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Havent we heard it said, time and time again here, that guns dont kill people, people kill people...why not blame the inventor of guns, and get rid of all the guns...its the very same reasoning, that people are using to blame Darwin for Hitler...Does anyone actually really believe, if Darwin had not formed his theory of evolution, that Hitler would not have acted in the way that he did?...That Hitler would not have done what he did?....Give me a break...Evil people will do as they wish, and they will so using any and all justifications that they deem necessary to sway people to their way of thinking...

What do YOU think that the two Columbine School murderer's shooting actions were based on?

Have you read Hitler's "Mein Kampf"??

Hmmmmm???

"What do YOU think that the two Columbine School murderer's shooting actions were based on?"

Their perceived abuse at the hands of other students, faculty and society at large.

You are suggesting that we should be allowed to blame what we read for our actions. This flies in the face of taking personal responsibility for what we do and how we act.

Perhaps we should dig deeper into the psyche of people like Hitler and the Columbine gunmen to determine what lies behind their aberrant behaviour before we start blaming those distortions of other's ideas they seek for support.

In Hitler's case, had not humans witnessed the change for the better in domestic population when the weak are removed, had Plato not suggested a method of improving the human species, had the Spartans not winnowed out the weak in an attempt to produce stronger warriors, and had not Darwin discovered the process of common descent and it's mechanism, natural selection, Hitler would have found some other rationale to support his hatred.

Whether Darwin had racist tendencies or not, and it can be argued that in comparison to modern ideals he could be classed as a racist (albeit poorly), his views on human classes are not responsible for the actions of Hitler or the Columbine gunmen. At most his ideas are tools which can be and have been illicitly used to promote distorted ideologies.

Darwin, despite his tremendous contribution to science, and his modern approach to scientific methodology, was a product of his time. Just as everyone else in the Britain of the era, he confused technological level and the formalization of human interaction, not just in every day life but in war, with a fundamental superiority. Even with that erroneous view, one so prevalent in his society, he obviously abhorred the idea of one subspecies of human subjugating another and considered all humans to be one species.

His views on human racial differences were far more modern than even the religious leaders of the day.

If you compare the racial ideas of the Victorian era with those of today, and take a rather broad definition of 'racist' then you can claim everyone of the Victorian era, including yours and my great, great grandparents as racists. Among those of the Victorian era, Darwin was unusual in his belief of all humans being fundamentally the same. Remember that Darwin was a man well versed in the classification of species based on very minor differences. Two organisms, too similar for a layman to differentiate between, Darwin, through his own or through other's work, would classify them as separate species. Yet he considered Africans and Caucasians to be of the same species.

Those that recognize minor morphological differences between individuals and cultural differences between societies are not racists because they acknowledge those differences; they become racist when those differences become the focus of hate, or their actions and words become based on unfounded bias. That does not describe Darwin.