My first problem is that he accuses Wiker of quoting Darwin out of context to support his thesis. In truth, as Wiker's article makes very clear, the author of the textbook which John Scopes used to teach evolution, George William Hunter is the source of the ideas he finds abhorrant. Wiker then provides quotes from The Descent of Man to corroborate Hunter's ideas, and show how they derive directly from Darwin.
Ananda's first example:
"The 'most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring.'"
Darwin does say that. In the next sentence, he says:
"Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense."
OK, so Darwin tried to tone down the implications, but let's look a little closer. If natural selection provides the basis for the social instincts, and those socal instincts provide the basis for the moral sense, then natural selection does provide the ultimate proving ground for our moral sense. If that sense provides us with a fitness edge, then we will survive and prosper. If not, we will fail.
Second, Darwin never took the full implications of his theories to heart. Religion has no foundation in a world derived strictly from natural selection. Darwin assumes that there are qualities which separate man from the animals, that 'highest part' which is not amenable to natural selection. What he fails to examine is how behaviors which are readily shown to be contra-survival actually provide a net benefit.
Ananda's next example:
"'We civilized men,' Darwin declared, 'do our utmost to check the [natural] process of elimination [by natural selection]; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.'"
In the very next paragraph of the Descent of Man, Darwin says:
"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."
So, in other words, if we were to act according to our baser desires and neglect the helpless for eugenic purposes, we would be "deteriorating" the "noblest part of our nature."
Again, Darwin provides a moral argument for ignoring the dictates of natural selection without providing ANY sound biological foundation. Again, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. We are just animals, but we are other than animals. He never explains the contradiction, and neither does Ananda.
This contradiction is at the heart of Wiker's review of the movie, and the book which Scopes used to teach evolution. It is interesting that Ananda omits discussion of the most damning Of Wiker's Darwin citations:
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [that is, the ones which look most like the savages in structure] . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope…the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."
Go ahead, place that into a favorable context.
Ananda's diatribe only examines part of the story, and rejects truths which he finds unpalatable. Darwinism is a racist philosophy at its very roots, and trying to extirpate the racism only leads to the contradictions I've demonstrated above. If evolution through natural selection is the only biological mechanism at work, then racism is the natural state of man. On the other hand, viewing natural selection as a partial theory gives us the ability to determine why co-operative modes of evolution also work. As Darwin himself noted, even though we breed badly, we still thrive. It is evident that evolution has a driver to compliment natural selection. Instead of railing at people who expose the short comings of natural selection, our time would be better spent trying to understand and codify this other driver.
UPDATE In the first publishing of this piece, I referred to Ananda as 'she' when in fact I have just been informed that Ananda is a male name. I apologize for the error.
