Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Richard Dawkins.net ^ | 4/20/08 | Richard Dawkins

[Soliton]

On 18th April, the day Ben Stein's infamous film was released, Michael Shermer received the following letter from a Jew (referencing a past article that Shermer had written debunking the Holocaust deniers) whose identity I shall conceal as "David J".

Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!

Shermer wrote to Mr J to ask if he had by any chance just seen Expelled, and he received this reply:

Yes I have. You know, I respect you as a human being and you have done great work exposing psychics and frauds, but this is a very touchy issue that affects me and family emotionally. Our family business was affected because of Auschwitz because now, our family has nothing. It is gone. Things began to make sense once I saw the movie and I am just appalled. I have learned a lot from Ben Stein, a Jewish brother, who has opened my eyes up a bit.

It seemed to me that Ben Stein and his lying crew were more to blame than Mr J himself for his revolting letter. I therefore decided to write him a personal letter and try to explain a few things to him. It then occurred to me (indeed, Michael Shermer suggested as much) that there are probably many others like him, whose minds have been twisted in this evil way by the man Stein, and that it would be a good idea to publish the letter. I decided to wait 24 hours to see if he would reply, although I didn't expect him to. I am now publishing my letter to him, exactly as I sent it to him except that I have removed his name.

Richard

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr J

Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein's mendacious and/or ignorant suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.

1. I deeply sympathize with you for the loss of your relatives in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, I don't think that could really be said to justify the tone of your letter to Michael Shermer, who is a kind and decent man, as even you seemed to concede in your second letter to him, and the very antithesis of a Nazi sympathizer. Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States! Just look at those words of yours. Probably you regret them by now. I certainly hope so, but I'll continue to write my letter to you, on the assumption that you still feel at least a part of what you wrote.

2. Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain, by the way. What singled Hitler out was the fact that he somehow managed to come to power in one of Europe's leading nations, which was also one of the world's most technologically advanced nations. Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church's support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example, here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf. Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. Hitler's obscene anti-Semitism was able to hold sway in Germany because there was a deeply embedded history of anti-Semitism in Germany, and indeed in Europe generally.

3. Going further back in history, where do we think the toxic anti-Semitism of Hitler, and of the many Germans whose support gave him power, came from? You can't seriously think it came from Darwin. Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as "Christ-killers". While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that "All Jews should be driven from Germany." By the way, do you hear an echo of those words in your own letter to Michael Shermer, "We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States." Don't you feel just a twinge of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don't you feel that, as a Jew, you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?

4. Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.

5. Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind. Quite the contrary. It is emphatically NOT about natural selection between races. It is about natural selection between individuals. It is true that the subtitle of The Origin of Species is "Or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" but Darwin was using the word "race" in a very different sense from ours. It is totaly clear, if you read past the title to the book itself, that a "favoured race" meant something like 'that set of individuals who possess a certain favoured genetic mutation" (although Darwin would not have used that language because he did not have our modern concept of a genetic mutation).

6. There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf. Not one single, solitary mention, not one mention in any of the 27 chapters of this long and tedious book. Don't you think that, if Hitler was truly influenced by Darwin, he would have given him at least one teeny weeny mention in his book? Was he, perhaps, INDIRECTLY influenced by some of Darwin's ideas, without knowing it? Only if you completely misunderstand Darwin's ideas, as some have definitely done: the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and John D Rockefeller. Hitler could fairly be described as a Social Darwinist, but all modern evolutionists, almost literally without exception, have been vocal in their condemnation of Social Darwinism. This of course includes Michael Shermer and me and PZ Myers and all the other evolutionary scientists whom Ben Stein and his team tricked into taking part in his film by lying to us about their true intentions.

7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin's great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realise that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: "natural selection", the "survival of the fittest". Hitler didn't apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidiently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler's eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.

8. Mr J, you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and potentially to many others. I do not know whether they knowingly and wantonly perpetrated the falsehood that fooled you. Perhaps they genuinely and sincerely believed it, although other actions by them, which you can read about all over the Internet, persuade me that they are fully capable of deliberate and calculated deception. You are perhaps not to be blamed for swallowing the film's falsehoods, because you probably assumed that nobody would have the gall to make a whole film like that without checking their facts first. Perhaps even you will need a little more convincing that they were wrong, in which case I urge you to read it up and study the matter in detail -- something that Ben Stein and his crew manifestly and lamentably failed to do.

With my good wishes, and sympathy for the losses your family suffered in the Holocaust.

Yours sincerely

Richard Dawkins

[Fichori]

"Is the test of the theory who believes it, or who survives?"

Quite irrelevant to my rhetorical question to which you replied.

[Fichori]

"My understanding of Evolution is that the stronger animals kill the weaker animals."

"Stop right there and go read evolution 101"

I actually read that in an Evolutionary textbook.

Of course that book was from ~20-30 years ago, so it might not be up to your standard for Evolution.

[Fichori]

"ID does not have a competing scientific argument to evolution. Hence the reason it can't be taught in science class. It could be discussed in philosophy or comparative religion, however. If you know what scientific evidence exists for ID, please share it. No one else will."

Then why not let students debate and decide?

Why are 'educators' so afraid of ID?

[Fichori]

"Why is it that whenever people who are anti-science want to make their anti-science points, they drag out Einstein making quotes on social issues? Einstein was no better qualified to make a statement on social science or cultural issues than Forrest Gump.

If pictures of Catholic Bishops giving the Nazi Solute doesn’t convince you that some members of the Church were nazis, then nothing will."

Enough of the 'anti-science' garbage.

There is a difference between Evolution and Empirical Science and you know it.

[Soliton]

There is a difference between Evolution and Empirical Science and you know it.

Evolution theory includes an immense amount of empirical science. ID has none. For each experiment you provide that supports ID (not criticizes evolution), I will provide 5 that supports some aspect of evolution theory.

[Soliton]

There is a difference between Evolution and Empirical Science and you know it.

Evolution theory includes an immense amount of empirical science. ID has none. For each experiment you provide that supports ID (not criticizes evolution), I will provide 5 that supports some aspect of evolution theory.

[Fichori]

You can post it a couple more times for good measure, but that will not change the facts.

Evolution is based on Naturalistic Science.

Naturalistic Science is based on Dogmatic Assumptions.

Dogmatic Assumptions are not Empirical Science.

[tacticalogic]

Quite irrelevant to my rhetorical question to which you replied.

If you're going to use Hitler as an individual as your example, then his fitness as a leader is measured by his ability to attract followers. If he finds himself opposed by a majority, and fails to survive as a result then it's a distinction without a difference.

[Fichori]

Enough of the stawmen.

You are twisting my statement to mean something I never intended.

[Soliton]

Scientists force evolution in the lab
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11147751/

Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030508075843.htm

Evolution in the Laboratory: Up Close and Personal
http://www.science-spirit.org/archive_cm_detail.php?new_id=84

To Test Evolution, Press the ‘Undo’ Button
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DEFD61731F93BA25750C0A9659C8B63

[tacticalogic]

What did you intend? To judge the validity of the theory by the actions of someone who professed to believe it?

[Fichori]

What I intended to show was that survival of the fittest does not apply to all battlefields all the time.

Which I am quite sure was totally obvious to anyone endowed with intelligence.

Descendants of monkeys not included.

[Caramelgal]

I’m inclined to consider the entire subject more apropos for a survey of religions and belief systems class.

A distinction between all these different belief systems and hard, replicable true science would go a long way toward making the whole discussion more honest.

And where there are historical proofs, such as the finding of Sodom, of the submerged Egyptian chariots circa the Exodus, etc. then let them be considered historial proofs, yet not science.

Like it or not, Archeology is a scientific discipline and subjected to the same objective scientific methods as any other scientific discipline.

You may wish to relegate the discussions of all the relative merits of all the possible theories of who the “intelligent designer” is or was to what you call “a survey of religions and belief systems class” (what in academia is referred to as “Comparative Religion” or “Theology” or “Philosophy” or “Ethical” studies) and rightly so because that’s just were such discussions belong – because these spiritual arguments really have no place in a Biology class. But if you are going to propose ID as a relevant and alternate scientific biological theory and subject to the scientific method, then you just can’t ignore the very basic question of who or what is or was the “designer” – where did he or she or it come from, who designed the designer and what is his or her or it’s nature – is it singular or plural? Is the theory of one possible intelligent designer superior to another and why? These are answers that science doesn’t wish or choose to answer. These are questions best left to theologians and even atheists to debate among one another in some forum but not in the science classroom.

And the archeological discovery of an ancient city like Sodom, referenced in the Bible, gives the Bible no more credence as a scientific text book as does the discovery of the ancient city of Troy gives Greek mythology equal credence as a scientific text. The Bible references many historical places and historical events but doesn’t once mention the city of Troy but that doesn’t mean that Troy didn’t exist historically.

And without further investigation, the finding of a single chariot wheel at the bottom of the Red Sea is not alone substantive proof of the story of Exodus. Of course if you already firmly believe that Exodus is an irrefutable historical fact without any need for further evidence, then this finding only buttresses your beliefs and any discovery to the contrary is going to be dismissed by you as false and irrelevant. And isn’t that the same argument that the ID’ers and creationists use against evolutionary theory? But I would submit that evolutionary theory has “evolved” to some extent and expanded due to an open and honest and sometimes very spirited debate among evolutionary biologists given additional empirical evidence that doesn’t dismiss the original theory in it’s entirety but may either prove or modify some of it’s earlier premises.

It is rather obvious that you already have the firm and unmovable belief that it is the God of Abraham who is the “intelligent designer” of your ID theory. I say this because you affirm and firmly believe that “historial proofs”, mentioning Sodom and Exodus, and making your belief system more “honest” and scientifically and historically provable over all and every other possible creation theory.

I really have no axe to grind with you on what you choose to believe in spiritually or what religion you choose to follow. I defend your right to exercise your religious beliefs freely under our Constitution. But I do have a problem with theology and in particular that one specific theological belief being forcibly taught as “scientific fact” when there is no basis in fact to substantiate that your religious belief is more scientifically provable than any other. If you really need science to substantiate your belief then perhaps your belief isn’t all that strong to begin with.

And even the most ardent supporters of Evolution, some of whom, but not all of whom are also Atheists (even Dawkins), are not demanding that science and Evolution and Atheism be taught in your Sunday school classes as a religious theory equal to your religious beliefs as some religious creationists and ID’ers are demanding that their religiously based creationism and ID theories have to be given an equal voice in the science classroom.

[Petronski]

The letter seems very fake and contrived. The public response makes the entire exercise self-serving and bizarre.

[Soliton]

Thanks for your input!

[Soliton]

I gave you four examples of empirical evidence supporting evolution. Where’s yours supporting ID?

[Soliton]

But if you are going to propose ID as a relevant and alternate scientific biological theory and subject to the scientific method, then you just can’t ignore the very basic question of who or what is or was the “designer” – where did he or she or it come from, who designed the designer and what is his or her or it’s nature – is it singular or plural? Is the theory of one possible intelligent designer superior to another and why?

You have a beautiful mind.

[js1138]

The “not so well known” quote from Einstien is all over the internet. What is not documented is when he said it and to whom. There is no reference to it or source in the Einstein archives in Israel. The custodian of the archives is on record as thinking the quote is bogus.

[Fichori]

Evolutionary Science is based on Methodological Naturalism.

Methodological Naturalism is based on philosophical assumptions.

It is technically impossible to disprove a philosophical assumption.[1]

Methodological Naturalism can not give a non-naturalistic explanation, even if the evidence clearly indicates a non-naturalistic explanation.[1]

Methodological Naturalism makes the philosophical assumption that all things are naturalistic and all explanations must be naturalistic, regardless of evidence.


It doesn't mater how many links to articles you post, Evolution is still based on philosophical assumptions and that is still not empirical science.


Empirical Science is the best thing that ever happened for the observation of phoneme.

Methodological Naturalism is the worst.


The difference being, the former can validate what is observed, and the later can validate what is not observed.

[Fichori]

"I gave you four examples of empirical evidence supporting evolution. Where’s yours supporting ID?"

You can demand of me evidence for ID after I start teaching it in public schools.

For now, I am happy to discuss with such people as yourself the merits of what is currently being taught in afore mentioned schools.