Notorious Nazi Dr. Mengele was a Social Darwinist

An article in Haaretz says,

A diary and a revealing letter written by notorious Auschwitz death camp Dr. Josef Mengele were put on auction in the United States last month. Mengele was the SS officer who supervised the selection of prisoner transports arriving at Auschwitz and performed bizarre medical experiments on camp inmates.

The Haaretz article continues,

Unless the world adopted breeding programs like those he pursued in Auschwitz, "mankind is doomed, even without war," he writes.

Referring to morality, aesthetics and genetics, Mengele writes: "The real problem is to define when human life is worth living and when it has to be eradicated."

"There's only one truth and one true beauty ... There's no 'good' or 'bad' in nature. There's only 'appropriate' or 'inappropriate' ... Both sides receive equal chances. Nevertheless, nature provides a strainer. Things that are 'inappropriate' fall through since they lose in the struggle for survival."

Discussing the Indian caste system, Mengele notes, "Brahmans are built nicely; some of them even have blue eyes. They have small, straight noses and they're in general high quality human beings. And this is because the Brahmans used the highest caste to preserve their noble blood. They are the descendants of Nordic peoples who once conquered and ruled India."

Mengele discusses how to create an upper class: "It can only be done by selecting the best."

"Everything will end in catastrophe if natural selection is altered to the point that gifted people are overwhelmed by billions of morons," he warns, predicting that 90 percent of humans will starve due to stupidity and the remaining 10 percent will survive "like reptiles survived. The rest will die, just like the dinosaurs did ... we have to prevent the rise of the idiot masses," he writes.

"The feeble-minded person ('village idiot') was separated from farmers because of his social status and low income," he writes.

"This separation is no longer the case in the age of technology. He is now on the same level with the farmer's son who went to the city.

"We know that selection rules all nature by choosing and exterminating ... Those who were unfit had to accept the rule of more accomplished human beings, or they were pushed out or exterminated. Weaker humans were excluded from reproducing. This is the only way for human beings to exist and to maintain themselves."

He says "inferior morons" should be exterminated, adding, "We have to make sure that nature's suspended eradication will continue through human arrangements ... birth control can be done by sterilizing those with deficient genes."

Mengele goes on to advise Germany to abandon feminist ideology and control childbirth. "Biology doesn't support equal rights. Women shouldn't be working in higher positions. Women's work must depend on filling a biological quota. Birth control can be done by sterilizing those with deficient genes. Those with good genes will be sterilized after the fifth child."

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Jews deeply divided over evolution

Judge "Jackass" Jones, who has said that judges should not be influenced by public opinion, nonetheless bragged that his Kitzmiller decision was supported by Jews. I have news for him -- if, for example, he visited Jerusalem, the ultra-orthodox Jews there would probably riot in protest.

The National Center for Science Education said,

The chief scientist in Israel's ministry of education, Gavriel Avital, "sparked a furor" by questioning the reliability of evolution and global warming, leading to calls for his dismissal, according to Haaretz (February 21, 2010). "If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct," he was quoted as saying. "There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula."

. . . . . . . . Unfortunately, Avital's views on evolution may be shared by a sizable segment of the Israeli public. A 2006 survey of public opinion in Israel by the Samuel Neaman Institute found that "a minority of only 28% accepts the scientific theory of the evolution [sic], while the majority (59%) believes that man was created by god," while according to the 2000 International Social Survey Programme, a total of 54% of Israeli respondents described "Human beings developed from earlier species of animals" as definitely or probably true, placing Israel ahead of the United States (46%, in last place) for its public acceptance of evolution, but behind twenty-three of the twenty-seven countries included in the report.

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Kitzmiller decision violated Federal Rules of Evidence

Casey Luskin said,

During the Dover trial, plaintiffs’ expert witness, biologist Kenneth Miller, testified that he presented Judge John E. Jones with “more than three dozen scientific studies showing the origin of new genetic information by these evolutionary processes.” The plaintiffs’ attorneys, working with the NCSE, successfully convinced Judge Jones to parrot Miller by stating in the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling that Miller had “pointed to more than three dozen peer-reviewed scientific publications showing the origin of new genetic information by evolutionary processes.”

Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 803(18) says,

Learned treatises: To the extent called to the attention of an expert witness upon cross-examination or relied upon by the expert witness in direct examination, statements contained in published treatises, periodicals, or pamphlets on a subject of history, medicine, or other science or art, established as a reliable authority by the testimony or admission of the witness or by other expert testimony or by judicial notice. If admitted, the statements may be read into evidence but may not be received as exhibits. (emphasis added)

The above publications presented by Ken Miller were apparently "received as exhibits" instead of being "read into evidence," in violation of the above FRE rule (what Miller did is sometimes called "bibiliography bluffing"). This rule was also violated when a stack of publications was dumped in front of defendants' expert witness Michael Behe.

The scientific questions in the case should have simply been declared to be "non-justiciable." A question is considered to be non-justiciable when there is a "lack of discoverable and manageable standards for resolving the question" (Vieth v. Jubelirer).

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Godwin's Law

Wikipedia describes Godwin's Law as follows:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

Godwin's Law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread reductio ad Hitlerum form. The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

Godwin's law is so strong that even supporters of Prop. 8, the California ballot proposition that banned gay marriage, have been using Nazi-Hitler analogies, even though it is well known that the Nazis were extremely homophobic. A video titled "Hitler enraged at Yes on 8 Victories in California" is especially amusing. On a more serious note, Ed Brayton's blog has an article with a video of a speech that Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, gave at a pro-Prop. 8 rally. The article has the following excerpt from the video:
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There was another time in history when people, when the bell tolled. And the question was whether or not they were going to hear it. The time was during Nazi Germany with Adolf Hitler. You see he brought crowds of clergy together to assure them that he was going to look after the church. And one of the members, bold and courageous, Reverend Niemoller made his way to the front and boldly said "Hitler, we are not concerned about the church. Jesus Christ will take care of the church. We are concerned about the soul of Germany." Embarrassed and chagrined, his peers quickly shuffled him to the back. And as they did Adolf Hitler said, "The soul of Germany, you can leave that to me." And they did, and because they did bombs did not only fall upon the nation of Germany, but also upon the church and their testimony to this very day. Let us not make that mistake folks. Let us hear the bell! Vote on Proposition 8!

Brad Dacus's above analogy is completely inapposite. If Proposition 8 concerns the fate of the soul of America or the souls of Americans, Prop. 8 did not ask voters if they wanted to leave that fate in the hands of a dictator -- Prop. 8 gave the voters the opportunity to determine that fate themselves.

I am especially disappointed in Brad Dacus's speech because the Pacific Justice Institute helped represent the plaintiffs in Caldwell v. Caldwell, a lawsuit that I very strongly supported (it was an establishment clause lawsuit against the Univ. of Calif. and the National Science Foundation for sponsoring a website that endorsed one-sided religious views supporting evolution theory -- this blog has a post-label group of articles about the case).

BTW, I am not a supporter of gay marriage (I support civil unions or domestic partnerships). One of the reasons why I do not support gay marriage is -- ironically -- that I feel that public support for gay marriage is not strong enough to create uniform availability of gay marriage in all the states, and the result is that some gays -- those who live in the states offering gay marriage -- are more equal than the gays in states that do not offer gay marriage.
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