Page 575 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

THE HISTORY OF RUTHLESSNESS, FROM MALTHUS

TO DARWIN

A s we already made clear, Darwin's views in The Origin of Species were most influenced by the

British economist and demographer Thomas Robert Malthus.

In Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future, first published in 1798, Malthus claimed
that the human population was increasing every twenty-five years in a geometrical ratio (1, 2, 4, 8, 16,

32, 64, 128, 256…), while the food supply was increasing in an arithmetical ratio (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...);
that as the population doubled, food resources showed a much more modest rise. Malthus claimed that
within 300 years, the ratio of population to food resources would be 4,096 to 13. Again according to this
unscientific claim, resources were insufficient for the rapidly rising population, and Malthus alleged that
it was becoming essential to engage in a serious struggle for survival. This was the same claim expressed

in the subtitle to Darwin's The Origin of Species: the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life...
In his Essay, Malthus stated that this rapid population rise needed to be halted,
and came up with a number of solutions. According to him, misery and vice

were the two main factors that checked population growth. Phenomena
such as famine and epidemics were examples of misery, which kept
population in check. Other examples were such phenomena as wars.
Malthus wrote that rapid population increase could be checked by
such means as war, famine, disease and the killing of newborn ba-

bies, to balance population and food resources. Anyone with
common sense and a conscience will agree that such a claim is
irrational, illogical, and horrendously brutal. Accurate planning

of income and essential resources for the well-being and peace
of societies is of course of the greatest importance for the future
of those societies. However, it is also evident that planning
wars, slaughter and murder will inflict nothing but tears and
suffering on a society's future.

Malthus had a number of other illogical recommendations.
For example, he suggested that all possible measures should be
taken to prevent poor or laboring-class couples from having chil-

dren. Malthus's views reached a peak in 1834 with a new law passed
in England setting up special "workhouses" for the poor. Under that
law, married couples in workhouses were kept apart by means of fixed

Thomas Robert Malthus

Adnan Oktar 573