Quote Originally Posted by ermitonto
I disagree. If nobody ever died of a stupid choice, we would not be the most intelligent species on the planet. In order for intelligence to evolve, unintelligence needs to be filtered out somehow. Sorry if you think I'm insensitive just because I believe the species is more important than the individual, and that evolution through natural selection is a good thing even for humans.
I'm not helping the species survive because I'm gay. Why hasnt nature eliminated homosexuality. From an evolutionary standpoint, its not a desirable trait. Do you think I should die because I'm never going to have kids?????

Or suppose the guy who Amsterdam saw die was a social worker who helped hundreds of people get their life back on track. Is it more "fit" to be a smart driver or to help hundreds of others survive. How exactly did nature filter him out? We dont know anything about him, so you really cant say how natural selection was at work. Is nature filtering out Africans by killing them off through AIDS? You can then say that natural selection was at work when the white man killed millions of Native Americans. The colonists were more fit, right, they had better weapons and whatnot? Where do we stop?

Bringing up natural selection is dangerous territory, and it reminds me of "social darwinism" when people justified all sorts of injustices by evoking it.