Page 640 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

The American
Eugenics
Association gave
lessons at state
fairs and held
competitions at
which the
"fittest" family
was chosen.

Dr. Robert Youngson, who has studied errors in the history of science, states in his analysis that the
idea of eugenics underlay the Nazi slaughter, and that eugenics itself was a great scientific error:

The culmination of this darker side of eugenics was, of course, Adolf Hitler's attempt to produce a "master race"
by encouraging mating between pure "Aryans" and by the murder of six million people whom he claimed to

have inferior genes. It is hardly fair to Galton to blame him for the Holocaust or even for his failure to antici-
pate the consequences of his advocacy of the matter. But he was certainly the principal architect of eugenics,
and Hitler was certainly obsessed with the idea. So, in terms of its consequences, this must qualify as one of the

greatest scientific blunders of all time. 119
Describing Galton's irrational, unscientific views as merely a "scientific blunder" is actually a too "op-

timistic" approach. Actually, the claims made by Galton and those like him formed the basis of unprece-
dented savagery and slaughter. When Nazi Germany adapted the Social Darwinist world view to society,
the catastrophes that ensued are a historical lesson of what can happen.
The Nazis adopted as a state policy the killing of every "inferior," "deficient," "flawed" and sick" human

being who "polluted" the Aryan race. Hitler set out the reason:

… peoples to decay … In the long run, nature eliminates the noxious elements. One may be repelled by this law
of nature which demands that all living things should mutually devour one another. The fly is snapped up by
a dragonfly, which itself is swallowed by a bird, which itself falls victim to a larger bird … to know the laws of

nature … enables us to obey them. 120
Hitler made the grievous error of suggesting that various phenomena that maintain the ecological bal-

ance in nature also applied to human beings. If animals regard each other as prey, that does not mean that
humans should ruthlessly destroy those they regard as weaker. Animals have no conscience. Human be-
ings, on the other hand, possess both conscience and consciousness, the ability to distinguish between right
and wrong, good and bad, and the capacity for judgment. Only those, like Hitler, who seek to justify their

own psychological imbalances maintain that human beings should lead an animalistic lifestyle. Indeed,

638 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3