Sublime

To hold that human beings are the product of nothing but the evolutionary process of the strong eating the weak, but then to insist that nonetheless every person has a human dignity to be honored—is an enormous leap of faith against all evidence to the contrary.

his human flock, and it was thus right and natural for his subjects to obey him

A central debate within Darwinism concerns the unit that is actually selected: what kind of entity is it that survives, or does not survive, as a consequence of natural selection.

Two prominent philosophers proved to be especially influential members. The first was Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor who is the contemporary successor to John Rawls in defining the concept of justice. At the time, he was writing an essay titled “The Case Against Perfection: What’s Wrong with Designer Children, Bionic Athletes, and Genetic

The role of luck, therefore, appears decisive.

they are both obsessed with questions of meaning. Sometimes I think this is just a way of winding up those atheists who betray a religious or evangelical intensity in promoting their atheism.

Social Darwinists proposed that all humans began by facing a fair struggle over scarce resources: money, jobs, esteem. Some gained the upper hand in this contest, not because of improper advantages or luck but because they were intrinsically better than those they outpaced. The rich were not better from a moral point of view. They were,