Social Darwinism and the Theory of Evolution

By Henry Neufeld

Science Avenger has an excellent article on the connection, or rather lack of a logical connection, between the theory of evolution and social Darwinism (for the third time today, HT: Dispatches).

Evolution is a scientific theory. It explains why many facts are what they are. It can never tell us what we should do about it.

Just so.

I’ve always wondered about the logic, only distantly related, of those who say, “If I evolved from an animal, why shouldn’t I act like one?” If you read Genesis 2:7 literally, you were made out of mud. (One assumes the dust was wet in order to be formed, but with God, who knows?) So should you act like mud because you were formed from mud?

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Mark Olson

May 10, 2007 at 5:55 pm

Doesn’t “mud” just teach us that we are not made from higher things, such as myths in which Men are descended of Gods. I think this is just part of early Jewish rejection of apotheosis. Is that you’re understanding too?

Henry Neufeld

May 10, 2007 at 6:10 pm

But that’s not fair! You’re not reading it literally.

I haven’t thought of it in that sense, though that is not incompatible. I believe that Genesis 1 & 2 challenge the prevailing creation myths. In Enuma Elish it seems that being made of dirt is a bit of a put down, something which is transformed in the context of Genesis 2. Psalm 8 expresses the same theme in a similar way–no, you’re not gods, but you’re special.

Mark Olson

May 11, 2007 at 9:01 am

I certainly am reading it literally.

When Genesis 2 talks of Eden begin at the confluence of four rivers which do not actually meet. That’s a literal signal that this chapter is figurative.