SAYING THAT NATURAL SELECTION IS AN IDEOLOGICAL IMPOSITION on whatever legitimate science can tell us about the evolution of life, the origin of species, according to the co-inventors of natural selection, becomes obvious when looking for the ideological content of, especially Darwin's claimed evidence for it and that of his disciples, from the start up till today.
I have dealt with it mainly in Darwin's and his disciples' imposition of it on the human species, so I have mostly concentrated on those things, especially in Darwin's second most important work on the subject, which scientists then and, to some extent, now identify as science, The Descent of Man of 1871. You can find the most rampant of ideology, racism, white supremacy, Anglo-Saxon supremacy, upper class snobbery and bias and, lest anyone overlook it, male supremacy on almost every page. And good old fashioned Brit anti-Catholic propaganda as well. Take this passage, which I'll analyze for that.
Who can positively say why the Spanish nation, so dominant at one time, has been distanced in the race.
The insincere and false modesty of that (non) question is about to be seen in Darwin positively saying why, even though he obviously knows what he's going to say is hardly supported with anything like scientific method to back it up. It is ass covering if someone challenges his unfounded claims, he does that all the time.
The awakening of the nations of Europe from the dark ages is a still more perplexing problem.
The assumption that Europe had awoken is debatable, I would imagine there were people in Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas who wouldn't think it had. I certainly don't concede that British law and society during the age described by Dickens and Thomas Hardy as being well lighted.
At that early period, as Mr. Galton has remarked, almost all the men of a gentle nature, those given to meditation or culture of the mind, had no refuge except in the bosom of a Church which demanded celibacy (28. 'Hereditary Genius,' 1870, pp. 357-359.
If that's the case then it is surely the fault of the civil authority who didn't provide what he claims the church did, though I doubt that Galton, who, like most of Darwin's inner circle hated religion, Christianity and Catholicism, probably in that ascending order, meant anyone to notice that. I'll expand on this point later.
The Rev. F.W. Farrar ('Fraser's Magazine,' Aug. 1870, p. 257) advances arguments on the other side. Sir C. Lyell had already ('Principles of Geology,' vol. ii. 1868, p. 489), in a striking passage called attention to the evil influence of the Holy Inquisition in having, through selection, lowered the general standard of intelligence in Europe.); and this could hardly fail to have had a deteriorating influence on each successive generation.
Yeah, that would be because a 19th century Brit Protestant divine would be expected to be the most dispassionate exponent of the quite wicked, but not more noticeably prone to bloodshed than the civil governments of the time were. Yet the Catholic Church is singled out for blame in this most unscientific claim.
During this same period the Holy Inquisition selected with extreme care the freest and boldest men in order to burn or imprison them.
What the inquisition selected were people suspected of heresy, the imagining of them as "freest" is certainly open to question. I don't think that Savonarola would be considered a free spirit, I would bet that I could go through a list of those who were executed in Europe by the "Holy" Inquisition (did these Brits not know that it operated in places other than the Iberian peninsula?) and find lots of those who even Lyell, Farrah and Darwin would consider benighted, superstitious nutcases. Probably not a few who were too dumb to stay out of trouble or who were mentally ill (who Darwinists would consider no great loss to the human species) were among its more common victims.
In Spain alone some of the best men—those who doubted and questioned, and without doubting there can be no progress—were eliminated during three centuries at the rate of a thousand a year.
That is certainly nothing like a carefully made numerical claim, the large majority of those accused even under the infamous Spanish Inquisition WHICH, BY THE WAY, BY THE DEMAND OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA, WAS ADMINISTERED BY THE SPANISH MONARCHY, NOT THE CHURCH, ITSELF, were acquitted. The Encyclopedia Britannica on that topic says about the most infamous of the Inquisitors:
The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada’s tenure was exaggerated by Protestant critics of the Inquisition, but it is generally estimated to have been about 2,000.
That was for the entire period when he was the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, from 1482 to 1498. I figure that was not something a British scientist of that enlightened milieu would have bothered to fact check. Ol' Chuck wasn't that big on numbers, truth be told.
The evil which the Catholic Church has thus effected is incalculable, though no doubt counterbalanced to a certain, perhaps to a large, extent in other ways; nevertheless, Europe has progressed at an unparalleled rate.
Careful readers might have noticed this little bit of story-telling in order to claim natural selection at work as an explanation of the power of late medieval Spain having diminished in the period between then an Darwin's time is riddled with other, more general, more discrediting problems. Just quickly occurring to me.
A. Spain was hardly the only place where the foremost (only,really) seats of learning and intellectual activity, including, by the way, mathematics, science, medicine, philosophy, literature, scholarship, etc. was in the Catholic Church, a large number of those engaged in intellectual pursuits celibate men - not a few of whom, though, managed to father children, which has uses for Brit anti-Catholic invective but not in Darwin's argument. What could have been said about Spain at that time was as true of Italy, France, what would become Germany, Austria, and, yes, England.
B. In this telling of things, what should certainly count in the Catholic Church's favor, THAT IT WAS THE SEAT OF LEARNING AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT FOR MOST OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD AND AFTER, as the civil authority had no interest in that, is turned into an occasion of abominable culpability.
C. As already alluded to, the Catholic Church was hardly the major killer of "the best of men" not a few of whom were members of the feudal order, families which provided not a few of those who became clerics and scholars.
The death toll of "the best men," in Darwin's snobbish formulation, in the English Reformation is impressive for the accomplishment and intelligence of many of those killed. And they joined a far larger river of blood that was liberally and lavishly spilled by the Tudors, muchly during the Protestant phase of Henry VIII's reign but also under his children, including Elizabeth and under their cousins the Stuarts.
That information would certainly have been available to Darwin and his colleagues named above at the time, the radical PROTESTANT William Cobbett was most eloquent and, not infrequently, more accurate in his condemnation of the viciousness of the reign of terror under the Tudors in his A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland (1827). The estimates of those executed under Henry VIII range from 57,000 to 72,000, and I believe that doesn't cover Ireland in most of the estimates I've read. His children, especially Elizabeth continued to be pretty bloody, though I would guess there were probably more people killed by the destruction of the social safety net which had, from medieval times been administered through the church, especially the monasteries and convents which Henry dissolved and looted along with the English and Scottish aristocracy resulting in the infamous Poor Law under bloody Bess.
And the killing didn't dissipate in England after that. The British "enlightenment" brought in "The Bloody Code" which saw an enormous expansion of crimes for which hanging was the sentence, going from about 50 to more than 200 during those very years of "enlightenment" along with a great increase in the number of people hanged for being convicted of so little as stealing 12 pence worth of something. And there was no legal aid. Britain also, though, retained a good many of its more medieval practices such as drawing and quartering, especially for the expansive definition of "treason," not a few of those so butchered for spectacle men of intellectual distinction and accomplishment.
I am tempted to go on with this in the very next paragraph because it is, if anything, even more outrageous in its clear ideological, racist, etc. content asserted as scientific proof - along with one of Darwin's typical ass-covering possible disclaimers like the opening non-question. "Who can say how the English gained their energy?" he "asks" as if he doesn't know exactly how the rich white men who will read him will understand his claims.
The remarkable success of the English as colonists, compared to other European nations, has been ascribed to their "daring and persistent energy"; a result which is well illustrated by comparing the progress of the Canadians of English and French extraction; but who can say how the English gained their energy? There is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the character of the people, are the results of natural selection; for the more energetic, restless, and courageous men from all parts of Europe have emigrated during the last ten or twelve generations to that great country, and have there succeeded best. (29. Mr. Galton, 'Macmillan's Magazine,' August 1865, p. 325. See also, 'Nature,' 'On Darwinism and National Life,' Dec. 1869, p. 184.) Looking to the distant future, I do not think that the Rev. Mr. Zincke takes an exaggerated view when he says (30. 'Last Winter in the United States,' 1868, p. 29.): "All other series of events—as that which resulted in the culture of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the empire of Rome—only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with, or rather as subsidiary to...the great stream of Anglo-Saxon emigration to the west." Obscure as is the problem of the advance of civilisation, we can at least see that a nation which produced during a lengthened period the greatest number of highly intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic, and benevolent men, would generally prevail over less favoured nations.
I will point out, as I always do, that in his letters he looked forward to the Brits doing all round the world what the Nazis wanted to do in Poland and other Slavic countries, murder and replace the native population. Clearly Darwin and our current fans of things "Anglo-Saxon" share much in common.
And this is only the start of the ideology, racist, nationalistic, upper class favoring, sexist, religious, etc. of the scientists is inserted directly into the science of the study of evolution. I'd say it gets worse as eugenics developed as the consequence of a belief in natural selection but it's only a name for what Darwin was already doing before the word for what he did was invented. It is an inevitable and still vitally active feature of Darwinism even among those who may disavow Darwinism.
Update: Oh, I forgot, one of the things that occurred to me in Darwin's little rant about Spain is that he leaves out that for a good part of its medieval history most of Spain was governed by Muslims who were generally a bit more "enlightened" than the barbarians in England. The viciousness of the Spanish Inquisitions is a direct result of the monarchs to establish their unchallenged rule over the population, the Inquisition largely put there to enforce forced conversions, expulsions, secret observance of Islam and Judaism. If Darwin had wanted to go for the throat on those more accurately condemned things, I'd have used another section of his abysmal book but they wouldn't have gotten him to the praise of non-Catholics and Anglo Saxons, which was his goal, along with claiming the issue for natural selection.
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