a scenario where there isn't any proof either way, and unfortunately for you, you do have the burden of proof here, since you're making the positive claim regarding the existence of a god that initially formulated these morals. You can't claim that christianity was the source of morality without proving first that your god exists, but I can claim that humans were the source, because... well, humans exist. Demonstrably so. And when we also account for the number of outright immoral things within the judeo-christian ethos that have to be edited out before you can even claim your religion to be moral in the first place, well...