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8664327
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He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.
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survival-of-the-fittest
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Jack London |
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aafdaed
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With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised 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; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.
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planned-parenthood
sterilisation
sterilization
population-control
eugenics
social-darwinism
survival-of-the-fittest
darwinism
natural-selection
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Charles Darwin |
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5cd66a5
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This century will be called 's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. . Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer , and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of --a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; . Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.
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evolution
myth
true
nature
reason
fear
science
atonement
origin-of-species
orthodox-christianity
false
clergy
garden-of-eden
original-sin
orthodox
biology
charles-darwin
fact
investigation
geology
dogma
survival-of-the-fittest
darwin
genius
england
ignorance
superstition
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Robert Green Ingersoll |
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6712e49
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If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught?
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evolution
morality
infidelity
macro-evolution
macroevolution
social-darwinism
survival-of-the-fittest
theft
darwinism
natural-selection
stealing
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Robert J. Sawyer |
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74ac11e
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"Survival of the fittest," which Sax had always considered a useless tautology. But if social Darwinists were taking over, then maybe the concept gained importance, as a religious dogma of the ruling order...."
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social-darwinism
survival-of-the-fittest
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Kim Stanley Robinson |