Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?
by Richard Weikart


Professor of History

California State Univ., Stanislaus



For more information on this topic, see my book From Darwin to Hitler:
Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004).



[Note: This article first appeared in The Human Life Review 30, 2
(Spring 2004): 29-37.]


A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class
discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good
nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the
worst mass murderers in history wasn't evil? How could they believe
this? How could they justify such a view?


They did it by appealing to Darwinism. Their pronouncement on Hitler
occurred while we were discussing James Rachels' book, Created from
Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford University Press,
1990). Darwinism, these students informed us, undermined all morality.

This was not the first time I had heard such a view. In fact, at that
time I was in the beginning phases of a research project on the
history of evolutionary ethics, and I had already reviewed the work of
some scientists and social scientists who believed that Darwinism
undermined human rights and equality.


Before reading Rachels' book, however, I hadn't thought much about
whether or not Darwinism devalued human life itself. Rachels, a
philosopher at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, best known for
his contributions to the euthanasia debate, argues that Darwinism
undermines the Judeo-Christian belief in the sanctity of human life.
The title of his book comes from an observation Darwin makes in his
1838 notebooks, "Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work,
worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble and, I believe,
true to consider him created from animals." Rachels assumes the truth
of Darwinism and uses it as a springboard to justify euthanasia,
infanticide (for disabled babies), abortion, and animal rights.

Stimulated by his book, I continued my research on evolutionary
ethics, but now with two new questions in mind: Does Darwinism
undermine the Judeo-Christian understanding of the sanctity of human
life? Does it weaken traditional proscriptions against killing the
sick and the weak?


As I read more about the development of evolutionary ethics, I
discovered that many scientists, social thinkers, and especially
physicians in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany did
indeed use Darwinian arguments to devalue human life. In the second
edition of his popular book, The Natural History of Creation (1870),
Ernst Haeckel, the leading Darwinist in Germany, became the first
German scholar to seriously propose that disabled infants be killed at
birth. Darwinists were in the forefront of the eugenics movement,
which often taught that disabled people and non-Europeans were
inferior to healthy Europeans.

They argued that Darwinism implied
human inequality, since biological variation has to occur to drive the
process of evolution. Haeckel even suggested that Darwinism was an
"aristocratic" process, favoring an aristocracy of talent (not the
traditional landed aristocracy, for which Haeckel had no sympathy).
Since Darwinism provided a naturalistic explanation for the origin of
ethics, many of its adherents dismissed human rights as a chimera.

Darwin expressed incredulity when critics assailed him for undermining
morality. In his Autobiography, however, Darwin rejected the idea of
objective moral standards, stating that one "can have for his rule of
life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts
which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones." (1)

Friedrich Hellwald, an influential ethnologist, promoted a Darwinian
view of social evolution in his major work, The History of Culture
(1875). Hellwald was quite radical in exalting the Darwinian process
of the struggle for existence above all moral considerations. "The
right of the stronger," he insisted, "is a natural law." (2) He
clarified this idea further:

In nature only One Right rules, which is no right, the right of the
stronger, or violence. But violence is also in fact the highest source
of right, in that without it no legislation is thinkable. I will in
the course of my portrayal easily prove that even in human history the
right of the stronger has fundamentally retained its validity at all
times. (3)

This Darwinian undermining of human rights would be fateful for the
Judeo-Christian vision of the sanctity of human life.


Besides stressing human inequality, Haeckel and many of his fellow
Darwinists devalued human life by criticizing Judeo-Christian
conceptions of humanity as "anthropocentric." Rather than being
created in the image of God, they argued, humans were descended from
simian ancestors. They blurred the distinctions between humans and
animals, alleging that characteristics that had been traditionally
considered uniquely human--rationality, morality, religion, etc.--were
also present in animals to some degree. In Darwin's own words, the
difference between humans and animals is quantitative, not
qualitative.

Darwin's explanation that all human characteristics that previously
had been associated with the human soul were not qualitatively
distinct from animals also undermined the traditional Judeo-Christian
conception of body-soul dualism, which endued humans with greater
moral and spiritual significance than other organisms.

(4) Many
Darwinists understood the implications of this, including Haeckel, who
founded the Monist League in 1906 specifically to combat all dualistic
religions and philosophies, especially Christianity (but also
Kantianism). One prominent member of the Monist League, August Forel,
a world famous psychiatrist at the University of Zurich, described his
initial encounter with Darwinism as a kind of conversion experience.
He explained that Darwinism had convinced him that body-soul dualism
was no longer tenable and that humans have no free will. Based on his
view that heredity accounts for almost all character traits (and most
mental illness), Forel became one of the most influential figures in
the German eugenics movement, preaching the need to eliminate
"inferior" races and handicapped infants, and recruiting Alfred
Ploetz, who founded the world's first eugenics organization and
journal.

Another element of Darwinism that contributed to the devaluing of
human life was its stress on the struggle for existence. Based on the
Malthusian population principle, Darwin pointed out that offspring are
produced at much higher levels than can survive. Therefore multitudes
necessarily perish in the struggle for existence. While Malthus saw
this tendency toward overpopulation as the cause of misery and
poverty, Darwin explained that it was really beneficial. In the
conclusion of The Origin of Species, Darwin wrote, "Thus, from the war
of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals,
directly follows." (5) For Darwin death--even mass death--was not only
inevitable, necessary. As Adrian Desmond explained in his biography of
T. H. Huxley (the foremost Darwinian biologist in late
nineteenth-century Britain, who earned the nickname, "Darwin's
bulldog"), "only from death on a genocidal scale could the few
progress."

(6) Hellwald expressed the same idea in The History of
Culture, claiming that evolutionary progress would occur as the
"fitter" humans "stride across the corpses of the vanquished; that is
natural law." (7)


Indeed, many leading Darwinists in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries claimed that in order to foster evolutionary
progress, the less valuable elements of humanity, generally defined as
the disabled and those of non-European races, had to be eliminated.
They feared that Judeo-Christian and humanitarian ethics, together
with the advances of modern civilization--especially medicine and
hygiene--would produce biological degeneration, since the weak and
sick would be allowed to reproduce. Though many focused on methods to
restrict reproduction, a surprising number of leading Darwinists--and
not only Haeckel and Forel--actually promoted killing the "unfit" as a
means to bring biological progress. Racial extermination and
infanticide were integral components of their Darwinian program for
biological rejuvenation.

In retrospect, the connection between these Darwinian ideas and
Hitler's ideology are obvious. Interestingly, however, when I began my
research on evolutionary ethics, Hitler was not even on my radar
screen. I was wary of connecting Darwin and Hitler because of Daniel
Gasman's failed attempt to draw a direct line from Haeckel to Hitler
in The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, a book with which
most historians rightly find fault. However, the title of my
book--From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism
in Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)--indicates that I made the
connection nonetheless, though in quite a different manner from
Gasman. Indeed, the more I studied books and articles on evolutionary
ethics by German scientists, physicians, and social thinkers, the more
I discovered that I could not avoid the parallels between German
Darwinist discourse and Hitler's ideology. This should not come as a
complete surprise, however, since just about all of Hitler's
biographers have noted the strong social Darwinist elements in his
ideology, as Ian Kershaw does recently in his magisterial two-volume
biography.

Hitler was strongly influenced by the Darwinian ideology of the
eugenics movement, and his writings and speeches clearly reflect it.
In Mein Kampf Hitler asserted that his philosophy


by no means believes in the equality of races, but recognizes along
with their differences their higher or lower value, and through this
knowledge feels obliged, according to the eternal will that rules this
universe, to promote the victory of the better, the stronger, and to
demand the submission of the worse and weaker. It embraces thereby in
principle the aristocratic law of nature and believes in the validity
of this law down to the last individual being. It recognizes not only
the different value of races, but also the different value of
individuals. . . . But by no means can it approve of the right of an
ethical idea existing, if this idea is a danger for the racial life of
the bearer of a higher ethic. (8)

Thus Hitler justified his racial views by appealing to Darwinian
science. Because Hitler's racial views were so obviously flawed, some
scholars call Hitler's views pseudo-scientific or a "vulgar" form of
Darwinism. However, this is to judge Hitler by later standards of
scientific thought. Many leading scientists and physicians embraced
eugenics and scientific racism in Hitler's day, and indeed Fritz Lenz,
the first professor of eugenics at a German university, crowed in 1933
that he had formulated the essentials of Nazi ideology even before
Hitler began his political career.


Hitler's genocidal program was not the only adverse consequence of
Darwinism's devaluing of human life, and Germany was not the only
country impacted. Much work on the history of the eugenics movement in
the United States, Britain, and elsewhere suggests that scientific and
medical elites in many parts of the world imbibed the Darwinian
devaluing of human life. Though it did not lead to genocide in these
countries, it did lead to other injustices, such as the compulsory
sterilization of thousands of people classified as "less fit," based
on their hereditary condition (sometimes based on very tenuous
evidence, leading to many cases of misdiagnosis). Social Darwinist and
eugenics ideology also played an important role in the budding
movement to legalize abortion in the early twentieth century.


Further, recent confirmation of my findings about the Darwinian
devaluing of human life have come from Ian Dowbiggin's and Nick Kemp's
important new studies on the history of the euthanasia movements in
the United States and Britain, respectively. Both emphasize the role
of Darwinism in paving the way ideologically for euthanasia. According
to Dowbiggin, "The most pivotal turning point in the early history of
the euthanasia movement was the coming of Darwinism to America." (9)
This held true in Britain, as well, for Kemp informs us: "While we
should be wary of depicting Darwin as the man responsible for ushering
in a secular age we should be similarly cautious of underestimating
the importance of evolutionary thought in relation to the questioning
of the sanctity of human life." (10) The worldview of most early
euthanasia advocates was saturated with Darwinian ideology, and they
forthrightly used Darwinian ideas to combat the Judeo-Christian
concept of the sanctity of human life.


Thus, historical evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries overwhelmingly supports the thesis that Darwinism devalued
human life. Whatever one thinks philosophically about this issue--and,
of course, some Darwinists are embarrassed by the link and try to deny
it--historically Darwinism has contributed to a devaluing of human
life, thereby providing impetus for euthanasia, infanticide, and
abortion.


The question now emerges: Is this all just of historical interest?
Haven't we learned a lesson from Nazism not to use social Darwinism to
devalue humans? Haven't we abandoned biological racism and rabid
anti-Semitism, integral components of Nazi ideology?


Yes, indeed, we have learned much from the Nazi past, and I don't
think it is fair to compare our present situation with Nazi Germany,
as though they are completely the same. We don't live in a murderous
dictatorship, and racism is on the defensive, at least in academic
circles. For this we can be thankful. Still, in some respects, I
wonder if we have learned enough, especially when I see big-name
Darwinists, evolutionary psychologists, and bioethicists using
Darwinism today to undermine the sanctity of human life. Whether
Darwinism does actually devalue human life or not, there are certainly
many people who think it does, and they are not intellectual
featherweights.


First of all, the position that Rachels stakes out on issues of life
and death are strikingly similar to that of the Australian
bioethicist, Peter Singer, whose appointment a few years ago to a
chair in bioethics at Princeton University stirred up vigorous
controversy. Singer is renowned--or notorious, depending on one's
point of view--for promoting the legitimacy of infanticide for
handicapped babies and voluntary euthanasia, as well as for defending
animal rights. Darwinism plays a key role in Singer's philosophy,
underpinning his views on life and death. Singer claims that Darwin
"undermined the foundations of the entire Western way of thinking on
the place of our species in the universe." It stripped humanity of the
special status that Judeo-Christian thought had conferred upon it.
Singer complains that even though Darwin "gave what ought to have been
its final blow" to the "human-centred view of the universe," the view
that humans are special and sacred has not yet vanished. Singer is now
laboring to give the sanctity-of-life ethic its deathblow. (11)

Singer and Rachels are not the only prominent philosophers arguing
that Darwinism undermines the sanctity of human life. In Darwin's
Dangerous Idea the materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that
Darwinism functions like a "universal acid," destroying traditional
forms of religion and morality. In confronting the issue of biomedical
ethics, Dennett asks, "At what 'point' does a human life begin or end?
The Darwinian perspective lets us see with unmistakable clarity why
there is no hope at all of discovering a telltale mark, a saltation in
life's processes, that 'counts.'"

Because of this, Dennett argues,
there are "gradations of value in the ending of human lives," implying
that some human lives have more value than others. After using his
Darwinian acid to dissolve the sanctity-of-life ethic, Dennett
wonders, "Which is worse, taking 'heroic' measures to keep alive a
severely deformed infant, or taking the equally 'heroic' (if unsung)
step of seeing to it that such an infant dies as quickly and
painlessly as possible?" Darwin's Dangerous Idea is apparently
especially toxic to disabled infants. (12)


The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology
at Harvard University, also draws connections between Darwinism and
infanticide. After some high-profile cases of infanticide occurred in
1997, Pinker wrote an article purporting to explain its evolutionary
origins. Since Pinker believes "that nurturing an offspring that
carries our genes is the whole point of our existence," of course he
tries to explain infanticide as a behavior that somehow confers
reproductive advantage. He argues that a "new mother will first coolly
assess the infant and her current situation and only in the next few
days begin to see it as a unique and wonderful individual." (This is
outrageously speculative; no new mother I have ever met has "coolly
assessed" her infant, and it seems to me that those who commit
infanticide are not "coolly assessing" the survival prospects for
their infant, either--more likely they are desperate). According to
Pinker, the mother's love for her infant will grow in relation to the
"increasing biological value of a child (the chance that it will live
to produce grandchildren)." Pinker specifically denies that infants
have a "right to life," so, even though he doesn't completely condone
infanticide, he thinks we should not be too harsh on mothers killing
their children. (13) Pinker's view of infanticide is by no means
unusual among evolutionary psychologists. In a leading textbook on
evolutionary psychology, Evolution and Human Behavior: Darwinian
Perspectives on Human Nature (2000), John Cartwright provides
basically the same Darwinian explanation for infanticide as Pinker's.


What do Darwinian biologists have to say about all this? Some think
Singer and company are on the right track. In 2001 Richard Dawkins,
probably the most famous Darwinian biologist in the world today, made
an impassioned plea for using genetic engineering to create an
Australopithecine (whose fossil remains are allegedly an ancestor to
the human species). Producing such a "missing link" would, according
to Dawkins, provide "positive ethical benefits," since it would
demolish the "double standard" of those guilty of "speciesism."
Dawkins specifically claims that producing such an organism would
demonstrate the poverty of the pro-life position, because it would
show that humans are not different from animals. In the midst of this
acerbic attack on the sanctity of human life, Dawkins expresses the
hope that he will be euthanized if he is ever "past it," whatever that
means (some people already think that Dawkins is "past it," but
fortunately for Dawkins, I suspect that most of them still uphold the
sanctity-of-life ethic that Dawkins rejects). (14)


Edward O. Wilson, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning pioneer of sociobiology
and Harvard professor whose entire view of human nature revolves
around Darwinism, also exemplifies this devaluing of human life,
though he is more subtle about it. In his book Consilience (1998) he
argues that his empiricist world view "has destroyed the giddying
theory that we are special beings placed by a deity in the center of
the universe in order to serve as the summit of Creation for the glory
of the gods." In one passage in his autobiography he compares humans
to ants, informing us that we humans are too numerous on the globe,
while ants are in a proper population balance. "If we were to vanish
today," Wilson explains, "the land environment would return to the
fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion."
But if ants were to disappear, thousands of species would perish as a
result. The implication seems to be: ants are more valuable than
humans, and biodiversity takes precedence over human life.


Many biologists, of course, disagree with Singer and Dawkins. From the
late nineteenth century to today they have assured us that Darwinism
has no implications for morality. They allege that those trying to
apply Darwinism to morality are committing the "naturalistic fallacy"
by deriving "ought" from "is." Darwin's friend and defender, Thomas
Henry Huxley, vigorously opposed the attempts of his contemporaries to
seek ethical guidance in natural evolutionary processes. More
recently, Steven Jay Gould often butted heads with evolutionary
psychologists, arguing that morality was a separate realm from
biology. In his view Darwinism has nothing to say about how humans
should act.


Gould, However, did not really divorce science and morality as much as
he claimed. While vociferously arguing that Darwinian science on the
one hand and religion and morality on the other are "non-overlapping
magisteria," separated as far as the east is from the west, he
persisted in drawing conclusions from his Darwinian science that are
suspiciously laden with religious and moral implications. In Wonderful
Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1989), the whole
point of his book is to use the Burgess Shale--a fossil-laden
outcropping of rock in Canada teeming with many extinct, ancient forms
of life--as an example of the contingency of history, to demonstrate
that there is no real purpose to human existence. "Wind back the tape
of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from
an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small
that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay." His
view of the contingency of human creation in the evolutionary process
clearly affects the way he views the nature and status of humanity,
for he informs us that "biology shifted our status from a simulacrum
of God to a naked, upright ape." The closing words of this book are
remarkable for someone who claims to keep science and religion in
non-overlapping compartments:

And so, if you wish to ask the question of the ages-why do humans
exist?-a major part of the answer, touching those aspects of the issue
that science can treat at all, must be: because Pikaia [a Burgess
shale chordate] survived the Burgess decimation. This response does
not cite a single law of nature; it embodies no statement about
predictable evolutionary pathways, no calculation of probabilities
based on general rules of anatomy or ecology. The survival of Pikaia
was a contingency of 'just history.' I do not think that any 'higher'
answer can be given, and I cannot imagine that any resolution could be
more fascinating. We are the offspring of history, and must establish
our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable
universes-one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us
maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way. (15)

Does Gould really think this conclusion has no religious or moral
implications? Does he really believe that his claim that biology
demotes humans from the image of God to a naked ape is a purely
scientific statement that has no bearing on moral issues, such as
abortion and euthanasia?


In light of all this, does Darwinism really devalue human life? I
think I have shown conclusively that historically Darwinism has indeed
devalued human life, leading to ideologies that promote the
destruction of human lives deemed inferior to others. Those on the
forefront in promoting abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and racial
extermination often overtly based their views on Darwinism. Also, as I
have shown in this essay, those favoring a Darwinian dismantling of
the sanctity-of-life ethic have a good deal of intellectual firepower,
and the idea is becoming rather widespread in academic circles today.
There are, of course, various religious and philosophical moves that
one can make to evade these conclusions, and some Darwinists have in
the past and will continue in the future vigorously to oppose such
developments (for this we can be thankful), construing them as faulty
extrapolations by overzealous Darwinian materialists. However, it
seems to me that there is an inherent logic in the move by Darwinists
to undermine the sanctity-of-life ethic, which makes it so alluring
that I doubt it will ever disappear as long as Darwinism is ascendant.
In any case, it is certainly safe to say that in modern society
Darwinism has contributed mightily to the erosion of the
sanctity-of-life ethic. Darwinism really is a matter of life and
death.



ENDNOTES

1. Charles Darwin, Autobiography (NY: Norton, 1969), 94.
2. Friedrich Hellwald, Culturgeschichte in ihrer natürlichen
Entwicklung bis zur Gegenwart (Augsburg, 1875), quote at 27, see also
278, 569.
3. Ibid, 44-45.
4. On the connection between dualism and bioethics, see J. P. Moreland
and Scott Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics
(Downers Grove, IL, 2000).
5. Darwin, The Origin of Species, (London: Penguin, 1968), 459.
6. Adrian Desmond, Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High
Priest (Reading, MA, 1997), 271.
7. Hellwald, Culturgeschichte in ihrer natürlichen Entwicklung, 58,
27; "Der Kampf ums Dasein im Menschen- und Völkerleben," Das Ausland
45 (1872): 105.
8. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 2 vols. in 1 (Munich, 1943), 420-1.
Emphasis is mine.
9. Ian Dowbiggin, A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern
America (Oxford, 2003), 8.
10. N. D. A. Kemp, 'Merciful Release': The History of the British
Euthanasia Movement (Manchester, 2002), 19. For more information on
Dowbiggin's and Kemp's works, see my review essay, "Killing Them
Kindly: Lessons from the Euthanasia Movement," in Books and Culture: A
Christian Review (Jan./Feb. 2004), 30-31.
11. Peter Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life (New York, 2000), 77-78,
220-21.
12. Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the
Meanings of Life (NY, 1995), ch. 18.
13. Steven Pinker, "Why They Kill Their Newborns," The New York Times
Sunday Magazine (November 2, 1997).
14. Richard Dawkins, "The Word Made Flesh," The Guardian (December 27,
2001).
15. Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the
Nature of History (NY, 1989), quotes at 14, 323; for his views on the
compartmentalization of science and religion, see "Nonoverlapping
Magisteria," Natural History 106 (March 1997): 16-22.


http://www.csustan.edu/History/Faculty/Weikart/DarDevalue.htm

Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?
by Richard Weikart

Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?
by Richard Weikart

Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?
by Richard Weikart

Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?
by Richard Weikart


Professor of History

California State Univ., Stanislaus