Social Darwinism: Right or Wrong

[Something completely different]

Vincent, are you realy an atheist?

What a preposterous question.

I'm not here to prove my atheism to you.

Actualy, Fuck it!!!
why should I not question your "atheism".
I met alot of atheists in my life and almoust all so far were very reasonable people.
And people who I met who proposed "social darwinism" were baldheaded nuts with swastiker-tatoos and combatboots, who beat up black people.

No sane person would propose the instalment of a eugenic sociaty!

And then this equasion with "life in the wombe" and "outside "the wombe"???
Equating abortion with murder is something I never heared an atheist do.

So yeah, are you a troll who states that he`s an atheist?

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

What a preposterous question.

I'm not here to prove my atheism to you.

No offense.

On subject:
Dont your views lead to eugenics? And isn`t the main difference between animals and us that we are social animals who have a grasp of the concept of sociaty?

No problem. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

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

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?

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

edit: I see you decided to change your mind and challenge my position more aggressively, because "you never heard an atheist who talks like this".

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.
You will be surprised by other prominent supporters of Eugenics in the past. You won't believe the names if I tell you, so read it yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Su...nd_critics Ironically the prominent critic of Eugenics according to Wikipedia is GK Chesterton. A Christian.
Also, on your conclusion that "atheists don't talk like this therefore I can't believe you are an atheist", I suggest you read about the Black Swan Theory. Or at least watch the first 30 seconds of this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDbuJtAiABA
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.

So I think my position is well supported by the academics and sciences. 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. Unfortunately, it's difficult to remove the brainwashing from people.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

Or one ultra right wing government willing to single out the "undesirables"

Yes, German, Vinny is a troll, regardless of what he believes or doesn't.

[Something completely different]

I dont eat together with cockroaches in a resteraunt (at least i hope not)
I dont marry a cockroach and have kids with it.
I dont work for a cockroach
I dont take a hitchhikeing cockroach with me in a car.

Equating cockroaches with humans? humans special so why not cockroaches? wtf!
You cannot define human value by comparing it to a differnet species which isnt eaven part of our sociaty

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

I dont eat together with cockroaches in a resteraunt (at least i hope not)
I dont marry a cockroach and have kids with it.
I dont work for a cockroach
I dont take a hitchhikeing cockroach with me in a car.

Equating cockroaches with humans? humans special so why not cockroaches? wtf!
You cannot define human value by comparing it to a differnet species which isnt eaven part of our sociaty

I don't eat together with a baby in a restaurant.
I don't marry a baby and have kids with it.
I don't work for a baby.
I don't take a hitchhiking baby with me in the car.

What's the difference?

You could also say dogs have more moral worth than cats like this:

I don't play catch with my cat.
My cat doesn't greet me when I come home from work by wagging its tail.
I don't trust my cat to guard my house while I am away.
My cat doesn't listen to verbal commands.

Or, comparing the value of dogs to infants:
In fact, I can have more meaningful experiences with a dog than an infant. Training, playing, walking.

But this doesn't make dogs more valuable than infants, does it?

The truth is, everything we do must be rational and scientific. All our laws and our values should be rational and scientific.

And there is no rational or scientific support to say that humans are any more special. Your examples are totally arbitrary.

You are giving in to Christianized beliefs, not secular beliefs.

[Something completely different]

a infant child is a human being.

a cockroach is not.

do you want me to paint a picture?

[TaraJo]

What do we do with these people? We prevent them from creating more people at the very least.

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).

If Down Syndrome markers show on the CVS test (That's Chorionic Villi Sampling test, not the convenience store), then we proceed to abort. Over 90% of Down Syndrome births in Europe are aborted just like this already. And there is no real difference between a fetus inside or outside a womb for most medical ethicists today.

So the bottom line is, there's no problem with euthanizing people outside the womb. But if that's a problem we can start slowly, by legalizing sterilization first, so that they can't reproduce. 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.

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.

Ok, so, as far as down syndrome goes, we automatically abort them before they're born. I'm assuming you'd do the same thing with many of the other genetic birth defects I mentioned, right? Parkinsons? Sickle Cell Anemia? What about traits that are partially genetic? Diabetes? Heart disease? Alcoholism? Mental illness? Are we going to eliminate those traits from our gene pool as well?

While you're considering that slippery slope, consider this one as well: social darwinism is generally used to justify objectivism. However, if you want to use social darwinism to emphasize traits that are productive to society, what do you do when someone decides they want to eliminate selfish douchebag genes from the gene pool? I think the world would be much better if we eliminated some of these greedy bastards like Grover Norquist, the Koch brothers and Donald Trump and I think the world would be much better if the kind of greedy traits they're known for were eliminated from the gene pool.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

a infant child is a human being.

a cockroach is not.

do you want me to paint a picture?

And human beings are not special.

Listen, I know this goes against your intuitions and your childhood learning, and maybe even your society.

But if reality says this is the case, then it's true. Nature is not always a convenient supporter of our social preferences.

Stop and ask yourself, what makes a human being more special than any other animal?

Is it being a vertebrate? Nope. Other animals are. Is it having an endoskeleton? Nope. Other animals have it. Is it having a brain? Nope. Other animals have it. Is it being able to laugh? Nope, other animals have it.

What makes human beings so special? Being able to do math? Animals can do math, albeit more rudimentary versions.

Eyesight?

Stop and think about what makes humans special. Then take that property, and ask "Is this REALLY something special, greater than all other properties, that it must affords special value to a species?"

These kind of things are not simplistic.

[Something completely different]

??????
Why not then just run around in jungle with spears hunting your food?

What makes a human so different from an animal is, that we have a grasp of our surrounding world which goes beyond instinct.
We may or may not understand it and we influence it and our fellow species in it.
We found means and knowlege to build skyskrapers and delusions to fly planes into them.

While a cockroach lives under your frige, which it doesn`t understand the concept of, because it is a lower species which doesnt have a bigger grasp of it`s surroundings.

Humans are special when compared with other species, and only because we understand nature it doesn`t mean we have to live by it`s cruel standerds.

By the way, you dont seem to understand evolution, it is the survival by the fittest and not the survival of the ruthless.
The survival of those who best addapt to their surroundings and not of those who exterminate others.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

??????
Why not then just run around in jungle with spears hunting your food?

What makes a human so different from an animal is, that we have a grasp of our surrounding world which goes beyond instinct.
We may or may not understand it and we influence it and our fellow species in it.
We found means and knowlege to build skyskrapers and delusions to fly planes into them.

While a cockroach lives under your frige, which it doesn`t understand the concept of, because it is a lower species which doesnt have a bigger grasp of it`s surroundings.

Humans are special when compared with other species, and only because we understand nature it doesn`t mean we have to live by it`s cruel standerds.

By the way, you dont seem to understand evolution, it is the survival by the fittest and not the survival of the ruthless.
The survival of those who best addapt to their surroundings and not of those who exterminate others.

This is quite a thoughtful response, reflective on the nature of what makes humans special.

Your suggestion is that it's whatever goes beyond instinct. I suppose that means intellect- the ability to rationalize and have logical thought. Self-awareness, maybe?

So I presume there's [humans] in category 1, and [non-humans] in category 2. You assume this is a clean, neat way to delineate, but neurological studies show this is not the case. Many animals, especially higher primates (I've been doing a lot of research on the PFC, structural granularity and brain development in higher primates lately) show some very similar functions to human beings. Ie, the rudimentary skills of what human beings do, from metacognition to reasoning to even higher level emotions like jealousy and depression.

So the science disagrees with such a neat categorization.

But there's another problem with this position: That we base our own special treatment based on our mental performance, but babies, who fail to have the special mental abilities as grown ups, we still give special protection.

In many ways, a dog is said to be as intelligent as a 2 year old human. So by your own logic, wouldn't we treat dogs more valuable than 1 year olds? This is the second problem with your position.

There are more, but they are much more sophisticated, and frankly my brain is fried. I'll revisit tomorrow.

But in summary I think because of these reasons, we cannot base the idea that humans are special simply because they are smart. Einstein would therefore be more valuable than George Bush. A child with down syndrome would be less valuable than a healthy child. An infant would be less valuable than an adult. This reasoning for anthropic value fails.

You mentioned something else: That my position is survival of the ruthless. But I don't believe this is true. Because I believe all humans are equal, and humans are equal to animals, I believe that since we have no problem selectively breeding, spaying, neutering and even putting down dogs and cats, we can do it to humans.

Not to be ruthless. We are not ruthless when we do it to pets.

We do it to manage our population. If our population grows more than we can feed it, we will have to manage it. If crime becomes a problem, we have to manage it. If diabetes or other issues become a problem, we have to manage it.

This is not ruthlessness. This is simply the state of nature- to survive and reproduce the species.