[Buddha-l] Darwin's 200th centennial

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

jkirk schreef:
> http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1105/darwin-debate-religion-evolution
>  
> Find interesting graph here showing that of all the US religions,
> 81% of Buddhists agree that evolution is the best explanation for
> origins of life on earth, followed closely by Hindus at 80% .
> Mainline Protestants come up with a mere 51% and it gets
> progressively more ignorant, moving down the scale through
> Muslim, Black Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, Mormon; and
> Jehovah's Witness at 8%.  
> Overall, 63% of Americans don't accept Darwin's theory and 64%
> agree that creationism should be taught in schools along with
> evolution. 
>  
> With brilliance of that quality, no wonder we are so dedicated to
> greed and delusion. Such biases include the ironic probability
> (my guess) that many if not most of those who condemn Darwin also
> accept the non-Darwinian views of some kinds of "Social
> Darwinism" which support race and class "inferiority". (The
> wikipedia article on this topic is faulty in many ways, but if
> you read it judge for yourself. There's a better discussion of
> Social Darwinism here:
> http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/eh4.shtml )
>   
There's another obvious mistake in social Darwinism. Evolution works 
through natural variance in genetic qualities in newborns. The 
individuals with the most suitable qualities live longer and breed more 
succesfully. In human society the reverse happens. The poor have large 
families and the rich small ones. That's one of the causes for the fact 
that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor and the first are always 
outnumbered by the last.
 A more philosophical objection is that social Darwinism fiddles with 
the meaning of the word 'good' and mixes up the meanings like 'noble', 
'suitable', 'succesfull' and 'morally recommendable'. Anyone who has 
followed the narrow escape the world had from Sarah Palin becoming 
president of the U.S. of A. will agree that this mix up can be very 
dangerous.
I wonder if Darwinism can be applied to karma, i.e. if good karma makes 
life last longer you have  more opportunity to generate good karma than 
bad karma and everyone should have more good karma in the long run. The 
amount of people with good karma should grow as well.

-- 


Erik

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