Do you think Darwin is right

[Kasz216]

Rath said:

JaggedSac said:

First off, the movie wasn't about how Darwin's ideas influenced Eugenics(although there is no doubt about that fact), it was about the fact that the scientific community shuns ID.  Secondly, the portions of that quote that were left out do not deny Darwin's ideas that helping the weak produces a lesser whole.  But that in order for there to be no helping of the weak, it would be evil.  Darwin believed that helping the weak and genetically inferior would produce a weaker whole, but that in order for us to not help these people, or prevent the well being of these people, it would be evil.  The only thing that that quote shows us, is that Darwin would think the Nazis were evil, or the concept of Eugenics were evil.   He would agree with the Nazis that Eugenics would have provided a stronger genetic whole though.

The movie was about the freedom and sharing of ideas in science, not a closing off.

 

 

It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself

Clearly Darwin believed that man was an exception to that rule, in a part that Stein cut out. Completely misquoting somebody in order to give the exact opposite of what the quote was about is terribly misinformative, I don't see how you can deny that.

In any case thats not the only piece of bad journalism in the movie. Just read through the wikipedia article (and its sources) if you want an idea of the other major problems with the film. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled

I'd argue that there is a very good reason Darwin wrote that... not related to actually believing it was true.

I think it was more a case of how he didn't even want to publish his theories at all, and only did because someoen else was going to beat him to it anyway.

He was very aware of the predujidces people have when it comes to well.... people.

Note that he even avoids mentioning people in his early works.