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?
Derbyshire is a bigot and shallow-thinker who admitted that he is commenting on a movie he refused to see.
“Again, breeding”
Breeding IS TRAIT SELECTION, ie, DARWINISM in action!
How can you compare a movie by Ben Stein to anything by Michael Moore or Al Gore?
Rather than blame Darwinism or Christianity for Hitler, why don’t we blame Hitler for Hitler?
Hitler and the Nazis were totally marinated in the "survival of the fittest" ideology. Those who suggest otherwise are not paying attention to history.
Obviously, Darwinism does not necessarily lead to Nazism,
---but it does make Nazism possible.
“Rather than blame Darwinism or Christianity for Hitler, why don’t we blame Hitler for Hitler?”
Because the leftist Pigs like Foxman keep blaming CHIRSTIANITY for Hitler, but, when conservatives point out that Hitler was inspired by their pet theory of Darwin, the howl.
God, this guy is so frikin stupid that he puts mutually exclusive statements in adjacent paragraphs....
I humbly submit that if you cannot tell the difference between the meanings of the words 'connection' and 'equate' in the above context, it is indeed you who are 'frickin' stupid'.
Really? Then do so, to wit: after Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote a second book ("Zweites Buch") , in which he went into considerable detail about his affection for Darwinian evolution concepts:
On the second page, both of the German and English versions, Hitler stated:
"In the limitation of this living space lies the compulsion for the struggle for survival, and the struggle for survival, in turn, contains the precondition for evolution."
A page later Hitler stated:
"This development (Entwicklung) is characterized by the never-ending battle (Kampf) of humans against animals and also against humans themselves."
A better translation of this would be:
"This evolution is characterized by an eternal struggle of humans against animals and against humans themselves."
Wikipedia's discussion of the evolutionary principles Hitler embraced are particularly noticeable when Hitler discusses the U.S., wiki summarizes as follows:
In Mein Kampf, Hitler rarely mentioned the United States and when he did, it was in a tone of deep contempt. In Mein Kampf, Hitler portrayed the United States as a “racially degenerate” society on its way to self-oblivion. By contrast, in Zweites Buch, Hitler portrayed the U.S. as a dynamic, “racially successful” society that practiced eugenics and segregation and followed what Hitler considered to be a wise policy of excluding “racially degenerate” immigration from eastern and southern Europe. What promoted the change in Hitler's views between 1924 and 1928 is not known. By 1928, Hitler seems to have heard about the massive industrial wealth of the U.S., the Immigration Act of 1924, segregation and the fact that several American states had eugenics boards to sterilize people who were considered mentally defective, and was favorably impressed. Hitler proclaimed his admiration for these sorts of policies and expressed his wish that Germany would do similar things, though on a much greater scale.Of all Germany’s potential enemies, Hitler ranked the United States as the greatest and most dangerous. By contrast, Hitler saw the United Kingdom as a fellow “Aryan” power that in exchange for Germany's renunciation of naval and colonial ambitions would ally itself with Germany. France in Hitler’s opinion, was rapidly “Negroizing” itself. In regard to the Soviet Union, Hitler dismissed the Russian people as being Slavic Untermensch (sub-humans) incapable of intelligent thought. Hitler consequently believed that the Russian people were ruled over by what he regarded as a gang of bloodthirsty but inept Jewish revolutionaries. By contrast, the majority of Americans were in Hitler’s view “Aryans”, albeit Aryans ruled by what Hitler saw as a Jewish plutocracy. In Hitler’s point of view, it was this combination of “Aryan” might coupled with competent “Jewish rule” which was what made the U.S. so dangerous.
——That Clinton thinks he can use Christian theology to his advantage——
So you don’t think that Hitler misused Christian theology for his advantage?
That’s Herbert Spencer.
Yes, the author spoke colloquially.
It would have been more precise if he'd have said,
“Most important, the latter make no claims to answering ultimate questions, like how HUMAN life originated”
or even better,
“Most important, the latter make no claims to answering ultimate questions, like FROM WHERE HUMAN life originated”
Too bad you're unable to address his actual arguments.
sitetest
Sounds like a case of having eyes and ears and being blind and deaf. N’est pas?
Worse, it was compiled by a proven sociopath, who was anti-Christian and was published after Hitler's death.
“’Expelled doesn't equate Darwinism and Hitler... Expelled only spends about 10 minutes on the Hitler-Darwin connection.’
“God, this guy is so frikin stupid that he puts mutually exclusive statements in adjacent paragraphs....”
They're not mutually exclusive.
It's a different thing to say that one thing is equal to another ("equates") and to say that there is a connection between one thing and the other.
I thought you were a smart guy?
sitetest
“Naziism…was expressly opposed to modern concepts of ‘Jewish science’.”
Nazism, it seems, would have viewed Darwinism as “Anglo-Saxon science,” and therefore valid.
Breeding has something to do with biology and genetics doesn’t it? Was it Christ who taught that nature selects those biological traits which are fittest to survive, or was that someone else?
Hitler was into the occult not Christianity.
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