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Jim:

You're right. Eugenics is a pretty bad business, and it is vaguely science-related. Scientific racism--well, you're gonna have to help me out with that one.

Tell me something: if, in the bedrock of our animalistic human nature, the only constant is selfish predatory survival, how do the weak manage to survive from generation to generation and multiply? Are you aware that it is a common practice among chimpanzees for the strongest male to allow the others to eat first, and to defer to weaker members of the group in practice/play combat? How is this possible in your ultra-selfish natural world?

Everett:

I just told you a story about men in war--unleashed demons and all--who sat back and carefully assessed a situation. Instead of killing a hundred Afghani insurgents (whose resolve, by the way, might impress even the Imperial Japanese Army!) and losing probably at least a dozen Rangers, they implemented a plan much like what could have been done in Japan in 1945. Guess what? It worked. 20/20 hindsight is just that, but let's not be so quick to write off possibilities. I wonder what would've happened if one of those Rangers (some of the best soldiers on the planet, by the way) had been sitting in Truman's seat. Let's just put it this way; these guys weren't behind a computer screen when it happened. I fear that sometimes you forgot that my generation currently fuels a standing U.S. military of 1.5 million and a reserve force of another 1.5 million, 10,000 of which have died in two wars over the last ten years. Alas, we're (well, you're) too busy bemoaning the death of personal responsibility and the untouchable decisions of the Greatest Generation to notice...

I agree; our treatment of Germany and Japan after World War II was humane on an unprecedented level. I take this as more evidence that, as a species, we're improving morally. After all, that had never really been done before in the history of major civilizations going to war (and yes, that includes about 1,950 years of Christianity). Seems like you should be arguing with Toni about that, not me.

Scientific racism is the well documented theory of Dr. Samuel George Norton, an American physician who amassed a collection of almost 1000 skulls from around the world. Morton estimated brain size of different racial groups by pouring seed and lead shot into the skulls. He concluded that whites have larger brains than blacks on average, confirming his suspicion that blacks were inferior.

Stephen Jay Gould attacked Morton's findings in his book The Mismeasure of Man, and was subjected to vicious criticism and ridicule by the scientific community in the 80's. James Watson in 2007 was forced out of active research despite being the co-discoverer of DNA's double helix and a Nobel laureate for attributing the problems of sub- Saharan Africa to blacks' innate inferiority.

The biological inferiority of women, certain Hispanic populations, imbeciles and the poor were also products of scientific Darwinism. The flimsy linkages of genes to human traits have more recently, and without conclusive proof, underpinned the homosexual privileges movement. I hope you now know what the entire world has known for years about bad science shaping social views and public policy.

Renowned primatologist Franz de Waal and the now fading star of monkey morality studies Marc Hauser have been kind of at odds with each other on innate monkey sanctity theories. De Waal has postulated that human morality is of an entirely different kind as the questionably inferential conclusions of chimp altruism. Hauser fudged his conclusions that monkeys were in fact the precursors of language and morality in humans.

Bottom line: you may choose to believe that wild monkeys that once in a while act altruistically in the wild---or at least seem to do so---establish to a high degree of scientific certainty that humans are replete only with monkey-based good and noble tendencies. This makes no sense whatsoever. It is counter-factual and counter-experiential.

Atheism needs science to prove this. Hauser cheated his way into his formulation of his formerly widely acclaimed "findings"---until he got exposed as a fraud and was found guilty of scientific fraud. Franz de Waal is on the money: human morality is different. Besides, the thrust in human moral science now is to find an "objective secular morality". But the problem is that every honest person knows that evolution has planted a bunch of unpleasant tendencies in our species, e.g., a tendency to Xenophobia, and a much stronger one to self-gratify.

You seem to think that once man abandons belief in God and magical thinking he is on automatic pilot to follow only some of our tendencies and not others. This flies in the face of universal human experience. It is a fraud---like Hauser's fraud, which is the basis for this delusion.

With no external controls, man will tend to be bad. Just watch what happens at traffic lights everywhere: if a cop is visible either on horseback, on a motorcycle or in a patrol car, people will not run the red light. No cop, lots of red light violations. Without an external source of punishment or reward, people will try to get away with as much as they can. That's human nature.