Social Darwinism is the study and implementation of various pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics. Social Darwinists believe that the strong should see their wealth and power increase, while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. ... Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism.*

Charles Darwin and his fellow naturalists were aristocrats from wealthy families from the Victorian era during the height of the British Empire. They used concepts like natural selection and survival of the fittest to justify the inhumane inequality caused and maintained by themselves. Many of them were racists and eugenicists.

Charles Darwin:
The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. ... the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

The text of The Descent of Man is undeniably racist. Darwin regarded the Caucasian white race to be superior to all other human races. He propagandized that negros and Aboriginal Australians were more closely related to gorillas, based on his own monkey theory. This is pure racism. Scientific racism* is inherently linked to Darwin and his fellow naturalists. See also Neanderthal Man.

Charles Darwin:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

While the ‘science’ of eugenics is now widely discredited, a few of its leading proponents, and numerous others with looser links to the movement, have been given London blue plaques in the past. At the time, their views were either regarded as uncontroversial or their achievements were considered to outweigh any reservations about their eugenic connections. The same may not be necessarily true today.*

Social Darwinism also motivated ideas of eugenics. Eugenics is an immoral and pseudoscientific theory that claims it is possible to perfect people and groups through genetics and the scientific laws of inheritance.* Francis Galton was half-cousin of Darwin and a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics, and biological racism; he was a pioneer of eugenics, coining the term itself in 1883.* He was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society. Leonard Darwin* and Charles Galton Darwin* were presidents of the British Eugenics Society. Yale University professor William Graham Sumner* argued in his book What Social Classes Owe to Each Other that assistance to the poor actually weakens their ability to survive in society.* Historian Mike Hawkins argues that it is accurate to describe Sumner as a social Darwinist because Sumner draws directly upon evolutionary theory to explain society and dictate policy. Sumner was heavily influenced by naturalist Herbert Spencer who originated the expression "survival of the fittest"... after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species.* On the Origin of Species, the "bible of evolution", carries the subtitle Preservation Of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life.

Darwin's ideas also played to the dangerously receptive imaginations of certain members of Victorian society, who threw caution to the wind and hastily carried Darwinian ideals beyond the realm of basic science.*

Capitalists all, they took what they thought were the lessons of Darwin's book and applied them to human society. Their hard-hearted conclusion, of which a 17th-century religious puritan might have been proud, was that people got what they deserved — albeit that the criterion of desert was genetic, rather than moral. The fittest not only survived, but prospered. Moreover, the social Darwinists thought that measures to help the poor were wasted, since such people were obviously unfit and thus doomed to sink.

It is hard to overestimate the influence of Darwinian and eugenic ideas in the Progressive Era. I believe one cannot fully understand the economic ideas that underwrote labor and immigration reform without also understanding the biological thought that crucially informed them.

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Within American society, ideas of social Darwinism reached their greatest prominence during the Gilded Age. Some argue that the rationale of the late 19th-century industrial titans such as John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) and Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) owed much to social Darwinism, and that monopolists of this type applied Darwin's concept of natural selection to explain corporate dominance in their respective fields and thus to justify their exorbitant accumulations of success and social advancement. Rockefeller, for example, proclaimed: "The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest ... the working out of a law of nature and a law of God."*

The ultra-rich used Darwinian ideas to seemingly justify their greed and injustice inflicted upon society.

Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, began to use their enormous wealth and resources for the benefit of society. For example, Carnegie distributed more than $350 million dollars (90 percent) of his wealth to support the construction of libraries, universities, and other public institutions. This practice of civic philanthropy became known as the Gospel of Wealth. These philanthropic activities were consistent with the ideas of Social Darwinism and American ideals of individualism, self-reliance, and limited government.

By means of so-called "philantropy" the ultra-rich sponsored universities to "educate" the people by indoctrinating them with the self-given justifications for thier injustice. See also Power, CONspiracy and Dark Triad. What a "coincidence" that Darwin and his influential fellow naturalists, who were all Victorian elite from wealthy families, came up with such a monkey theory. Social Darwinism was used to justify the stratification of the wealthy and poor. The evolutionary worldview obviously fits into a materialistic world with ideas like survival of the fittest. With the rise of materialism comes the decline of morality. It was sold to the world as "social" Darwinism but in reality it was and is very anti-social.

Truly, this earth is a trophy cup for the industrious man. And this rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world, and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by.*

No, this was not Darwin, it was Hitler. In fundamental ways Hitler was influenced by Darwin and evolved similar ideas about races based on natural selection. Alan Bullock said that The basis of Hitler’s political beliefs was a crude Darwinism. Just like Darwin in his time, Hitler had a close relationship with a certain part of the aristocracy* of his time which used his ideas and beliefs in support of their agenda. Darwin and his fellow naturalists provided the idea, Hitler and his Nazi henchmen practiced it. If one believes that humans are mere animals, one inevitably starts behaving like one...

C. S. Lewis:
Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men. If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing up our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies or capitalists for the same reason.

Naturalism faces a dilemma: Either humans in some sense "transcend" nature by their moral sensibility and agency, or they are mere by-products of evolution, in which case there is no ontological ground for saying they 'ought' to behave any less aggressively than other predatory creatures in the food chain who are looking out for their own good.*

The belief that human beings are animals or descendants of animals, as is evident in evolution theory, automatically leads to moral relativism. Obviously, ideas have consequences. People who don't believe in a God that will hold them accountable for their lives will behave that way. Naturalism provokes these practices because if human beings do not possess a mind that transcends matter and energy there would be no point in discussing morality and every human being would ultimately be allowed to outcompete any other by whatever means available.

According to fanatic evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins...

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

It is obvious what evolution does with people's minds. Richard Dawkins is a fanatic evolutionist. The belief in evolution will tend to lower the bar of morality, or even exclude morality from reality. Good and evil are concepts only understood by humans but many evolutionists deny their value. If evolution is true then there is no reference for morality because it ultimately originated from dead matter and nobody will be accountable for his or her deeds to a higher existence like a Creator God.

But the truth is that evil exists. No sane person will argue that for example the Nazi Holocaust or Stalin's Holocaust weren't evil. Richard M. Weaver wrote a book called Ideas Have Consequences in which he wrote: The catastrophes of our age are the product not of necessity but of unintelligent choice. The philosophy naturalism undermines absolute morality. With the rise of materialism comes the decline of morality and naturalism plays a crucial role in this. It's the rise of the planet of the self-proclaimed monkey descendants.

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