Darwinism and its Moral Implications

Ideas about human origins are ripe with moral implications. Historian Richard Weikart, California State University, wrote in From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany:

• Before the advent of Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, there was no significant debate in Europe over the sanctity of human life, which was entrenched in European thought and law… Judeo-Christian ethics proscribed the killing of innocent human life, and the Christian churches explicitly forbade murder, infanticide, abortion, and even suicide. The sanctity of human life became enshrined in classical liberal human rights ideology as "the right to life," which according to John Locke, was one of the supreme rights of every individual. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, and to a large extent even on into the twentieth century, both the Christian churches and most anticlerical European liberals upheld the sanctity of human life. A rather uncontroversiaI part of the law code for the newly united Germany in 1871 was the prohibition against assisted suicide. Only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life, especially infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide.

Darwinism powerfully ushered in a new worldview with its moral implications:

• By reducing humans to mere animals, by stressing human inequality, and by viewing the death of many "unfit" organisms as a necessary—and even progressive—natural phenomenon, Darwinism made the death of the "inferior" seem inevitable and even beneficent. Some Darwinists concluded that helping the "unfit" die—which had for millennia been called murder—was not morally reprehensible, but was rather morally good. 

• Those skeptical about the role Darwinism played in the rise of advocacy for involuntary euthanasia, infanticide, and abortion should consider several points. First, before the rise of Darwinism, there was no debate on these issues, as there was almost universal agreement in Europe that human life is sacred and that all innocent human lives should be protected. Second, the earliest advocates of involuntary euthanasia, infanticide, and abortion in Germany were devoted to a Darwinian worldview. Third, Haeckel, the most famous Darwinist in Germany, promoted these ideas in some of his best-selling books, so these ideas reached a wide audience, especially among those receptive to Darwinism. Finally, Haeckel and other Darwinists and eugenicists grounded their views on death and killing on their naturalistic interpretation of Darwinism.

Can Darwinism and its assertion that humans are just another animal be separated from its moral implications? Darwinists are feverishly endeavoring to do this very thing by disclaiming any connection with social Darwinism. Or is there an inseparable connection between Darwin and the social/moral implications of his theory? Is it inevitable that if we view humanity as the result of a purposeless biological process that we will treat humanity accordingly?

Who am I and why this Question Matters

 

From where do we derive our personal value? One Italian woman had derived her sense of worth from her good looks: 

•  A healthy Italian woman paid a Swiss right-to-die clinic to take her life because she was ‘unhappy about losing her looks.’ Oriella Cazzanello, 85, travelled to a clinic in Basel, Switzerland, where she paid €10,000 for an assisted suicide.  The elderly woman, who was in good mental and physical health, disappeared from her home in Arzignano, near Vicenza in northern Italy, without telling her relatives where she was going.   Her family, who had reported her to the police as missing, only learnt of her death after they received her ashes and death certificate from the clinic.

I don’t mean to criticize this tragic figure. However, her worldview reflects the dangerous way that many see and value themselves. Whether this valuation is based upon our looks, our performance, or another socially derived criterion, we rest our lives on an unstable, tenuous foundation. If our performance, appearance, or popularity slips, we slip along with it, either into depression or death.

In a sense, we are what we value. With so much depending on these external standards of worth, these “treasures” will control our thinking.  If our worth depends on our appearance, appearance will absorb us, condemning us into the psychological rut of self.

What are the consequences of this self-absorption? The price is not merely required when we decline. It is also exacted when we are at the top of our game. Theologian David F. Wells writes:

•  Though they grew up in good homes, had all they wanted, went on to college, (perhaps) entered the workplace, they are nevertheless baffled by the emptiness they feel. Their self-esteem is high but their self is empty. They grew up being told they could be anything that they wanted to be, but they do not know what they want to be. They are unhappy, but there seems to be no cause for their unhappiness. They are more connected to more people through the Internet, and yet they have never felt more lonely. They want to be accepted, and yet they often feel alienated. Never have we had so much; never have we had so little. That is our paradox. (God in the Whirlwind)

Why we do feel alienated from others and disappointed by them? We have become dependent on them, expecting from them what they cannot give – validation for who we are! And when they fail to deliver, we resent them.

Nor can we elevate ourselves through self-absorption - looking within to self-centered standards of value – but instead through looking outside ourselves to something greater and ultimately validating!

It has only been this external focus on an all-defining Reality greater than me that has made a difference. I had seen numerous highly recommended psychologists. They assured me that I was a good person, but the glow would fad by the next day. Only the assurance of Christ’s undying love has been able to lift me from my rut.

The Expendable Lives of the “Morally Irrelevant”

From where do we derive our value, significance and self-esteem? A recent article, although it fails to establish such a standard, is nevertheless dogmatic that, for some, there is no value:

• Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” [MI] and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued…The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life.”

If babies are “morally irrelevant,” who then is relevant? Is it adults? Productive citizens? Likeable people? People who look and think as we do? Perhaps everyone is an expendable commodity, socially valued according to their temporary usefulness? And babies are just not that useful!

Who then decides if another individual is “morally irrelevant?” The ruling class? The party in power? The majority? Do we want to live in a society where our ultimate value is determined by others who might deem us “morally irrelevant?”

By virtue of what criteria can they say that babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life?” Is it age? Why not also the unemployed, the infirm, the aged or the mentally ill? Some, like the renowned ethicist Peter Singer, assign value according to intelligence. Perhaps then we should all be accorded value and influence according to an IQ test. If you score 180, then you should receive a greater vote than those who score lesser, and if you score under 100, then you are socially expendable.

If babies can be put to death, why not others? Why not me? For how long can I feel safe in such a society? I read that the elderly fear going to the hospital in Holland, no longer knowing if their doctor is their advocate or their executioner.

These are very real questions. If babies are subject to murder, where does it stop? If there is nothing holy about their lives, by what arrogance can I convince myself that I have adequate, socially-assigned value – enough to insure that I will be reckoned “morally relevant” by my morally relativistic society?

When value is equated with convenience and profit, then anyone is fair-game – the unpopular, the vulnerable, and the weak. I don’t think that we realize what a great portal to hell we’ve cracked open when we replaced the Biblical concept of “sanctity of life” (Genesis 1:26-27) with a pragmatic assessment of the value of life. This has unhinged us from the Christian values that had once made the West great.

We’ve replaced the dignity of each human life with a cold-blooded, materialistic determination of who is relevant and who isn’t – a virtual survival-of-the-fittest, of-the- popular, and of any life that doesn’t look like our own. We are on a slippery slope. For example, euthanasia and physician-assisted-suicide (PAS) used to only apply to the terminally ill. However, now membership to the “morally irrelevant” has been liberalized:

• The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has released new guidelines for interpreting the 2002 Euthanasia Act that now includes “mental and psychosocial ailments” such as “loss of function, loneliness and loss of autonomy” as acceptable criteria for euthanasia. The guidelines also allow doctors to connect a patient’s lack of “social skills, financial resources and a social network” to “unbearable and lasting suffering,” opening the door to legal assisted death based on “psychosocial” factors, not terminal illness.

When pragmatism replaces principle – the transcendent measure of evaluation – only “choice” remains, whether it’s the individual’s choice or the State’s choice. When convenience and comfort are the measures, the value of all humanity is degraded and the lives of those at the margins are endangered. It is therefore not surprising that the margins are now being pumped full with those who lack “social skills, financial resources and a social network.”

The Oxford study deemed that “newborn babies” are “morally irrelevant.” But if newborns are MI, why not also two-years-olds? If two-year-olds, why not also four-year-olds or ten-year-olds? What principle will stop this steady slide?

If a society is measured by its care for the marginalized and defenseless, then we are going in the wrong direction. We were aghast at Hitler’s social experiment to build a new society by ridding itself of the undesirables. How is it that we no longer blink an eye?

(Touching testimonial: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/the_new_scar_on_my_soul.html)