Re: Further Evolution beyond the Human? (Sardonic Diatribe)

David Veal (veal@web.ce.utk.edu)
10 Oct 1996 06:57:12 GMT

In article <53h1oj$394@news3.digex.net>,
Theodore A. Holden <medved@access.digex.com> wrote:
>The other difference is that nothing in Newton's description of gravity could
>be said to have caused any marked worsening of human conduct. Darwin's
>theory has done that and the outcome was altogether predictable.

What, scientific certainty as revealed in the human response to it?

You know what happened when we figured space out? We tried to put
guns there. :-)

>Certainly
>there were villians, blackguards, hoodlums, neerdowells and whatnot before
>Darwin, but they always felt BAD about it.

Total nonsense. I don't even know really where to begin it is so
completely divorced from reality.

>Darwin walked into the picture and told every one of those types, all over
>the world, that the <survival of the fittest> was the only moral law in
>nature, i.e. that they could feel GOOD about being assholes. The results
>are obvious in any reading of the history of this century.

Perhaps if you completely ignore the rest of human history.

Darwin provided unintentionally yet another rationalization for
terrible behavior to a species that has since the dawn of time shown a
remarkable knack for rationalizing. Probably every widespread idea in
history has its own examples.

-- 
David Veal veal@web.ce.utk.edu / lveal1@utk.edu
"Any smoothly functioning technology will be
indistinguishable from a rigged demo." Isaac Asimov