The Other Great Emancipator
Four thousand miles away from a tiny log cabin in the Kentucky woods, another Great Emancipator was born 200 years ago today.
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, corrected a 250-year-old injustice and set the nation on the path to the Inaguration of President Barack Obama.
But Charles Darwin freed human minds from the tyranny of religion, crowned two centuries of the Enlightenment, and ushered in the era of scientific reason.
So celebrate Darwin Day, and rejoice that our new President's vow to restore the primacy of science and facts honors both Great Emancipators.
Posts
3 comments:
The unfortunate thing about Xharles Darwin is that his observations led to the concept of "social Darwinism", the idea that survival of the fittest occurs among species in nature and so many Republican-minded people took this to mean it is natural evolution for the rich and privileged to succeed and the poor and downtrodden to fail. They have taken it to mean that therefore the lower classes should be ignored and not ever be helped by the state, and whatever happens to them will happen, so why bother with them anyway? Though not directly one of his conclusions, I can never forgive Darwin for laying the groundwork for that type of cold-hearted and neglectful Republican philosophy.
Social Darwinism is indeed a horrific philosophy responsible for 150 years of attacks on the poor and unhealthy, but don't blame Darwin for it.
Darwin's idea was "natural selection," NOT "survivial of the fittest." Survival of the fittest was actually developed BEFORE Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" by a wingnut named Herbert Spencer.
See this piece from Slate.
Later wingnuts attached Darwin's name to their fascist philosophy in order to both make it sound scientifice and undermine evolutionary biology, which has nothing to do with society.
Thanks for the correction, Yellow Dog! It just shows that the wingnut mentality has existed for many, many years and that two of its main attributes are the ignoring of fact and the twisting of fact or truth into a false premise they can exploit or are more comfortable with...
Post a Comment