It seems like intelligence would be self destructive?

The other day, yesterday actually, I was driving and got lost in thought. I was thinking about all the people my age I know, and which ones were married, and which ones were not. Moreover, I started thinking about who had kids and who didn’t. I then realized that all of the smart people I know don’t have kids yet and all of the people who probably shouldn’t have kids have a lot of kids.

After this realization, two things happened. First, I recognized that it was a disturbingly eugenic thought. Second, I figured there was probably a Wikipedia page on the topic.

So, when I got home, I wasted a bunch of time researching the topic as one does. The good news is that despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary, genetic studies have shown no evidence for dysgenic effects in human populations. The bad news is that instead of intelligence being the main factor, it seems to be socioeconomic status instead. As it turns out, poor people have way more kids than rich people.

It was at this point that I realized just how complicated this whole issue is. It kind of boils down to the good old nature versus nurture debate. Intelligence is linked to environmental factors and genetics. Fertility is linked to environmental factors as well. Intelligence and fertility seem to be linked to each other too. Overall, it all quickly turns into a mess. More importantly, a mess we probably don’t want to mess with.

I say that, because what are we really going to do about it? Americans, at least for now, aren’t on board with the Canadian euthanasia kick. We’re okay with murder up until they’re out of the womb and then it’s a no-no. Eugenics is also a no-no that we don’t like to talk about. It’s not popular for the US to admit we were doing forced sterilizations before it was cool.

All of this is uncomfortable to talk about, which is a good sign that it probably should be thought about and discussed. I found this site here which talks about abortions in the US.

If you look into the origins of eugenics, you see some pretty disturbing things. I find it deeply troubling that the 2017 data estimated that African American babies made up nearly 34% of those aborted despite only being 12.3% of the population at the time. The same source says that there were 295,000 African American abortions to 575,000 live births. So, if you’re a baby born to that demographic, you have a one in three chance of not even making it out of the gate.

I think this is a tragedy and a lot of other people do too but what I find funny is the underlying logic to justify it being a tragedy. For me, I believe humans are made in the image of God. From that, it follows that all human life is precious. God says do not murder in the Bible, so as a consequence, abortion and all eugenics are immediately off the table for consideration.

However, these days there are a lot of evolutionist shills running around the place. For these people, I can’t help but scoff at their objections to either of these atrocities. Once you take God out of the equation, everything becomes permissible. You can’t really even explain why it pays to propagate the species at all. If we’re all just space dust stuck in a self-replicating loop, what’s the point of anything? Why keep wasting energy? Who even cares about energy? Who even cares about anything?

There aren’t many good answers to any of these questions without God. You just end up with a greasy mass of subjectivity. So, this is once again why I’m thankful to be a Christian. In this camp, 1 Samuel 16:7 is how we do business. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.