In 1859 Charles Darwin published a treatise on natural history, entitled the Origin of Species, which launched a paradigm shift in the way that people viewed the history of life on earth. Ever since Christianity became the predominant religion in western culture, the prevalent theory explaining the origin of life had been based on biblical passages about the creation of the world (Dixon, 2009). Darwin’s theory of evolution shifted the agency of the origin and progression of life away from the supernatural religious explanation that had held sway in western societies, toward a scientific explanatory model based on natural selection and descent with modification (Larson, 2009). It is important to note that Darwin himself, while not deeply religious, did not view the theory of evolution as being incompatible with Christianity. He was not advocating atheism, but rather proposing a mechanical explanation of how God orchestrated the growth and variation of life forms on earth (Dixon, 2009).

While Darwinism was generally accepted as valid in the United Kingdom and many other European countries by the end of the nineteenth century, the theory encountered strong resistance in some parts of the world. In the United States, the fundamentalist Christian movement, which was founded after World War I in order to defend traditional American Christian values against the corruption of modern secularism, fought against the teaching of evolution in public schools (Keas, 2010). The constitutionally mandated separation of church and state prohibited religious instruction in American public schools, and the fundamentalist movement argued that children were being indoctrinated by a one-sided secular humanist influence, as represented by Darwinism. The struggle over the curriculum culminated in a court case, lightly referred to as ‘The Monkey Trial’, in 1925, in which a science teacher was charged with violating a ban on teaching evolution in his school. The fundamentalist movement won the case and the teaching of evolutionary theory was effectively banned from the public school system until the 1960s. Even after evolution was reintroduced to the curriculum, opponents have attempted to have alternate theories of ‘creationism’ and ‘intelligent design’ taught along with the theory of evolution (Dixon, 2009).

Theories and explanatory systems can be misused by individuals or groups with ideologically driven agendas. The Eugenics Movement, based on social Darwinism, arose in the early 20th century, encouraging selective breeding of healthy and fit individuals, and the elimination of individual considered to be ‘unfit’ from the gene pool. The United States adopted public health policies based on eugenic principles in the early 1930. Individuals with mental retardation, mental illness, and various other disabilities were sterilized, often involuntarily, so that they could not create additional ‘unfit’ citizens (Caplan, 2004). Anti-miscenegation laws, in effect in some states until the 1960s, were also partially designed to prevent the production of ‘unfit’ children.

Social Darwinism, where healthier and wealthier members of a society are encouraged to produce large numbers of children and poorer members are discouraged from reproducing, assumes that the more successful individuals have a superior genetic make-up that they can pass on to their offspring. In the Darwinian sense of natural selection, social Darwinists posit that the more successful members of a society should be selected for, contributing a larger share of their genes to the pool than their less successful counterparts (Jones). Immigrants coming to the United States, from the late 19th century through today, encounter resentment, and occasionally blatant discrimination, based on this construct that they are introducing inferior qualities to the native population and culture. It is unfortunate that a revolutionary scientific theory such as Darwin’s can be distorted into oppressive and dangerous social policy.