Darwinism, both as an idea and as a mechanism, has been used as an excuse for no end of atrocities — from Hitler, to Pol Pot, and to Stalin.
Justifying hate
Almost anything can be used as an excuse and as a means to inflict harm upon others, like the Christian Bible, for instance. Do we see people protesting against the sale and distribution of religious texts in the same way as Christians — and particularly Conservative Christians do — in the southern states of the United States of America? No, we don’t.
Or what of the Qur’an, or the Torah? Again, silence. Yet religion is the original weapon of mass destruction, one responsible for unparalleled cruelty and destruction, visiting death not just on mere people, but on entire cultures and civilisations, which have been swept from the face of the Earth.
So clearly, what we see is not knowledge itself as being harmful, but what people choose to do with it.
If he were alive, you could ask Robert Oppenheimer for his thoughts on the potential of hydrogen atom, and how it was harnessed to unleash unimaginable devastation upon the Japanese. Specifically, we could ask Oppenheimer what he thought of his part in the harnessing of this element, yes?
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer
Knowledge is potential, not power unto itself
The internet is another much maligned entity, which is essentially a repository for knowledge of many kinds.
“The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see. If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society.”
― Vint Cerf
Substitute the internet for almost anything, like Facebook, and again you find something that contains various things of varying edifying quality, and many things some — or most —people would describe as challenging or troubling. But what you’re seeing is only ever a reflection of society itself.
Yes, there are blueprints for bombs on the internet, but that blueprint is nothing but bits of data without the want of someone to harm someone else.
Belief — and by extension religion itself — does not require anything so stoic and solid as proof or evidence, and relies entirely on fear, uncertainty and doubt. Darwinism — or any other theory of science — does not require such an ephemeral thing as belief to exist, only the persistence of human enquiry and the willingness to learn.
