In this compelling and painstakingly researched work of intellectual history, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially those pertaining to the sacredness of human life. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary "fitness" (especially in terms of intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Weikart concludes that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis. He convincingly makes the disturbing argument that Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles rather than nihilistic ones. From Darwin to Hitler is a provocative yet balanced work that should encourage a rethinking of the historical impact that Darwinism had on the course of events in the twentieth century. You apparently have never met an argument from adverse consequences you didn't like.
Coulter's "reasoning" is fallacious, and so is the reasoning you've quoted above.On this very thread, which I (perhaps mistakenly) assume you've been reading, it's been pointed out that all of the terms I've bolded in the paragraph above also took place before 1859!
Kindly explain (or find us a book blurb explaining), how Darwin's theory caused events that took place before it was expounded.
From Darwin to Hitler is a provocative yet balanced work that should encourage a rethinking of the historical impact that Darwinism had on the course of events in the twentieth century. What took place before is not relevent to this argument. Whatever the reasons for those things happening before 1859 are beside the point. The argument being made by Colter and people like Richard Wiekart is that Darwin influenced the thinking in the 20th century. The people of earlier ages had other ways of rationalizing their inhumanity I assume, but there is no denying that Darwin had an impact on the thinking that went into what Hitler and the Nazis and others did during the last century. And it can be argued that moral relativism, euthanasia, infanticide, abortion and the like which continue into this century were all influenced by Darwinism.