Are Evolution and Christianity Completely Incompatible?

[Esquilax]

The reasoning is that for the betterment of a species, weaker or less "evolved" species must be eliminated. I won't venture into Master Race/Hitler/Pol Pot/Evolution justifies genocide/etc territory here, but the idea is that a species will not evolve into unless its weaker members are unable to reproduce, such as by geographic separation, death, or whatever (symbiotic relationships only go so far). By evolution, if certain primitive earlier "humans" didn't die out, and let our ancestors propagate, we wouldn't be here. In that sense, I can see why he says that through the deaths of other species did the human race come into existence.

You're right in some respects, but I'd say wrong overall: those weaker members of a given species are equally capable of mutating the next beneficial trait as the stronger ones, after all. It's the traits themselves that matter, not where they come from.

Besides, we might not be here if those other human variants didn't die out, but that's only because we're a very specific byproduct of a certain genetic lineage. If they had remained alive, and their genes persisted in the gene pool, we might have gotten something different, but we would have still gotten something. The current gene pool didn't arise as a result of their deaths, that was just the environment that led to it. Death isn't required for evolution, it's just a mechanism that sometimes shapes it. If we were all immortal and had infinite space to exist in, evolution would still be happening; hence, evolution is not based in death.