This site is named for the famous statement of US Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver from Missouri : "I`m from Missouri -- you'll have to show me." This site is dedicated to skepticism of official dogma in all subjects. Just-so stories are not accepted here. This is a site where controversial subjects such as evolution theory and the Holocaust may be freely debated.
My biggest motivation for creating my own blogs was to avoid the arbitrary censorship practiced by other blogs and various other Internet forums. Censorship will be avoided in my blogs -- there will be no deletion of comments, no closing of comment threads, no holding up of comments for moderation, and no commenter registration hassles. Comments containing nothing but insults and/or ad hominem attacks are discouraged. My non-response to a particular comment should not be interpreted as agreement, approval, or inability to answer.
posted by Larry Fafarman | 2/22/2009 05:22:00 AM
5 Comments:
Guess who has written about the powerful influence of Darwinism in fostering racism, eugenics, and thus rather clearly, Nazism? Abraham Foxman, who now tries to deny the well-established Darwin-to-Hitler link.
Foxman wrote an introduction to Hitler's Mein Kampf (Houghton-Mariner Books paperback edition, 1999,) in which Foxman said:
"Racial theories became increasingly radical as they incorporated aspects of Darwinism, which swept the Western world in the mid- to late 1800's. Applied to race, the ideas of evolution and the 'survival of the fittest' turned the history of humanity, as well as the contemporary world, into a story of racial conflict. When coupled with nationalism, racial (social) Darwinism led to the development of national archetypes; thus educated people at the end of the nineteenth century could seriously claim that the distinctive cultural characteristics of the English, French, Americans and Germans were biological. Eugenics movements with the goal of improving national or racial 'stock' through selective breeding (which later became inextricably linked with the Nazi regime in popular perception) arose in England, Scandanavia, and the United States." (p.xx.)
So Foxman understands the Darwin-to-Hitler influence quite well; and it seems that he should hardly object to David Berlinski's point that Darwin's views were a "necessary, but not sufficient condition" for the rise of Nazism.
It appears that those who were protesting the cartoon were the racists. The author was commenting on the lack of intelligence of those who wrote the stimulus package. It was Al Sharpton who first claimed a similarity of the chimpanzee to Obama.
"Eminent evolutionary biologists" of Hitler's era evidently regarded Hitler as a true Darwinist, a real disciple of Darwin's theory of evolution. Certainly that was the view of Sir Arthur Keith, a well-known British "evolutionary biologist," who merits his own entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
In 1942 Sir Arthur wrote an essay, "The Behavior of Germany Considered from an Evolutionary Point of View in 1942." The essay was reprinted in Keith's book Evolution and Ethics, published by Putnam in 1947.
"The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice," wrote Keith in 1942, during WWII. (p.10 of the book.)
Keith notes that Hitler believed in some sort of God, and was thus a theistic evolutionist, or theistic Darwinist: "I may remark incidentally...the German Fuehrer, like Bishop Barnes and many of our more intellectual clergy, regards evolution as God's mode of creation." (Keith, p.11.)
Keith points out that in Mein Kampf, Hitler expounds the doctrine of reproductive isolation, which Darwinists regard as the key to the rise of new species: "Here we have expounded the perfectly sound doctrine of evolutionary isolation; even as an ethical doctrine it should not be condemned," writes Keith.
Darwinists hold that geographical factors, etc., can cause one variety, subspecies, or "race" to no longer interbreed with another. This supposedly results in the races going their separate evolutionary ways, and eventually evolving into different species.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler made it clear that he wanted to enforce the reproductive isolation of different "races." As Keith writes about German Jews and German non-Jews: "Is it possible for two peoples living within the same frontiers, dwelling side by side, to work out harmoniously their separate evolutionary destinies? Apparently Hitler believes this to be impossible." (p.14)
After WWII, as Nazism fell into great and well-deserved disrepute, it apparently became Taboo for conventional evolutionary biologists to point out that Hitler was greatly influenced by Darwinist ideas.
Jim Sherwood said (Tuesday, February 24, 2009 5:58:00 PM) --
>>>>> Foxman wrote an introduction to Hitler's Mein Kampf (Houghton-Mariner Books paperback edition, 1999,) in which Foxman said:
"Racial theories became increasingly radical as they incorporated aspects of Darwinism, which swept the Western world in the mid- to late 1800's . . . . " <<<<<<<
WOW, did the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman really say those things? He has sure done a complete about-face -- he angrily denounced the Darwin-to-Hitler themes of the Coral Ridge Ministries' "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" TV documentary and Ben Stein's movie "Expelled." The ADL said of "Expelled,"
Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust
New York, NY, April 29, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement regarding the controversial film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.
Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness.
Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.
Abe really did write those things, implicating Darwin's theory in the rise of Nazism. I've been careful to quote him exactly.
It's true that many other factors had to come together in addition to Darwin's theory, in order to spawn Nazism. Hence David Berlinski's point that Darwin's allegedly "scientific" theorizing was a "necessary" condition for the rise of Nazism, but was not a "sufficient" condition, alone, to bring it into existence.
Thus without Darwin's supposed "science," Nazism could not have appeared. Yet Darwin's theory alone, was not enough to bring it into existence. Everyone who studies the matter, including ID proponent Bill Dembski, seems to agree on that. Nobody that I have heard of says that Darwinism alone was sufficient.
The factors that had to be added to Darwinism to give rise to Nazism included, in my opinion: German militarism, traditonal German racism and anti-Semitism, German nationalism, and probably others, such as the anti-Marxism that arose in reaction to the Bolshevik revolution.
But the point still stands: without Darwin's theory, there would have been no Nazism, no Hitlerism.
Post a Comment
<< Home