Social Darwinism

I believe in social Darwinism only inasmuch as it applies to human artifacts, not to humans themselves. The term “social darwinism” triggers people and causes an instant recoil because they assume it means allowing (and even encouraging) the starvation and “weeding out” of less fit humans in the same way that less fit species go extinct in the natural world. This is obviously morally wrong, but it’s practically important to let the survival of the fittest logic apply to human artifacts (things humans produce), such as ideas, positions, companies, and products. If we are not weeding out and letting “die” worse ideas, then we are necessarily preventing better ideas from replacing them. If we are not weeding out and letting “die” bad theories (such as the four humors theory of disease), then we are preventing more correct theories (the germ theory of disease) from replacing them. We can’t let a knee-jerk reaction to the phrase “social Darwinism” or “survival of the fittest” turn us away from the important role that this process must necessarily play in social improvement. To anyone who thinks social Darwinism is always wrong, I ask, do you think a genocidal political leader should be “weeded out” and replaced in favor of a better president? If so, then you believe in social Darwinism in the correct sense: survival of the fittest applied to human artifacts, but not to humans. I’m also curious as to how atheists, who make no distinction between the natural and human world, can oppose social Darwinism but applaud natural if there is no distinction between the social and natural worlds (i.e., if humans are not “special” and are just animals like any other, then how can we logically oppose Darwinian logic in the realm of one animal—humans—but not in the realm of another—say, the first land animals?).