Essay:Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution

An Introductory Word by AmesG
Most point-by-point essays can stand and fall of their own accord. I believe that, like others, this essay also speaks for itself. However, the importance of the topic deserves a quick note with which to begin. While no less of a hack-job than any of his other articles, Ken DeMyer's arguments here deserve greater attention because they are unfortunately common, and damning in their implications. So here is something to keep in mind, plain and simple.

Ken's argument, here, boils down to this:
 * 1) Evolution suggests man is a base, stupid animal.
 * 2) Evil people interpret this to mean that man sometimes deserves to be killed, like a base, stupid animal.
 * 3) Evil people act on these instincts due, in greater than 50% part, to evolutionary ideas.
 * 4) Evolution is somehow responsible for these people's interpretations.

NONE of the above steps in this "logical" reasoning are valid. The weakest link is (4), which suggests that evolution, as a theory, is responsible for the absurd extremists that it somehow generates. However, I suggest that no theory is responsible for its extremists. These extremists alone feel the blood on their hands, and the guilt on their souls. If theories could be held responsible for the unforeseeable results generated, and abandoned as such, most every theory - scientific, religious, or otherwise - would have been abandoned today as "morally bankrupt."

Christianity, especially, would be gone. Christianity has led men, throughout the ages, to assume the role of jihadist (no different than the Muslim terrorist) and kill in the name of Christ. Ken's reasoning would suggest that all of Christianity bears this blood, just as much as the actual murderers, and that the theory deserves abrogation, despite any resonant truth to it, by virtue of this idea-guilt.

The idea is too absurd to even rebut. It is self-evident. This absurd idea, though, underlies Ken's entire hypothesis. Since this essential leg fails, his argument is without merit and collapses wholesale.

Now, onto the quote-mining!

== Point by Point to the Companion Article, a masterwork by Ken DeMeyer ==

Conclusion
The foregoing should prove that evolution cannot be held "responsible" for any of the evils of racism, and should also prove that the arguments which attempt to hold evolution as culpable are just the sorts of anti-intellectual, Luddite, backwards-looking, Miniver Cheevy-esque nonsense we've come to expect from creationists, as they seek desperately to fend off scientific truths that don't actually contradict religion, but nonetheless scare them witless.

One final word. Assume all of Ken's "essay" is correct. Assume evolution did cause racism, and the Holocaust, and (why not?) the tragedy of September 11th. That still doesn't make the theory of evolution scientifically false.

And this is one of Ken's best arguments, too! Really makes you think, huh.