There is a Big Misconception Right Now About the Impact of Evolution

Ideas have consequences. Over the past century evolutionary thought has become dominant in much more than just the historical sciences. Other branches of science as well as education, law, history, public policy and media have increasingly been influenced by the idea that the world arose spontaneously. This tremendous influence of evolutionary thought has consequences that are largely misunderstood. The misconception is that, while there have been some missteps along the way such as in the twentieth century’s eugenics movement, those are both minor and largely behind us now and the greater and lasting consequences of evolution have been positive. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Evolution’s influence

An obvious example of evolution’s influence can be seen in the popular misconceptions held by those in positions of power. After the 2005 Dover trial, Judge John Jones, who ruled that evolution must be taught in our schools, recalled that he “was taken to school” by the evolutionists. It was, Jones recalled, “the equivalent of a degree in this area.” Unfortunately what evolutionists such as Ken Miller “taught” Jones was a series of scientific misrepresentations.

But these were not the only misrepresentations that made their way into American jurisprudence in the Dover trial. For the judge did not enter into his new training as a complete novice. As Jones later explained, “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

But the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, upon which the play is based, was a show trial used to promote evolution. The entire event was cleverly orchestrated by the ACLU to advance evolutionary thought and disparage skeptics.

For instance, the famed statesman and politician William Jennings Bryan was added to the prosecution team. Bryan had a good understanding of evolution and was concerned with the undefendable claim of evolution as fact. He was particularly concerned with evolution’s degraded view of humanity. The left-leaning pacifist was concerned with evolution’s racism, eugenics, social Darwinism and economic laissez faire implications.

Bryan’s role on the team was to deliver the final summation. That would have been important for Bryan would have provided a much needed corrective to the ACLU’s evolutionary propaganda. The ACLU needed to avoid any such exposure so they used a clever legal trick to deny any closing arguments.

But the fact that the Scopes Monkey Trial was a manipulated show trial is only the beginning of the problem with Judge Jones relying on Inherit the Wind as a source. For its authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee added yet more manipulation to the truth. In their fictionalized account of the trial they did what even the ACLU could not do—they rewrote history as evolutionists would have it. The result was a two-dimensional and grossly misleading rendition of the Scopes Monkey Trial. And yet to this day evolutionists use this play and film to misrepresent evolution. It is this script that is informing the public consciousness of the origins debate. This is an example the power of evolution’s influence.

A consequence of evolution

One of the earliest examples of evolution’s consequences is the modern eugenics movement, a term coined by Darwin’s half cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Eugenics was a natural extension of evolution, which explained that all life just happened to arise by random chance and the survival of the fittest in resource-limited environments. Nietzsche proclaimed that it was the sick, the oppressed, the broken and the weak, rather than evil men, who were the greatest threat to humanity.

From scientists such as Charles Davenport (Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) to elites such as Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes, eugenics was well accepted, and all with the best of intentions no doubt.

Evolutionist Henry Goddard identified a particular family as having inferior genetics on one side, making for a classic case study of good genes versus bad genes. According to this phony evolutionary science, those on the “bad” side were diagnosed as “feeble-minded,” a vague category into which anyone on the wrong side of an evolutionist could be cast. Their penalties included forced sterilization and a life sentence in an institution.

And the great Nikola Tesla warned of humanity’s “new sense of pity” which interfered with evolution’s law of the survival of the fittest:

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.

Evolutionist Hermann Muller wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin imploring the communist dictator to implement the “conscious control of human biological evolution.” And laws across America and even Supreme Court rulings turned against those who evolutionists pronounced to have the wrong genes. Meanwhile evolutionist’s such as Goddard enjoyed success and reputation while their victims were mutilated and imprisoned.

A big misconception

But aren’t such crude ideas as eugenics behind us now? That was then and this is now, and now we are all fixed, right? As Forbes’ Alex Knapp put it this week, “as we’ve advanced scientifically, we’ve also advanced morally.” This is a common view amongst evolutionists. They either ignore evolution’s role in the eugenics movement (Knapp puts the blame on physics), or they view it as an anomaly—the exception rather than the rule.

It would be difficult to imagine a bigger misconception. It is true that the eugenics movement has waned, but it has been replaced by something far more effective: worldwide abortion at levels the most extreme eugenicist could only have dreamed of.

No, today’s evolutionists are no different than yesterday’s evolutionists. They haven’t gotten better. Today’s evolutionists would have staunchly backed eugenics every bit as much as did Galton, Nietzsche, Davenport, Goddard, Tesla, Muller and the rest of them. Or they at least would have politely stood by in silent assent.

How do I know this? Because today they do the same with abortion. It is safe for evolutionists to look back at those who came before them and scrutinize their failings as a thing of past. Unfortunately this is a myth. Those failings are by no means a thing of past.

The theory that speaks of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life” has not set us on the path to utopia. Today infanticide and slavery are at levels never before seen in history while evolutionists pat themselves on the back for undermining science and teaching the world that humans are animals.

Evolutionists dogmatically proclaim they have the truth. They blackball and defame anyone who even so much as questions their phony science and absurd truth claims. And all the while they insist they hold the moral high ground while their world descends into yet more death and destruction.

Ideas have consequences.