Posted on 08/22/2006 2:04:20 PM PDT by js1138
ADL Blasts Christian Supremacist TV Special & Book Blaming Darwin For Hitler
New York, NY, August 22, 2006 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."
After being contacted by the ADL about his name being used to promote Kennedy's project, Dr. Collins said he is "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory," he told ADL.
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement:"This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.
"It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to "reclaim America for Christ" and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law."
The documentary is scheduled to air this weekend along with the publication of an accompanying book "Evolution's Fatal Fruit: How Darwin's Tree of Life Brought Death to Millions."
A Coral Ridge Ministries press release promoting the documentary says the program "features 14 scholars, scientists, and authors who outline the grim consequences of Darwin's theory of evolution and show how his theory fueled Hitler's ovens."
"Even if your claims were not completely nonsensical, it would not demonstrate a link between "darwinism" and Auschwitz."
From "The Science and Politics of Racial Research" (pp. 126-127), William H. Tucker, Rutgers University:
"The American eugenicists [such as Margaret Sanger] even made their own modest contribution to the plight of Jews in the Reich. In the late 1930s there were last-ditch attempts to waive some of the restrictions in the 1924 Immigration Act in order to grant asylum to a few eventual victims of the Holocaust. These efforts were vigorously opposed by eugenicists, especially by [Harry Hamilton] Laughlin, who submitted a new report, Immigration and Conquest, reiterating the biological warnings against the "human dross" that would produce a "breakdown in race purity of the ...superior stocks." While almost one thousand German Jews seeking to immigrate waited hopefully in a ship off the coast of Florida, Laughlin's report singled them out as a group "slow to assimilate to the American pattern of life," and he recommended a 60 percent reduction in quotas, together with procedures to denationalize and deport some immigrants who had already attained citizenship. For the eugenicists, Nordic purity was as important in the United States as it was in Germany. The ship was sent back to Germany."
What is your excerpt intended to demonstrate? I see no substantiation that Ben Stein ever linked the the theory of evolution to Auschwitz, nor do I see substantiation of the link itself.
If you're incapable of grasping the Darwin-Galton-Eugenics-Nazi nexus, I'm afraid you'll remain at sea.
I'm still waiting on an explication of the "false Jews" bit. Please let us know what you're talking about.
Thanks,
Alter Kaker
But all this is absurd from the point of view of science. Are astronomers responsible for the mental pathology of the Raelians?
"But all this is absurd from the point of view of science."
At what point, and upon what basis, did science determine that eugenics is absurd?
If you quote me, don't remove punctuation. That's fraud.
Around 400 BC Plato, writing in The Republic, suggested "The best men must have intercourse with the best women as frequently as possible, and the opposite is true of the very inferior." Humans, being as they say closer to the earth those days, easily saw the similarities between man and animal. Breeding humans was as logical as breeding animals. We even have their imagery of half-human half-animal breeds (such as the Centaurs, etc.)
Darwin's insight was not that even humans could be breed. He simply illustrated the natural selective mechanism that propelled evolution.
To credit or blame him for attempts at human breeding is at least several thousand years too late.
Modern eugenics incorporated the more scientifically grounded basis of Darwin, but they would have existed regardless. Just as they have incorporated modern genetics.
Sounds like a Godwin's Law candidate.
I assumed he meant secular/unobservant, but I could be mistaken. On the Christian end of Judeo-Christian, there is no concept of belonging based upon heredity. You either are, or you aren't, based upon belief.
Missing quotation marks around the word Christianity does not change the absurdity of your statement.
Godwin's Law isn't quite applicable, when the entire thread concerns Hitler and the Nazis. That Nazis were eugenicists is not at question. That the so-called "Father of Eugenics," Francis Galton, utilized Darwinism as the foundation of his theories is not at question. That Charles Darwin published, and was enthusiastic about, his cousin Francis Galton's theories in "The Descent Of Man" is not at question.
Please try to keep up.
My point was that Darwin's opinions unquestionably carried more weight in the late-19th and 20th centuries than those of Plato, on the evidence of the eugenicists and Social Darwinists who admired him, cited his writings, and invoked his words to justify their policies.
Is he responsibile for the repugnant doctrines and still more repugnant practices of every one of his disciples? Of course not. But for better or for worse, he ranks with Marx and Freud as one of the most influential sources of inspiration for 20th century utopians who, convinced that they grasped the key to our history, struggled to control our destiny.
Your opinion of a statement is irrelevant. Changing punctuation in a presumed quote is fraudulent.
In view of the fact that Hitler's relation to Christianity is a major theme of this thread, you have clearly changed the meaning in removing the quote marks.
In my view it is quite applicable. Starting at post 1.
Thank you for saying it so well.
Godwin's law doesn't actually comment on the aptness of the comparison. It just says it is so frequent that it loses all effectivness.
The bigger logical error is that it doesn't even matter if Darwin was really Hitler himself. Scientific theories stand or fall on their logical merits, not on how human agents apply them.
This thread will end up disproving nothing about the theory of evolution, since it is off in an illogical vein.
Not so much illogical as fallacious premises and clearly propagandistic approaches.
I consider arguments from (presumed) consequences and guilt by association to be not so much logical fallacies as straight propaganda.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.