this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Darwin is well known to be a pretty shit person and inspired a lot of justifications for racism but that doesn't discredit the theory of evolution.
He may have proposed the idea first but the mountains of evidence supporting evolution came long after him.
Completely discrediting him because he was a shit human being would be like saying a particular mathematical theory is incorrect because the person who proposed it 100 years ago was a pedophile. His personal convictions are irrelevant at this stage and how his theory was used to justify genocide is similarly irrelevant
I'm not critiquing the theory of evolution. There are plenty of scientists doing that already.
The discussion is about whether extremism is unique to religion. I'm arguing that dangerous extremism can be justified in a variety of ways, even via Darwinism. It's human nature.
I think that this thread highlights our tendency towards selective bias.
What now?
I don't think anyone but you believes this thread is about wether extremism is unique to religion.
Obviously there are other forms of dangerous extremism.
Nazis were pretty fucking extremist.
Now they were not (at least not primarily) extremist Darwinists off course, but extremist racists and antisemites (among other things).
But the meme makes the insecure loser guy say "We should be fighting religion".
And what I think this thread truly highlights is, that a majority in it doesn't see it as a loser thing to fight religion.
Ffs fighting racists and fascists is way more important than fighting religion at this specific point in history.
Still religion is also a cancer that should be fought in my opinion, and seemingly in others as well.
Perhaps you didn't see my other comment so I'll copy it here. Yes, the Nazis were explicitly motivated by Darwinism.
You appear to be a German (judging by your handle). It should be pretty easy for you to confirm the history.
Not just Hitler, the whole of the Nazi party and their public propaganda was based on extreme Darwinism.
An important official Nazi Party publication, Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, edited by Alfred Rosenberg, occasionally featured articles promoting evolution. In a 1935 article Heinz Brücher praised German biologist Ernst Haeckel for paving the way for the Nazi regime. In addition to mentioning Haeckel's advocacy of eugenics and euthanasia, Brücher highlighted Haeckel's role in promoting human evolution. Brücher reminded his readers that Haeckel's view of human evolution led him to reject human equality and socialism. In 1941 Brücher published another article in Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte on evolution through natural selection. Several times he stressed that the principles of evolution were just as valid for humans as for other organisms. He closed the essay by explaining the practical application of evolutionary theory:
The hereditary health of the German Volk and of the Nordic-Germanic race that unites it must under all circumstances remain intact. Through an appropriate compliance with the laws of nature, through selection and planned racial care it can even be increased. The racial superiority achieved thereby secures for our Volk in the harsh struggle for existence an advantage, which will make us unconquerable.
In Brücher's view human evolution is an essential ingredient of racial ideology, not a hindrance to it. In 1936 Heberer launched an attack on antievolutionists in Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte. He praised Haeckel and stressed the affinities of Darwinism and human evolution with Nazi ideology.
The history is really quite fascinating and it's rarely taught in your state-mandated evolutionary biology classes!
Oh yeah for sure, fascism is not specifically a religious thing, reactionary ideology can easily form without religion, it's just unfortunate that religion offers a great justification for exclusionary rhetoric and persecution. Religion can exist without fascism and fascism can exist without religion, but they tend to get along.
I'm not talking about Fascism. There were several European countries that adopted Fascism with mixed results.
Only the Nazi party murdered eleven million Jews and several million other "weaker races". They explicitly referred to Darwinism as their justification.