No Thanks....to Darwin: The Ideology We Could Have Lived Without

The Survival of the Most Brutal

Archimedes once said that if he were given a stick, a fulcrum and a place to stand, he could move the world. Move the World. His experiment was only stopped by a lack of travel beyond the stratosphere, obtaining the place to stand, and a stick long enough, or we could have been done with the whole thing long before a baby named Charles Darwin was born in 1809. Two hundred years ago, though, in the shadow of the Great Enlightenment, and Cartesian thought, a small child was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire England, to a Unitarian family back when even Unitarians went to church.His name was Charles Darwin. Before he died on April 19,1892, at 83, he radically changed the world, but not for the good. Not at all.

Before beginning my argument of 'why' it was not for the good, a guess is ventured that any loyal Evolutionist or Darwinist will no doubt lambaste how ignorant I could possibly be not to see the preeminence of Darwin and his theories. yet one thing with which we might all agree is that his influence was utterly pervasive. The theories of this one man would touch business and the industrial revolution, natural sciences, psychology and sociology, religion and theology, Eugenics and Human Engineering, Social order , politics, Education and child-rearing, would revolutionize philosophy, and provide the political philosophy for Adolf Hitler's Brave New World, as well as our own. That is the degree of profundity which characterized Darwin's concepts however... they were ONLY concepts

Theories, Hypotheses and Facts

It has been approximately 28 years since leaving graduate school, yet every year I was there, one professor or another expounded on the difference between Theories, Hypotheses and Facts. Sometimes it was in the Philosophy of Science, or Contemporary Systems in Psychology or even in Research Methods, but it was so pronounced a lesson almost any psychologist or scientist can recite it , a sort of 'catechism' entry in our field.

A Hypothesis is essentially a guess or prediction, about the possible meaning and direction of a set of observed events.
B. A Theory is a well and widely tested hypothesis, in which observations and studies have been conducted validating a hypothesis or set of hypotheses, and
C. A fact is an openly observable established observation, so readily agreed upon by all that it is essentially established for all time.

There's a little variation in that, but that pretty much it: Darwin's ideas are often called Darwin's THEORY but he really was casting forth 'hypotheses', which were not yet thoroughly proven, and were certainly not fact, as the statement at the beginning of this blog notes:


Darwinian Theories and 'Social Darwinism'.

Much of the social change and scientific changes related to the social, such as 'Racial Science' or 'Eugenics' which were birthed by Darwin's ideas are subsumed under the rubric now referred to as "Social Darwinism". Among the basic tenets of traditional 'Darwinism' which are then applied to Social variables were:

1. A Universe whose origin and reason or lack of reason could exist apart from God

2. Species adaptation such that physical and other traits would be 'selected'out for
Survival of the species [Natural Selection] or 'Survival of the fittest'.

3. The Generation of 'kinds' from 'kind'- that instead of the divine creation of 'kinds' which differed from the Garden of Eden, that a biochemical process caused life and then all life emanated by mutation and adaptation.

4. "Spontaneous Generation" of the origin of the Universe: theories such as 'Big Bang' emanated from his theories.

While the buzzword 'Evolution' is what Darwin is most equated with, he is responsible for far more than that idea, and his ponderings of what man is or might be have effected literally the entirity of Western academic and political thinking . Even though approximately 170 years later a 'transitional type' has never been found (which would have to exist for his theories to be true), they nevertheless, as his quote indicates, took wing and became 'established fact' without confirmation.


This consideration of Darwinian Evolutionary thinking is no dialogue between blind belief in a myth of Creation vs. Science: those philosophical differences are portrayed by academic snobbery as that dialectic: their unquestioned belief in 'Science' as the means and way to truth is not a Philosophy of Science, but a blind 'Scientism' in which the idea of man-made methodologies and procedures, like incantations and 'conjuring' lead to the 'truth', although they are also the modern Pilates asking constantly 'What is Truth?' , constantly changing their opinions every 5 years or so. Indeed one of the main characteristics of a 'model' or theory of man is termed 'knowability'---(i.e. Can man in whatever aspect of study: psychology, sociology etc be absolutely 'known' or is he forever 'unknowable?' ) So one of the first things Darwin accomplished, was to put into action outside ivory towers, the concept that man could exist outside of God,that God was not necessary to consider in all things, and that the carnal nature of man was a product of his environment and 'caused' him to survive, and that ergo, it was good. Two of the most basic fallacies of Darwinianism are that:

A. All life developed from a simple structure and
B. That behavior will affect genetic structure. (Think about it: genetic structure does not change in and individual or group by 'adaptive behavior', and 'breeding' in 5000 years, has not lent towards a more intelligent population, but we are just as diverse as ever.)

When one applieds the parameters of Adaptation, Survival of the fittest and evolution, micro or macrocosmic, to the Social aspects of mankind, one finds a philosophy of a 'deity-free' value system, relativism, without certain innate human values, in which even among children the 'valued' child is not the sensitive or well-acting child but the one who aggressively pushes toward survival, whether it be on a test, a playground, or relationship. In Darwinian thought, that child would hold the greater value for the species, and if we had been 'in the wild' would have been more likely to continue existing. One Nazi thinker suggested in the extreme that children such as retarded children were never 'meant to live', and therefore society is excused from their care. As children grow in the quiet by pervasive shadow of Darwinianism, they find in this and the last century a reward for pushing ahead, aggressiveness, overthrow,'winner-take-all' behavior. Corporations today court those types, and the corporate world is the clearest example of the milieu of Social Darwinism one can observe.


Survival, Success and 'Good'

Survival and Success became the premiere parameters of this new worldview and destiny. If one survived it was because of 'adaptive' traits and characteristics. This would later translate into a 'theology' of Humanism in which whoever 'won out' was the 'good' person, and the concepts of morality, law, and empathy and love were human inventions to be discarded. Gone too was the concept of kindness and respect for the other, or any idea that lives which could not contribute economically to a social group had value, though Martin Buber attempted to resurrect 'divine' thinking in his theories of the I-Thou relationship.

. In Nazi Germany, in the T4 Euthanasia Program, over 64,000 "mental defectives" [Developmentally delayed, Psychotics, Alcoholics and even Epileptics and the chronically Unemployed and homeless] were killed to clear out hospitals for the use of the Wehrmacht, and to purify the bloodline of the German race of imperfections. Rather than reason upon 'the value of human life' or the essential sovereignty of God in deciding who should live or die, the ethic became survival of the fittest among individuals, among the group or community, and hence for the State. "Mental Defectives" were renamed 'useless feeders' and a new concept by a physician named Binder was posited in which there could be "Life Unworthy of Life" or lebensunwerte leben which was defined by usefulness to society and ability to produce and generate profit. The ultimate application of 'social Darwinism' was certainly this, for the Third Reich believed that the killing of 'inferiors' would increase the Survival probabilities of the Aryan nation as a whole in a total utilitarianism.


Consider for a moment whether the Third Reich's Darwinian integration was an isolated incident in History, or whether Darwin's principles affected far more. The truth is, while Darwin may have 'winced' at the overuse of his ideas or even corruption of them, the demonic wings which carried them far virtually changed the whole of Western Thinking and Science, Politics, Theology and the Social Sciences worldwide. A few areas of Darwin's influence and their outcome are described below:



Racial Science, Eugenics & the Third Reich

I posted a comment not to long ago on a news article in which I mentioned the relationship of Darwin to the Third Reich and received an email from a fellow who found it incredulous that I should in any way associate the two. To the unstudied person, even a scholar, it must sound quite preposterous as these days everything someone does not like is attributed to 'Nazism'. The truth is though, the foundation for apologetics of the Third Reich, its philosophical and 'doctrinal' underpinnings are firmly rooted in Darwinism, and even the philosophies, societies and 'dark arts' which contributed to coloring the Third Reich were not without the foundation of Darwinism. Nietzsche and Gobineau as well as Wagner were influence by Darwin, first hand, and all contributed to the concept of Racial Science in the value of producing an 'optimally functioning' and genetically perfect Master Race.

The concept of a 'Super-man' [Ubermensch] and Master Race [Herrenrasse or Herrenvolk] was developed first not by Hitler or Goebbels but by Nietzsche and taken to the limits when a group of zoologists and biologists at University of Jena in the 1920s applied Darwin's concepts and those of racial theorists and Theosophists to an applied science which came to be called 'Racial Science'. Racial Science produced such greats as Binder, and Mengele, and scientists throughout Germany and Poland, who went after the genetically perfect race and type, the end of which was Auschwitz and the Death Camps of Europe. Shall we thank Darwin and believe the theories he posited had merit for producing a better world?


Racial Science , Natural Selection, and Social Darwinism were so central to Reich values and concepts that they cannot really be argued any longer. Those wishing further reading in the area might consider Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Aug 1, 1994) by Götz Aly, Peter Chroust, Christian Pross, et al.;From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, E… (Hardcover)
by Richard Weikart; Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Streicher, and Doctors of Death by Aziz. Darwin virtually laid the base for Nazism and Hitler himself integrated and mentioned Darwin's ideas often. While one may argue that Darwin was not the only influence, we shall see shortly that he was the foundation of many of the other influences on the Eigenvelt of the Third Reich. Continuing past Nazism (and during) Racial Science continued to influence American and British Eugenics, and was the foundation of Sanger's Birth Control movement ending in "The Negro Project" which came to be "Planned Parenthood". [Don't write, just study]. Further, Darwinian Racial Science became the foundation for mass 'euthanasias' and sterilizations here in the US, and persons involved in the movement included Davies, Terman [the son of the Terman of Stanford-Binet tests, and ex-President of Stanford] and many other eminent persons. Today's Human Engineering is only occasionally questioned, but the same value system prevails: the quest for the perfect person.

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Psychology & Social Sciences

Did Darwin influence Psychology? So much so that his underpinnings in the field are utterly unquestioned. Racial Science went on to influence "Ethology" and one of the premiere proponents was Konrad Lorenz with the imprinting of ducks. Lorenz was a Nazi Party member, not only in name only but a proponent. (See "Did Racial Science have a grandchild in the psychology Department?"-this blog). Darwin influenced Galton who took Racial science to new heights in the study of eminence and "Individual Differences" which the area would eventually be called: the modern equivalent is Personality Psychology. The testing of Personality and Mental IQ and traits is a direct outgrowth of Racial Science and Eugenics the child of Darwin, as most tests outside of Piagetian measures were developed to weed out 'defectives' for the benefit of all or at least to increase and enhance the development of 'superior types'.


But Darwinian concepts are so entrenched in Psychology and Sociology now, that even the unproven constructs provide the basis of most reasoning about individuals and groups. The notion of the 'group' as a survival mechanism is well known and is taught as fact. I remember one fellow in an Honors Seminar who questioned 'evolutionary predispositions' and was mocked. My field earlier in my career was
grief and bereavement and the classic volumes in the field by Bowlby and Ainsworth
included the positing of 'adaptive' mechanisms in grief such as keeping individuals tied to the crowd although that never sounded too logical to me given that most mourning persons wish to be left alone. We taught 'searching and yearning' in mourning as adaptive and survival mechanisms in the same vein and never questioned the prior Darwinian concept, but rather assumed that it was 'true'. A fact, beyond theory. Comparative Psychology and EAB (Experimental Analysis of Behavior) fundamentally based upon the ability to compare lower species with higher level species: if a white rat responds to a 'variable interval schedule' then we assume it will apply to humans and readily jump to conclusions. Concepts such as 'Self-Esteem' come from the same sort of belief: highly functioning people must be successful people who feel good about themselves, although that is a shallow idea and by the end of the era of 'self-esteem' research, it was found that self-esteem was basically pride and too much of it was potentially pathological!


Psychology with its Darwinian undercurrent has done away with 'holistic' values such as love, honor, etc and replaced them with 'operational definitions' such as 'altruistic behavior', or 'attachment behavior', losing the person in the fray. Many more examples could be given but for the moment it is facile to say that all of Psychology, Cognition and perception, Social, Experimental Analysis of Behavior,even Clinical and Counseling derive principles and techniques from Darwinism and early Racial science which re-defined forever the Person, Society, and the nature of Life.

Business and Industry

Business and Industry even before Darwin had little trouble instituting competitive survival techniques and "king of the Hill' tactics: it had just not until Darwin been considered a natural and good thing. Before Darwin it carried names like 'greed' or 'avarice' or selfishness. The end of Darwin's life though saw the Industrial Revolution and his theories of Survival of the Fittest met perfectly with the dog-eat-dog value system of the Industrial Revolution. Because God could be dismissed in Cartesian enlightenment and Darwin selection from the picture, man could take comfort in redefining business values to an ethical vacuum in which anything was acceptable apart from moral consideration.

This philosophy has so grown that during the Shoah era, for the sake of free labor, even US companies participated in the funding of the Reich, slavery and genocide, and even experimentation on victims. (e.g. Bayer and the women 'subjects' from Auschwitz).
DeHomag, the branch of IBM continued during the Shoah to do business with the Nazis against ourlaws, producing the genocide-facilitating Hollerith Machine and Mass production. Ford also contributed to the cause and aided in the development of the Volkswagen and mini-tanks. A constant stream of Wall Street money aided the Reich before and after the war via the Ruhr Industrialists, and under IG Farben, a german company, American Companies such as DuPont, and standard Oil (now Exxon) used slave labor at their facilities in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. The Silesian Steel Mills included some formidable American business affiliations via US Steel, whose former CEO, Myron Taylor, friend of FDR supposedly represented the Jews at the Evian Conference where few solutions were found, and continued Vatican ties including obtaining an honorary citizenship for FDR in Rome in 1943-4.


The whole concept of the Human Being having any intrinsic value in business was gone, and has been gone since, with wanton spending and corruption, participation in genocide, US war involvement (including Oil Companies in Iraq via the "Oil Law" of 2007) Back in the 1970s, the death of many infants in impoverished nations by companies such as Nestle who sold mothers unaffordable formula and stopped them from nursing just to make a buck. Bayer, DuPont, Exxon, Ford, IBM, and many other US companies profited off of Death camp slavery; but so did the Church! Even the Church has been influenced by a moral ethic of natural selection. If I have no sympathy for bail-outs of irresponsible corporations, forgive. They have become the starring poster child for Darwinian thought and values.



Other Academic Areas

Other Academic areas readily and proudly admit their Darwinian influence: Biology, Zoology, and all the life Sciences. Medicine has so embraced Darwinism as foundational that every textbook includes 'adaptation' explanations of behavior, genetics, disease etc. Even in Obstetrics and Gynecology, the modern move to 'bond' with infants comes from Lorenz's studies of imprinting adapted by Klaus and Kennell of Case Western, resulting in worldwide 'rooming-in' with new infants. While that is a happy result for mothers, the idea of 'critical periods' in humans is still ethologically based, and traces again back to the ideas of Darwin, in which human mothers are reduced to the level of human animals and many today in animal rights movements (we should all desire the right treatment of animals) do not distinquish between Humans and others whom they consider without question of the same root.

Anthropology is utterly darwinian based. The earth is millions of years old: carbon dating techniques, although based upon the fallacy of measuring time periods by our conjectures, which is a snake swallowing its tail, perpetuate the 'primordial soup' idea emanating from Darwin of single cells diving and mutating into many forms. It is impossible to mention every field, but one can easily see that no field honored by most Universities and Labs has gone unchanged, and yet still, to this day, Darwinism has the fundamental error of no transitional forms ever found, which in essence negates the theory.

Politics & Economy

Just a brief mention, that Social Darwinism has also spoiled the idea forever that there can be honor or justice in such endeavors as the political arena or Western or Worldwide commerce. Survival of the Fittest with no holds barred attitudes of the person as object is commonplace. Elections become corrupt on every side for fear of advantage by another. With the adulterated blessing of Darwinism, we have cut out that which offends: conscience. We have made it a modern 'sin' not to get the other guy and hurt him before he hurts you, indeed we consider it foolish and insane. Modern reasoning is: 'sure it is wrong, but if I don't someone else will': it is the Azazel of American Market. Our economy is collapsing because we embraced Social Darwinism with profits and comfort and survival more important than life. And still we consider him a great hero, as we send billions of dollars to companies who have failed because of this 'doctrine'. And we will lose.

Other Societal Influences

There were almost no abortions before Darwin, although the fate of children was often poor. Today we are topping 43.2 million since 1973 although even 'Roe' has changed her mind. We have participated in killing 43 million children who by now would have been taxpayers in a failing Social Security system, because we adopted the Darwinian concept of "life unworthy of life". We value children no longer intrinsically but upon how much they will cost financially and personally. "I just couldn't afford a baby right now is the cry on the way to the clinics. Many of those clinics are run by the descendants of Sanger's Eugenic clinics, Planned Parenthood. They have in turn defined their 'product' as something other than life.


So, Thank you, Darwin. Education has travelled far since the Scopes trial: instead of the young evolutionist on trial for teaching we descended from apes, we put on trial and exile Christian and Orthodox Jewish professors who espouse Intelligent Design or a God created world with souls. Evolution is taught without hesitation as fact in K12, implying to our children that their lives have no intrinsic value and now teaching them not right and wrong but how to succeed by overthrow. The result thanks to really the misuse of Darwinism is geometric increases in drugs and suicides among the young and mental hospitals without empty beds. Even tradition psychological approaches have been replaced by 'drug therapy': the use of psychotropics to sedate and control 'patients': never any real therapy, and that matters little because the theories there, based upon Darwinism do not work. Our Medicine and modern psychological methods are all a product of 'evolutionary' reasoning. We have replaced the Third Reich's T4 program with our own: we do not kill them as we characterize them as a form of 'sub-life', but give them a living death, a meaningless and unproductive life as products of an industry for which they become victim for someone else's profit margin
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Was Darwin Good?

This may sound like a bizarre question, but you never hear it asked. "Was Darwin Good?". Well, his theories survived, so by his musings, many would say they had value. His toll on society though was the most destructive overall influence of any generation at any time including the worst beasts history has given us including the Borgias, the Huns, Prince Machiavelli or Vlad Tepes and so on. So, in my slightly 'sardonic' opinion, I would have to consider that because of Darwinian concepts, regardless of whether one finds them acceptable or not, good or bad, that his theories have either caused or influenced the following:

Racial Science, The Third Reich, 11.5 million deaths in the Holocaust, Mass Euthanasias of the mentally challenged, The "Negro Project" of Sanger to reduce the AfroAmerican population in urban areas, the mass sterilization of the retarded in the US, Eugenics and Human Engineering with surrogate parents, 'embryo farms', 43 million abortions in the US alone in 36 years, Industries and Corporations without ethics, increases in slavery, increases in teen suicides, worldwide Genocides, the Testing movement for 'weeding out defectives', the use of aborted infants for medical school experimentation on stem cell research, and the growing consciousless imperialism in a 'Survival of the most Brutal' in both war and the conquest of nations for Oil. I think I will say, No. I don't think Darwin's influence was good. Not at all.

Is There More than Meets Our Eye?: Darwin's Academic and 'Doctrinal' Family Tree

Did Darwin act alone in the great societal upheaval and redefinitions of Life and the value of Human beings? Essentially, at first yes, followed by a quick 'no'. When researching Darwin and Racial Science and Darwin's influence I found my own area of training had many of the 'fathers' of psychological research and testing tracing back to Darwin and the Eugenicists. Then, I found that Darwin also influence Statistics the new Mathematical field of the late 1800s and since. Darwin influenced Galton, and both he and Galton influence Pearson, the father of modern correlation methods, and Cyril Burt who developed factor analysis, both of which were used in Racial Science efforts to develop tests to separate 'imperfections' in their eyes in the human race. The same people had ties to Theosophy, an occultic endeavor. One discovers that the Eugenicists were tied into the same 'influence network', and that Karl Pearson became a second generation 'hub' of influence----including in men involved in modern Bible translations! Consider the following network, which is only a preliminary study:




( a few arrows are missing as Darwin continued to influence almost all the on chart long after his demise, and a number of formidable names are not included. )

Now to be truly 'paranoid' one would have to say these folks were all connected, and then find out they were not, but readers in each of the fields mentioned will find the crossovers and mutual influence patterns. Almost all trace back to Darwin and his theories, which even he would not put forth as boldly as later followers. Those ideas fit neatly into modern 'occultic' or 'New Age' (it isn't new) groups such as Blavatsky's Theosophical Circle, which included members such as Sir Conan Doyle and Bishops Westcott and Hort who produced a new and dissensioned version of the New Testament. The pattern shows that many of the time influenced the altered disciplines in Nazi Academics, but those influences carry through today, here in the US.

I will not posit more than that, or who they may have been ( I have a strong suspicscion): some affiliations were tightly woven and others were peripheral, but today, without even tracing the roots of our ideas and theories and textbook knowledge of our Theological doctrines and academic departments, we have now those disciplines divorced from their origins. I took a doctorate in Personality Psychology and for 30 years, although it had been referred to as "individual differences" I did not know, nor do most that it's roots were in Racial Science. I took 28 grad hours in Statistics and did not know that Pearson was a major Eugenicist clamoring for the 'purification' of the human race. I did not know when I used Factor Analysis to develop several scales that Burt had developed them to partial out 'defectives'. Or that Galton, always taught as the father of the testing movement was primarily interested in producing only 'Ubermenschen', genetically, but that was why he had an interest in 'family eminence' over generations, and tests of strength and ability. I did not know when I studied doctrine and Bible history later, that a number of well known foundational 'heroes' dabbled or were entrenched in the occult, or that leaders in business might be. I suspect we will not be turning back to a day and time when we see the intrinsic value of each human life, just as it is, as a spectacular work of God, not to be emulated, reproduced, or 'cloned' but loved and appreciated.

Today, because of Darwin: this is who we are; this is where we are: this is what we know, (with apologies to the writers of the old series 'Millennium').When we were not looking, Thanks to Darwin, we let the reigns of our world be handed into the hands of heartless men, whose aim was power and wealth even at the cost of believing we had souls and worth. So, considering all of Darwin's 'Accomplishments' I would have to say,

Thank-you,Charles Darwin...for nothing---that is what is left: for example I can no longer sit at my computer and write without having to protect it from someone who thinks they are more 'fit' than I am, and mere free speech and writing have become so cut-throat that talented artists and authors are giving up. I cannot think about the number of children who because of Racial Science's euphemism 'genetic engineering' will never know who they are or where they came from, and I can't tell you what that will do to a society. Thank-you, Darwin, for a godless world where no human life has any innate value anymore: where the song at the Universities is, "its all relative". Thank-you, Darwin, for a nation which survived until recently, at the culmination of your theories, which is now neck deep in the blood of our sons and daughters and other peoples' sons and daughters, and we want more blood, more of what other people and nations have, because we are, we think, more 'fit for survival' than those starving third world types.

Thank you Darwin, for making Genocide a business where the terror in the eyes of victims losing their lives and dreams and loves is never felt again---where my worth as an artist or poet depends on my physical appearance, size or health, or age. Thanks Darwin, for a world where 'anything goes', including God's Word in 2000 translations and nobody trusts anyone or anything anymore. Marriages don't last, children don't matter,you have granted us the hymn of Epicureans: eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die'.

We have created with the theories of Darwin, who towards the end of his life began to doubt all (that is not a myth, Snopes), and would never have applied his own theories so far, we have created a 'Brave New World' and such people in it. They say in the end Darwin clung to the Word of God, studying it daily, with the expectation of something beyond what he had seen. While he did not renounce his theories publicly as some suggest, he certainly did not make the religion out of them that modern man has. I am reminded of the words to a song which says, "We in our foolishness, thought we were wise (1)....


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1) Michael Card 'God's own Fool


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