Re: Teilhard de Chardin - new documentary

On Mon, 27 May 2024 12:29:51 +0000, *Hemidactylus*
<ecphoric@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

[cutting to the quick]

 

1. You are narrowly focused on one connotation of eugenics. Slattery seems
to be too. But did Teilhard invoke a form of eugenics in his writing?
>
2. "[A] nobly human form of eugenics" is eugenics. Full stop.

Only in your own connotation. Teilhard says in one of the quotes given
by Slattery:

"For a complex of obscure reasons, our generation still regards with
distrust all efforts proposed by science for controlling the machinery
of heredity, of sex-determination and the development of the nervous
systems."

Let's take an example. Somebody who argues that people with Down's
Syndrome should be aborted or not allowed to breed after birth IMO are
guilty of the worst form of eugenics as promoted at the time of
Teilhard's writing. Let's take the case, however, of a scientist
researching ways of genetically eliminating the future occurrence of
Down's Syndrome. That is a form of seeking to remove biological
deficiencies in humankind and easily fits into Teilhard's argument for
using "the machinery of heredity" to improve humankind. Do you think
such a scientist should be condemned?

Or let's take another Teilhard quote given by Slattery:

"What fundamental attitude…should the advancing wing of humanity take
to fixed or definitely unprogressive ethnical groups?"

Let's take female genital mutilation which is mostly found in Africa:

"The highest concentrations [of FGM] among the 15-49 age group are in
Somalia (98 percent), Guinea (97 percent), Djibouti (93 percent),
Egypt (91 percent), and Sierra Leone (90 percent). As of 2013, 27.2
million women had undergone FGM in Egypt, 23.8 million in Ethiopia,
and 19.9 million in Nigeria."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Distribution

Are agencies and individuals who are fighting to eliminate FGM guilty
of practising eugenics (your form) because they are seeking to
eliminate what they see as inferior ethical/moral practices in
particular nations?

>
So I do have answers.
>

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