Social Darwinism Attaches No Value to Human Life — Darwinism and Moral Collapse

Reading time: ~9 min read

The graph below shows the enormous rise in crime levels over the last 30 years. The more societies distance themselves from religious moral values, the greater the ensuing moral collapse and crime levels.

When Darwinism's dogma of the "struggle for life" and its mistaken views are put into practice, human life is rendered worthless. Killing people for any reason whatsoever, abandoning them to starvation, provoking war, slaughter, carrying out acts of terrorism, and exterminating people for being mentally or physically handicapped or belonging to a different race all become "legitimate."

In line with this twisted mentality, one who attaches no value to human life is the American professor E. A. Ross. According to Ross's Social Darwinist view: "The Christian cult of charity as a means of grace has formed a shelter under which idiots and cretins have crept and bred." Again according to Ross: "The state gathers the deaf mutes into its sheltering arm, and a race of deaf mutes is in process of formation." Since these actions obstruct so-called natural evolutionary development, he declared that the shortest way to better this world was to leave all such people on their own to be eventually eliminated through natural selection.¹⁷⁶

What a ruthless view this is! Man is possessed of a conscience, and conscience commands one to protect the weak, the down-and-out and the poor. Otherwise, if man loses his ability "to think like a human being," then he really will achieve a position inferior to that of animals—because animals show great solidarity and cooperation.

Ross is not the only Social Darwinist to place scant value on human life. A great many share his terrifying ideas. For example, the evolutionist Peter Singer, Princeton University's professor of bioethics, goes so far as to say that people with severe physical handicaps must be regarded as unworthy of life. He expressed this cruel opinion in the following terms:

According to the Darwinist mindset, which regards man as a species of animal, humans are of little worth. Under Social Darwinist logic, nothing must be done to help people who are suffering in pain and fear; and such people are abandoned without help or protection. However, under Islamic moral values, every believer is responsible for striving to ensure others' peace, security and well-being.

If we compare a severely defective human infant with ... a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities... Only the fact that the defective infant is a member of the species Homo sapiens leads it to be treated differently from the dog or pig. Species alone, however, is not morally relevant...¹⁷⁷

Singer went even further and said that the mentally handicapped might be killed in scientific experiments or even for food purposes! Singer's exact words are:

Mental defectives do not have a right to life, and therefore might be killed for food – if we should develop a taste for human flesh – or for the purpose of scientific experimentation.¹⁷⁸

Even such revolting and savage behavior can be supported in Darwinist logic. Joseph Fletcher, former president of the Right to Die Society, makes a similar claim regarding the mentally handicapped:

Humans without some minimum of intelligence or mental capacity are not persons, no matter how many of their organs are active, no matter how spontaneous their living processes ... [Idiots] are not, never were, and never will be in any degree responsible. Idiots, that is to say, are not human.¹⁷⁹

There are only grounds against those who wrong people and act as tyrants in the Earth without any right to do so. Such people will have a painful punishment. (Surat ash-Shura, 42)

The killing of newborn babies is yet another practice condoned by Darwinism, which attaches no value to human life. Darwinism condones such an unconscionable idea: If looking after a newborn poses a hardship for the parents that will hold them back in their struggle for survival, then in evolutionary terms, that baby should be killed. Darwin claimed that animals were frequently observed to kill their newborn, and that this was an important factor in population control. In an article in Science magazine, the evolutionist Barbara Burke has this to say:

Among some animal species, then, infant killing appears to be a natural practice. Could it be natural for humans, too, a trait inherited from our primate ancestors? ... Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man that infanticide has been "probably the most important of all checks" on population growth throughout most human history.¹⁸⁰

As we have seen earlier, Darwinists like Haeckel encouraged suicide and claimed that those who thought life was unbearable had the right to put an end to it. Yet God has made the taking of one's own life a sin.

All these savage practices and beliefs—eugenics, euthanasia and racism—show how Darwinism is an ideology that attaches no value to human life, and is constructed on myths of no scientific value.

The fact is that the life of every single human being is of great importance. Under Qur'anic moral values, people regard each other as valuable and important, and sacrifice for one another. A believer will give food to someone else, even if he needs it himself:

They give food, despite their love for it, to the poor and orphans and captives. (Surat al-Insan, 8)

Muslims are charged with protecting the poor, helping the abandoned and protecting orphans, helpless women and men, children and the elderly. In one verse, for example, God has commanded people not even to say"Ugh!" to their parents (Surat al-Isra', 23) and always to "say the best" to one another (Surat al-Isra', 53). In another verse, God reveals: "... if someone kills another person—unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the Earth—it is as if he had murdered all humanity. And if anyone gives life to another person, it is as if he had given life to all humanity." (Surat al-Ma'ida, 32)

It's a manifest truth that a society where everyone regards every human being as having reason and conscience, as valuable and important will be filled with peace, security, love and respect.

The slaughter perpetrated to “Eenforee Natural Sselectıon”

On 20 April 1999, two American students from Columbine High School in the state of Colorado, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold, attacked their school armed with guns and bombs. After killing 12 students and a teacher in the space of half an hour they then committed suicide.

Searches of the two students' homes immediately after the attacks uncovered most interesting documents and information. In one of his pieces of writing dated 26 April 1998, printed on the Westword web site based in Denver, Eric Harris wrote that he and Klebold would enforce "natural selection" in their school:

These youngsters who killed their friends, saying that they shall carry out natural selection, wrote in their diaries that they were more highly evolved— and therefore superior— to other people.

Sometime in April [of 1999] me and V [Klebold, whom he called "V" of "Vodka" in the journals] will get revenge and will kick natural selection up a few notches. Armed with the following; a terrorist bag full of noisey crickets, noisey crickets strapped to WD40 cans, pipe bombs with a ... load of shrapnel, fire bombs, chlorine gas bombs, and smoke bombs.1

In addition, the words "NATURAL SELECTION" were printed on Harris' T-shirt at the time of the attack. 2

It appears from the writings that theirs was an act of revenge against teachers and students whom they regarded as "inferior."3

In most of his writings, Harris constantly referred to natural selection and feelings of superiority. In the three videos they shot before the attack, the two referred to themselves as more "evolved" than others and to the feeling of being "above human."4

Indeed, exactly in April as Harris had written in his journal, he and Klebold entered Columbine High School with weapons similar to those they had referred to and began massacring the students there. Both were known in the school for their admiration of Hitler, and wore T-shirts with swastika emblems on them. Furthermore, the day they carried out the attack would have been Hitler's 110th birthday.

These two boys were apparently ordinary high school students with stable family backgrounds, whom nobody had ever imagined would perpetrate such an attack. In addition, it appears from their journals that they had good relations with their families and experienced no problems with them.

The abnormally aggressive streak in these young people's characters which propelled them to perpetrate such a psychopathic attack must have been supported by the education they received. They resorted to the concept of "natural selection," which they had learned in school, in order to resolve problems with classmates whom they thought had excluded them. It is by no means surprising that people "educated" to believe such false ideas as that life is a struggle to the death, that one has to fight to survive, that the strong crush the weak, that human life is of no value, and that human beings are no different from animals, carry out attacks that they link to natural selection.

The view of life they acquire as a result of their education is the one imposed on people by Darwinism. People who learn about natural selection's ruthless competition in textbooks and in class, and who imagine this is the only way to survive, are able to regard such hatred and ruthless enmity as legitimate. They will therefore be capable of perpetrating similar actions.

However, when educated in the light of values taught by the moral values of the Qur'an, rather than of dogmas such as "natural selection," young people-–and indeed all society—will seek to be forgiving, to feel love, affection and friendship, and to ensure peace and peacefulness rather than hatred and conflict. The solution to moral degeneration lies in the intellectual overthrow of the philosophy that leads to it and its replacement by the moral values commanded by the Qur'an.

1. CNN, "Columbine Killer Envisioned Crashing Plane in NYC, 6 Aralık 2001, http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/12/05/columbine.diary/

2. Denver Rocky Mountain News, 25 Haziran 1999, s. 4A, 14A

3. Antonio Mendoza, "High School Armageddon", http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/columbine.html

4. Antonio Mendoza, High School Armageddon, http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/columbine.html

References

Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 170. ↩
Peter Singer, "Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life?, Pediatrics, July 1983, pp. 128-129. ↩
Martin Mawyer, "Death Act Dies in California," Fundamentalist Journal, June 7, 1988, p. 61. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Barbara Burke, "Infanticide," Science 84, May 1984, p. 29. ↩