I finished the book today, and it has left me unsettled still, yet with more faith in the power of God to tear down the Babels of our day. The Holocaust did send the Eugenics movement into hiding. It does surprise me that more hasn't been said about this movement and our quest for racial purity. Thirty states had sterilization laws on their books. Doctors and legislators felt it their moral duty to take away the right to bear and raise children from several thousands of Americans, often without their consent in the guise of an appendectomy. The author does make the connection between the eugenics movement and the biotechnology and genetic engineering of our day. The same quest for perfection, though not based on race, can also serve to destroy us as a civilization. He appeals to "positive law" to save us from moral depravity, but I would argue that the law has to come from God and His Word. Our inalienable rights come from our Creator. If there is no Creator, then how can one argue that we have any more rights than animals? It is God who gives human beings separate dignity. The by-product of the theory of evolution is a race of people no longer morally accountable to God. "With man no longer seen as little lower than the angels, nor sparked with the divine, but simply a biological creature more evolved than apes, Galton could begin to build a science of better breeding upon a simple intuition, an intuition so disarmingly uncomplicated and eminently rational that it still makes sense today. If pigs and peas and flowers can be engineered for better traits, why not human beings?"
Evolution is not an amoral theory. The consequences of Darwin's teaching spawned a new generation of people who believed that somehow "science" had become the new savior. We are no longer accountable to God. Many may believe that God started it all, and some form of evolution started from that point on, but a large number of people, tired of the conventional Christian morality, took Darwin and ran with it as an opportunity for moral lawlessness and human pride. As Bruinis pointed out, those who were the main proponents of eugenics in the US did not have children - Galton had severe mental breakdowns, suffered from syphilis and died childless. Charles Davenport had two daughters who rejected his beliefs and they died childless. His son died of disease at a young age. Harold Laughlin ended up with epilepsy - one of the conditions that would have led to sterilization under his own state's laws. He and his wife were also unable to have children. Bruinis points out the irony as natural, but I would see it as divine consequences for ungodly choices.
As we face similar challenges today that were faced by those around the beginning of the 20th century, the question still remains - what about the moral dignity of the individual? As Bruinius puts it, "What is the foundation for human dignity in light of evolution?" If we lose our belief in a Creator God who has set human beings apart as moral entities, then doing whatever is necessary to create our own "master race" will again become the goal. Christianity requires that we bear the burdens of those less fortunate than ourselves, that we give to those in need and care for orphans and widows. We must have regard for the sanctity of human life or, as Robert H. Jackson said at the Nuremberg Trials, our quest for perfection may result in the "doom of civilization." God will not be mocked.