What follows is the continuation of my debate with Rasasthali Devi Dasi at www.dandavats.com. The below is a new and revised version.
In my post “Prabhupada on Darwin and Moral Decline (Part 1)” I defended my first contention which was that Rasasthali Devi Dasi contradicts Prabhupada when she claims that Darwinism hasn’t been, to a large extent, the cause of the many social evils we see today.
In the following I’ll defend my second contention which is that Rasasthali Devi Dasi is wrong when she claims that Darwinism hasn’t been, to a large extent, the cause of the many social evils we observe today.
There’s a lot to be said about this subject matter. My intention is to write a longer article presenting more detailed explanations and giving more evidence for the six points I will discuss here. So stay tuned at Vaisnava Apologetics! :-)
The Social Impact of Darwinism
I will argue that social evils follows logically and inescapably from Darwin’s ideas. Specifically I’ll mention six things about his theory of evolution which makes it an evil theory:
1. Leaving God out of the picture
Darwin’s ideas made it possible, like never before, to explain the world without the need for God or any sort of supernatural phenomenon. Darwin was himself heavily influenced by materialistic philosophy from his very childhood and from earlier and contemporary materialistic philosophers like Hume and Comte whom he liked. Even before he published his books he would lean towards the rejection of God. Evidence for this can be found in his earlier notebooks and manuscripts. At the end of his life Darwin would totally reject Christianity. His theory became a “scientific” justification for leaving God out of the picture – and Darwin knew this very well.
The social impact of leaving God out of the picture is that from that it follows that there can be no absolute standard for right and wrong. We are left with no spiritual guidance. This is common sense which I show in my version of “The Moral Argument for the Existence of God”. Prabhupada agrees fully with this view which I document in my “Prabhupada and the Moral Argument for the Existence of God”. Making people think that we don’t have any need of God in order to explain the origin of and development of life leads naturally to disastrous moral consequences. It more then anything else confines people within the physical world by making them identify with the body.
2. Moral relativism
If we can explain everything without God it becomes irrational to believe in God. Darwin argued that all human traits including moral traits can be explained by his theory. This leaves us with moral relativism. The consequences of moral relativism can be seen in my article “The Moral Argument for the Existence of God”. The consequences are that all actions are morally equal. There can be no true normative moral statements. Thus it becomes impossible to condemn things like rape, murder, oppression, child abuse, slavery etc. And we also can’t praise things we normally consider morally good like helping people in need, caring for our children, spreading spiritual knowledge etc. Everything become equal. Darwin himself arrived at the conclusion that morality was simply relative. If we want to do good, he said, we can do nothing more than listen to what we feel is good. This moral relativism was condemned by Prabhupada (see “Prabhupada and the Moral Argument for the Existence of God“).
3. There is no progress in our evolution as a species without war, disease, famine and other sorts of pressures which eliminates the weak specimens and forces the strong to adapt and develop superior traits.
Darwin often praised war as a good thing and later thinkers and political leaders like Stalin, Lenin and Hitler used this to justify their wars. Some, like Lenin, even created artificial famine in their countries to eliminate the weak.
To say that there’s no progress without wars and that wars are therefore a good, and even a necessary thing, is in itself an evil doctrine. How accountable Darwin is for this is ultimately between him and Krishna.
4. The use of eugenics.
Darwin favored, at least to some degree, the use of eugenics. Just like we can make better and stronger animals by not letting the weak specimens procreate and by letting the strong specimens procreate so we can make better and stronger men by hindering the weak in body and mind to procreate and by helping to strong in body and mind to do so. There are quotes were Darwin says that the poor should not be allowed to procreate and were he says only humans, among other animals, are so stupid as to take care of their weak specimens.
5. Racism
While some argue that Darwin was against slavery it’s still true that he was a racist. You’re not necessarily against racism because you are against slavery. Darwin’s books are filled with racism. He consistently wrote that the European white race was the most superior race and that blacks were almost like apes. This view follows logically from his evolution theory; some must be more evolved than others. The weak dies and the strong survives. Thus Darwin predicted that soon the “savage races” would die in the struggle for survival, being eliminated by the stronger races (the white caucasians).
6. Sexism
Darwin used his theory of evolution to explain why he thought that men were more intelligent than women. He argued that it must be because men were the ones who were out of the home struggling to get food. Thus they encountered more pressure and thus acquired superior traits, like a higher intelligence. In some places Darwin would say that women, like dogs, was good to keep men company.
Conclusively
There is definitely a logical and historical link between Darwin’s ideas and evil. The six points mentioned above are in themselves evil and combined together gave a “scientific” justification for all sorts of social evils. Darwin was warned about the consequences, even by his own mentor and friends. But he didn’t do anything to prevent them. Nor did he protest when his cousin Francis Galton instituted a eugenics society. He also didn’t object to the sick way in which many contemporary thinkers took his ideas.
Besides the indisputable historical links between Darwin and all the socials evil performed in his name by later dictators, like Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao, Mussolini and others are there also logical links between them? I think in some areas there certainly are. But in other areas it might be their adding something to Darwin’s ideas or seeing some consequences of the ideas that Darwin didn’t see or spoke about. Sometimes Darwin was inconsistent. This was the case in regard to his morality. He had his personal moral opinions which is inconsistent with the view that morality is relative. On the one hand the claimed that morality was relative, but on the other hand he claimed that slavery was wrong. So some thinkers simply took the logical consequences of Darwin’s moral relativism and rejected his inconsistent moral opinions. Darwin’s contemporary admirer Ernst Haeckel, who was a very outspoken racist and eugenicist, did this and claimed that moral relativism follows logically Darwin’s theory. He was right. Without Darwin’s theory it’s hard to see how these thinkers and dictators could have argued for their ideas and gotten away with their actions.
Darwin’s theory has been used as the building block for many social evils. It has fueled, inspired and “scientifically” justified things like euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, racism, satanism, forced sterilization, sexism, liberalizing sex and criminal justice, experimentation with humans and animals, wars, artificial famine, elimination of the inferior, eugenics and many other evils.
Darwinism permeates everywhere and makes people identify with their bodies and think that God is unnecessary. Therefore it is the number one evil theory on the face of the planet and therefore Prabhupada wanted it defeated almost more than any other thing. We can let Krishna decide precisely how much Darwin will be held accountable for propagating his ideas. But it doesn’t look good. Let’s pray that he will become Krishna Conscious and be protected from the bad karma.
