Evolution is proven!

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The decision to atom bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrid conditions in the Soviet Gulag, and of course, The Holocaust all seem to confirm that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is correct. After all, according to his theory, people are but apes, with all the savage instincts of apes, and what we term Civilization is a mere illusion. Mind you, my view is that people, being people, are basically evil, in any event. Notice, even in the most supposedly Civilized countries, like The United States of America, there is always some amount of homicide, rape, and even cannibalism. As deplorable a statement about Human Nature that is!

Evolution through natural selection (or even human selection) has been proven scientifically for many many years.

It's the refusal to want to believe it and understand it that's taken a much longer time.

Charles Darwin is an interesting person to read!

People are not basically evil. Most people don’t commit homicide, rape, or cannibalism. A few do.

Evolution fosters positive traits. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without nurturing our young and helping other members of our tribes.

This is the primary reason why I doubt that autism was derived from the genes of Neanderthal Man.

Clearly, Neanderthal people had to be social and cooperate in order to survive.

Perhaps, as evil as people are, they basically had to develop some altruistic traits, to ensure their own individual, and perhaps Tribal, survival. Still, it is all based on the selfish desire to survive!

Or...

"Evolution is DISproven" because of all of that stuff it shows that all humans are all stained by the original sin of Adam and Eve disobeying God telling them not to eat the fruit, and being expelled from the Garden of Eden, ergo the Garden of Eden story must be literally true, ergo evolution must be wrong.

Are you suggesting that people actually think: I’d better help this person out because it will help me survive?

I don’t think that people are as selfish as you are suggesting. Via natural selection, positive traits are passed on because the others are not going to be. A mother who doesn’t nurture her children is probably going to have children who fail to thrive and pass on genes.

Communities are not going to advance when people can’t help each other.

I don’t think people are selfishly thinking of their own survival all the time but are products of the traits that are imbedded in their genes.

Of course, most children who are free of sociopathy can learn good citizenship through education and the good examples of others.

When people state that evolution should promote extremely egoistic behaviors, I would like to point out one aspect:

Humans naturally form societes.
Humans evolve as societes (tribes, cultures, etc).
Individual humans survive and reproduce within their societes.

This is why "altruistic" behaviors really help survive - if they help the society survive and if the society rewards them.

Right, and if a primate relative lived during the time of our ancestors that failed to form tribal relationships, that species would not have survived or been as successful as groups that do. There wouldn’t be strength in numbers to avoid predators or other forms of help to ensure the survival of the species.

So you do not believe in Social Darwinism, then?

Hmmm., that is an interesting point. I never thought of it like that.

Not the way it is typically presented, for sure.
Cooperation is a very important part of success of humans.
The competition-cooperation dynamics in our species is generally complex.
Typically, "social darvinists" take only competition into account and neglect cooperation. In my opinion, wrongly. Both are important.

That is interesting to think about.

It's not an interesting point, though, any more.
Science doesn't prove anything, it only ever disproves a theory. Evolution is s great theory, it is consistent with an awful lot of data and has smazing predictive powers - and so far, no one was able to disprove it OR come up with a rival theory as consistent with the data and as powerful in predicting outcomes.
The garden eden theory above is only consistent with a tiny bit of data, but there's no useful test of its predictive powers.

If you find a theory that's consistent with the data, look for a way to disprove it, and give it your best. If you still fail to disprove it, you have a theory to build on.
That's science.

True but in evolution of social animals some individuals will always try to break the rules in for personal gain. It happens in social insects too.