Ethics and Evolution

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Today the world is faced by three extremely serious dangers. We cannot be at all sure that we will get through the 21st century without a catastrophe.

The three greatest threats will be discussed in more detail below, but briefly they are as follows:

• The threat of an all-destroying thermonuclear war
• The threat of catastrophic climate change
• The threat of a global famine leading to as many as a billion human deaths

In order to avert these threats and to pass safely through the next short period of history, we urgently need human solidarity.

The ideas of Social Darwinism and the Eugenics Movement undermine human solidarity. This is not the moment for genetic improvement of the human race! Genetic evolution proceeds extremely slowly, but today technological and political change are moving with blinding speed – constantly accelerating speed. So fast, indeed, is the speed of change, that it threatens to shake human civilization to pieces.

For the sake of survival in a desperately precarious time, we can afford to allow humans to lose a percentage or two of their IQ’s or to become very slightly less athletic, if that is the consequence of failing to breed humans as though they were farm animals. In any case, the horrors committed by the Nazi’s during World War II in the name of “improving the race” should serve as a warning.

Today we live at a time of crisis for human civilization and the biosphere. We have a responsibility to save the planet for the sake of our children and grandchildren, and for the sake of all future generations. We need to save the earth for the sake of the animals and plants that might become extinct if we do not act to help them. No one can do this alone, but acting together, we can succeed. As Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!”

A latest book by John Scales Avery,  a renowned intellectual, EACPE board member, and theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. We thank him for giving us permission to reproduce it here.