[lbo-talk] M. Parenti joins the New Atheists?

[Chris Doss]

Obviously he's talking about Social Darwinism, but I'm not really sure it makes sense to say that a society can be modelled on Darwinian principles. Natural selection is a fact of life, like gravity. Can we organize society along gravitational principles? Like, we push people over so they fall more often?

----- Original Message ----
From: Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com>

"I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of *A Devil's
Chaplain*) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of
how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes
to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several times said
that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant
society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the
beginning of my very first book, *The Selfish Gene*, that we should learn to
understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it
to human politics."

http://www.richarddawkins.net/articles/2488

This is actually one of the rare occasions when I agree with Dawkins, or at
least find his perspective more plausible than the other options.

-- 
"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
lytlað."
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