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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 Chris

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”.

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”.