Civic Biology Controversy

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Recommended: Controversy of eugenics

Hunter's book of Civic Biology was so controversial because of conflicting ideas between creationists and evolutionists, and its support of eugenics. A Civic Biology (1914) by George William Hunter is a Biology Textbook that fueled lots of controversy in 1925 during the Scopes trial, a battle between Evolutionists and Creationists in the confinement of a courtroom. A Civic Biology was the most widely used textbook in the US for nearly a decade, and many people had conflicting ideas about it.
Creationist's beliefs in God and creation make them more inclined to disapprove of "A Civic Biology.” Most Creationists in the early 1900s had a strong belief system that did not support evolution or anything related to it. Creationism is “The doctrine …show more content…

Many terrible things ensued with eugenics in the US, such as mandatory abortions, sterilizations, discrimination, and devaluation of human life (Hill). “In the USA, eugenics societies held competitions to find the genetically fittest families.” (“Who Am I?”) Human life was treated as a science experiment rather than people with human rights to marry whoever they want. Nazis quoted Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." when he was talking about eugenics, and this contributed to the Holocaust, which killed millions of Jews. Hitler legitimized his ideas using American eugenics, gaining many followers by saying that science was on his side (Black). Eugenics ideas were at their height in USA and Germany in the 1930s, and around 25,000 Americans were sterilized around the 1930s due to a mental illness or physical disability. (“Who Am

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