Sterilization And Death Laws

Another of Social Darwinism's most wide-ranging practices is eugenics, the so-called science that seeks to improve the human race by means of breeding. The term was first proposed in 1883 by Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, and consists of a combination of two Greek words; eu (good) and genet (birth). Put together, the word implies "well-born," or "genetic soundness." In contrast to its linguistic meaning, however, far from connoting good, this concept leads to savage cruelty.

Supporters of eugenics claimed that only their own race or class needed protection and improvement, and that other races or classes needed to be subjected to "artificial selection." According to Galton, only the British upper class needed such protection. He therefore proposed that the poor, the sick, the weak and the untalented should be prevented from multiplying.

A photograph of a 1914 eugenic training class.

The Nazis, on the other hand, maintained that those who were not healthy Aryans were a burden on the state and needed to be eliminated by means of sterilization or extermination. They then put these ideas into practice. While sterilizing hundreds of thousands as part of their eugenics policy, the Nazis also killed more thousands for being sick, crippled, mentally handicapped, elderly, unskilled or without families, by sending them to the gas chambers, poisoning them, or leaving them to starve.

Proponents of eugenics think that most of the features of a person's character is inherited, or make partial claims to that effect. According to the supporters of eugenics, including Galton himself, undesirable characteristics like laziness or poverty are inherited. Imagining that idle parents would bear idle children, they attempted to prevent these people marrying in the first place. It is interesting how evolutionists could advocate such an illogical and nonsensical claim, in the name of so-called science.

The eugenics supported by Darwinists led to the suffering of a great many. Examining the development of this cruelty will give a better appreciation of the basic foundations of those who supported it. How Darwin supported and encouraged the perversion known as eugenics in the name of so-called science is therefore of great importance. Although the origins of eugenics extend back as far as Plato's Republic, with Darwinism it acquired an alleged scientific appearance and nearly became a branch of science in its own right. Karl Pearson, whose racist views we have already cited and who was strongly influenced by Galton, stated that the theory of evolution underlies the origin of eugenics:

… modern eugenics thought arose only in the nineteenth century. The emergence of interest in eugenics during that century had multiple roots. The most important was the theory of evolution, for Francis Galton's ideas on eugenics – and it was he who created the term "eugenics" – were a direct logical outgrowth of the scientific doctrine elaborated by his cousin, Charles Darwin.73