Stop hiding behind arguments about whether or not Darwin’s theories had an impact on Hitler and address the more important issues!

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?

Why are you so afraid of letting people question and debate the popular concensus?

“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?

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!

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.

Best,

Your comments …make no allowance for the reality that ideas have consequences, even consequences that the originator of the idea never intended.

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.

there is no way to argue that mankind’s eugenics decisions and genocidal decisions are not merely a part of the selection process.

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.”

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

Ed Darrell’s last blog post..Archaeology marches on! Carnivals to catch up

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

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.

“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.

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…

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.”