the guy I saw talking about the broader social implications of schoolkids with guns said something about keeping gods out of schools that really grated my cheese. The way he put it was, paraphrasing:
[i]The cause of mass murder in public schools is general moral decay, specifically that atheists are taking gods out of schools and replacing them with Evolution, where the strong kill the weak.[/i]
First, I think he made a good point about moral decay. Too many people think morality is a joke.
Second, the unfortunate parent is plain wrong about evolution. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” has nothing to do with intraspecies predation, only with [i]competition[/i] for resources. To use the common giraffe example, giraffes with long necks survived not because they competed against [i]other giraffes[/i] for the leaves at the tops of the trees, but because the long-necked giraffes were able to reach leaves on trees [i]higher than the more aggressive species[/i] could reach. All giraffes were chased off from shorter plants by this more aggressive species, but the tall giraffes were still able to eat by reaching taller than this other, more aggressive species. I admit, I invented this “other species” but evolution is always illustrated with giraffes and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time researching this. Bottom line: survival of the fittest means only that survivors are those capable of surviving, meaning acquiring (or, in the case of humans, inventing) the necessities of survival.
Modern day humans exist primarily because our ancient ancestores competed successfully against cold and predation, not each other, and we are all genetically capable of survival. Metaphors such as “dog-eat-dog” are just not accurate descriptions of our Natural Role in the Universe, and represent a worldview that makes life more difficult for everybody.