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.]
Abortion is at least as BAD as the holocaust
What point do you believe that you have made with that graphic?
"What lies did Charles Darwin propigate?"
His untruths were fundamental, and yes, racist at their core.
And...?
You are unable to list examples of these, or do you simply refuse to?
The very title of the The Origin of Species is: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Surely you don't think that the book's title refers to human races, do you?
You're flat-out wrong. The title refers to varieties of animal and plant species. Who told you otherwise?
"Surely you don't think that the book's title refers to human races, do you?"
Are you claiming that the title does not?
It's a old Creationist trick to pretend that "races" in the title refers to human races, and therefore that Darwin himself was a racist.
It's patently and obviously untrue, as anyone who has actually read the book can tell you. But the ploy should not be surprising coming from a camp that trumpets willful ignorance.
It's a particularly slimy trick, because it doesn't even speak to the validity of the Theory itself but attempts to smear the character of the man who proposed it. Completely sleazy tactics, unworthy of any serious conversation.
No such implication is contained in the theory. If you believe that contention, you've misunderstood the theory or inferred it out of whole cloth.
The theory simply says that the ancestral humans who left Africa and whose descendants settled Eurasia, Australia, the Americas and the Pacific Islands were fully Homo sapiens when they exited Africa (and not another hominid, such as Homo erectus.)
Those that left Africa were most certainly no more or less intelligent than those who did not. Indeed, it is inconceivable that they were aware that they had left Africa. The spread of humanity across the globe was generation after generation of humans deciding to live "just a little a over the hill" or "just a bit down the coast" or "just a ways up the river."
I have observed that many creationists, when confronted with a request to support false claims, will resort to insulting all who disagree with them, falsely asserting that all who accept that evolution is valid science are atheists and making excuses for refusing to support their claims while making a show of their perceived superiority by abandoning us "inferiors".
>>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.
Let me guess. You never found time to read "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
Nobody who has bothered to read the book could make such an elementary error.
Speaks volumes about a person who would make such a silly claim:
Human beings are specifically omitted, in the reference to "races" in that title, hmmm? One is left to wonder, then, just why on earth Darwin then went on to author "Descent Of Man."
Eugenics is the application of animal husbandry to human beings. As soon as an intelligent agent is doing the selecting, it is no longer "natural selection" but "artificial selection" and, therefore, not encompassed by the TOE (to the extent that the "TOE" refers to Darwinian evolution.)
A restatement of what I said to you. All you're saying is that "better" traits -- whether alone or in combination, lead to improved probability of reproductive success. Thus, "fitness" is still in the picture -- and your argument merely demonstrates your agreement with that claim.
Does evidence exist to support the "greater intelligence" claim? If not, then it is purely conjecture? Also, what is meant by "greater intelligence"? Is this a measure of speed of acquistion of knowledge, ability to solve problems or is some other metric used?
Empirically, one might point to the fact that sub-Saharan African countries tend to be (and have pretty much always been) savage sh*tholes, whereas non-African countries tend to be less so. One might also point to the positive correlation between IQ and income -- and note which races appear at the upper and lower points of each scale.
This still does not demonstrate the superiority of one race over another.
One could use the aforementioned observations to state that "racial superiority" has been demonstrated by empirical observation. (I don't hold to this conclusion --I'm merely showing that one can adduce the conclusion based on evidence.)
Getting back to the source of this, though, please note that we got onto this topic by your asking "How" the theory of evolution has been used to justify racist claims. The foregoing is one such example.
Another interesting example can be found in a couple of the Declarations of Secession, prior to the Civil War.
Mississippi's stated that:
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
Texas stated that:
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
There is, of course, a lot of additional context to these declarations; the thing I'm pointing out to you, however, is the very explicit statements of racial superiority, and the obvious "evolutionary basis" from which those claims are drawn.
As has been pointed out, Plato was advocating eugenics a couple thousand years before Darwin. He did so in The Republic.
"As has been pointed out, Plato was advocating eugenics a couple thousand years before Darwin. He did so in The Republic."
Which is it, eugenics as originated and described by Francis Galton and enthused upon by Charles Darwin to the point that he published same in "Descent Of Man," or mere "animal husbandry?" You guys need to make up your mind on this.
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