Social Darwinism

One of the great fallacies of how people perceive[d] evolution(and believe me, there are more to come) is the idea of Social Darwinism. Granted, it's an easy mistake to make, but it is completely wrong.

The basic premise boils down to a nation that natural selection can be "helped along", specifically in human society. In this idea, the strong are explicitly selected to survive over the weak. How this would be enacted differs from idea to idea, but it usually involves some type of Big Brother.

I fully respect the boundaries of Godwin's Law, and even looking towards that I believe that it is completely relevant to the argument to say that Social Darwinism was a big part of Adolf Hitler's views of the master race. Essentially, the Holocaust was one big social-Darwinist machine to leave only the 'worthy' to survive, which should give you an idea on to most ways this is enacted. The idea of the 'white man's burden' is similar.

Anyway, let's abandon racial flamebait and discuss why this is a fallacy. Evolution and natural selection are not the kind of processes that should be left up to humans. It thrives upon the unexpected, and is about what is best for a species, not about what we think is best. In a similar way, it's a reactionary process, with big changes leading to very unpredictable leaps in design. Many social Darwinist seem to think of it as improving our current form, and if evolution was like that then monkeys would have simply decided to be better at climbing trees. It's not up to humans to decide such a complex process particularity when the Social Darwinists didn't have much of a clue about evolution anyway. In fact, I doubt even the best evolutionary biologist could predict what's best for us right now.

If you want to learn a bit more, try this site.