Were Darwin and his devotees irresponsible in not foreseeing the potential danger of applying his theories to ethics?
RW: Darwin recognized that his views did not provide any objective, transcendent foundation for morality. He stated, “A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward [and these are Darwin’s views], can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.” However, Darwin, like most Victorian liberals, was optimistic about human nature, and he believed that humans had social instincts that would lead them to obey the Golden Rule. Darwin did not take seriously enough the dark side of human nature, and his views provided no moral fulcrum to oppose anyone obeying sinful, aggressive instincts. JW: The promulgation of Darwinian ethics led to a rejection of the Judeo-Christian idea of the sanctity of human life. Was genocide, such as that perpetrated by Hitler, inevitable? RW: No, the Holocaust required othe
