Psychology Today Blogger Says Darwinism Requires Support of Suicide

Darwinism is a theory of biological inception and change over time.  Yet some advocates, bent on destroying Judeo/Christian moral philosophy that focuses on intrinsic human dignity, abuse the theory by using it as a justification to promote dangerous cultural and societal shifts.  The latest example: Darwinism requires support of some suicides.  From the blog post by Steve Stewart-Williams :

. . . Thus, the injunction against assisted suicide – like that against unassisted suicide – is commonly underwritten by the doctrine of human dignity. But the whole edifice starts to crumble once we bring Darwin into the picture. With the corrective lens of evolutionary theory, the view that human life is infinitely valuable suddenly seems like a vast and unjustified over-valuation of human life. This is because Darwin’s theory undermines the traditional reasons for thinking human life might have infinite value: the image-of-God thesis and the rationality thesis (see my last post ).

But if human life is not supremely valuable after all, then there is no longer any reason to think that suicide or voluntary euthanasia is necessarily wrong under any or all circumstances. In fact, it starts to seem decidedly odd that we have elevated human life – i.e., pure biological continuation – so far above the quality of the life in question for the person living it. Why should life be considered valuable in and of itself, independently of the happiness of the individual living that life?

Note the potential for tremendous harm here. A publication involved with mental health is the forum for pushing an anti-anti suicide meme. That’s dangerous to despairing people and could very well undermine the important work of suicide prevention.

More details and analysis over at Secondhand Smoke .