"Don't Blame Darwinism for Hitler! Blame Christianity!"

Jewcy - What Matters Now ^ | April 30, 2008? | David Klinghoffer

[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?

[Antoninus]

Worse, it was compiled by a proven sociopath, who was anti-Christian and was published after Hitler's death.

Guy, just give up. You brought an intellectual butter knife to a gun fight.

[Antoninus]

Pretty much everybody on earth believed that their race was superior to every other race since the dawn of humanity.

LOL. You do realize that the concept of "race" didn't really exist in the modern sense until after Darwin, don't you? Sure, the Greeks and Romans believed that they were superior to others around them. But it was for *cultural* reasons, not racial ones. Romanitas was a cultural phenomenon that could be shared by all Romans be they of Italian, Greek, African, Syrian, or Egyptian heritage.

Wow, ignorance runs rampant here.

Your projecting again...

[Antoninus]

So before Darwin, racism did not exist? Europeans and Americans thought Africans were their equals? They enslaved them for what? Oh, I recall, in America they counted as a fraction of a white man. And, you call me nuts.

No, it wasn't racism in the same sense. You'll recall that there were white "slaves" for a while too. And free blacks in the North who counted as a FULL person. Counting slaves as 3/5 of a person was actually something that was insisted upon by the Free states--the slave states wanted to count them as full people so they could have more representation in Congress.

And you'll recall that the British had as much or more contempt for the Irish than they ever had for black Africans.

The concept of superior/inferior races springs almost directly from social Darwinism in the mid-19th century.

[Antoninus]

Well you have finally said something so stupid I can no longer debate you. I guess you just solved the world's racial problems by denying races exist.

That is the Christian point of view, as clearly spelled out in the Scriptures. In Christ, there is no race. Only the human race.

I agree with it. The world would be much better off if we discarded the antiquated social Darwinist notions of race once and for all.

[Antoninus]

Hitler was all powerful in Germany. He had stated goal to destroy Christianity and, especially, Catholicism. And you seem to be saying he was a Christian and a Catholic. Remarkable.

LOL. There are some truly pathetic anti-Christian ideologues here on FR.

[Antoninus]

Hitler has many inspirations. The most important would be Plato’s Republic where just his sort of program was described more than 2000 years before Darwin.

Hey mrjesse, just for kicks, run that word counter for Mein Kampf on Plato and see what comes up, eh?

[SeaHawkFan]

Seeing how it was the Christian world that destroyed Naziism, one can hardly blame Christians for Hitler.

[mrjesse]

Hitler has many inspirations. The most important would be Plato’s Republic where just his sort of program was described more than 2000 years before Darwin.

Hey mrjesse, just for kicks, run that word counter for Mein Kampf on Plato and see what comes up, eh?

Zero..?! ahh ha ha ha good point!

Thanks,

-Jesse

[Soliton]

Read Plato’s republic and get back to me

[Tribune7]

Worse, it was compiled by a proven sociopath, who was anti-Christian and

who was one of Hitler's private secretary and one his most trusted officials.

published after Hitler's death.

It was about as contemporaneous as you can get. It was record of Hitler's private conversations recorded while they were happening.

[Antoninus]

Read Plato’s republic and get back to me

As you can see from mrjesse's search, Hitler mentions Plato exactly ZERO times in Mein Kampf.

I'm bookmarking this thread. Few times have I seen the darwinian evolution fundamentalists so thoroughly and completely unmanned (intellectually speaking, of course!)

[Soliton]

Euthanasia, Eugenics, and Genocide Plato introduced the idea of eugenics in the Republic, and the concept has been put to insidious means since. Plato wrote, “The children of the better parents they will carry to the creche to be reared in the care of nurses living apart in a certain quarter of the city. Those of inferior parents, and any children of the rest that are born defective, will be hidden away, in some appropriate manner that must be kept secret . . .”

Hitler echoed Plato in his defense of eugenics in Nazi Germany. “Defective people” may not reproduce, and all who are defective are to be “mercilessly isolated.” Hitler’s utopian vision also led to the genocide of millions of Jews, saying that if Jews do not leave Europe, “I see no other solution but extermination.”

http://dartreview.com/issues/11.12.01/utopias.html

[Soliton]

PLATONIC EUGENICS

The Lebensborn Project cannot be understood without placing it into the greater context of the international eugenics movement that began in the 1880s. The eugenics movement was driven by the emerging disciplines of psychology and sociology; that is, the question of why human beings behave as they do pursuant to national, racial, religious, economic, and class status. It was also driven by the belief that physical characteristics such as head size, facial features, size and configuration of genitalia, and eye and hair color determined a person’s value.

Superimposed over these factors was the belief that the people of Atlantis as described by Plato were the prototype of the perfected human being and that through the practice of eugenics it was possible to bring humanity back to that state of perfection. Plato’s thoughts on eugenics and the breeding of philosopher kings and guardians for the Republic are found in Republic, Book IV. (For a detailed description see: Republic, Book IV, Re: Philosopher Kings and Guardians; Henri Estienne, 1578 [Stephanus] translation and numbers 460, 467, 467, 537, 541)

Plato cites five criteria for children who are to become philosopher kings and guardians of the Republic:

The race of the guardians is to be “pure.”
Children will be put into the rearing pen and turned over to nurses. Mothers will nurse babies but will not know which one is theirs.
Children of inferior parents and defective children will be put out of sight in secrecy as is befitting.
Male and female guardian children will be educated as both philosophers and warriors.
Children will be taken on horse back to witness battles and have their taste of blood like puppies.
In the Republic it was a matter of eugenic policy that parents should bear children for the state for a defined number of years. Children were not for fulfillment or for “family,” but were for the health of the body politic. After the proscribed child bearing years were completed, Plato held that abortion should be compelled for any woman who became pregnant at forty or who had a husband over fifty. It was expected that parents would make every effort to abort the fetus or dispose of the newborn child of ensuing pregnancies if abortion was not successful.

http://www.socialjusticespeaks.org/id29.html

[Soliton]

Eugenics, in its original sense, like other forms of selective breeding was conceptualized as a means of “improving “the stock, in this case the human race. Eugenics is a very old idea, dating back to Plato and even earlier. It has been embraced by a gamut a different individuals throughout history. These individuals range from sensitive artists like George Bernard Shaw to the man whose name has become synonymous with evil, Adolf Hitler.

http://www.geneticengineering.org/eugenics/jack-a-palmer.html

[Soliton]

Eugenics is a scheme for improving the human race by controlling reproduction. The practice of eugenics reached its height in the period between the latenineteenth century and World War II, when German Nazis carried eugenic principles to the extremes of mass sterilization and genocide. Different forms of eugenics have been practiced around the world and are currently in effect in the People’s Republic of China, where reproduction is strictly limited. With the advent of medical research such as the Human Genome Project, society is still trying to resolve the ethical issues raised by eugenic theories.

The general concept of eugenics is first mentioned in Greek records dating back to 368 BC. Plato and Aristotle both refer to the city state’s need for healthy citizens to form an elite ruling class and army. In this earliest blueprint for eugenics, men and women were encouraged to reproduce when they were at the peak of their physical and mental powers, in order to conceive the healthiest and most intelligent children. This underlying principle of striving for an ideal society through selective breeding is one that has motivated eugenicists throughout history.

http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/45/Eugenics.html

[Soliton]

Breeding of human beings was suggested at least as far back as Plato, but the modern field and term was first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1865, drawing on the recent work of his cousin Charles Darwin. From its inception eugenics was supported by prominent people, including Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.

http://www.jewishmag.com/114mag/leprosy/leprosy.htm

[Antoninus]

I am very familiar with Plato's Republic, having studied it at university.

Now please provide specific evidence that Hitler was inspired directly by Plato--or had even read the Republic. The circumstantial stuff you provided to this point proves absolutely nothing except there were some points of affinity between Socrates's political theory and what was actually implemented by the Nazis.

BTW, the Soviets adopted some of Plato's tenets as well--rule by enlightened "philosopher kings" (the politboro), collective raising of children, etc. But few people would argue that Plato was at the core of their ideology and not Marx.

[Soliton]

The point I was making, and stated explicitly was that Hitler’s actions were designed to create a master race within the human species (after Plato) and not a new species (after Darwin).

I will not look through all of Hitler’s writings to see if he cites Plato directly. I have said that he never cites Darwin as an influence, but he does reference christianity. I do not believe I have ever said he cited Plato.

From Mein Kampf:

“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.”

“What makes a people or, to be more correct, a race, is not language but blood.”

“All these opinions have this common feature and failing: that they are not grounded in a recognition of the profound truth that the capacity for creating cultural values is essentially based on the racial element and that, in accordance with this fact, the paramount purpose of the State is to preserve and improve the race; for this is an indispensable condition of all progress in human civilization.”

“Thus the indispensable prerequisite for the existence of a superior quality of human beings is not the State but the race, which is alone capable of producing that higher human quality.”

“The constructive principle of Aryan humanity is thus displaced by the destructive principle of the Jews, They become the ‘ferment of decomposition’ among nations and races and, in a broad sense, the wreckers of human civilization”

Again, Hitler’s eugenics programs, including the haulocaust and the Lebensborn programs, followed Plato’s methods for creating a superior race within our species. Darwin was concerned with the evolution of one species into another. Therefore Darwin could not have been a source for these programs.

[Antoninus]

Your premise has been completely exploded by dozens of posts on this thread, and yet you haven't backed off of it even an iota. You respond with the same invalid points over and over.

These are the hallmarks of invincible ignorance as spouted by an ideologue, not rational debate. As such, There is no point in continuing this discussion.

May Almighty God shower his blessings upon you that you may someday come to know the Truth.