Posted on 05/01/2008 3:09:53 PM PDT by sitetest
It was from an obsessive Darwin-defender that I learned of the Anti-Defamation League's attack on the theatrical documentary Expelled, for "misappropriat[ing] the Holocaust." This guy is constantly emailing me. He warned that the ADL had just "issued a terse press release today condemning the equation of ‘Darwinism' with Nazism in Expelled. How can you call yourself a religious Jew and still believe in such Fundamentalist Protestant Christian nonsense like Intelligent Design?"
I thanked my email correspondent for a good laugh. The idea that, having defended Expelled's thesis concerning Hitler's intellectual debt to Charles Darwin, I would now feel chastised and repentant because of a statement from the ADL, an organization for which I have not a feather's weight of respect! This was rich stuff.
Just to be clear, however: Expelled doesn't equate Darwinism and Hitler. That basic point was also missed by Professor Sahotra Sarkar, who published a confused attack piece on me here on Jewcy. Sarkar attributed to me the view, "If you believe in the theory of evolution, you are an anti-Semite" -- something that, obviously, I would have to be a fool to write or believe.
Dealing primarily with the academic suppression of Darwin-doubting scientists on campuses around the country, Expelled only spends about 10 minutes on the Hitler-Darwin connection. But it draws upon a solid, mainstream body of scholarship by the chief Hitler biographers and others.
Undeterred, the ADL wailed that "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness."
Much the same view has been propounded elsewhere. Once again here at Jewcy, Jay Michaelson seemed to argue that all science is by definition value-neutral: "Last I checked, Hitler also made use of automobiles. Indeed, he based a lot of ideas on militarism and machines; does that mean technology is morally wrong? Should you turn off your computer right now?"
No, Jay, there are obvious differences between Darwinian theory and auto and computer technology. Most important, the latter make no claims to answering ultimate questions, like how life originated, from which ethical corollaries are naturally drawn.
Auto and computer technology are also proved reliable every day by our experience. But no one has ever reported seeing a species originate in the manner described in Darwin's Origin of Species - not now, not in the fossil record, not ever.
More interesting than these observations is the hypocrisy of the ADL's outburst: "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan."
It's funny how when the subject of conversation is Darwinism, then Hitler needed no one particular inspiration. But when the conversation shifts from Darwinism to - oh, I don't know - Christianity? Ah, then suddenly the genealogy of Nazism becomes eminently traceable.
One of the ADL's main fundraising technique has long been to scare Jews by demonizing Christianity. The group accordingly isn't shy about tracing the genealogy of the Holocaust back to the New Testament. In an essay on the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, for example, Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of interfaith affairs wrote:
"The anti-Judaism that begins in the New Testament was transformed through the admixture of political, economic and sociological prejudice into the anti-Semitism of modernity. This reached its ugly and inhuman nadir during World War II with Hitler's Final Solution for the Jewish people."
Blaming the earliest Christian writings for setting off a chain of influences resulting in the Holocaust evokes little outrage in the liberal Jewish community. Visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, for instance, are greeted by a film, Anti-Semitism, purporting to uncover the "religious root of this phenomenon, the pervasive anti-Jewish teachings that evolved from overly literal readings and misreadings of New Testament texts."
Yet when Hitler successfully sold his ideology of hate to the German people in his bestselling tract Mein Kampf, he phrased his argument not in Christian terms but in biological, Darwinian ones.
Ignoring Hitler's evolutionary rhetoric, of course, some commentators brandish a famous quote from the same book -- "by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." They don't realize that Hitler was referring not to the God of the Bible but to Nature and her iron laws, as his preceding sentence clearly indicates.
In a curious irony, the modern paperback edition of Mein Kampf, available in any Barnes & Noble, includes an Introduction by - guess who? None other than the ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman. Did he, I wonder, even read the book?
Nazism violates the most basic doctrine of Christianity and God’s laws. This is irrefutable.
On the contrary, Nazism and social Darwinism are perfectly congruent and compatible. This is undeniable.
Your argument is going nowhere.
LOL! I'll keep that in mind.
I just wanted to add a different perspective from that of the braying jackass Derbyshire.
sitetest
By the time Jesus was born Plato's Republic was 400 years old. Jesus was however a Jew and Orthodox Jews do not believe in marrying outside the faith. Breeding again you see,
BS.
Hitler was excommunicated latae sententiae hundreds of times over (Do you know how many priests his troops shot in Poland? Every one is good for an automatic excommunication.)
There is no, nada, absolutely ZERO evidence that Hitler practiced Catholicism at all after his mid-teens.
No, it has nothing to do with breeding, since other races can convert to Judaism. It’s nice to see that you slander Judaism along with Christianity though. Just like Hitler.
Perhaps you fail to understand where Christianity break from Judaism. All Christians are brothers, there is no Jew or Gentile.
Oh, puh-leeze. This “distinction” is merely a clintonian attempt to utter a smear and then refuse to take responsibility for it like a man.
——No, it has nothing to do with breeding, since other races can convert to Judaism. It’s nice to see that you slander Judaism along with Christianity though. Just like Hitler.——
OoooH BUUUURRN. Better put some ice on that Soliton.
Could you quote "the smear".
Thanks.
Bingo!
“Oh, puh-leeze. This ‘distinction’ is merely a clintonian attempt to utter a smear and then refuse to take responsibility for it like a man.”
To me, the distinction between “equates” and “is connected to” is rather large.
I'm connected to my sons. I'm not my sons.
The doctrine of ecclesiology of the Catholic Church is connected to the doctrine of the Real Presence. They're not the same things. Grass is connected to dirt (at least, that's the theory in my yard). They're not the same things. Maybe you get the idea.
What I see is that you have an emotional response to the whole issue and just don't feel like using that allegedly superior intelligence of yours.
Don't feel bad - I find that folks who think that they're highly rational are usually the least rational folks around.
sitetest
Idiotic nonsense. According to Naziism, the Jews had acquired powerful influence and were on the verge of taking over everything through their sneaky machinations. By the tenets of Social Darwinism, anyone clever enough to do that deserves to be in charge, and everybody else should just accept their leadership.
Ergo, one of the following statements is true:
1. Naziism teaches that everyone else should bow down to their Jewish Overlords, or
2. Naziism and Social Darwinism are fundamentally incompatible.
Ah, so you believe that Nazis wanted Gentiles to submit to Jewish rule, then.
Let me make this PERFECTLY CLEAR. Hitler was a monster. He thought monstrous thoughts. He did monstrous things. I have never suggested that his thoughts or actions were consistant with the teachings of Christ or the Church, only that he REFERENCED them as inspiration.
People on this site, including the original poster, claim that Darwin was Hitler's inspiration, even though Hitler NEVER mentioned Darwin in thousands if not millions of recorded statements.
Hitler believed in breeding a master race. I have shown repeatedly that breeding WITHIN a species is Socratic, not Darwinian. Darwin was concerned with the evolution of one species from another. Nazis were concerned with creating a new breed of man, not a new species of non-man.
The "Hitler-relies-on-Darwin" meme is simply a blood libel on Darwin and all those who genuinely believe in evolution. It is used to demonize the person when you can't offer a scientific argument.
Hitler was neither a Christian nor a Darwinist; he was a monster.
Nothing can explain Hitler's genocidal madness.
His insanity defies explanation, IMHO.
Wow, ignorance runs rampant here. Is this FR or DU.
Pretty much everybody on earth believed that their race was superior to every other race since the dawn of humanity. It's only Western modernism that has led some people to reject racist ideology.
So how to explain eugenics in the U.S.?
Your post makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe if you would elaborate it would help me understand your point.
"We all feel that in the distant future many may be faced with problems which can be solved only by a superior race of human beings, a race destined to become master of all the other peoples and which will have at its disposal the means and resources of the whole world." - Adolf Hitler, Mein KampfHitler wanted to breed a new man, the Superman or ubermensch, who would be a new race which would rule over all the less evolved men. The Superman would be to modern man what man is to ape. He wanted to cause the speciation of the human race.
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