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?
2. Did Mr. Stein suggest that Hitler's use of Darwinism was legitimate?
If we're going to examine the connection between Hitler and Darwin's theories, wouldn't it be appropriate to include an examination of the actual outcome of Hitler's philosophy and actions weighed against those theories? Hitler's own actions and nature resulted in his removal from the human gene pool.
Is this where Lucas got "In a galaxy far, far away"?
Now of course we learned from the liberals during the Michael Moore 911 documentary that one should not judge or criticize a documentary without first seeing it. So I look forward to liberals applying that same standard to Expelled. We also know coutesy of the Jerimiah Wright school of thought that unless someone has seen an entire DVD one does not haave to right to comment on it...unless of course your taking the liberal side.
Those who deny Hitler as a Christian will invariably find the recorded table talk conversations of Hitler from 1941 to 1944 as incontrovertible evidence that he could not have been a Christian. The source usually comes from the English translation edition by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, with an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper.
The table talk has Hitler saying such things such as: “Christianity is an invention of sick brains...,” “The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.”
But those that argue against Hitler’s Christianity fail to see that Christianity comes in many forms, two of which consist as: a belief system held by Christians, and organized religion. It was the latter, organized Christianity, that Hitler spoke against (just as many Christians do today). Not once does Hitler denounce his own Christianity nor does he speak against Jesus. On the contrary, the Table-Talk has Hitler speaking admirably about Jesus. But the problems with using Hitler’s table talk conversations as evidence for Hitler’s apostasy are manyfold:
1) The reliability of the source (hearsay and editing by the anti-Catholic, Bormann)
2) The Table-Talk reflects thoughts that do not occur in Hitler’s other private or public conversations.
3) Nowhere does Hitler denounce Jesus or his Christianity.
4) The Table-Talk does not concur with Hitler’s actions for “positive” Christianity.
Not one of Hitler’s table talk conversations were recorded or captured by audio, film, or broadcast on radio. According to H.R. Trevor-Roper, Hitler refused to admit any mechanical recorder into his room.
Did you bother to read the actual article?
Do you bother to comprehend what you read? Darwin proposed a theory of Natural Selection. Evolution is about how species evolve. He drew upon experienced with breeding and field observations of animal. The origin of life is another matter studied as the science of Abiogenesis. That is not the field of Evolution. ID'ers are idiots for confusing Darwin's ideas with creationism.
Gott Mit Uns is the traditional motto for the German Army, it goes back way before the third reich. It was also the saying only used by the Wehrmacht in WWII which was the less political of the military branches. The SS used “Mein ehre heisst true” and the hitler youth used “Blut und Ehre”.
Anyone that thinks Hitler was in any way tied to Christianity is ignorant of his background. He was tied up into occultism, nature worship, and paganism. He viewed Christianity as a religion forced upon the Aryan people to help weaken them and eventually wanted to purge Christianity out of the German Volk.
The documentary “The Occult History of the SS” does a good job exposing what the Nazis were all about. Shockingly, the very early founders of the Nazi party had much more in common in the religion department with your average smelly hippy environmentalist than anyone else the the USA today.
"Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. 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 of organic living beings would be unthinkable. The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance,etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice. Therefore, here, too, the struggle among themselves arises less from inner aversion than from hunger and love. In both cases, Nature looks on calmly, with satisfaction, in fact. In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development. If the process were different, all further and higher development would cease and the opposite would occur. For, since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health. No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Boy, that's convenient! I bet you use that all the time in various situations to suit. I'll have to remember that.
It takes far more faith to believe in the theory of evolution that it does to believe in intelligent design.
There, I said my piece. I can leave this thread.
A dodge. How unexpected.
What a load of. One could argue that "traditional" German antisemitism was historically rooted in Luther, but Hitler (who was born and raised in Catholic Austria) was a product of pre-WW1 Austrian pan-Germanist antisemitism and occultism. The worship of pre-Christian Germanic heroism was essential.
Of course anti-semtitism and pogroms in Germany far outdated Luther.
"Under certain circumstances, in periods of distress or under bad climatic condition, or if the soil yields too poor a return, Nature herself tends to check the increase of population in some countries and among some races, but by a method which is quite as ruthless as it is wise. It does not impede the procreative faculty as such; but it does impede the further existence of the offspring by submitting it to such tests and privations that everything which is less strong or less healthy is forced to retreat into the bosom of tile unknown. Whatever survives these hardships of existence has been tested and tried a thousandfold, hardened and renders fit to continue the process of procreation; so that the same thorough selection will begin all over again. By thus dealing brutally with the individual and recalling him the very moment he shows that he is not fitted for the trials of life, Nature preserves the strength of the race and the species and raises it to the highest degree of efficiency. The decrease in numbers therefore implies an increase of strength, as far as the individual is concerned, and this finally means the invigoration of the species. But the case is different when man himself starts the process of numerical restriction. Man is not carved from Nature's wood. He is made of 'human' material. He knows more than the ruthless Queen of Wisdom. He does not impede the preservation of the individual but prevents procreation itself. To the individual, who always sees only himself and not the race, this line of action seems more humane and just than the opposite way. But, unfortunately, the consequences are also the opposite. By leaving the process of procreation unchecked and by submitting the individual to the hardest preparatory tests in life, Nature selects the best from an abundance of single elements and stamps them as fit to live and carry on the conservation of the species. But man restricts the procreative faculty and strives obstinately to keep alive at any cost whatever has once been born. This correction of the Divine Will seems to him to be wise and humane, and he rejoices at having trumped Nature's card in one game at least and thus proved that she is not entirely reliable. The dear little ape of an all-mighty father is delighted to see and hear that he has succeeded in effecting a numerical restriction; but he would be very displeased if told that this, his system, brings about a degeneration in personal quality. For as soon as the procreative faculty is thwarted and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which allows only healthy and strong individuals to survive is replaced by a sheer craze to 'save' feeble and even diseased creatures at any cost. And thus the seeds are sown for a human progeny which will become more and more miserable from one generation to another, as long as Nature's will is scorned. But if that policy be carried out the final results must be that such a nation will eventually terminate its own existence on this earth; for though man may defy the eternal laws of procreation during a certain period, vengeance will follow sooner or later. A stronger race will oust that which has grown weak; for the vital urge, in its ultimate form, will burst asunder all the absurd chains of this so-called humane consideration for the individual and will replace it with the humanity of Nature, which wipes out what is weak in order to give place to the strong. Any policy which aims at securing the existence of a nation by restricting the birth-rate robs that nation of its future." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Hitler was raised a Catholic in Bavaria, a predominantly Catholic region of Germany.
You will find it in Mein Kampf: “Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s Work.”
Hitler said it again at a Nazi Christmas celebration in 1926: “Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews ... The work that Christ started but could not finish, I — Adolf Hitler — will conclude.”
In a Reichstag speech in 1938, Hitler again echoed the religious origins of his crusade. “I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord’s work.”
Hitler regarded himself as a Catholic until he died. “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so,” he told Gerhard Engel, one of his generals, in 1941.
There was really no reason for Hitler to doubt his good standing as a Catholic. The Catholic press in Germany was eager to curry his favor, and the princes of the Catholic Church never asked for his excommunication. Religions encourage their followers to hold authority in unquestioning respect; this is what makes devout religionists such wonderful dupes for dictators.
When Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in Munich in November, 1939, he gave the credit to providence. “Now I am completely content,” he exclaimed. “The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence’s intention to let me reach my goal.” Catholic newspapers throughout the Reich echoed this, declaring that it was a miraculous working of providence that had protected their Fuhrer. One cardinal, Michael Faulhaber, sent a telegram instructing that a Te Deum be sung in the cathedral of Munich, “to thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuhrer’s fortunate escape.” The Pope also sent his special personal congratulations!
Later the Pope was to publicly describe Hitler’s opposition to Russia as a “highminded gallantry in defense of the foundations of Christian culture.” Several German bishops openly supported Hitler’s invasion of Russia, calling it a “European crusade.” One bishop exhorted all Catholics to fight for “a victory that will allow Europe to breathe freely again and will promise all nations a new future.”
Biographer John Toland wrote of Hitler’s religion: “Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god — so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty. Himmler was pleased to murder with mercy. He ordered technical experts to devise gas chambers which would eliminate masses of Jews efficiently and ‘humanely,’ then crowded the victims into boxcars and sent them east to stay in ghettos until the killing centers in Poland were completed.”
It fits well in this thread then.
Help me out here. Does "equate" == "connection"? Can someone talk about a connection between two ideas or issues without implying equality between the two? For instance, there are connections between conservatism and libertarianism, both with individual people and derivation of thoughts and values. However, no one would say that I just equated the two distinct political philosophies, would they?
Anyone denying the Social-Darwinist foundation for Nazi Ideology should read the excerpt and repeat the denial...
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