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.]
Common sense tells us that if you're approaching a traffic light that's just turned green at 10 mph and the idiot in front of you accidentally puts his car into reverse instead of drive and backs into you at 5 mph, his apparent speed of approach is 15 mph.
So suppose you're in a spaceship travelling at 95% of light speed. You're playing chicken with another spaceship, which is hurtling towards you at 98% of light speed. What's the spaceship's apparent speed of approach?
Common sense would say the other spaceship looks like it's approaching at almost two times light speed, but common sense would be wrong. I'm not going to calculate the value--I'd likely get it wrong!--but it would be something close to but below the speed of light. What seems like common sense to us is often incorrect if we don't really understand the underlying mechanics of a phenomenon.
Explains the misunderstanding. When one possible answer is "to know the facts, the creationist has to read a book," that answer always merits attention.
"You are misrepresenting what I said. I stated that the term "races" applied to interbreeding groups of any species of animal."
So, then, "The Preservation Of Favoured Races" actually DOES apply to human beings? Man, you guys are spinning like a top.
What I find ironic is 40,000,000 abortions. How many do you suppose were by Liberal parents? I have seen statistics that approximately 80% of children follow their parents political bent.
Survival of the fittest sems to be, being enacted as we speak.
Transparent attempts to change the subject by taking quotes out of context.
Sad, but not unexpected.
I see your point, but disagree. Somebody else (Right Wing Professor, I think) once stated that animal husbandry -- or eugenics -- merely imposes a different sort of evolutionary pressure, but that the underlying mechanism was the same.
The underlying principle of eugenics, though, was taken from the TOE, in the sense that the theory of evolution implies the existence of "superior" and "inferior" traits. A eugenicist need not strive for "improvements," per se. For example, Margaret Sanger put her beliefs in terms of getting rid of undesirable traits:
A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
Since when have evolutionists made any such distinction? The whole point of the theory is to connect man and beast.
Racism has plagued humanity for thousands of years, and it has especially shown its ugly head during the last few centuries. Think of the myriads of Blacks carried from Africa and sold into slavery in the New World and, more recently, of the blatant racism of Nazi Germany. Even today, there are justifiable concerns along these lines. It is easy to condemn the sins of others, but how is it possible, we should ask, that a leader such as Hitler could sway thousands and even millions of intelligent Germans to his cause? It is one thing to say that Hitler was crazy; it is quite something else to affirm that all Germans were crazy along with him.
There is an hypothesis that has not yet adequately been considered. Staunch evolutionist, Sir Arthur Keith claims:
The German Fuhrer . . . consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution. 1
Elsewhere, Keith wrote:
The leader of Germany is an evolutionist, not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him, the national "front" of Europe is also the evolutionary "front;" he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people. 2
Hitler used the German word for evolution (Entwicklung) over and over again in his book. In fact, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the very title itself of Hitler's book ("My Struggle"), was influenced by Darwin's subtitle, "Struggle for Existence," and by the German advocate of evolution, Ernst Haeckel, who published a book, in 1905, entitled, Der Kampf um den Entwicklungs-Gedanken ("The Struggle over Evolutionary Thinking").
In Hitler's Mein Kampf, he spoke of "lower human types." He criticized the Jews for bringing "Negroes into the Rhineland" with the aim of "ruining the white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization." He spoke of "Monstrosities halfway between man and ape" and lamented the fact of Christians going to "Central Africa" to set up "Negro missions," resulting in the turning of "healthy . . . human beings into a rotten brood of bastards." In his chapter entitled "Nation and Race," he said, "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable." A few pages later, he said, "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." 3
Present-day Darwinians, for the most part, do not want to be identified with racism; so it is no wonder that some of Darwin's statements touching on this area receive little attention. He spoke of the "gorilla" and the "negro" [sic] as occupying evolutionary positions between the "Baboon" and the "civilized races of man" ("Caucasian"); viz:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro [sic] or Australian and the gorilla. 4
Later in the same volume, Darwin wrote:
It has often been said . . . that man can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate and other changes; but this is true only of the civilized races. Man in his wild condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country. 5
Referring to On the Origin of Species, by Darwin, Harvard University's Stephen Jay Gould wrote, "Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory." 6 He cites various sources to support his thesis, but two names which do not appear in his section entitled "Racism" are the names of Edwin G. Conklin and Henry Fairfield Osborn.
It is important to recognize that these two men were writing before Hitler's brand of evolution unfolded itself on the European continent. Some of the language of both Conklin and Osborn is reminiscent of Darwin, if not also of Hitler. It is important to keep in mind who these men were. Conklin was Professor of Biology at Princeton University from 1908 to 1933. He was also President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1936 (the year of Hitler's Berlin Olympics). He wrote:
Comparison of any modern race with the Neanderthal or Heidelberg types shows that all have changed, but probably the negroid races more closely resemble the original stock than the white or yellow races. 7 Every consideration should lead those who believe in the superiority of the white race to strive to preserve its purity and to establish and maintain the segregation of the races, for the longer this is maintained, the greater the preponderance of the white race will be. 8
Henry Fairfield Osborn was a professor of biology and zoology at Columbia University. For twenty-five years (1908-1933), he was President of the American Museum of Natural History's Board of Trustees. Osborn wrote:
The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolians, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the bodily characteristics . . . but of the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old-youth of the species Homo Sapiens. 9
In a book dedicated to John T. Scopes (the evolutionist teacher made famous by the Scopes "monkey trial"), Osborn wrote:
The ethical principle inherent in evolution is that only the best has a right to survive. . . .10
In this book, Osborn said that he was summing up an article he had written for the New York Times (2/26/22). One could speculate that Hitler, himself, might in some way have had access to this teaching prior to his writing of Mein Kampf, so similar does this last statement sound to much of what he believed and wrote.
It is easy to believe that Hitler had such an interest in the boxing match between Joe Louis and the German, Max Schmeling, (6/19/36). It "was rife with political and racial overtones. . . ." 11 Less than a year prior, Paul Gallico, writer for the New York Daily News, wrote:
Louis, the magnificent animal . . . He eats. He sleeps. He fights. . . . Is he all instinct, all animal? Or have a hundred million years left a fold upon his brain? I see in this colored man something so cold, so hard, so cruel that I wonder as to his bravery. Courage in the animal is desperation. Courage in the human is something incalculable and divine. 12
In April of 1986, The Pennsylvania Gazette (University of Pennsylvania) published an article featuring a skull labeled "NEGRO/LUNATIC." The caption under the photograph read, "'Scientific' racism: Skulls like these, housed in the University Museum, were once used to 'prove' white supremacy." 13
The National Geographic Society, in November of 1985, set before the public a display of "4,000,000 years of bipedalism" in its magazine. Nine "hominids," strongly suggestive of evolutionary development, are drawn--from Australopithecus-afarensis (a "Lucy" type), through modern Homo sapiens. The first five in the sequence had a darker skin tone; the last four, lighter. The editors acknowledged that the skin color is speculative, but, in the March 1986 issue of National Geographic ("Members Forum"), they said the following:
Since the three H. sapiens variations depicted were based on fossil evidence in Europe, Mr. Matternes gave them a lighter tone. 14
But this seems to be misleading, since the last four in the sequence have the lighter skin tones and the fourth from the end was based on evidence from Kenya, Africa! Could this be an example of a subtle form of racism still affecting the public today?
The Christian, as a follower of Jesus, does not have the option of racism. Jesus was no racist. He told His followers to love enemies--not to kill them. He sought to "draw all men" to Himself (John 12:32). "He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26).
1 Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1947), p. 230.
2 Ibid., p. 10.
3 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1943), pp. 286, 295, 325, 402, 403, 285, 289 respectively.
4 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1901), pp. 241-242.
5 Ibid., pp. 291-292.
6 Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 127.
7 Edwin G. Conklin, The Direction of Human Evolution (New York: Scribner's, 1921), p. 34.
8 Ibid., p. 53.
9 Henry Fairfield Osborn, "The Evolution of Human Races," Natural History, April 1980, p. 129--reprinted from January/February 1926 issue.
10 Henry Fairfield Osborn, Evolution and Religion in Education (London: Charles Scibner's Sons, 1926), p. 48.
11 Christ Mead, "Black Hero in a White Land," cf. Sports Illustrated, September 16, 1985, p. 94.
12 Ibid., p. 92.
13 "Gazetteer,"The Pennsylvania Gazette (University of Pennsylvania), April 1986, p. 19.
14 "Members Forum,"National Geographic, March 1986.
* Paul G. Humber, A.B., M.S., M.Div., is Schoolmaster at a college preparatory school in the Philadelphia area.
The concept of "racial superiority" predates Darwin by decades, if not centuries. The Spartans believed in the concept, for example. The domination of blacks by whites in the United States prior to the War Between the States can be chalked up to specific Christian doctrines -- blacks were considered "the children of Ham."
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid [it] upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces [were] backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed [be] Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. [Gen 9:22-27]
You've already been corrected on this. Plato was advocating eugenics 2000 years ago. It has been known since recorded history that human could be breed just like animals for specific traits. Breeding humans as a concept was not "taken from Darwin's theory of evolution." Breeding isn't a form of evolution anyhow, as has also been pointed out to you.
"Transparent attempts to change the subject by taking quotes out of context."
OK, then, does the subtitle "The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life" apply to human beings, or does it exclude human beings? Put it into your perception of proper context, please.
True enough. Darwin didn't have a lock on the ideas or the observations -- he just happened to be the one who formalized them at a propitious time. The culture of Darwin's time was ripe for those who would leap on the scientific foundations Darwin supplied -- and thus we call it Social Darwinism, as opposed to Social Platonism.
I know, bro. But it's worth it occasionally for the lurkers...
"Please provide a quote from the book wherein Darwin speaks of human races."
Given that Darwin went on to publish "Descent Of Man," gaining a much wider audience for eugenic theory, please provide a quote from that book wherein Darwin excluded human races from "the struggle." He didn't. You're splitting hairs.
Agreed. However, it was Darwin who supplied the scientific basis from which eugenicists and racists of various stripes were able to make "objective" claims.
One need not (and I don't) ignore the fact that people used Biblical claims in defense of slavery. However, Mississippi's "imperious law of nature" looks to be based more on evolutionary claims, than on Biblical ones.
The idea of selective breeding of humans goes back to at least Plato. Galton was one of the originators of the modern notion of human selective breeding and he chose to call it eugenics, which attempted to clothe it in scientific garb (sort of like what the IDers do.) Regardless of how it is phrased, its essence is animal husbandry applied to humans. As such it is artificial selection.
In fact, the idea that humans can be breed for specific traits (as were domesticated animals) is in fact a CORRECT fact, is it not? If you admit the underlying facts about breeding are correct (lets forget about natural evolution), then you have the basis for your Hitlerian excesses. Or do you dispute that human can be breed? Not whether they should or not, but whether the potential exists?
What say you to that?
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