Posted on 08/28/2006 6:31:13 AM PDT by 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.]
The discussion is what you make it.
A stunningly dishonest set of responses. When you're ready to conduct an honest discussion, please let me know.
"It would be amusing if these people weren't so hell-bent on destroying and discrediting the Conservative Movement. Its now gone way beyond that"
"these people" meaning....what, Creationists? So you are saying Creationists are destroying The Conservative Movement?
It's something I have passed on to my children and grand-children...and am confident that they will pass on to theirs.
It's also true...but not something I will rant or contend with you about because until you reach a point in your own life (as it is with all of us) where you desire to find out for yourself through a humble approach and petition to your Father in Heaven...it would be absolutely senseless to go the rounds with you over it. Matters of faith are not approached or resolved in such a manner, nor can they be.
Anyhow...I still contend that the largest portion, by far, of the Christian faith is the option number three that you left out and that I referenced when replying to your initial post...ie. those who honestly and sincerely beleive God created man and the erth. They are not ignorant, and they are not evil. They just have that faith...a faith I might add, that the founders of this nation expressed and based our free society on.
Best Fregards to you...we can clealry still be allies on many critical issues despite this difference.
You responded.
The kind of anti-Semitism which prevailed before the 19th century was based on envy, xenophobia, and sectarian politics, whereas Hitler's was based on "science" and romantic paganism.
Hah! I read this wrong and thought you said it was their enema! Well, they are full of shiite...
A softball question, to be sure. I'm rather certain that you raised the applications in your own mind as you posted your question to me.
Eugenics is one such application -- the idea that one can apply the scientific principle of "survival of the fittest" to a "scientific" approach to improving the human animal by selective breeding.
One can also justify racism in its various forms by invoking the ideas.
Huxley's Brave New World suggests one manner in which it might occur; but of course, the Nazis were the ones who really tried it.
No doubt. Which does nothing to address the idea that evolutionary theory has moral implications.
"One can also justify racism in its various forms by invoking the ideas."
I'd only point to the countless threads posted to FR, with all the skull porn of which evos are so fond ... craniometrics are inevitably included. Quite the nasty, racist history behind measuring crania and attempting to deduce intelligence on that basis.
"They pay money for their air-time like everyone else. Perhaps you think they should not be allowed to speak? I haven't heard one word of refutation of what Kennedy says, only insults." ~ Dr. Thorne
I agree with you that they have a right to free speech as much as anyone else. They haven't advocated killing those who don't agree with them.
I would like to know, however, how you think Kennedy's statement, "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," is any different from saying:
"To put it simply, no Bible no David Duke? Or:
"To put it simply, no guns, no murders." ? Or:
"To put it simply, no writing implements, no misspelled words"? Or:
"To put it simply, no Bible no Inquisition or witch-burning"?
thanks for your enlightening history on the eugenics movement. My parents had a book on eugenics that I remember looking at when I was quite young. Never really knew what it was all about. The woman who began planned parenthood (Sanger) believed in it too. Started PP to get rid of blacks and other people she deemed unworthy to live. Wonder why the left doesn't bring this fact out????
Your inflammatory descriptions aside, you're quite correct -- and the fact is that there was quite an "racial superiority" industry built on that basis. So much so, in fact, that Stephen Jay Gould felt compelled to write his "Mismeasure of Man" to address the issue.
I completely agree with this statement. It's not the job of science to provide a moral basis, only to discover and interpret data.
Blaming the theory evolution for what Hitler did is like pushing your grandmother down the stairs and blaming the theory of gravitation. Just doesn't make any sense. Scientific observations don't validate anyone's bad behavior.
"To put it simply, no Bible no Inquisition or witch-burning?"
... or Hitler? There are self-styled defenders of Darwin on this thread who seem to be laboring under the impression that this is the far more rational and socially acceptable conclusion.
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. Coral Ridge Ministries doesn't go around chopping off hands or executing those that disagree with them.Bingo.
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.
Are you referring to the scientists here on FR?
That notwithstanding, eugenics is not apart of TOE. Why it does not factor into this argument.
On the contrary, it provides a fully-developed syllabus for any district that requires the teaching of "Intelligent Design".
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