1. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #158396 by julesfkirby on April 10, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Well Philiproulx,
Let me make an extreme case in your favour and then introduce a what if. Further, I will construct the case by assuming that we have perfect understanding of a probabilistic event and reduced the probability of error to as near zero as possible.
Case: we find what genetic combinations promote poor health or predisposition to certain genetic maladies. We forbid people from breeding that will result in this combination. I mean if we're going to abort the fetus anyway, why not intervene before it has a chance to be made. Further, we prohibit everyone over a certain age from breeding, again it reduces the chance of disability. Of course we have to mandate that anyone with a current genetic disability from a predetermined list (How it's determined and by who is a problem we can come back to later, but assume for now that it's not based on any form of discrimination rooted in race, creed, class, caste, faith - because humans have never done any of the kind of discrimination, right;)... obviously, this would still be problematic) And of course we start to weed out the weaker members of society (based again on a predetermined and equally problematic criteria). At this point we have successfully reduced the breeding human population to its strongest members, a vaste minority of the entire population. the result, probably if we're successful there is a high probability that the children do tend to be stronger, healthier, smarter (assuming we breed for it), and live longer.
But, doing this we have created a seed of our own demise. We have created an artificial genetic bottleneck, reducing the human population to a predetermined set of genetic characteristics that APPEAR to be the best suited to our survival at the time those lists of traits were made, but in limiting the genetic pool we have also reduced the possibility for human survival should an unexpected event occur, like say a disease that a group of people that did not meet the list of traits above actually had an immunity to. so you see it actually serves humanities survival to not practice eugenics because we are not omniscient. we are not gods because there are no gods and we can not know the future events, good or bad of current choices, so surely limiting probability in the way you suggest is not only immoral, but does not meet the basic goal of your desired aims, to assure the continuance of humanity. It's not only unethical, it's poor planning.

2. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #158333 by julesfkirby on April 10, 2008 at 11:00 am

Philiproulx, Just because we understand the general mechanism of evolution does not mean that we should engage in eugenics. Evolution, in and of itself has no ethical implications, it is the best way of scientifically undertanding how species evolve. Your ethical implications are the result of a major misuderstanding better the knowledge of a concept and some of the applications that a poor understanding of that same idea can lead to.