CHARLES DARWIN AS PHILOSOPHER
Before Darwin, the worldview of the West, which was Biblical and Christian, is that the natural world, the universe itself, was created by God. It was not the result of evolution. Therefore, the idea of evolution when it was introduced was not simply a scientific concept. It reached beyond natural philosophy to touch upon metaphysics, ethics, and social and political philosophy. The theory of evolution influenced metaphysics by implying that the world was exclusively material and the product of mechanistic processes. In effect it denied the possibility of a transcendental reality operative in the world and thereby opened the door to existential nihilism and to the emergence of the absurd hero in reaction. It directly originated Social Darwinism and as a result unleashed the destructive industrial power of the Nazi regime. Darwinism changed not only metaphysics in the West but also ethics and social and political philosophy.
Public domain image
ReplyDeleteImage link:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editorial_cartoon_depicting_Charles_Darwin_as_an_ape_(1871).jpg
Gonzalinho
In Roman Catholicism the official and authoritative doctrine is that human beings are descended from a single set of parents, Adam and Eve. It is also taught that God creates the human soul, which is eternal. In this sense, the human soul does not evolve. Roman Catholicism is compatible with the belief in evolution as long as you do not deny monogenesis or the direct creation of the soul by God.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Social Darwinism
ReplyDelete“Social Darwinism is a loose set of ideologies that emerged in the late 1800s in which Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was used to justify certain political, social, or economic views. Social Darwinists believe in ‘survival of the fittest’—the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better. Social Darwinism has been used to justify imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality at various times over the past century and a half.”
https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/social-darwinism
—History.com Editors, “Social Darwinism,” History.com, August 21, 2018
Key figures in the development of Social Darwinism include Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Sir Francis Galton, and who else?—Adolf Hitler.
Gonzalinho
Darwin did not originate Social Darwinism but at least two key ideas of Social Darwinism originate in Darwin’s theory of evolution.
DeleteGonzalinho
Darwin’s theory of evolution is a theory of the origin of species and not about the origin of biological life.
ReplyDeleteDarwin proposed his theory of evolution at variance with the widespread Christian belief in the direct creation of plant and animal species by God.
Gonzalinho
DARWINISM IS SCIENCE, NOT RELIGION
ReplyDeleteDarwin’s theory of evolution is a scientific theory of the origin of species. It is not a theological exposition but rather a scientific argument. Those who condemn Darwinism on religious grounds are recapitulating the same mistake as that of the Roman Catholic Church when it condemned the heliocentrism that was propounded by Galileo Galilei in the first half of the seventeenth century. Galileo was expounding a scientific claim, not a religious one.
Gonzalinho
THEORY OF EVOLUTION AS AN EXPLANATORY FRAMEWORK
ReplyDeleteWhy don’t penguins exist in the Arctic?
See 10:43:
“Thanks to… geography, the north-south direction penguins need to move in means migrating from polar to sub-polar to temperate to sub-tropical to tropical back to sub-tropical back to temperate back to sub-polar and finally back to polar—each step along the way requiring adaptations to the changing environment. …adapting to literally every single climate zone takes time.”
https://youtu.be/A7cWtICGgHE?si=c57uzg-3TueGlZ-n
—Atlas Pro, “Why There Are NO Penguins in the Arctic | Island Biogeography 2,” YouTube video, 24:43 minutes, September 2, 2021
This YouTube video illustrates well that Darwinism is science, not religion. The video shows how the theory of evolution works powerfully as an explanatory framework—the speaker argues that penguins do not exist in the Arctic because, among other reasons, their populations have to migrate from the Antarctic and evolve across multiple climate zones.
Gonzalinho