Category: religion

Eugenics as a Religion and Social Darwinism, Collin Wells

Source: Dr. Collin Wells, “Social Darwinism” a paper presented in 1907, found in The American Journal of Sociology, pages 706-709 Finally, what is the evolutionary value of certain ideals? Let us take individualism, the ideal of democracy, which has tacitly figured in many of the phenomena to which I have already referred. Let us go …

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Julian Huxley: The History of Population Control–Malthus and Darwin and Birth Control

Today, one can hear people talking endlessly about ‘birth control’ without remembering that just a few decades ago, it was synonymous with ‘population control’ (see this excerpt from the same book quoted below) and that the population control advocates themselves saw themselves as merely applying the laws Malthus discovered and Darwin proved–the very same outlook …

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Julian Huxley: Birth Control, Family Planning or Population Control All the Same Thing; Taking Control of Human Evolution (1963)

Julian Huxley is a direct descendant of “Darwin’s Bulldog”, Thomas Huxley.  In this lecture from 1963, he makes it clear that birth control is family planning is population control.  He argues that the goal should be improving the ‘quality of human beings.’  The word for that, of course, is eugenics.  In other words, population control …

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Eugenics Must Begin with the Family: Paul Popenoe

From David Popenoe in War Over the Family p 235-236 (regarding his father, Paul Popenoe): In keeping with the decline of hereditarianism in American intellectual life, Paul Popenoe gradually shifted his professional efforts from genetic improvement to family improvement.  With the help of some influential financial donors, he started the American Institute of Family Relations (then …

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Davenport: Death is Nature’s Great Blessing to the Race. Why Keep Defectives Alive?

Charles Davenport, in The Eugenic Programme And Progress in its Achievement (1914) [italics in original, bold added] The lowest stratum of society has, on the other hand, neither intelligence nor self-control enough to justify the State to leave its matings in their own hands. On the contrary, the defectives and criminalistic are, so far as …

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The Geneticists Manifesto (1939) or Social Biology and Population Improvement, by H.J. Muller

Social Biology and Population Improvement (aka, the Geneticist’s Manifesto) by H.J. Muller [Source #1, Source #2] The Seventh International Congress of Genetics adjourned at Edinburgh only three days before World War II got under way. It is interesting to recall that just before the shooting started a group of geneticists at that Congress-informally formulated what …

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Religion an Obstacle to Science; Socialism Fights For Eugenics, a Letter to the Editor

A letter to the editor found in The Eugenics Review, pages 346-347 (1933) [Source] The Church has always opposed progress in sexual reform. Scientists are continually cavilling at its reactionary influence. It is an appendage of the capitalist State which serves the purpose of doping the people with its promise of pie (in the next …

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Eugenics and Christianity in a Letter to the Eugenics Review

Norman A. Thompson, “Eugenics and Christianity”, published in The Eugenics Review, pages 346-347 (1933) [Source] To the Editor, Eugenics Review Sir, In these latter days of the general liquefaction of ideas, philosophies, and policies, whether founded on dogma or tradition, or on other bases, which may have satisfied our understanding at earlier stages of the …

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The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879

R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source / Italics added, bold text added] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and …

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Eugenics Quote of the Day: Not likely there will be an Eugenic Inquisition

Herbert E Walter in an essay called “Human Conservation” found on page 483 of Readings in Evolution, compiled by Horatio Hackett Newman.  First published in 1921. One needs only to recall the days of the Spanish Inquisition or of the Salem witchcraft persecution to realize what fearful blunders human judgment is capable of, but it …

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