Page 21 - The Social Weapon: Darwinism

19

Darwin—said that these people should be ruthlessly left to die.
The British sociologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer

headed the list of those who immediately adopted and devel-
oped these inhumane ideas. The term “the survival of the
fittest,” which sums up Darwinism's basic claim, actually be-
longs to Spencer. He also claimed that the “unfit” should be
eliminated, writing that: “If they are sufficiently complete to
live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not
sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should
die.” In Spencer's view, the poor, uneducated, sick, crippled
1
and unsuccessful should all die, and he sought to prevent the
state from passing laws to protect the poor.
Spencer possessed a great lack of compassion for people
who should awaken feelings of compassion and protection and,
just like Malthus, he sought for ways to get rid of them. In
Darwinism in American Thought, the American historian Richard
Hofstadter makes the following comment:

Spencer deplored not only poor laws, but also state-supported
education, sanitary supervision other than the suppression of
nuisances, regulation of housing conditions, and even state pro-
tection of the ignorant from medical quacks. 2
Darwin, powerfully influenced by Malthus and Spencer's
ruthless world views, proposed in The Origin of Species the myth
that species had evolved by means of natural selection. Darwin
was no scientist, and took only an amateur's interest in biology.
Under the very primitive microscopes of Darwin's time, cells
appeared to be nothing more than blurry blots, and the biologi-
cal laws of inheritance had not yet been discovered. Darwin's
theory, developed with very limited scientific knowledge and
under inadequate scientific conditions, claimed that nature al-

ways “selected” the fittest with the most advantages, and that

Harun Yahya - Adnan Oktar