The Ends of Religious Tolerance

[PocketRocket]

From the OP post......LICTOR:

Elimination of the genetically degenerate is the first requisite for the survival of a nation or people. To neglect this unavoidable duty is knowingly to break the inexorable law of nature that ordains the survival of the fittest.

The word "duty" implies that we must go out, cast judgment upon, then eliminate those lesser specimens among us. As you can see by one of my previous posts, I agree that the genetic state of the human race may be in trouble, but surely there must be better solutions than what you have implied here.

But our civilization by assuming the need to defend itself collectively and thanks to its medical breakthroughs, short circuited natural eugenics, and now foolishly entertain illusions about the "equality of man" and similar humanitarian slop.

Eugenics I will not speak to. Equality of man, on the other hand, I believe in to a degree, that is to say every man should have the equal opportunity to advance himself.

I do not agree that every man is entitled to whatever any other man has earned.

If a man is not able to advance himself, then he is not entitled to the goods that the more advanced man has acquires through his own self advancement.

Considered purely in financial terms, this would be a framework for capitalism.

From a genetic/biological standpoint, however, we people of the West have long been mad. We not only perversely and insanely reject the eugenics that are absolutely necessary for survival, but enthusiastically promote every dysgenic device and procedure, not only by our birthrates (which see the biggest families given to the dull elements of our society) but by selective breeding for equality (which of course can only mean uniform dilapidation).

Again, while I do not enjoy your selection of words, I have some concern.

I do not think the reason, however, to be "perverse", but rather I hope that the motivation is mercy, one of our highest ideals.

However, I do not forgot the road to Hell and what it is paved with.....

Driven by cunning resident enemies, liberal intellectual and our own idiots and vain politicians, our Civilization became crazed with the Christians' frantic denial of reality, sullen hatred of science, logic and intelligence, and crazed doting on whatever is debased, diseased, deformed, and degenerate.

Now that's just over-the-top hyperbole to promote your own agenda.

Stop it at once, or go to your room

The rest of the post was by-and-large just a lot more hyperbole.

LICTOR, you raise an interesting point, and one which has concerned me for many years, that of a merciful society vs evolution of the human race. I responded to later posts, then came back to yours.

See my post #47. I'm sure you'll agree with much of the last half.

[Guest TrueMetis]

Hell, elephants care for their sickly herd members. So do gorillas, wolves, many of the lower primates, even dolphins.

But like elephants, it is unlikely that the sick or lame neandertals found a mate willing to breed with them. In most social animal groups sick or lame group members are cared for to some degree, but due to the pecking orders in these animal societies, those sick/lame members are VERY unlikely to reproduce.

That is the difference with our species. We are allowing/promoting procreation of those misfits who are mentally or physically handicapped, and furthering the distribution of the faulty genes which are responsible for their conditions.

I've got an hypothesis for that. A sick animal is more likely to be targeted by predators. So it seems likely that having one sick animal around, even though it would be seem to be easier to abandon it, would give a better chance of survival to the strong and young in the event of predation.

Lictor

Lictor your advocating eugenics man. Go and get a history book and flip to the section on WW2 and Nazi Germany. You should be able to figure out the problem with eugenics on your own.

Edited October 28, 2009 by TrueMetis

[Wild Bill]

So far in this thread I haven't seen anyone clearly take on the definition of "survival of the fittest". It seems to be to be a very vague and subjective term.

It all depends on what particular context you measure the individual, for what particular need. Consider the case of Steven Hawking. His physical state is a tragedy yet his mind already has advanced the potential of the entire race! Without him we may never develop the ability to build a "B Ark".

If your ship is sinking you need physically fit people to bail. If your cropland is flooding you need intellect to invent a pump!

Sometimes it is physical limitations that force someone to develop their mind. In the final analysis, I would state that the mind is most important! Not just for raw intellect. There are "idiot savants" born who appear feeble minded yet are capable of astonishing feats with mathematics, or playing a musical instrument.

Where do we draw the lines when we choose the "most fit" to survive? With a total mental vegetable it seems easy but for anything else it doesn't seem so. Again, there may be survival situations where being physically fit is not applicable. It might take a "milksop" genius to figure out a survival solution.

[Michael Hardner]

Lictor is proposing eugenics pure and simple, which not everyone is picking up on. ToadBrother gets it. Shwa calls it a 'slippery slop' on page 2 of this thread, and Pocketrocket says he will not speak to eugenics, but this is exactly what Lictor is proposing: it's not a slippery slope, it's a cliff.

Lictor survival-of-the-fittest ideology is extremely right-wing (sorry but I'm not name calling - that was a mainstay of the Nazi ethic) and includes disdain of Christianity. Furthermore, he doesn't submit this ethic as an intellectual argument - he directly declares elimination of the weak a duty - a value - that doesn't need any further explanation but simply must be adopted:

Elimination of the genetically degenerate is the first requisite for the survival of a nation or people. To neglect this unavoidable duty is knowingly to break the inexorable law of nature that ordains the survival of the fittest.

...

But our civilization by assuming the need to defend itself collectively and thanks to its medical breakthroughs, short circuited natural eugenics, and now foolishly entertain illusions about the "equality of man" and similar humanitarian slop.

From a genetic/biological standpoint, however, we people of the West have long been mad. We not only perversely and insanely reject the eugenics that are absolutely necessary for survival, but enthusiastically promote every dysgenic device and procedure, not only by our birthrates (which see the biggest families given to the dull elements of our society) but by selective breeding for equality (which of course can only mean uniform dilapidation).

...

Driven by cunning resident enemies, liberal intellectual and our own idiots and vain politicians, our Civilization became crazed with the Christians' frantic denial of reality, sullen hatred of science, logic and intelligence, and crazed doting on whatever is debased, diseased, deformed, and degenerate.

I reject that we need to do this. We are not a small group of hunter-gatherers. The costs of keeping the disabled in our society should go down over time, in relative terms, because of advances in medicine.

PocketRocket has acknowledged the need for some kind of biological management of our own race, but as he himself pointed out birth control and modern medicine themselves have neutralized the mechanics of evolution anyway.

In any case, if we're letting people escape a life of pain, then that's one argument but we need to have that discussion separately from discussions about cost. How can we have a discussion saying let's have mercy... and by the way, we'll each save fifteen bucks a year !

[M.Dancer]

So no putting our elderly, diseased and non producing on ice floes and waving good bye as they rejoin the circle of life?

[Michael Hardner]

Mo,

So no putting our elderly, diseased and non producing on ice floes and waving good bye as they rejoin the circle of life?

A darkly beautiful and poetic image there... but another loaded question. We can talk about giving the old folks the 'sleepy drugs' when it's time ( or hitting them with a large polo mallet I suppose ) but let's have that talk apart from how much money we will save to spend on Happy Meals.

[M.Dancer]

Mo,

A darkly beautiful and poetic image there... but another loaded question. We can talk about giving the old folks the 'sleepy drugs' when it's time ( or hitting them with a large polo mallet I suppose ) but let's have that talk apart from how much money we will save to spend on Happy Meals.

No I mean as soon as they retire....no point letting them eat up their savings till they nod off when we can use them for our own productive good....

Freedom 65...they turn 65 and we will be free of them.

[Michael Hardner]

MD,

Are you are how old again ?

This is like a less sexy version of Logan's Run... no Farrah Fawcett... but maybe Bea Arthur...

[M.Dancer]

MD,

Are you are how old again ?

This is like a less sexy version of Logan's Run... no Farrah Fawcett... but maybe Bea Arthur...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2019/221807..._7bd1a2af6a.jpg

[ToadBrother]

So far in this thread I haven't seen anyone clearly take on the definition of "survival of the fittest". It seems to be to be a very vague and subjective term.

Probably because it's a bit of overstatement. It should be phrased "the fittest tend to survive". Even the fittest can be killed before passing on their genes, by free accident if nothing else.

It all depends on what particular context you measure the individual, for what particular need. Consider the case of Steven Hawking. His physical state is a tragedy yet his mind already has advanced the potential of the entire race! Without him we may never develop the ability to build a "B Ark".

If your ship is sinking you need physically fit people to bail. If your cropland is flooding you need intellect to invent a pump!

The root of the problem is trying to declare a scientific theory as a model for human society. Nature just isn't red

in tooth and claw. There are lots of examples of predation, to be sure, but there are also examples of co-operation, and social animals, particularly ones that form complex units like the higher primates.

Sometimes it is physical limitations that force someone to develop their mind. In the final analysis, I would state that the mind is most important! Not just for raw intellect. There are "idiot savants" born who appear feeble minded yet are capable of astonishing feats with mathematics, or playing a musical instrument.

Where do we draw the lines when we choose the "most fit" to survive? With a total mental vegetable it seems easy but for anything else it doesn't seem so. Again, there may be survival situations where being physically fit is not applicable. It might take a "milksop" genius to figure out a survival solution.

There are no easy answers, but claiming that killing all the incompetents will somehow make a better human animal is short-sighted, and rather misses the point of what made the human animal so successful in the first place.

[ToadBrother]

PocketRocket has acknowledged the need for some kind of biological management of our own race, but as he himself pointed out birth control and modern medicine themselves have neutralized the mechanics of evolution anyway.

I don't know why people think that birth control and medicine have neutralized evolution. Where there is variation, where there are imperfect replicators, there is evolution. We are still evolving, and will continue to do so until we go extinct. We're changing the selection pressures, to be sure, but that just means we started doing that the minute we invented slash-and-burn agriculture and ceased to be completely at the whim of nature.

[cybercoma]

this thread, with the issue that was raised, it's in regards to the way things are, not the way you think things should be.

You want to have people discuss the way health care is rather than how it ought to be? Where's the debate to be had there?

[Michael Hardner]

I don't know why people think that birth control and medicine have neutralized evolution. Where there is variation, where there are imperfect replicators, there is evolution. We are still evolving, and will continue to do so until we go extinct. We're changing the selection pressures, to be sure, but that just means we started doing that the minute we invented slash-and-burn agriculture and ceased to be completely at the whim of nature.

TB,

You're arguing that we're evolving because we're changing, which is a semantic argument but ok.

The difference, then, is that we're not being evolved by external forces anymore, we are as a species evolving ourselves by inventing drugs that will alter us, or evolve us I suppose.

[M.Dancer]

.

The difference, then, is that we're not being evolved by external forces anymore,.....

There is nothing to suggest that we aren't evolving along the tried and true paths....the biggest factor may well be immigration which opens up for everyone the giant gene pool as well as populations who have not evolved themselves in the northern climes may well be subject to evolutionary forces....

Mates tend to select those who they are attracted to....and the first and foremost qualifier as to what we consider attractive is a healthy appearence. Doesn't matter which gene pool we jump in, those who are attractive (healthier) tend to mate sooner and have more children. The result will be that, no matter where the gene pools originate, or who the intermingle with, those who are better at passing on their genes will have adapted to northern climes better...

[ToadBrother]

TB,

You're arguing that we're evolving because we're changing, which is a semantic argument but ok.

The difference, then, is that we're not being evolved by external forces anymore, we are as a species evolving ourselves by inventing drugs that will alter us, or evolve us I suppose.

Of course we're evolving by external forces. Mutations still occur. Environmental factors still change.

Evolution is, simply put, change in the genetic makeup of a population over time. As I said, we've changed some selection pressures (just some, not all).

Look at our antibiotics. Great boon to human health, keeps one of the major causes of premature death at bay. Except that they evolve too, and thus those people who are genetically better capable of dealing with bacterial infections still have an edge over those that don't, despite our greater capacity at intervention.

[Guest American Woman]

QUOTE=American Woman: this thread, with the issue that was raised, it's in regards to the way things are, not the way you think things should be.

You want to have people discuss the way health care is rather than how it ought to be? Where's the debate to be had there?

What I want to discuss is in regards to the issue that was raised, and it's not about health care per se. It's about prioritizing the money we do have available for health care -- how we should do it/if we should do it -- in regards to the way things are re: the money we do spend/have available.

[Guest American Woman]

You think she is weak because you would not be able to live with her afflications when in fact she is strong to survive in our modern environment whereas you would - I am guessing - likely kill yourself. In this scenario 'survival of the fittest' works perfectly fine.

It depends on what your definition of "survival" is because there's basic survival and there's thriving. Many people survive to live a very miserable, unhappy life; not everyone who is miserable and unhappy and in pain commits suicide, as you seem to be suggesting. Fact is, I wouldn't want my child to merely survive; I would want him/her to thrive.

[Michael Hardner]

Morris/TB

Morris

There is nothing to suggest that we aren't evolving along the tried and true paths....the biggest factor may well be immigration which opens up for everyone the giant gene pool as well as populations who have not evolved themselves in the northern climes may well be subject to evolutionary forces....

Mates tend to select those who they are attracted to....and the first and foremost qualifier as to what we consider attractive is a healthy appearence. Doesn't matter which gene pool we jump in, those who are attractive (healthier) tend to mate sooner and have more children. The result will be that, no matter where the gene pools originate, or who the intermingle with, those who are better at passing on their genes will have adapted to northern climes better...

TB

Of course we're evolving by external forces. Mutations still occur. Environmental factors still change.

Evolution is, simply put, change in the genetic makeup of a population over time. As I said, we've changed some selection pressures (just some, not all).

Look at our antibiotics. Great boon to human health, keeps one of the major causes of premature death at bay. Except that they evolve too, and thus those people who are genetically better capable of dealing with bacterial infections still have an edge over those that don't, despite our greater capacity at intervention.

Your points are well taken. Addressing these posts together - yes there are other factors at play but the biggest impacts on survival and procreation are pharmaceutical.

[M.Dancer]

Morris/TB

Your points are well taken. Addressing these posts together - yes there are other factors at play but the biggest impacts on survival and procreation are pharmaceutical.

By the time we need pharmeceuticals for procreating, we are procreating, just recreation-ing....people in need of medicine to survive aren't high on the mating list...

[lictor616]

You speak as one who is certain.

Out of curiosity, do you know anyone who was hanging around the Galilee area about 2,000 years ago???

If not, or if you were not there yourself, then this is simply your opinion and not a statement of fact.

You should preface it as such.

I'm quite certain that there never was such a person that changed water into wine, sired a virgin birth, walked on water, resurrected himself from the grave and was the son of this big poppa up in the clouds...

this is not an opinion, it is a fact... the same way that Santa Clause isn't real .... is also a fact.

[Michael Hardner]

M

By the time we need pharmeceuticals for procreating, we are procreating, just recreation-ing....people in need of medicine to survive aren't high on the mating list...

I'm now biting my tongue several times per day...

[lictor616]

Lictor says:

Society must eliminate or subjugate the unfit. And who are the unfit Lictor? The Dull? Panamanians?

And who are the fit who will be doing the subjugating and eliminating?

creatures such as the irredeemably defective Julianna.

[Melanie_]

creatures such as the irredeemably defective Julianna.

From all I've seen and read, minus your sensationalistic posts, Juliana Wetmore's "defects" are physical, and can be fixed, at least to a degree. I've known someone with Treacher Collins Syndrome, and like Juliana, it was a physical defect that required surgery, but she was fully capable of contributing to society and leading a meaningful life. Her biggest barrier, of course, is when judgmental assholes make deliberately rude comments about what she looks like, as if she is obligated to meet their standard of physical attraction.

[ToadBrother]

By the time we need pharmeceuticals for procreating, we are procreating, just recreation-ing....people in need of medicine to survive aren't high on the mating list...

The one place where advanced medical techniques (not just drug therapies but actual techniques) has been substantial reductions in infant mortality. This actually began some time before the advent of the modern drug industry, and has more to do with better understanding of germs and of the necessity of cleanliness.

[GostHacked]

creatures such as the irredeemably defective Julianna.

Julianna is not a creature. She is human with some severe challenges. You are going to lose your humanity once you start refering to people in Julianna's predicament as creatures.

Please stop.