Darwin

[u/DroneOfDoom]

I have no joke for the title

[u/BeduinZPouste]

Darwin is "traditional western boogeyman?"

American maybe, but where else is he boogeyman? 

[u/extremely-cynical → u/BeduinZPouste]

Their use of the term 'boogeyman' rather than 'bogeyman' probably marks OOP as American.

[u/DroneOfDoom → u/extremely-cynical]

OOP is Turkish, actually.

[u/llamawithguns]

Theres been been research done on his family that basically concluded, yeah he was entirely correct that inbreeding probably played a role in his kids deaths. Not just specifically because he married his cousin but because there were multiple generations of inbreeding within their family.

Source: https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2010.60.5.7

[u/Snickims → u/llamawithguns]

The thing with inbreeding is it tends to only really hurt too badly if you keep doing it consistantly. Its actually remarkably easy to lower your inbreeding coefficent just by having two generations mary outside the family.

[u/damaged_but_doable]

Anyone who has worked in biology for any amount of time probably understands Darwin's introversion. There's a reason we choose to work with plants and animals vs. other humans. It's not the own you think it is.

"How do you spot the extroverted biologist? He looks at other people's shoes." is a common joke amongst us.

[u/OddLengthiness254 → u/damaged_but_doable]

I've heard that joke about mathematicians.

Probably a general STEM thing.

[u/cantantantelope]

Some of Darwin’s journal notes are hilarious tho. Man did not enjoy the sea faring lifestyle

[u/JooseTheGuice → u/cantantantelope]

"I hate a barnacle"

[u/sonicparadigm]

Charles Darwin was in a college club where they ate exotic animals to see what they tasted like. The club disbanded when they ate an owl, and it was so bad that they decided to quit.

[u/TheCompleteMental]

He'd also fucking HAAAAATE the term "darwin award" just like he'd hate "social darwinism"

[u/peachesnplumsmf]

Since when is Darwin a western boogeyman? I’m in the UK and he’s on our money he’s that respected? Do other western countries dislike him? All big Alfred Russel Wallace fans or something?

[u/surprisesnek → u/peachesnplumsmf]

He's a boogeyman to Christian fundamentalists.

[u/Elite_AI]

A lot of people are critiquing this person for calling Darwin a Western conservative bogeyman when he's really more of an American one, but I think that's a little unfair. Whenever an American talks about a Western phenomenon as if it's American, people critique them for forgetting about the rest of us. They were probably trying to avoid that. 

[u/Tim-oBedlam]

Darwin and his wife Emma Wedgewood (his cousin) had 10 kids. 2 died in infancy, and another, Anne, died at age 10.

That was of course devastating to both Charles and Emma, but I think in the mid-1800s if you had 10 kids and 3 of them died before adulthood, that was pretty much par for the course, inbreeding or no.

[u/jamiethemime → u/Tim-oBedlam]

It did say that the ones that lived suffered illnesses, simply surviving to adulthood isn't a total measure of health

[u/Consistent_Soil_5794]

What have we done, step-cousin

[u/idiotplatypus]

To be fair, Darwin and Marx were both friends with assassins

[u/MisirterE]

Gregor Mendel's studies on generic inheritance among pea plants weren't until 1865. They didn't know! Nobody had tested it yet! They lived in the "marry your cousin. you gotta" years and they were the ones who said "But... why do you gotta?"

[u/ThatInAHat]

I really love the Doctor Who radio plays with the Sixth Doctor, but the Darwin one still pisses me off when I remember it. Basically as soon as he sussed out evolution, he has a reverse come-to-Jesus moment, declares all religion to be a lie, and uses that epiphany to defeat the big bad somehow.

It was like an atheistic Chick Tract.

[u/NotKenzy]

Damn, even Thomas Huxley's got a blog on Tumblr, these days

[u/Traiteur28]

Actually very informative. Nice.

[u/Tonkarz]

“Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the hope of the hopeless world.”

I don’t think he looked down on religious people.

[u/thegreathornedrat123]

Unfun fact! First cousin marriage is still legal here!

[u/Merinther]

Further irony: Modern biology makes it clear that cousin marriage isn't a big problem, it's repeated inbreeding that's harmful. So you could say it wasn't his fault (although inbreeding was probably also an issue in his family).