Resources:

• Candidates and sample ballots at www.bernco.gov or contact your local County Clerk
• Right to Life NM - www.rtlnm.org
• Catholic Voter Resource Center - www.catholicsvotecatholic.com (website to be updated with info for NM Primary)
• League of Women Voters - www.lwvnm.org 

It was in 1859 that Charles Darwin, in his famous work On the Origin of Species, introduced the world to his theory of natural selection, the force, he claimed, that drives biological evolution. Through the process of the sampling of life's random variations - as the story goes - nature, over and over and over again, picked the "fittest" of those variations and in so doing, slowly transformed the "simple" single-celled organisms that existed a billion years ago into the complex and wondrous creatures of today's world.

Of course at that time, no one…including Darwin…had any idea as to the actual complexity of even the simplest single-cell organism. The truth of the matter is that Darwin's theory was largely based on ignorance, had no real convincing evidence in its support and was of little or no practical use. Its real value lay in its ability to provide the basis for a new secular religion. Consequently, today, in spite of its inability to provide anything more than content for "just-so" Darwinian fairy tales, neo-Darwinism reigns…not as science but as materialistic ideology.

Darwin's intent in publishing Origins was that his theory be accepted, not just by the scientific world, but by the masses. However, he had a problem. It was one thing to say that the birds of the air and the beasts of the field evolved but it was another thing altogether to say that the same was true for mankind. This would surely offend the Christian ladies and gentleman of Victorian England who believed that their existence was the result of the special creative work of God. Darwin thought it best to let everyone get a little more comfortable with these ideas before exposing them to the disconcerting truth about the origin of mankind much less its dark and troubling implications. All of this would have to wait till later.

Thus, in writing Origins, Darwin reluctantly stopped short of claiming that mankind was also the product of natural selection…though that was his ultimate intent.

Now Charles Darwin had a cousin, Francis Galton. Galton had an excellent understanding of Darwin's work but he had little concern about British sensibilities. In 1869 Galton published a book, Hereditary Genius, based on Darwin's Origins where he not only made it clear that mankind descended from lower forms but he also foresaw the emergence of a new science based on Darwin's theory.

Galton was well aware that one of Darwin's strongest arguments supporting natural selection had to do with domestic breeding. He reasoned that these same principles could be applied to human populations for the purpose of eliminating undesirable traits in those populations just like breeders did with domestic animals. This reasoning provided the basis for a new social science which Galton called "Eugenics".

In Hereditary Genius Galton "cleared the decks" for Darwin with respect to any remaining issues thus within a couple of years later Darwin published his second work, The Descent of Man. It was in this book that Darwin laid out the foundations of Eugenics. Darwin writes…

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health…We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick;… and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment….Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one…will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.

If…various checks…do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde, as has occurred too often in the history of the world.

In Origins, Darwin introduced his theory of natural selection. In Descent, he provided the scientific basis for eugenics. At the end of the nineteenth century utopian thinking was "in the air" in Europe and America. This combination of ideas set the stage for the twentieth century and some of mankind's darkest times.

We generally think about the "Holocaust" as being the result of what happens when a mad man like Hitler comes to power. But it is not that simple. In the next segment, Part 2, we look at the connection between Darwin and Hitler, examine the shameful role that the U.S. played in the eugenics movement and show that you should never let "eugenicists" and "utopians" play together.

Next meeting of the NM IDNet will be May 25 at 7-9 PM in rm 2405 of the UNM Law school.  The topics will be i) a critique of the multiple universes explanation of the anthropic coincidences,  ii) review of Steve Meyer's recent book "Signature in the Cell", and iii) modeling the DNA polymerase.

Update on Preschool/Childcare Licensing

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