Page 23 - The Disasters Darwinism Brought To Humanity

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A A S H O R T H I S T O R Y O F D A R W I N I S M 23
tific façade. It was now impossible to reproach or obstruct those who car-
ried out barbarous massacres, treated human beings like animals, turned
peoples against each other, who despised others on account of their race,
who closed down small businesses in the name of competition, and who
refused to extend the hand of help to the poor. Because they were doing
this in accordance with a "scientific" natural law.
This new scientific account came to be known as "Social Darwin-
ism."
One of the foremost evolutionist scientists of our own time, the
American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould accepts the truth by writing
that following the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, "subsequent
arguments for slavery, colonialism, racial differences, class struggles, and sex
roles would go forth primarily under the banner of science." 5
One point requires careful attention here. All periods of human his-
tory have seen wars, atrocities, ruthlessness, racism, and conflict. But
there was at all times a divine religion teaching people that what they
were doing was wrong and calling them to peace, justice, and calm.
Because human beings knew this divine religion, they at least had a mea-
sure of understanding that what they were doing was wrong when they
th
engaged in violence. But from the 19 century, Darwinism showed that
the struggle for profit and injustice had an element of scientific justifica-
tion to them, and said that all of these were part of human nature, that
man carried savage and aggressive tendencies left over from his ances-
tors, and that in the same way that as the strongest and most aggressive
animal survived, the same laws applied to human beings. Under the
influence of this thinking, wars, suffering, and massacres began to affect
a very large part of the world. Darwinism supported and encouraged all
those movements which brought pain, blood, and oppression to the
world, showed them to be reasonable and justified, and backed all their
practical applications. As a result of this so-called scientific backing all
these dangerous ideologies grew increasingly stronger, and stamped the
th
name "the age of suffering" on the 20 century.
In his book Darwin, Marx, Wagner professor of history Jacques