See, Richard Dawkins may be an atheist, but Richard Dawkins is not just any atheist - he's an atheist with a belief system that stems from his own education and expertise in evolution, Darwinism and genetics. His background is biology and, as far as I can see, Professor Dawkins rose to a degree of fame in the United Kingdom mainly through his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures back in 1991. Since then, through his books and excessive media grandstanding, Dawkins has received the ear of the general public of the United Kingdom to an astonishing degree which would be unthinkable for any Churchman.
It is notable that the prestigious Royal Institution lectures have been graced with some big names before Dawkins, names such as the famous eugenicist and British Eugenics Society member, Julian Huxley, the first Director of UNESCO and brother of the author of Brave New World, Aldous. Members of this society, now known as the Galton Institute, have included Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, John Maynard Keynes, Neville Chamberlain and William Beveridge among a host of other 'luminaries'. Nowadays, the Institute is more coy of its membership. I know, because I emailed them and asked for a list of members, a request which was refused me. However, the Galton Institute's President and Vice President and supporting staff are named on its website and both are eminent geneticists. Given the history of the Institute and its well documented churning out of propagandists for eugenics and those who practiced it in their chosen specialist fields, the names now mentioned on its hierarchy are interesting.
In fact, if you read the list of those who have given the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in the past, mysteriously, some of the same names appear on the list of those who we do know are key players in the Galton Institute. Sir Walter Bodmore is one who has given a Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution. There are others. In fact, there are quite a few. As recently as 2009, Professor Steve Jones, good friend of Richard Dawkins was the President of the Galton Institute. Another sworn atheist and hater of the Catholic Church, Jones is essentially a geneticist and genetics is the field which continues to ‘pioneer’ new research into the fabric of the human DNA – and – therefore, delve into the fabric of society itself.
And in order to understand what Dawkins actually believes, you have to understand the scientific fundamentalism and empirical reductivism which he espouses so vocally. Dawkins is just one man, of course, but he is undoubtedly the voice of an atheistic movement that prizes science and empiricism above all other avenues of human enquiry. In fact, Dawkins’s atheism is not particularly interesting. What does interest me is what he does believe and in order to understand what Dawkins does believe, we have to examine Darwinism and how many Darwinists including, I would suggest, Dawkins himself, apply Darwin’s theories to the human person and to human society at large.
While many credit his Darwinism as his greatest strength, it is, ultimately, Dawkins’s greatest weakness and it is a weakness that must be exposed in order to protect society from the barbarity of the real belief system of this man and a considerable number of his associates, friends and followers. Allow me to elaborate as to why this is the case.
In the years after Charles Darwin’s death, the scientist’s explosive theories were presented as a body blow to the Church and to religions and, up to a point, they were, because the processes of Creation were cast in a new light that caused doubt in the existence of a Creator.
There can be little doubt that Darwinism shook the faith of many especially in Europe and it is an easily forgotten irony that Darwinism, having caused a great loss of Christian faith, also gave rise to an ideology that ran in total contradiction to the Christian faith and that led to the barbaric cruelty of Auschwitz, in which a huge number of men, women and children died at the hands of Hitler’s executioners. This ideology was, of course, Social Darwinism. It was then, and is now, Social Darwinism, rather than evolutionary theory itself, that poses the great threat to human society that we are now seeing ‘through a glass, darkly’ every time we pick up a newspaper.
Evolutionary theory is about examining and explaining how nature works and learning more about it. Social Darwinism is applying Darwin’s theories to mankind with inherently destructive consequences as encapsulated by the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’.
You see. It is no coincidence that Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes and a veritable army of eugenicists were members of the British Eugenics Society because the Eugenics Society was, and is still, as its name suggests, very much about people rather than plants. Eugenics means simply ‘good birth’. In the minds of eugenicists there are ‘good’ human births and there are ‘bad’ human births. The Galton Institute – to this very day – cherishes Darwin’s theories but more importantly, still – to this very day – applies them to human beings in its lectures and research, available on the internet, in a manner which robs human beings of their inherent dignity as human beings ‘made in the image and likeness of God’.
Historians can point to the various factors that led to the Holocaust which claimed the countless lives of those deemed by the Nazi State as ‘unfit’ for society. They can talk about the terrible economic climate of the day. They can discuss the decadence into which society in the Weimar Republic had fallen and the search for some kind of order. They can talk about the grievances held by the population in the wake of World War I. However, what historians cannot deny is the role that the ideology of Social Darwinism played in the destruction of European Jewry and a host of other people deemed by the Nazi regime as ‘unfit’ for society, including the mentally ill, the handicapped, the homosexuals, those seen as a drain on the economy and all those who Hitler and his supporters saw as ‘unfit’ for society.
With the rise in Social Darwinist ideology and its attending scientific breach in the hull of the Church and the faith of Europe came a movement so cold-hearted, so brutal, so barbaric and so reductivist of the human person and man’s place in the World that the moral foundations of that society collapsed and an extermination process so chilling that it still haunts Europe to this day became possible and executable – and it all came to pass via the powerful arms of the State. Yet, without Darwin’s theories being applied to humankind, it may never have happened at all.
After the horror of the Holocaust, eugenics received a great deal of negative publicity as it became apparent that the ideology that drove the Nazi regime and which was adopted by many in Germany (and other parts of rest of Europe and the USA) had led to human destruction on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Well, it is unprecedented, if you do not count the number of abortions which have taken place in the World since that time.
Eugenics may have received negative press in the aftermath of the Holocaust, but it is blatantly obvious that, just as Nazi war criminals managed to find escape justice and flee to safety in South America, like Dr Josef Mengele, eugenics managed to discreetly smuggle itself into the very fibre of human societies in the West – even those societies like Great Britain – which ostensibly fought the Nazis and their evil, destructive and ruinous ideology. I have already pointed out that this could not have taken place without the sexual revolution and I shall not labour the point, but in order for eugenics to become a part of British life, sexual taboos had to be broken and the fundamental underpinnings of society had to be destroyed. Without the sexual revolution, it would have been impossible for the liberal State to redefine every sphere of human activity to suit its own ends. You could not redefine marriage to include homosexual marriage without the sexual revolution.
You could not liberalise divorce law without the sexual revolution. You could not have IVF without the sexual revolution which separated the sexual act and procreation and as I’ve already said, you could not legalise abortion without the sexual revolution. It was the method by which marriage, sex, personhood, human reproduction, the family, morality, fertility and, ultimately, you and me, could be redefined. The sexual revolution was wholly necessary to placing at the very heart of society, the individual and the State, the promotion of an ideology of a latently eugenic persuasion. Because of that revolution in our understanding of sexuality and fertility, we allowed ourselves to be redefined because of the temptation that was put in our way and, as this essay will assert, as we have sown, so shall we reap,
Why? Because now that every society in the West has been persuaded to voluntarily control our fertility, buy into the notion of sex without consequences, separate children from the sexual act, redefine ourselves along the lines of sexual identity, forget or disregard the true meaning of marriage and the raft of consequences of that revolution, we run the huge risk of moving into a period in which all of these things can pass, even without our notice, into the hands of the State. It doesn’t happen overnight, of course, but slowly, surely, we can see the State asserting itself over matters which, 50 years ago, would be absolutely unthinkable, because 50 years ago, the institutions of marriage and the institution of the family and public morality informed by Christianity was far stronger. That’s not to say that there aren’t Churchmen listed in the British Eugenics Society membership list from yesteryear, but then, sadly, that’s Anglicanism for you.
So, how does this all relate to where we find ourselves today? Well, when His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI came to visit the United Kingdom, His Holiness upset a number of people in the National Secular Society for drawing a link between atheism and tyrannical regimes which disregard the dignity of the human person and destroy those who both the State and society have a duty to protect. He talked of the horrors of Nazism and linked it to atheism which denies objective moral values and thereby takes a subjective view of the value attributable to human beings, made, we would say, ‘in the image and likeness of God’. His Holiness remarked that it is when faith, religion and conscience are pushed to the private sphere and driven from the public sphere that it is then that the objective morality of societies are destroyed. It is no coincidence that His Holiness should have said such things at this time in the history of the United Kingdom because His Holiness can see that the trends taking place in the UK and Europe are only going in one direction.
One man who led the campaign against Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United Kingdom was Professor Richard Dawkins. His letter to The Guardian was published in the days running up to the Papal Visit. My letter was, surprisingly, published the following day, though it was signed by ordinary Catholics, rather than a host of celebrities. One of Dawkins’s other signatories was Professor Steve Jones, the eminent geneticist, atheist and former Galton Institute President. Now, ostensibly, these two figures in British life wanted to arrest Pope Benedict XVI for running an ‘international pederast ring’ called the Catholic Church. I would assert, however, that there is far more to these two men’s deep and violent opposition to the Catholic Church than the sexual abuse crisis.
See, in the modern mind, after years of press reports, the Catholic Church is synonymous with paedophilia, cover up and corruption. However, it also stands for something else and despite the extraneous sins of some of Her priests and members it stands above all for Her Divine Founder, Jesus Christ, of course, but also for the unique dignity of every human person from conception to natural death, ‘from the womb, to the tomb’.
The Catholic Church has a totally and radically different understanding of the definition human person to that which is posited by Professor Steve Jones and Professor Richard Dawkins. These two men are Darwinists and, more importantly than that, they are Social Darwinists. They are, instinctively, eugenicists. Both are on record as holding views on ‘good births’ and ‘bad births’ that are reprehensible to the Catholic Church for whom each and every person, regardless of their condition is to be valued and treated with dignity. Richard Dawkins, as recently as this year, can be viewed endorsing the possibility of infanticide for newborn disabled babies. Professor Steve Jones’s Presidency of the Galton Institute guarantees his eugenic credentials. Why are these things so rarely discussed in the mainstream media? You might well ask, but the media couldn’t possibly comment.
And the reason the media couldn’t possibly comment is because eugenics is fashionable again. Thanks largely to genetics, the NHS and pre-natal scanning, it has experienced a revival in an age which, again, has lost its moral foundations. In the modern media, eugenics cannot be criticized without the left and elements of ‘the right’ calling anything that sounds like criticism ‘hate speech’. Few in the media, for instance, criticize IVF, even though IVF has been widely reported as being explicitly eugenic, in selecting embryos with the right colour eyes, the right colour skin, the right colour hair, keeping the ones that are healthy and destroying all the rest. Only a fantasist could observe these trends and not call IVF what it most assuredly has become – eugenics.
In the modern media, abortion is criticized as eugenic and morally outrageous when it becomes apparent that doctors in London, Birmingham and Manchester are signing through abortion requests for parents who want a boy and not a girl. That’s called gendercide and the Government ‘promises to investigate it’. However, nobody, or very few, will criticize abortion on the grounds of disability, such as Downs Syndrome or even abortions procured for cosmetic reasons such as ‘cleft palate’ and ‘cleft lip’ even though both are operable and curable. We are at a stage in our history when eugenics is such a deeply embedded part of British life that doctors on the NHS express total shock and even dismay when parents tell them that even though they know that their unborn baby will be born with a disability, they don’t want the ‘seek and destroy’ order to go ahead. Professionals in the BMA just don’t understand why any woman or set of parents, wouldn’t want to destroy their unborn child because it is imperfect.
Professor Steve Jones has worked for the UCL where ‘pioneering’ research in human embryology yields few miracle cures for humanity’s ills, but humanity itself is stripped of dignity and farmed in a laboratory and has its DNA crossed with animal DNA to form hybrids in order to find cures to diseases which never appear and all with the blessing of the State.
Both the State and leading atheist and Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, are for all of these things: abortion, IVF, human embryology, eugenics, and, ultimately, the weeding out of the ‘unfit’ from human society by stealth and all with the general approval of the British public. All this has been sold to the British public as ‘progress’ and the British public, while remaining uncomfortable about aspects of all of it, go along with it because we trust our Government with all of these things, even, yes even the power over the creation of human life itself – even human reproduction itself. At the moment, these things – abortion, IVF, artificial contraception and human embryology are undertaken (aside from the human embryos destroyed in abortion, IVF and embryology) on a voluntary basis, but there are signs that suggest that this may not be the case forever.
I would say to you, ‘We had better hope that this extraordinary power over the creation and destruction of human life is not one day used against us,’ but there really is no point, because if you think that these technologies and methods of birth control were designed to just help out the odd childless couple here, or ‘assist’ the ‘reproductive freedom’ of the odd poor, pregnant mother there, then you are, at best, an optimistic and trusting individual of the State or you are a very naïve person indeed and if you think that any State with these kinds of powers is trustworthy then I would say that you are a fool, because ‘power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely’.
Power can be no more absolute than the power to create life and to bring about death. That, after all, as the Catholic Church says and as Professors Steve Jones and Richard Dawkins deny, is the sovereign role not of some mythical ‘sky-fairy’ but of Almighty God Himself. History bears witness to the fact that, regardless of what people say of Him, God is a lot better at being God than men are and when men try to play God, or usurp His role in the giving and taking human life, the results are, without exception, disastrous, especially when the State is involved.
Of course, people like Richard Dawkins will keep talking about the ‘sky-fairy’ and a lack of ‘empirical’ or ‘scientific’ evidence for God’s existence despite the fact that Faith has seldom, if ever, been rooted in graphs and algebra. His media buzz words have to keep being disseminated to the British public, because his agenda and that of his eugenicist friends, is about demolishing Faith in order to carry out a eugenic dream which is, in their minds at least, utopian, but is, in reality, dystopian and a total affront to human dignity. Richard Dawkins has to keep talking about the God that he does not believe in because if he were to be totally honest about what he does believe in, eventually, sane-minded people of Great Britain would turn away from his doctrines in disgust. Ultimately the eugenic nightmare is not about only population control, but total control of the population in deciding who ‘fits’ in and who does not.
‘Ah’, you may say, ‘Well I don’t believe that embryos are human beings anyway.’ Well, if embryos are not human beings, then why are they called human embryos and why is it that the Government so desired that human embryos be handed over to research faculties, companies and a very eager scientific community to be tested upon, stripped of dignity, crossed with animal DNA and abused for the sake of scientific progress, the creation of ‘saviour siblings’ and ‘pioneering’ medical research? If these beings are not human, then what on earth does the scientific community want with them? Ultimately, the scientific community in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act did not want just any old embryos. It wanted human embryos.
‘Well, even so’, you may think, ‘as long as this is happening to beings inside the womb or in labs, then that is okay because it doesn’t affect me.’ My answer to that would be, it may not affect you now, but it will affect you and your children or your children’s children, one day, because one day, if the State obtains total control over human reproduction, which it shall if it remains unchecked, your grandchild may never make it into the World because he or she didn’t have the right colour hair, eyes, skin, or suffered a major or even minor, treatable medical condition because that is where this all ends. The media are always telling you to look after the environment for future generations to enjoy. If you want future generations to enjoy the environment with a measure of freedom, then I suggest you watch what your Government is actually doing in your name, to people, born and indeed, unborn.
In a way, what we are currently seeing in terms of individual ‘freedom’ at the beginning of life, in terms of abortion, artificial contraception and IVF is quite devilish. I say this because, like the Devil, the State has presented these moral evils to the population as services which can be bought, or even obtained on the NHS – an arm of the State – if citizens should choose to do so. As the Church teaches, in return for succumbing to his temptations, Satan drags you into Hell, unless you are repentant. So it is, that likewise the State has presented these ‘services’ to its population in a similar temptation – aimed at taking advantage of the population’s moral confusion, relativism and very human weaknesses. Likewise, for succumbing to these temptations towards controlling the beginnings of human life, the State will eventually drag you into Hell on Earth, because these ‘services’ can so easily become mandatory, should the State decide that it is viable to do so, with the help of a steady stream of propaganda.
The fundamental premise of this essay is that these and other services were made available to the British public after the 1960s so that the British public would become so accustomed to them that, eventually, we would accept them as so integral to the way in which society operates that we would also accept the State’s enforcement of these provisions on us even against our own will.
All that is required for this to happen is enough propaganda through the mass media to soften the population’s position on these matters. An economic crisis, of course, also comes in rather handy - as does hysterical concern for the environment and population issues - for the State giveth 'reproductive freedom' to its citizens, but likewise, the State taketh it away. The same too can be said for end of life issues such as voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, of course, which is surely to come. We've been here before.
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