A reader called Ashlea has replied to my post Natural Selection and Eugenics with this comment:

I fully believe that what Hitler did WAS Eugenics. And Darwinism is a direct link to this and other things. By eliminating a God and a creator, you really do eliminate the value of human life. If one believe that firstly, he was out on this earth by some cosmic accident, that his life is nothing more than to live and to die, and that after he does there is nothing left, no after life, what value does it have? So of course people are going to look at the "evolution" of people from mud or apes or whatever the case, and they are going to try to "perfect" it. If human life is NO more valuable that the life of an animal, which why would if be if we were once animals, and we have no soul, then what is the harm in picking and choosing and killing??
It has also led to other things, such as euthanasia and abortion. If life is as valueless as Darwinism suggests, then why not just kill of the ones who are "useless"?
What we need to realize is that Yes! We were created by an Intelligent Designer. Look at what trying to prove this wrong has done??? Resulted in the death of Millions of innocent people, people with a purpose in life.

I had started to reply with a comment there, but the reply was getting too long, so… a new post it is.

Ashlea: I’m sorry, but you are guilty of several common mistakes there. I’ll try to enumerate them:

I fully believe that what Hitler did WAS Eugenics.

No argument there (although it has been argued by some that the Holocaust wasn’t really done to perfect humanity, but because Hitler envied the Jews.)

And Darwinism is a direct link to this and other things.

Here I can’t agree. Both Dawkins’ quote in my post and my own follow-up to it clearly explained that eugenics is simply an attempt to apply the millennia old selective breeding of animals to humans — which is artificial selection, and has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution (not "Darwinism", but that’s a subject for another post), which is based on natural selection.

By eliminating a GOd and a creator, you really do eliminate the value of human life.

I disagree, and such a thing has never been proved. You’ll note that virtually everyone who says "without God, life is pointless" is a believer… and if they were right, then atheists would be sad, nihilistic, suicidal people who saw no point to anything. That is, of course, not the case at all. In other words: only the people who need an external justification for their lives believe that such an external justification is universally needed. Forgive me for the harsh comparison, but this is like an addict who claims that nobody could ever live happily and healthily without the drug.

Besides, even if you were right, and life were pointless without a god, it would not follow that a god would exist. Something is not more likely to be true simply because the consequences of it being false "would be bad". Please see this entry in my FAQ for more details.

If human life is NO more valuable that the life of an animal, which why would if be if we were once animals, and we have no soul, then what is the harm in picking and choosing and killing??
It has also led to other things, such as euthanasia and abortion. If life is as valueless as Darwinism suggests, then why not just kill of the ones who are "useless"?

Again, you are confusing two separate things. Darwinian evolution describes how things work, now how people ought to behave — and neither Darwin nor modern biologists advocate eugenics (which, again, is artificial selection, and which humanity has performed on animals and plants for ages).

You also imply that human life is only worth anything if we have something known as "souls". This is the old argument: theists claim that a finite life is worthless; I say that its finite quality only makes it more precious, more worthy of being lived to the fullest. And, look — I care for other people even though I don’t believe they have supernatural, immortal "souls"! Isn’t this weird, according to your way of seeing things?

I’d also argue that euthanasia and abortion arise from respect for human life and dignity, not from lack of it, but that’s another story.

To conclude, most of your comment was an appeal to consequences. You didn’t try to show either how evolution doesn’t happen, or how intelligent design does; you just claimed that, if evolution is true, "things would be bad", therefore it must be false, and intelligent design wins "by default". Sorry to say, but that’s not very convincing…

P.S. – I’m glad you didn’t use the "Hitler and Stalin did what they did because they didn’t believe in God, therefore they thought they could do anything" argument. My reply to that one would have been a lot less nice…

The Intelligent Design proponents make a compelling, and totally legitimate, argument that if a theory has not been proven, then one suggested theory is just as good as another.

Take gravity, for example: the force of attraction between massive particles. We know a great deal about the properties of gravity, yet we know nothing about the cause of the force itself. Why are particles attracted to one another? If we review the literature, we find a lot of material dealing with the properties of gravity, but very little dealing with the underlying cause of this attraction. Until we have a proven answer to this question, it seems irresponsible to instruct students in what is, ultimately, just a theory. However, if we must discuss the theory of gravity at all, then it’s reasonable that all suggested theories should be given equal time, since none have been proven or disproven. Therefore, I formally submit that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is behind this strange and often misunderstood force.

What if it is He, pushing us down with His Noodly Appendages, that causes this force? He is invisible, remember, and is undetectable by current instruments, so in theory it is possible. And the fact that the gravitational powers of the Spaghetti Monster haven’t been disproven makes it all the more likely to be true. We can only guess as to His motives, but it’s logical to assume that if He is going to such trouble, there is a good reason. It could be that He doesn’t want us floating off earth into space, or maybe just that He enjoys touching us — we may never know.

– Bobby Henderson, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster