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Are you trying to draw a dotted line between areligiosity/agnosticism and... eugenics?

lettergram 4y ago
Eugenics are inherently opposite to the teachings of Christianity. Christianity being the dominate religion in the US it’s easy to argue that progressivism has been in universities / dominate in universities since the early 1900s which was my point.
- WaxProlix 4y ago
  Your first sentence requires a lot of citations (I think that a lot of eugenicists of the past and present have been enamored of 'Tradition' and race, and Christianity is tightly bound to those in modern times), and the second doesn't parse well for me.
  - elcritch 4y ago
    It’s quite a bit more complicated than it’d seem. The Scopes trial for example is widely misconstrued (IMHO) as science vs religious ignorance and is a good exemplar. It really had more to do with eugenics which went hand in hand with evolution at the time. The science book in question was full of racist and eugenics pseudoscience. There’s a few of the accounts of the Scopes trial from a more wholistic understanding: A more academic one: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505430802062885 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950543080206288... > Using Bryan's unread closing remarks as a key to his views, this revisionist historical work argues that Bryan opposed evolution primarily for political and ethical reasons—reasons that have been lost to historical memory. Bryan's overarching concern was the threat to society posed by extrapolations of evolutionary doctrine—namely, Social Darwinism and eugenics. His commitment to the Social Gospel put him at odds with the concept of natural selection being applied to humans. A more biased one but which highlights the emotional aspects better: https://unherd.com/2019/11/americas-great-victory-for-science-and-scientific-racism/ https://unherd.com/2019/11/americas-great-victory-for-scienc... > The relevant statute, known as the Butler Act, was not a fusty old one. In fact the Governor had signed it into law only two months previously. The Tennessee House of Representatives had passed the bill by 71 votes to 5; the state Senate endorsed it 24 votes to 6. … > At this time almost everyone who considered themselves ‘progressive’, including everyone who considered themselves a ‘Darwinist’, strongly supported the-then rampant eugenics movement. In rural Tennessee, folks may not have had a sophisticated grasp of Darwin’s theory of evolution, nor of his cousin, Francis Galton’s related, but pseudo-scientific theory of eugenics; but they knew the progressives who preached Darwinism in the cities despised country people, called them “imbeciles” and “defectives” and would sterilise them if they got half a chance. > More than 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilised under eugenics laws passed by 33 states. It wasn’t just low IQ that established someone as likely to have a dysgenic effect: a history of heavy drinking, or conceiving a child out of wedlock, were enough to mark someone down as a “moral imbecile”.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  I’ll need a cite for Christians against anti-miscegenation laws. Unless you think progressives controlled all the votes in these 30 states: https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/535d39a37095aa00000000f8 https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/535d39a37095aa00000... Christians were all over it, with all their own rationalizations.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    >I’ll need a cite for Christians against anti-miscegenation laws. >In 1967, two Catholic social services agencies and eleven bishops in the states that still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage used a “friend-of-the-court” brief in Loving v. Virginia to urge the United States Supreme Court to strike down the laws in Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. https://ccgaction.org/node/1011 https://ccgaction.org/node/1011
    - hindsightbias 4y ago
      Progressives did eventually arrive, 60 years after OPs view.
      - Thorrez 4y ago
        What does progressive mean? >The cause [eugenics] became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.[5][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States
        hindsightbias 4y ago
        Progressive Christians
        Thorrez 4y ago
        Going back to the topic of eugenics, since you posted a link about eugenics: the Catholic Church has been against eugenics since it first got popular, when the 30 states you mention legalized forced sterilization. https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/103/2/498/1750859 https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/103/2/498/1750... Whether opposing eugenics is progressive or anti-progressive seems like a confusing topic to me.

Eugenics are inherently opposite to the teachings of Christianity. Christianity being the dominate religion in the US it’s easy to argue that progressivism has been in universities / dominate in universities since the early 1900s which was my point.

WaxProlix 4y ago
Your first sentence requires a lot of citations (I think that a lot of eugenicists of the past and present have been enamored of 'Tradition' and race, and Christianity is tightly bound to those in modern times), and the second doesn't parse well for me.
- elcritch 4y ago
  It’s quite a bit more complicated than it’d seem. The Scopes trial for example is widely misconstrued (IMHO) as science vs religious ignorance and is a good exemplar. It really had more to do with eugenics which went hand in hand with evolution at the time. The science book in question was full of racist and eugenics pseudoscience. There’s a few of the accounts of the Scopes trial from a more wholistic understanding: A more academic one: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505430802062885 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950543080206288... > Using Bryan's unread closing remarks as a key to his views, this revisionist historical work argues that Bryan opposed evolution primarily for political and ethical reasons—reasons that have been lost to historical memory. Bryan's overarching concern was the threat to society posed by extrapolations of evolutionary doctrine—namely, Social Darwinism and eugenics. His commitment to the Social Gospel put him at odds with the concept of natural selection being applied to humans. A more biased one but which highlights the emotional aspects better: https://unherd.com/2019/11/americas-great-victory-for-science-and-scientific-racism/ https://unherd.com/2019/11/americas-great-victory-for-scienc... > The relevant statute, known as the Butler Act, was not a fusty old one. In fact the Governor had signed it into law only two months previously. The Tennessee House of Representatives had passed the bill by 71 votes to 5; the state Senate endorsed it 24 votes to 6. … > At this time almost everyone who considered themselves ‘progressive’, including everyone who considered themselves a ‘Darwinist’, strongly supported the-then rampant eugenics movement. In rural Tennessee, folks may not have had a sophisticated grasp of Darwin’s theory of evolution, nor of his cousin, Francis Galton’s related, but pseudo-scientific theory of eugenics; but they knew the progressives who preached Darwinism in the cities despised country people, called them “imbeciles” and “defectives” and would sterilise them if they got half a chance. > More than 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilised under eugenics laws passed by 33 states. It wasn’t just low IQ that established someone as likely to have a dysgenic effect: a history of heavy drinking, or conceiving a child out of wedlock, were enough to mark someone down as a “moral imbecile”.
hindsightbias 4y ago
I’ll need a cite for Christians against anti-miscegenation laws. Unless you think progressives controlled all the votes in these 30 states: https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/535d39a37095aa00000000f8 https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/535d39a37095aa00000... Christians were all over it, with all their own rationalizations.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  >I’ll need a cite for Christians against anti-miscegenation laws. >In 1967, two Catholic social services agencies and eleven bishops in the states that still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage used a “friend-of-the-court” brief in Loving v. Virginia to urge the United States Supreme Court to strike down the laws in Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. https://ccgaction.org/node/1011 https://ccgaction.org/node/1011
  - hindsightbias 4y ago
    Progressives did eventually arrive, 60 years after OPs view.
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      What does progressive mean? >The cause [eugenics] became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.[5][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States
      - hindsightbias 4y ago
        Progressive Christians
        Thorrez 4y ago
        Going back to the topic of eugenics, since you posted a link about eugenics: the Catholic Church has been against eugenics since it first got popular, when the 30 states you mention legalized forced sterilization. https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/103/2/498/1750859 https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/103/2/498/1750... Whether opposing eugenics is progressive or anti-progressive seems like a confusing topic to me.