Eugenics: Nobody Was Innocent

Quoited from Pevensie15: "Eugenics was done by ignorant atheists, who should have read the Bible!"

Ignorant assertion for the win!

I already replied to him on his blog, but as usual he completely ignores my points, probably because the kid has nothing even resembling a cogent answer.

Now, Aj there has raised what is really an obnoxious lie common to the fundamentalist Christian position. Eugenics was certainly an outgrowth from the ideas of evolutionary theory, but that does not make it inherently atheistic. Studies of various hominids yielded information regarding things like general skull measurements and other empirical qualities that led people to start applying those measurements as benchmarks regarding what races were more evolved than others. This was done worldwide, from bible believing American Christians, the British, The Chinese, Japanese, etc. Its association with the Nazi agenda simply hastened its departure from acceptable science.

Were there Atheists involved? Hell yes. Was it racist? Damned straight. Denying that would be revisionist claptrap like claiming Hitler wasn't a Christian (forgive my Godwin* breach). Now, I've pretty much come to expect this from current fundamentalists since they generally only know what they're taught which is usually a very white-washed version of history painting Christianity as some kind of heroic underdog despite being the establishment for about 1500 years in the west.

The second part of what AJ says really bothers me and shows palpable ignorance of the Tanakh. The bible supports outright genocide of non-believing neighbor nations and encourages erradication and/or enslavement. You know what, AJ, you're right. Reading the Bible would have stopped them from starting Eugenics. It would have encouraged outright slaughter rape and enslavement instead. Good point!

Of course, we all know that those Christians involved in Eugenics weren't true Scotsmen... err Christians. Right?

*Thanks ExPatMatt and Beamstalk