Philosophical Implications

If Darwinism is false, then we can longer assume that History moves in the direction of progress.

The assumption of progress is a logical outgrowth of the concept of the survival of the fittest: those who disappear are, ipso facto, less valuable than those who persist. Restated: those who persist are more valuable than those who disappear. So, today is better than yesterday is better than the day before yesterday, and Émile Coué was right: every day in every way, we are getting better and better.

The belief in progress has further implications. Here is a short path:
1. They were less fit, so they did die out.
2. They are less fit, so they should die out.
3. The persistence of the less fit impedes Progress.
4. Let's kill them.

Of course, the problem comes when we have to define "less fit". Those who would exercise this process have a good starting point: they themselves are "more fit". Everyone else is "less fit", with varying degrees of unfitness. The path of least resistance is to identify the weakest, or least liked, members of a population, and get everyone else to sign on to the elimination program. Then work up the ladder of fitness. This pattern was followed by the National Socialists, who started their killing program with people with genetic defects, then moved on to Jews and gypsies and homosexuals and artists (though not necessarily in that order.) Similarly, International Socialism began with the kulaks, moving on to scientists, generals, and the entire population of Ukraine.

Take away Darwinism, and the underpinnings of the belief in Progress are gone. We can now consider two other views:
1. What came before is equally valuable to what exists today. This means that we no longer have an external yardstick by which to measure "fitness". In the absence of such a yardstick, we have no basis on which to argue that Group A is less "fit" than Group B.
2. What came before is more valuable than what exists today. This is a humbling thought, and seems counter-intuitive. In one sense, we are better off today than 2000 years ago: longer life-spans, better toys. Others might argue that we are worse off: we are certainly more capable of mass killing than were, say, the Romans. It could be that these are not measurements of overall fitness at all, but rather are variations within natural limits. Those distractions aside, a belief that we are in a state of devolution should drive us to protect life. Whereas the logical path from Darwinism eventuates in the killing of the less fit, so that Progress can be accelerated, the logical path from the belief in devolution leads to the preservation of life, as a means to slow down Regress.