America's Taliban strikes again

Arkansas News Bureau ^ | 28 August 2006 | John Brummett

[PatrickHenry]

The Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it. Complicit as well are any who buy into the scientific theory that modern man evolved from lower animal forms.

That's the latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Coral Ridge espouses that America is not a free-religion nation, but a Christian one. It argues there should be no separation of church and state.

Thus it's America's Taliban, America's Shiite theocracy.

It certainly has a propensity for explaining or excusing Hitler. A few years ago it brought in a conference speaker to argue that American abortion was a more horrible atrocity than the Holocaust.

One year it disinvited Cal Thomas as a conference speaker after Brother Cal got too liberal. You're thinking I must be kidding. But I kid you not. Brother Cal had displayed the utter audacity to co-author a book contending that American Christian conservatives ought to worry a little more about spreading the gospel from the bottom of the culture up rather than from the top of politics down.

Now this: Coral Ridge is airing a couple of cable installments of a "documentary," called "Darwin's Deadly Legacy," that seek to make a case that, without Darwin, there could have been no Hitler.

Authoritative sources for the program include no less than columnist Ann Coulter, noted scientist, who says she is outraged that she didn't get instructed in Darwin's effective creation of Hitler when she was in school. She says she has since come to understand that Hitler was merely a Darwinist trying, by extermination of a group of people he considered inferior because of their religion and heritage, to "hurry along" the natural survival of the Aryan fittest.

Also quoted is Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Project, who tells the Anti-Defamation League that his comments were used out of context and that he is "absolutely appalled" by the "utterly misguided and inflammatory" premise of Coral Ridge's report.

The documentary's theme is really quite simple: Darwin propounded the theory of evolution. Hitler came along and believed the theory. Hitler killed Jews. So, blame Darwin for the Holocaust. Blame, too, all others who agree with or advance Darwin's theory. Get back to God and Adam and Eve and all will be right again with the world.

"To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," said Dr. D. James Kennedy, president of Coral Ridge Ministries. "The legacy of Charles Darwin is millions of deaths."

Obviously, the theme is breath-taking nonsense. You can't equate academic theory with murderous practice. You can't equate a thinker and a madman, or science and crime.

And you can't ever blame one man for another's actions. That once was a proud conservative precept. In a different context, you'll no doubt find Coral Ridge fervently preaching personal responsibility. Except, apparently, for Adolf Hitler, to whom these religious kooks issue a pass. Ol' Adolf, it seems, just fell in with a bad crowd.

By Coral Ridge's premise, Mohammed is to blame for Osama bin Laden. Actually, Coral Ridge might not argue with that. So how about this: The pope is to blame for the IRA. And Jesus is to blame for Mel Gibson, not to mention Coral Ridge Ministries.

[Omitted some author detail and contact info.]

[Oztrich Boy]

One thing, I'm amused that so many people jump on the author for his hyperbolic comparison of Christians to the Talibs, but no one seems to recognize the absurdity of blaming the Holocaust on Charles Darwin.

When Annie Coulter blaned the Holocaust on Darwin it was all "She's just being a polemicist. Don't have a cow"

[DoctorMichael]

Then take it off.

[JamesP81]

When in Rome I don't tell lies.

This seems to have escaped you, so let me put into more mathematical terms that you might understand:

hyperbole /= lies

Better now?

[HIDEK6]

Basically, using the "Taliban" reference when referring to conservative Christians should be a corollary to Godwin's Law--invoke it, you automatically lose the argument. He did, and he lost.

Especially when you precede that reference with the word, "thus."

Beware of this liberal substitute for reasoned thought.

[scottdeus12]

"The purpose of Creationism is to destroy and discredit the Conservative Movement.
There are only two types of Creationists:

1) Those that know they are are telling a lie and are therefore Evil, and 2) those that are so pig-ignorant that they believe the lie told by those who know they are telling a lie"

...is this a joke?????

[steve-b]

But in the case of Darwin, as with Marx, there is a specific logic to their ideas which lends itself to the sort of misuse (if it is misuse...) that later occurred.

Cowardice and illogic all in one sentence. How very efficient of you.

[hellbender]

Amazing how no one seems to have paid much attention to your post, which documents what a small step it was from evolution to eugenics, and from eugenics to genocide. (Eugenics also clearly begat the legalization of abortion.)

[stormer]

Of course. But that makes me wonder:

Is hyperbole > lie, or hyperbole < lie ?

[Physicist]

They pay money for their air-time like everyone else.

Uh huh. And how much did they pay for this editorial?

Perhaps you think they should not be allowed to speak?

I think they should not be provided platforms. Let them scream at passersby from the alleys like the other weirdos.

[E Rocc]

The pattern of history is clear: Nations that lose their reverence for God are only one short step from a complete devaluation of the lives and the liberty of those who are made in His image.

That may be true about nations based on religious beliefs, including those based on the "divine right" of a king. But this nation was not. It was based on philosophical beliefs. Primary among those beliefs was freedom of conscience.

If we lose our commitment to that belief....

-Eric

[Dimensio]

Oh, and by the way, any valid points that the author had about the Darwin-Hitler link (which, I agree, is way too much of a stretch) went right out the window when he used the "Taliban" reference to refer to Coral Ridge.

I am not sure that I can accept your logic. You are saying that if the author of this article had not referred to those he criticized as "Taliban" then Darwin would not be responsible for Hitler, but because the author of the article did use the term "Taliban" to describe a Christian group, Darwin is to blame for the Holocaust?

[Quark2005]

We've been told repeatedly, including in this thread, that science has nothing to say about morality, but here you seem to be saying that morality must change as science progresses.

No, I'm trying to say that a solid system of morality doesn't try to cover up the truth, it faces it and deals with it. That's all. A solid (non-relativistic) system of ethics should have no problem facing the facts.

[Jeff Head]

Sorry, but unless you are being sarcastic or practicing hyperbole, I believe you missed by far the largest percentage...ie. those who actually, truly believe that God created man and the earth upon which mankind resides. Who believe He did it, and that it was a direct, intelligent decision on His part to do so.

If, in your thinking that makes me evil or ignorant...well, that is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. Such thinking, however does not make me either evil or ignorant.

[js1138]

I haven't heard one word of refutation of what Kennedy says, only insults.

You've missed about a thousand posts on two other threds.

It boils down to two things. First the documents Kennedy uses to demonstrate Hitlers hatred for Christianity are as phoney as Dan Rather's Bush memos.

Second, Hitler pushed selective breeding, a concept that predates Darwin by 2500 years (at least).

Blame Plato.

But then, the shifting of blame in this way is hardly conservative. More like whiny liberal mush.

[Senator Bedfellow]

What do you think would have happened if nobody challenged such rhetoric?

The Left is far too fond of such comparisons to begin with, calling conservatives fascists and such. Let's not give them any ammo to make it look like they actually have a point.

[Dimensio]

Ann Coultier did a great job of explaining this link and why its there.

I hardly find this a point in favor of the attempted link, given her innumerable errors on the subject of evolution.

[scottdeus12]

Jeff,

IMHO, I think he's just a bomb-thrower.....I'm not seeing him defend his "arguement".

Scott

[Jeff Head]

It was based on philosophical beliefs.

Actually, if you read the Declaration of Independence that started it all in motion, and explained the reasoning, it is clear that the philosophy was based on religious belief. "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."

Key to that however is the clear message you gave...and that is free conscience. Freedom of thought and expression are indispensable to liberty, but the founders also recognized (and spoke of it often) that it was equally indispensable for that freedom to be self governed by moral constraint as found in religious practise, particularly Christianity.

[JamesP81]

But this nation was not. It was based on philosophical beliefs.

I give you John Adams, who said: "[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Once we become a non-religious, non-moral people, then the American experiment is effectively over.

[EternalVigilance]

It just seems like an appropriate place, on several levels, for this passage from Romans chapter one:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.