Richard Dawkins and the Prince of Darkness

Every Prince deserves a courtier or schlepper to scrape and bow at their every whim. We can only endorse Richard Dawkins application for the role of courtier to the Prince of Darkness. Seldom has such a well qualified candidate presented themselves for such a post.

Richard Dawkins tweeted on 16 Feb 2020:

‘It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.’

Eugenics won’t work because we are human beings with a moral compass. The holocaust would ‘work’ for aimals but for human beings  it produces revulsion and people who are willing to die to stop it. We look after the sick and disabled and frankly do not care if horses and dogs do not do the same. This is a breathtaking logical fallacy – going from ‘we are animals’ to ‘we are merely/only animals’ with a definition of ‘animal’ as a being without moral compass.

Dawkings simply uses the word ‘works’ in a dishonest way. Rounding up animals who are no longer required and slaughtering them to save costs may be said to ‘ work’.  However when people attempt to behave in the same way to other human beings serious psychological disorders arise ..and this in the minds of those who claimed to support such policies. Fanon documented the nightmares and disorders that French torturers of Algerian freedom fighters suffered from and even Hitler and his top staff were aware that German soldiers could not engage in mass killing of civilians without serious psychological disorders. In order to prevent mass outrage, the ‘final solution’ had to be kept as secret as possible. What does it mean to say that such a policy ‘works’?

There is also a circular argument here. This school of genetic reductionists  retort to anyone who mentions morality by saying moral rules are in fact rules that serve the  continued survival of the species. However when moral rules get in their way they do not hesitate to say they are ‘fictions’.

What does it mean to say that a policy that makes many people sick and and want to throw up and willing to kill those who would implement it  ‘works’?