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The idea that the human race can be improved through eugenics is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it. The i

by _h4xr 18y ago

The idea that the human race can be improved through eugenics is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it. The idea that unlike all species, humans cannot be selectively bred for various traits, is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it.

Alex3917 18y ago
In almost every case, animals bred for specific traits end up with severe physical, mental, and emotional problems. The idea that humans are the one species that won't encounter these problems is a purely religious belief.
- _h4xr 18y ago
  Humans often test for those traits. Couples from populations that have a high incidence of the same recessive disorders will frequently abort kids who test positive for those disorders. And anyway, eugenics doesn't have to go that far -- what about policies that just reverse the dysgenic effects of low-education, low-accomlishment, high-crime types breeding more: http://www.projectprevention.org/ http://www.projectprevention.org/
- hugh 18y ago
  OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with "a purely religious belief". None of the ideas mentioned above is a "purely religious belief", even though several of them are half-wrong and the others are half-right. Animals bred for specific traits don't almost-always wind up with severe problems, unless said breeding is done over-zealously (trying to do too much in too few generations) or deliberately for traits which aren't necessarily beneficial to the animal. All modern-day farm animals are the product of a lot of selective breeding over the past few thousand years, and they don't have "severe" problems.
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    "OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with 'a purely religious belief'." If you take the position that the human race can be improved through eugenics and call it a scientific belief then the burden is on you to produce the science. I'm not taking the position that eugenics absolutely can't work, rather I'm taking the position that the science to support eugenics just isn't there so people who do support it support it on other grounds. If you can produce some books or journal articles making the case that eliminating intra-species biodiversity can make that species as a whole more resilient then I'd gladly recant.
    - hugh 18y ago
      I'm not saying that it's a scientific belief, I'm saying that it isn't a religious belief. There are many other types of belief, including: * belief based on incomplete experience (The traffic on I-80 is going to be terrible on Friday) * belief based on wild-assed guess (oil is going to be under $100 a barrel by the end of the year) * belief based on the fact that somebody told you it was true and you haven't bothered to check (The Nissan GT-R produces 480 horsepower) * belief based on not having thought it out very well (We should invade China!) * belief based on wanting to have that belief purely to annoy others (I think we should kill poor people!) * belief based on personal prejudice (McCain sucks!) * belief based on wanting to conform with the beliefs of your peer group (Lisp is awesome!) "Purely religious beliefs" are characterised by things other than just being unsupported. A necessary but not sufficient condition is that they should be both unsupported and strongly held.
      - Alex3917 18y ago
        Fair enough, I'll settle for non-scientific.
    - _h4xr 18y ago
      I would argue that eugenics is a valid belief so long as there is at least one trait that 1) is desirable, or correlated with something desirable (e.g. resistance to a disease, stronger work ethic, lower criminality, resistance to sunburns) and 2) is heritable. So I think I've got one! Skin color: people with darker skin are less likely to get sunburns, and darker skin appears to be heritable. So a smart eugenicist who believes that resistance to sunlight is an important trait would encourage darker-skinned people to breed more, at the expense of those of us with lighter hues. I'm sure there are other examples. But given that humans are an evolved species, all I'm saying is that we might be able to outguess chance and know which traits could be useful down the road. In a country with a solid welfare system, the ability to delay gratification is a bad one for your future genes -- if you're busy going to school instead of having unprotected sex, you'll have fewer kids (and they'll have fewer kids, later in life, too). So maybe a eugenic policy would be to subsidize people who have kids above the replacement level after getting their degrees, or who get sterilized if they have a kid when neither parent is employed.
zeraholladay 18y ago
Human beings can be selectively bred for various traits, but I don't think this is the issue for any intelligent, educated person since science is pretty clear on the matter. I take issue with the idea that human being can be improved, specifically with the word "improved" or any other such term used instead. Improved is subjective at best and totally repulsive when one considers what "improved" might actually mean to those defining an improvement (Nazi eugenics program). Human nature is such that any human designed program to selectively breed human beings will ultimately become a gross perversion, since the program would require institutionalization, planned breeding, castration and outright murder. We humans tend to be somewhat ethical and decent on an individual level but on a social or national level we're repulsive, greedy, disgusting monsters. Frankly, we can't trust ourselves.

by _h4xr 18y ago

Alex3917 18y ago

In almost every case, animals bred for specific traits end up with severe physical, mental, and emotional problems. The idea that humans are the one species that won't encounter these problems is a purely religious belief.

_h4xr 18y ago
Humans often test for those traits. Couples from populations that have a high incidence of the same recessive disorders will frequently abort kids who test positive for those disorders. And anyway, eugenics doesn't have to go that far -- what about policies that just reverse the dysgenic effects of low-education, low-accomlishment, high-crime types breeding more: http://www.projectprevention.org/ http://www.projectprevention.org/
hugh 18y ago
OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with "a purely religious belief". None of the ideas mentioned above is a "purely religious belief", even though several of them are half-wrong and the others are half-right. Animals bred for specific traits don't almost-always wind up with severe problems, unless said breeding is done over-zealously (trying to do too much in too few generations) or deliberately for traits which aren't necessarily beneficial to the animal. All modern-day farm animals are the product of a lot of selective breeding over the past few thousand years, and they don't have "severe" problems.
- Alex3917 18y ago
  "OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with 'a purely religious belief'." If you take the position that the human race can be improved through eugenics and call it a scientific belief then the burden is on you to produce the science. I'm not taking the position that eugenics absolutely can't work, rather I'm taking the position that the science to support eugenics just isn't there so people who do support it support it on other grounds. If you can produce some books or journal articles making the case that eliminating intra-species biodiversity can make that species as a whole more resilient then I'd gladly recant.
  - hugh 18y ago
    I'm not saying that it's a scientific belief, I'm saying that it isn't a religious belief. There are many other types of belief, including: * belief based on incomplete experience (The traffic on I-80 is going to be terrible on Friday) * belief based on wild-assed guess (oil is going to be under $100 a barrel by the end of the year) * belief based on the fact that somebody told you it was true and you haven't bothered to check (The Nissan GT-R produces 480 horsepower) * belief based on not having thought it out very well (We should invade China!) * belief based on wanting to have that belief purely to annoy others (I think we should kill poor people!) * belief based on personal prejudice (McCain sucks!) * belief based on wanting to conform with the beliefs of your peer group (Lisp is awesome!) "Purely religious beliefs" are characterised by things other than just being unsupported. A necessary but not sufficient condition is that they should be both unsupported and strongly held.
    - Alex3917 18y ago
      Fair enough, I'll settle for non-scientific.
  - _h4xr 18y ago
    I would argue that eugenics is a valid belief so long as there is at least one trait that 1) is desirable, or correlated with something desirable (e.g. resistance to a disease, stronger work ethic, lower criminality, resistance to sunburns) and 2) is heritable. So I think I've got one! Skin color: people with darker skin are less likely to get sunburns, and darker skin appears to be heritable. So a smart eugenicist who believes that resistance to sunlight is an important trait would encourage darker-skinned people to breed more, at the expense of those of us with lighter hues. I'm sure there are other examples. But given that humans are an evolved species, all I'm saying is that we might be able to outguess chance and know which traits could be useful down the road. In a country with a solid welfare system, the ability to delay gratification is a bad one for your future genes -- if you're busy going to school instead of having unprotected sex, you'll have fewer kids (and they'll have fewer kids, later in life, too). So maybe a eugenic policy would be to subsidize people who have kids above the replacement level after getting their degrees, or who get sterilized if they have a kid when neither parent is employed.

zeraholladay 18y ago

Human beings can be selectively bred for various traits, but I don't think this is the issue for any intelligent, educated person since science is pretty clear on the matter. I take issue with the idea that human being can be improved, specifically with the word "improved" or any other such term used instead. Improved is subjective at best and totally repulsive when one considers what "improved" might actually mean to those defining an improvement (Nazi eugenics program). Human nature is such that any human designed program to selectively breed human beings will ultimately become a gross perversion, since the program would require institutionalization, planned breeding, castration and outright murder. We humans tend to be somewhat ethical and decent on an individual level but on a social or national level we're repulsive, greedy, disgusting monsters. Frankly, we can't trust ourselves.