In Ben Stein’s recent box office splash and pro-intelligent design documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” links between Darwinism and the genocidal policies of Adolf Hitler are probed and explored. That link, according to Coral Ridge Ministries, has been historically proven time and time again.In 2006, Coral Ridge Ministries, one of the largest Christian media ministries in the nation, produced its own documentary on the subject titled, “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy.”
Jerry Newcombe, co-producer of the film, said “Expelled” brought up a fresh examination of the facts – namely that Darwinism, and later, through its racially charged forms of social Darwinism advocating the extermination of “inferior” races, provided Hitler with the springs to launch the most horrific genocide known to man.
“The ideas of Charles Darwin helped fuel the Nazi killing machine, which took the lives of some 10-15 million people,” he said in a statement.
Read more here.
[From me]
Rebuttal, anyone, anyone?
35 Comments, Comment or Ping
Neil
I think Hitler would have been awful with or without Darwin. The undeniable fact is that in a nothingness-to-molecules-to-man worldview that there is no foundation to criticize Hitler. Survival of the fittest and all that. As Doestevsky said, “If there is no God, everything is permissable.”
I’m hoping to see Expelled this weekend to see what the Hitler fuss is all about. Sounds like that is one spot where the movie got a little off track.
Neil’s last blog post..Sickening
May 2nd, 2008
Marty Duren
Neil-
The question is not whether Adolph Hitler would have been as bad without Darwin; it is whether the holocaust would have happened without it. The answer to that question is “no.”
Darwinism may not have been the foundation, but it certainly was indispensible to the convincing an otherwise cultured people the genocide was acceptable.
May 2nd, 2008
Quinn Hooks
The connection between Social Darwinism and the Holocaust is well documented. I had a college professor point this out in one of my history classes. I learned this not at a Christian college but at The Citadel and the professor in question did not believe the Old Testament as being factual.
Quinn Hooks’s last blog post..Urgent action needed against CBS? ?Dexter?
May 2nd, 2008
Jonathan
Unless Darwin is running for president, whether or not Darwinism influenced Hitler is not relevant to whether or not the scientific principles are valid.
May 2nd, 2008
Marty Duren
Jonathan-
whether Darwin is running for president is indeed irrelevant, as is your comparison. If the scientific principles are valid then there are huge social implications, ie, genocide and eugenics. Indeed naturalistic Darwinism can provide no framework for any moral behavior.
May 2nd, 2008
Kevin S (not B)
My favorite part of the movie was seeing Richard Dawkins suggesting that maybe life on earth is the result of being seeded by space aliens. Its a good thing that he approaches things so rationally, unlike those wacky Christians who believe in God.
Kevin S (not B)’s last blog post..Epicenter: The Middle East
May 2nd, 2008
Jonathan
Again, I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I understand that it’s about academic/scientific freedom and Darwinism vs. ID. The point I’m making is that (although it may be an interesting issue in its own right) whether or not Darwinism can provide a framework for moral behavior is relevant neither to the issues of the scientific merits of Darwinism and of ID nor to the issues of whether or not ID is or should be treated with respect as a scientific discipline…which, as I understand it, are the central questions the film attempts to address. In my opinion, by focusing of the alleged Nazi connection, the film has provided an easy target for critics and a distraction from the film’s main thesis.
May 2nd, 2008
Pauli Ojala
Ben(jamin) Stein is under heavy artillery for ‘exaggerating’ or ‘going easy’ on the influence of evolutionism behind Nazism and Stalinism (super evolution of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Russia). But the monstrous Haeckelian type of vulgar evolutionism drove not only the ‘Politics-is-applied-biology’ Nazi takeover in the continental Europe, but even the nationalistic collision at the World War I. It was Charles Darwin himself, who praised and raised the monstrous German Ernst Haeckel with his still recycled embryo drawing frauds etc. in the spotlight as the greatest authority in the field of human evolution, even in the preface to his Descent of man in 1871. If Thomas Henry Huxley with his concept of ‘agnostism’ was Darwins bulldog in England, Haeckel was his Rotweiler in Germany. Haeckel was also the first one to propose a systematic answer to the Judenfrage: To EXPEL all the Jews from their chairs at the universities.
‘Kampf’ was a direct translation of ’struggle’ from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Seinen Kampf. His application.
Catch 22: As an indication of the evolutionary ‘PUS’, Haeckel’s 140 years old fake embryo drawings have been mindlessly recycled in most biology text books until this millennium. This despite the fact that Haeckel’s crackpot raging Recapitulation/Biogenetic Law and functioning gill slits of human embryos have been at the ethical tangent race hygiene/eugenics/genocide, infanticide, and Freudian psychoanalysis (subconscious atavisms). It was the second to most cross/scientific paradigm in the 20th century. Dawkins is the Oxford professor for PUS - and should gather the courage of Stephen Jay Gould who could feel ashamed about it. Text book authors are making a mockery out of science.
Today, developmental biologists are anticipating legislation of laws that would define the do’s and dont’s. In England, they are fertilizing human embryos for research purposes and pipetting chimera embryos of humans and monkeys, ‘legally’. The legislation should not distract individual researchers from their personal awareness of responsibility. A permissive law merely defines the ethical minimum. The lesson is that a law is no substitute for morals and that dissidents should not be intimidated.
More from conference posters and articles defended and published in the field of bioethics and history of biology:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Asian_Bioethics.pdf
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Haeckelianlegacy_ABC5.pdf
BUT the marriage laws were once erected not only in the Nazi Germany but also in the multicultural states of America upon the speculation that the mulatto was a relatively sterile and shortlived hybrid. The absence of blood transfusion between “white” and “colored races” was self evident.
The first law on sterilization in US had been established in 1907 in Indiana, and 23 similar laws had been passed in 15 States and sterilization was practiced in 124 institutions in 1921 (these were the times of IQ-tests under Gould’s scrutiny in his Mismeasure of Man in 1981). By 1931 thirty states had passed sterization laws in the US. Typically, the operations hit blacks the most in the US, poor women in the Europe, and often the victims were never even told they had been sterilized.
Mendelism outweighed recapitulation (embryos climbing up their evolutionary tree through fish-, amphibian- and reptilian stages), but that merely smoothened the way for the brutal 1930’s biolegislation - that quickly penetrated practically all Western countries. The laws were copied from country to country. The A-B-O blood groups, haemophilia, eye colours etc. were found to be inherited in a Mendelian fashion by 1910. So also the complex traits and social (mis)behaviour such as alcoholism, schizophrenia, manic depression, criminality, rebelliousness, artistic sense, pauperism, racial differences, inherited scholarship (and its converse, feeble-mindedness) were all thought to be determined by one or two genes. Mendelism was “experimental” and quantitative, and its exaggeration outweighed the more cautious biometry operating on smaller variations, not discontinuous leaps. Its advocates boldly claimed that these problems could be done away within a few generations through selection, persisted (although most biologists must have known that defective genes could not be eliminated, even with the most intense forced sterilizations and marriage restrictions due to recessive genes and synergism. Nevertheless, these laws were held until 1970’s and were typically changed only when the abortion legislation were released (1973).
So the American laws were pioneering endeavours. In Europe Denmark passed the first sterilization legislation in Europe (1929). Denmark was followed by Switzerland, Germany that had felt to the hands of Hitler and Gobineu, and other Nordic countries: Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (1935), and Iceland (1938 ). Seldom is it mentioned in the popular media, that the first outright race biological institution in the world was not established in Germany but in 1921 in Uppsala, Sweden. (I am not aware of the ethymology of the ‘Up’ of the ancient city from Plinius’ Ultima Thule, or the secret organ Thule Gesellschaft that introduced Adolf, however.) In 1907 the Society for Racial Hygiene in Germany had changed its name to the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, and in 1910 Swedish Society for Eugenics (Sällskap för Rashygien) had become its first foreign affiliate. Today, Swedish state church is definitely the most liberal in the face of the world.
Hitler’s formulation of the differences between the human races was affected by the brilliant sky-blue eyed Ernst Haeckel, praised and raised by Darwin. At the top of the unilinear progression were usually the “Nordics”, a tall race of blue-eyed blonds. Haeckel’s position on the ‘Judenfrage’ was assimilation and Expelled-command from their university chairs, not yet an open elimination. But was it different only in degree, rather than kind?
In 1917 the immigration of “defective” groups was forbidden even in the United States by a law. In 1921 the European immigration was diminished to 3% based on the 1910 census. Eventually, in the strategical year of 1924 the finest hour of eugenics had come and the fatal law was passed by Congress. It diminished immigration to 2% of the foreign-born from each country based on the 1890 census in order to preserve the “nordic” balance in population, and was hold through World War II until 1965.
Richard Lewontin writes:“The leading American idealogue of the innate mental inferiority of the working class was, however, H.H. Goddard, a pioneer of the mental testing movement, the discoverer of the Kallikak family, and the administrant of IQ-tests to immigrants that found 83 % of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the the Russians to be feebleminded.” Regarding us Finns, Finnish emmigrants put the cross on the box reserved for the “yellow” group, until 1965.
Germany just was the most scientifically and culturally advanced nation of the world upon opening the riddles at the close of the nineteenth century. And she went Full Monty.
pauli.ojala@gmail.com
Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htm
May 2nd, 2008
hahajohnnyb
Ah just another rehash of the debunked “Eugenics is bad” BS, or that no Christian could possibly support Eugenics. In Mathew 7, Jesus says that a good tree will only yield good fruit, and that a bad tree will only yield bad fruit, ha concludes that bad trees should be chopped down and burned.
Every species of plant and animal made useful for mankind has been a result of selective breeding. Mankind has taken traits that he saw desirable in plants and animals, and breed for those traits. He did not breed he worst stock and somehow magically create a superior stock. God does not role dice like that.
Human intelligence has been shown in studies of twins raised in separate homes to be nearly entirely a function of genetics, as twins are most alike in intelligence than their adoptive siblings raised in the same home. The case for the environmentalists has no merit what so ever.
IQ has been shown to be the most important factor in an individual success in life and the average IQ of a society is highly correlated with the success of that society. Unsuccessful societies are unsuccessful because they have low IQs, and successful societies are successful because they have high IQs. The more successful a society, the lower its suffering factor the higher its poverty, crime and disease.
Its criminal and immoral not to have a eugenics in place, filtering out the dumbest most criminally prone individuals from ever being born rather than burden society with imprisoning them or supporting them on Welfare later. I fully support a wide spread and mandatory sterilization program in the United States right now, further we should look more deeply into our goals with special ed. Why are we spending so much more on the education of retards than the the education of our most talented and gifted young people?
If this seems mean spirited, oh well. Stupidity causes suffering in the world and the kids with the highest IQ provide the greatest benefit to the world because they make the greatest contribution. A retard is never going to do anything more than push a broom, but the gifted kid in school today might be your surgeon tomorrow. I would much rather have a competent surgeon than a competent janitor, not that being a janitor or a dish washer is an unimportant job.
Everyone deserves to be treated with honor and respect. Even the stupid and the criminal cannot help who they are, but who they are cannot be changed through education either. Its just an unfortunate happenstance that they were born they way they were, but we have an obligation to the future to insure that fewer people of the future suffer low IQ and that society does not have to be burdened with an over population of low IQ people.
Further our future foreign aid to countries in Africa and the caribbean should be rethought, as it is becoming obvious that we are subsidizing the over population of the stupid. Future aid programs should be coupled with sound sterilization programs, to reduce our future burden in supporting the stupid around the world.
We have been gifted with good IQ tests, and humane methods of sterilization. There is no need to kill people, but it would be criminally negligent to give the future even more idiots than we have had to bear ourselves. Its an unfortunate consequence of history that the United States every ceased its Eugenic Programs, and needs to restart as soon as possible for everyone on public assistance or in Prison.
May 3rd, 2008
Marty Duren
Jonathan-
Thanks for the clarification. You’re probably right.
Marty Duren’s last blog post..Expelled, Movie Review
May 3rd, 2008
Ed
Darwinian Evolution in the coat of Science is pretty appalling - but then it is a reflection of our sinful human nature to put people in tiers based on different categories - a worldview that leverages Darwinian Evolutionary thought “naturally” results in Euthansia, Eugenics…. policies to rid the populace of “unfit”
May 3rd, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Kevin (B)
Social Darwinism is no more a branch of evolution than Meme theory is a branch of biology. Evolution describes how species evolved, “social Darwinism” was an attempt to apply those biological principals to social struggles. That the concept was co-opted from Darwin’s theory says nothing about the validity of the theory itself (as Jonathan points out).
Neil
As an asside, and just for your information, Dostoyevsky never said “If God does not exist, everything is permissible” in any of his known works, Sartre’s reference notwithstanding, The misattributed quote would be a good summary of one of the themes in “The Brothers Karamazov” though.
I agree that Hitler would have been awful with or without the concept of evolution.
Marty
Hitler was raised as a Christian and invoked God, Jesus, and Christianity in his speeches and also in Mein Kampf. So those notions were as essential as any for Hitler’s justification of the Holocaust.
From Mein Kampt: “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the Almighty Creator by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
From a speach: “Today Christians stand at the head of Germany. I pledge that I never tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent developments in literature, in the Theatre, and in the press - In short we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years.” Three years later Hitler informed General Gerhart Engel ” I am now as before a Cathholic and will always remain so.”
Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsfuhrer of the SS), the person ordered by Adolf Hitler to implement the “final solution” (Holocaust), told his personal masseur Felix Kersten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient Aryan scripture, the Bhagavad Gita because it relieved him of guilt about what he was doing — he felt that like the warrior Arjuna, he was simply doing his duty without attachment to his actions.
Kevin (not B)
What do you think Dawkins means when he says that life on earth could have been “seeded by space aliens?” I’m asking in the hopes that it may inspire some people to do a little research, but I’m also asking because I’m curious what conclusions people, who have not followed the science much, draw from statements like these.
May 3rd, 2008
Neil
“As an asside, and just for your information, Dostoyevsky never said “If God does not exist, everything is permissible” in any of his known works, Sartre’s reference notwithstanding, The misattributed quote would be a good summary of one of the themes in “The Brothers Karamazov” though.”
I know you consider the Atheists-r-us site to be infallible, but just because it wasn’t in a known work doesn’t mean he said it.
And in the event that he didn’t say it, I will: If God does not exist, everything is permissible. You can quote me on that! In the nonethingness-to-molecules-to-man fiction there is zero foundation for morality. Just your basic bags of chemicals bouncing around leading people to think there is such a thing. But of course in that worldview there is no difference between mass murderers and those that serve the poor.
Neil’s last blog post..Sickening
May 3rd, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Pauli Ojala
Thanks for reproducing the text from http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htm. What are your thoughts about how Darwin, or his the theory of evolution, vs. the individuals who borrowed some of the concepts to rationalize their pet social prejudices, is responsible for the Holocaust?
By analogy, Is nuclear physics responsible for nuclear war, or is the weapons designers? The question is not addressing whether nuclear physics is necessary for the weapons design, it is addressing the proper placement of culpability.
May 3rd, 2008
Neil
Oops - it should have read, “doesn’t mean he said didn’t say it.”
You really ought to
Neil’s last blog post..Sickening
May 3rd, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Neil
To whom? Not to me (for example).
May 3rd, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Neil,
So your point is that, unless someone can prove that he never said it, you are willing to believe that he did, even if there is no record of him saying it?
May 3rd, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
hahajohnnyb,
Isn’t compassion also important for a society’s success? Without it, individuals would erode the social structure from within. Then solely from a utilitarian perspective, the practice of eugenics would be detrimental since presumable, those who are less compassionate would assume the responsibility to determine who would be allowed to produce progeny - they would presumably use themselves as the standard for the determination.
I don’t think that in this case, the utilitarian consideration is the most important one. In this case, I think the more salient consideration is that human nature is at odds with eugenics. Most of us have an innate sense of empathy which makes the devaluation of others, even those who may be less capable in certain ways, unappealing enough that we are not willing to consider eugenics.
May 3rd, 2008
Pauli Ojala
I have collected and scanned about 200 quotes and figures on the importance of Haeckel’s frauds and recapitulation here:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Sitaatit.htm
I will pick some comments by the Jewish scholar and ardent critic of Richard Dawkins SJ Gould. Remember that it was Gould the paleontologist who stated that there is a ‘dirty, little trade secret in paleontology’ which is the lack of intermediate fossils. So he came up with the punctualism contra gradualism theory of evolution. Gould’s proof was that there were no fossil proofs, in a sense.
“We grasp the importance of recapitulation only when we understand that it served as the organizing idea for generations of work in comparative embryology, physiology, and morphology.” Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and phylogeny (1977), s. 116.
“Haeckel’s forceful, eminently comprehensible, if not always accurate, books appeared in all major languages and surely exerted more influence than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin and Huxley (by Huxley’s own frank admission), in convincing people throughout the world about the validity of evolution… To cut to the quick of this drama: Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases - in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent - simply copied the same figure over and over again.” (SJ Gould, Natural History 3/2000 p. 42, 44.)
“Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because, as stated above, textbooks copy from previous texts. (I have written two essays on this lamentable practise: one on the amusingly perennial description of the eohippus, or ‘dawn horse’, as the size of a fox terrier, even though most authors, including yours only, have no idea of the dimensions or appearance of this breed; and the other on the persistent claim that elongating giraffe necks provide our best illustration of Darwinian natural selection versus Lamarckian use and disuse when, in fact, no meaningful data exist on the evolution of this justly celebrated structure.)” (SJ Gould, Natural History 3/2000 p. 44.)
“Yet Haeckel’s critics recognized from the start that this master naturalist, this more than competent artist, took systematic license in ‘improving’ his specimens to make them more symmetrical or more beautiful. In particular, the gorgeous plates for his technical monograph on the taxonomy of radiolarians (intricate and delicate skeletons of single-celled planktonic organisms) ofteh ‘enhanced’ the actual appearances (already stunningly complex and remarkably symmetrical) by inventing structures with perfect geometric regularity.” (SJ Gould, Natural History 3/2000 p. 43.)
“Haeckel remains most famous today as the chief architect and propagandist for a famous argument that science disproved long ago but that popular culture has never fully abandoned, if only because the standard description sounds so wonderfully arcane and mellifluous: ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, otherwise known as the theory of recapitulation…” SJ Gould, Natural History 3/2000 p. 44.
“In my own field of paleontology, for example, it governed most studies in phyletic reconstruction from Haeckel’s day right through the 1930s… As late as 1957, Jesse James Galloway wrote: ‘Ideally, a classification is built on the basis of comparative structure, and the application of the Law of Recapitulation, checked by the known geologic range of each taxonomic group (p 395).’” Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and phylogeny (1977) s. 116. Galloway, JJ 1957, Bull. Amer. Paelontol. 37, 345-486.
“It is no exaggeration to say that the theory of recapitulation has had more effect upon paleontologic thought than has any doctrine aside from that of organic evolution itself”. WH Easton 1960, Invertebrate paleontology s. 33. Gould Ontogeny and phylogeny (1977) s. 116.
May 3rd, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Pauli Ojala,
Interesting quotes about Haeckel’s recapitulation theory! But since the theory has long ago been rejected by biologists, why is it important today in a discussion about evolution?
And just out of curiosity - since the theory has indeed been long rejected, why go to the trouble of posting several quotes to cast doubt on it?
May 3rd, 2008
Ed Darrell
The “Christian Group” is guilty of history malpractice, and science malpractice.
Darwin didn’t invent nationalism. Darwin didn’t invent racism. Darwin didn’t invent Germany. Darwin didn’t force an end to World War I that left Germany humiliated and left with a reparations bill designed to make them angry and bitter. Darwin didn’t shoot Archduke Ferdinand. Darwin didn’t overthrow the Czar. Darwin didn’t order the printing of Deutsche marks in 1920 that forced hyperinflation on the German people. Darwin wasn’t a Jew. Darwin never visited Vienna, where Hitler’s racism born and was nurtured. Darwin didn’t invent eugenics, either the practice or the word. Darwin didn’t practice eugenics. Darwin didn’t say good things about eugenics. Darwin didn’t invent murder. Darwin didn’t endorse murder. Darwin didn’t invent genocide — Darwin warned that genocide would prevent the fittest from surviving, in fact. Darwin didn’t shake his fist at God nor make any unholy alliances with any church in order to carry on his work undisturbed.
Need I continue? Darwin had just about zippity-doo-dah to do with World War II and the Holocaust.
Darwin didn’t say morals were worthless — in fact, he said a good solid morality is absolutely essential to the rise and survival of the human race (singular: “race”). Darwin wrote,
Is that what you claim caused the Holocaust? Who should we crucify, this time, Jesus again?
Here is what Darwin really wrote about morals in humans:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/why-study-evolution/darwin-on-the-evolution-of-morality-in-humans/
Go read it, and you’ll know more than Ben Stein, more than Richard Weikart, and more than “Christian group.” What will you do with that knowledge?
May 4th, 2008
Marty Duren
3A-
You said:
There is little doubt about the duplicity of the Catholic church regarding its relationship with National Socialism, just as there is little doubt of the relationships between IBM, Ford and other companies’ relationships with the same. I will not dispute that fact, if that is what you were attempting to establish.
However, whether Hitler invoked God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit or a screaming mimi, has nothing to do with whether Hitler himself was a follower of Christ. His claim to be Catholic, for example, is no different than any dozen American political candidates who invoke “God” or the Bible while running for office. The purpose is to gain the support of the people. In most instances, it is a bogus claim. Surely you agree with that.
Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruit.” Not by their claims. The fruit of the lives of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, et al, preclude any possibility that any of them were followers of Christ.
The difference is that naturalistic Darwinism, not claims of Christianity, was in perfect line with the actions of the Third Reich, including the Final Solution. The “Confessing Church” of Bonheoffer and the Scholls was the actual representation of Christianity in Nazi Germany.
BTW, I think that Christoper Hitchens and Richard Dawkins were also both “raised as Christians” to some degree. Doesn’t mean much unless one has personally repented and demonstrated faith in Christ alone.
Marty Duren’s last blog post..Expelled, Movie Review
May 4th, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Marty,
I am attempting to point out that the complicity of the Church is no more a reflection of Christianity than the complicity of social Darwinism is a reflection of evolutionary theory (a.k.a. Darwinism). I’m reacting to one of the premises of Expelled as expressed through the film’s co-producer and as repeated on this blog post:
Ed Darrell made some salient observations (just above) which haven’t gotten any responses so I’d like to fold a few of them in to my response here. Hitler used some ideas from Social Darwinism (sort of… more on that just below), not biology and therefore, not Darwinism, in the same way that he used Christianity to justify his plans.
Note that the concept of “Social Darwinism” was originally an observation of how society might also follow evolutionary principles. It was not a justification for eugenics, which was already being advocated by others like Thomas Malthus well before Darwin published “On the Origin of Species.” So it’s not really even correct to say that social Darwinism influenced Hitler. Instead, we might say that the conflation of social Darwinism with eugenics influenced him. Though we might say that, I think it is far more realistic to say that those ideas were Hitler’s rationalizations for his agenda which was influenced directly by the insults on Germany by WWI sanctions.
Agreed. And by the same token, whether Hitler evoked ideas from social Darwinism or not says nothing about the fact of evolution or the theory of natural selection, or even about social Darwinism in its original sense.
Other than the conflation of social Darwinism with earlier ideas about eugenics, I don’t know of any other movement that viewed the theory of evolution as a justification for eugenics or any other kinds of mass murder. The same, however, cannot be said of Christianity. Note that Darwin, who some might consider the ‘root of the tree’, denounced eugenics. Hitler seems to be an illegitimate graft onto both the ‘tree’ of Christianity and the ‘tree’ of social Darwinism (its conflation with eugenics, that is; not social Darwinism per se). However, one would be hard pressed to cite either idea as the motivation for Hitler’s “solution.” One could however cite either idea as a rationalization for it.
Naturalistic Darwinisms makes no statements, either positive or negative, about eugenics. Could you explain how you feel that naturalistic Darwinism is inline with “the solution?” Do you mean to say “social Darwinism” instead (and in particular, it’s conflation with eugenics)?
Do you know for a fact that they did not ‘personally repent’ before leaving Christianity? I haven’t read much detail about their personal lives and I’m just wondering if you have.
May 5th, 2008
Marty Duren
3A-
I didn’t say anything about the statements of Naturalistic Darwinism. The foundation of Darwinism is survival of the fittest which certainly fits the Nazi philosophy, claimed or not.
Without going back to the book, I’m almost positive that Hitchens was in a Catholic school as a youth and that Dawkins was raised in an Anglican household (from a debate video). I stand to be corrected the history of either, but I’m pretty sure I’m close if not spot on.
That was why my phrase was in quotes. They were raised with a Christian influence, but rejected it.
Marty Duren’s last blog post..The Impending Disintegration of American Denominationalism
May 6th, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Marty,
“Survival of the Fittest” was not the foundation for Darwin’s work - “natural selection” was the foundation - natural selection is a term for describing the mechanism of evolution. Herbert Spenser coined the phrase, “survival of the fittest,” to describe about how the principals of natural selection (a.k.a. Darwinism) might be applied to economics. “Survival of the fittest” also has nothing to do with eugenics.
What do you think about my earlier comment on eugenics - that eugenics was a concept that predated Darwin’s work and that those who were proponents of eugenics later conflated Darwinism with eugenics? Proponents of eugenics before Darwin didn’t need the concept of natural selection in order to support their views. Eugenics would have been present as an influence for Hitler with or without the theory of natural selection, or even the idea of survival of the fittest.
I didn’t doubt that they were raised Christians - I was pretty sure they were. I was wondering if you had any reason to believe that they had never “personally repented and demonstrated faith in Christ alone.”
May 7th, 2008
Ed Darrell
I didn’t say anything about the statements of Naturalistic Darwinism. The foundation of Darwinism is survival of the fittest which certainly fits the Nazi philosophy, claimed or not.
You’re confusing murder with evolution. Murder frustrates natural selection. Remember, “Nature red in tooth and claw” was the Christian poet’s description of nature, not Darwin’s — and even at that, it describes a nature of predator and prey, not a nature of murder.
See if you can sort out the difference between murder and natural selection. If you confuse them, you’ll never understand either why natural selection works, nor why murder frustrates natural selection.
Ed Darrell’s last blog post..Archaeology marches on! Carnivals to catch up
May 7th, 2008
Ed Darrell
Oouch. That first paragraph was from another commenter. Sorry for the formatting difficulty.
Ed Darrell’s last blog post..Archaeology marches on! Carnivals to catch up
May 7th, 2008
Miguel Chavez
The very best way to win an argument is to distort your opponents views and make them look ridiculous. Whenever possible, quote them out of context. If this fails, call your opponents Nazis (or communists, that works too).
May 8th, 2008
Marty Duren
Miguel-
No one on this thread has called anyone a communist or a Nazi. The discussion concerns whether the principles in naturalistic Darwinism were in play in the formulation of Hitler’s genocidal thinking. It’s a legit issue.
Ed-
You did appear to be arguing with yourself instead of me ;^)
I did google “murder frustrates natural selection,” and found one use: yours, here. Doesn’t seem to be a common idea.
3A-
This will be my final comment; you are welcome to have the last word (if you haven’t forgotten about it). I’ll try to be a little more thorough.
Your comments seem to be pointing toward one concept: That Hitler’s thoughts toward The Final Solution were not influenced by naturalistic Darwinism any more than by Christianity, but it seems that you make no allowance for the reality that ideas have consequences, even consequences that the originator of the idea never intended. Above, Ed gave a litany of things for which Charles Darwin was not responsible, but no one in this thread has blamed Darwin himself for anything. It is to the influence of the philosophy that bears his name that I speak.
Hitler, et al, need not to have claimed Darwin to have been following in the footsteps of his thinking, even if they took it to a place he never wanted it to go (as most think happened with the Nazi treatment of Nietzsche’s Übermensch). Honestly, when the original name of Darwin’s book was, “On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life,” it really isn’t too hard to see the philosophical connection.
The entire premise of Aryan philosophy was that it was the favored race. Because “natural selection” (which is an oxymoron if there ever was one) cannot make value statements (which you acknowledge above) there is no way to argue that mankind’s eugenics decisions and genocidal decisions are not merely a part of the selection process.
Marty Duren’s last blog post..Post Denominationalism?We?re Not Who We Thought We Were
May 8th, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Thanks, Marty. I’ll use the last word not to advance the argument any further, but just to clarify my position where I feel the clarification is needed and to respond to your last point:
I do recognize that ideas can have unintended consequenses. I also think some ideas of Darwin were co-opted. My point is that we can’t say with such certainty that the ideas of Darwin were necessary for the “final resolution” as you suggested, because the ideas for eugenics, and by extreme extension, genoside were already in place before Darwin’s ideas were presented. The “final resolution” would likely have found enough fodder from those ideas even without Darwin.
I do see it as part of the selection process: we are cruel and murderous as a result of evolution, and mass genocides have a genetic affect on the human species.
But Hitler did not need any knowledge of evolution to know that if he killed everyone but “Aryans,” that only Aryans would be left. In other words, people knew well in advance of darwins that fair skin families produce fair skin babies, blue eyed families produce blue eyed babies, etc. At most, we can say that Hitler drew on some of the same common knowledge (though with far less understanding and in much less depth) that Darwin drew on. Thus, in this instance as well, Darwin’s ideas weren’t necessary for the “final resolution.”
May 8th, 2008
Miguel Chavez
Well my comment was more a response to Ben Stein’s film than your post. In any case your attempt to connect Darwin with Hitler is flimsy and embarrassing. Is is essentially the last resort in the debaters handbook when you’ve run out of plausible arguments. First, there is no evidence that Hitler ever read Darwin or even understood what Darwinism was all about. When you read Hitler he in fact uses language which clearly invokes pre-Darwinian ideas of hereditary and bloodlines. I also remember reading in a biography that Hitler believed mankind was specially Created, and rejected Darwin’s ideas as they pertained to man. (I just did a search online and I was correct.) If anything his views are more similar to the Church’s views of evolution today, more so than Darwin. But whatever. Second, Darwin did not advocate social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is a form of *artificial* selection (breeding), a practice which was in use for thousands of years before Darwin was even born. This is after all how we got domestic animals and our modern day crops. What Darwin did was extend this idea to nature, and hypothesis that NATURE too selects variation which further begets reproduction. So you’re just equivocating the two ideas because they have (by historical contingency) a similar name. You also commit this error when you equivocate Darwin’s use of the word “race” when he means “variation” and imply that he used “race” as we use the word today. This is very sloppy of you. This is the part Marty where you crack the book *open* and read past the title page.
Third, and I know you conceded this point already, but the social implications of an idea have nothing to do with its truth or validity. Even though Christianity has had its *monster* share of violence (as it propagated its beautiful message throughout the world) I wouldn’t try to blame these atrocities on Christianity per se. In my opinion, that’s more a statement of the culture which had adopted Christianity, rather than a reflection of Christian philosophy itself. Lastly if we’re going to make generalizations on the moral influence of Darwinism, let us do so properly by looking at *all* societies which have adopted it as an intellectual proposition. Seems to me it doesn’t matter either way, and most are living in harmony with one another. I just wish a handful of the religious nations would get their act together. If Darwinism is so morally corrosive why hasn’t Nazism (or an equivalent) arisen in England, France, the United States, Sweeden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, South America, and so forth? If you’re honest enough, the answer is simple.
Best,
May 8th, 2008
hahajohnnyb
Darwin really did not put anything new on the table. People had been practicing Eugenics for thousands of years before Darwin ever came along, and Darwin’s idea really was not that radical considering the fact that he was a dog breeder from a long line of cousins.
Hitler’s idea was not that unique either, nor did it vary much from the common perceptions of that time. Hitler was a German Nationalist who want to re-unite Prussia. In this age of multi-culturalism its hard to understand this, but people require their citizens to all share a common culture, those people who did not fit in with the mainstream culture were not given the full rights of citizenship. What Hitler did was nothing new, and neither was anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is the not the result of Eugenics, but the result of Jewish nature which tends towards loyalty to other Jews rather than the Nation, and their talents at banking which tend to place them in positions of high finance. Even today, all the Fed Reserve Board Governors, Bernanke, the President of IMF and World Bank are all Jewish. If the dollar collapses today, the most liberal multi-cultural nation on Earth will be turned into a nation of Anti-Semites.
Hitler was not a good guy, and I certainly do not condone genocide; however before the war, Hitler was merely deporting these people, and helped them establish colonies in Palestine. I do not believe that he wanted to kill them all, but he thought that they were a bad influence on Germany and blamed them for Germany’s problems. Then the War began, which Hitler was on the losing side of, and wars naturally cause shortages of all kinds. If you have to let someone starve in a time of war, obviously you choose the group that you are in the process of deporting, and who do you Euthanize, the factory worker or the mentally retarded? Towards the end, Germany was really in life boat survival mode, and I do not believe the Euthinasia or Eugenics can be judged based on the behavior of a Nationalist Country that was losing a war badly.
Was Hitler’s love of the German people unjustified? I don’t think so, and have found Germans to be delightful people. My grandpa used to tell stories of Germans that they had taken as Prisoners, and said that they were very nice people, and communities in America that hosted POW camps have always spoken highly of the German Prisoners who were often put to work in the communities. Average Nazi was not a bad person, just someone who had be put in a bad situation for a very long time.
Hitler like Darwin, was also a dog breeder, and his Eugenics program reflects his background breeding German Shepherd Dogs. Remember that he was trying to create a Nationalist State, so he wanted his people to be Germans. As a former Dog breeder he was trying to create a breed standard for German People, just like even the crappy AKC uses. Germans have always been better dog breeders than Americans because they are more discriminatory. For this reason, dog with European bloodlines are better than American dogs.
It might be noteworthy that after only 12 years of Nazi Eugenics, the national IQ of Germany is 5 points higher than the National IQ of America, and their crime rate is much lower. Its a shame that Germany’s experiment ended in WW2 and the Holocaust, not just because of all the lives that were lost, but because the world was deprived of seeing how Hitler’s Experiment would have panned out if it had been allowed to continue for 3 or 4 generations.
May 9th, 2008
Andria
The “Expelled” movie’s premise started out as a defense of REAL science, i.e. the freedom to debate and question the popular theory. I find it interesting that several athiests are hiding behind a deluge of argument that has nothing to do with the original premise of the movie. They still have yet to answer for the fact that they refuse to even entertain the idea that ID could be a possible explanation for the origin of life.
Granted, the movie moved from it’s original premise to discussing the connection between Darwinian concepts and eugenics & genocide. But my point is, none of the scientist’s that were questioned came up with any viable reason for the censure and blacklisting of those who would practice the foundation of true science, which is the exploration of ALL THEORIES, not just the few that are accepted mainstream. What would have happened if man had continued to accept the popular theory that the world was flat? The men who challenged popular theory then were also considered to be quacks. Thank goodness they did not let that stop them.
Hasn’t history taught you anything? Why are you so afraid of letting people question and debate the popular concensus?
Stop hiding behind arguments about whether or not Darwin’s theories had an impact on Hitler and address the more important issues! I, for one, am extremely concerned that such censure is going on in the scientific and academic communities!
May 28th, 2008
AskAnAtheist.org
Andria,
Er… uh… you do realize that “the atheists” were responding to charges put forth by fundamentalists that “Darwin’s theories had an impact on Hitler”, don’t you? No seriously, I mean, don’t you?
“The atheists” (and other intellectually honest people) are always up for the discussion. Teach the controversy, I always say - and of course by that, I mean teach that the truth of the matter is that the only controversy is that created by fundamentalists ID’ers - that evolution is a fact is a settled issue amongst freethinking believers and atheists alike. Care to join us?
May 28th, 2008
Reply to “‘Expelled’ Correct on Darwin, Hitler Link, Says Christian Group”