Posted on 05/24/2008 9:04:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The folks at Scientific American are steamed at Ben Stein: (see links):
Ben Stein's Expelled: No Integrity Displayed (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie)
Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know)
Stein's controversial movie Expelled links Charles Darwin to Adolf Hitler, the ultimate scientific hero to the ultimate manifestation of human evil. "A shameful antievolution film tries to blame Darwin for the Holocaust," shouts John Rennie's headline. Rennie then declares that its "heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency."
The problem is, that the link is quite real. In fact, undeniable. One doesn't need to see the film to make that link. Simply read Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Darwin's Descent of Man applies the evolutionary arguments of his more famous Origin of Species to human beings. In it, Darwin argues that those characteristics we might think to be specifically human—physical strength and health, morality, and intelligence—were actually achieved by natural selection. From this, he infers two related eugenic conclusions.
First, if the desirable results of strength, health, morality, and intelligence are caused by natural selection, then we can improve them by artificial selection. We can breed better human beings, even rise above the human to the superhuman. Since human beings have been raised above the other animals by the struggle to survive, they may be raised even higher, transcending human nature to something—who knows?—as much above men as men are now above the apes. This strange hope rests in Darwin's very rejection of the belief that man is defined by God, for "the fact of his having thus risen" by evolution to where he is, "instead of having been aboriginally placed there" by God, "may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future."
Second, if good breeding gives us better results, pushing us up the evolutionary slope, then bad or indiscriminate breeding drags us back down. "If…various checks…do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men," Darwin groaned, "the nation will retrograde, as has occurred too often in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule."
Now to Hitler. The first, most important thing to understand is that the link between Darwin and Hitler was not immediate. That is, nobody is making the case that Hitler had Darwin's eugenic masterpiece The Descent of Man in one hand while he penned Mein Kampf in the other. Darwin's eugenic ideas were spread all over Europe and America, until they were common intellectual coin by Hitler's time. That makes the linkage all the stronger, because we are not talking about one crazed man misreading Darwin but at least two generations of leading scientists and intellectuals drawing the same eugenic conclusions from evolutionary theory as Darwin himself drew.
A second point. We misunderstand Hitler's evil if we reduce it to anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism had, of course, multiple causes, including his own warped character. That having been said, Nazism was at heart a racial, that is, a biological political program based up evolutionary theory. It was "applied biology," in the words of deputy party leader of the Nazis, Rudolph Hess, and done for the sake of a perceived greater good, racial purity, that is, for the sake of a race purified of physical and mental defects, imperfections, and racial inferiority.
The greater good. We need to remember that, even though we rightly consider it the apogee of wickedness, the Nazi regime did not purport to do evil. In a monstrous illustration of the adage about good intentions leading to hell, it claimed to be scientific and progressive, to do what hard reason demanded for the ultimate benefit of the human race. Its superhuman acts of inhumanity were carried out for the sake of humanity.
Hitler had enormous sympathy for the downtrodden he witnessed as a young man in Vienna. "The Vienna manual labourers lived in surroundings of appalling misery. I shudder even to-day when I think of the woeful dens in which people dwelt, the night shelters and the slums, and all the tenebrous spectacles of ordure, loathsome filth and wickedness."
He believed that the social problems he witnessed in Vienna needed a radical, even ruthless solution if true change were to be effected. As he says with breathtaking concision, "the sentimental attitude would be the wrong one to adopt."
"Even in those days I already saw that there was a two-fold method by which alone it would be possible to bring about an amelioration of these conditions. This method is: first, to create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, to combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved."
The proposed ruthlessness of his solution was in direct imitation of nature conceived according to Darwinism. "Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation—which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development."
How do we secure a better road for future development? By ensuring that only the best of the best race, the Aryan race, breed, and pruning away all the unfit and racially inferior. That isn't just a theory; it's eugenic Darwinism as a political program. As Hitler made clear, "the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind." Jews have to be pruned away, but also Gypsies, Slavs, the retarded, handicapped, and any one else that is biologically unfit.
That's Darwinism in action. Does that mean that Darwin would have approved? No. Does that mean that Darwin's theory provided the framework for Hitler's eugenic program? Yes.
You’re a tease. Lol
Are you with me Dr?
Thanks for the chuckle.
Here's a nice bit of poetry by Darwin Medalist Karl Pearson:
"The garden of humanity is very full of weeds, nurture will never transform them into flowers; the eugenist calls upon the rulers of mankind to see that there shall be space in the garden, freed of weeds, for individuals and races of finer growth to develop with the full bloom possible to their species."
I always say, I have a heart as big as the galaxy.
This is a citation that gives some pause, it has to be admitted.
Note though, that he won the Darwin medal ( in 1898 !) “For his work on the quantitative treatment of biological problems.”
On presumes that this related to his role in the foundation of modern statistical methods; “Pearson’s thinking underpins many of the ‘classical’ statistical methods which are in common use today.” So are we to renounce “Pearson’s Chi-squared test” ?
Once again we are caught up in the question of “the times”. The wikipedia biography cites Pearson’s commitment to idealism: “There are many signs,” he wrote, “that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, the crude materialism of the older physicists.”
Aha! I bet you thought materialism was the enemy!
I’ve come across “idealism” before. It was popular in England in the 1930’s, and is one of those things that was not much spoken of after the war.
The citations in post 54 should give pause also, though they address a different comment.
So are we to renounce “Pearson’s Chi-squared test” ?
Which one of these relationships are not like the other?
1. Pearson wore shoes ~ Pearson was a eugenist.2. Pearson developed the chi squared test ~ Pearson was a eugenist.
3. Pearson was a Darwinian ~ Pearson was a eugenist.
Aha! I bet you thought materialism was the enemy!
There are many enemies of mankind, as you already know.
Huxley did not consider himself a materialist, even though everything he wrote gave the impression that he was. Pearson's philosophic views are somewhat clouded by a strong adherence to scientific irrationalism. Whatever it is that they meant by 'idealism' or 'not a materialist', it boils down to raving atheism and very little else.
If you want to know more about Pearson's philosophic views, download his book Ethic of Freethought from my FR page.
Here, you lie, excuse me don't excuse me you're making the doctor happy unhappy.
Pearson received the Darwin Medal, is what you averred. Why did you mention this? Why do you transmogrify it into "Pearson was a Darwinian?"
Evolution is garbage science and, as garbage science goes, a spectacularly dangerous and pernicious variety with two world wars and a couple of hundred million dead bodies lying around on account of it. The out of control arms races and isms which brought those wars and the massacres associated with communism and naziism about all began with the idea of a peson viewing his neighbor as a meat byproduct of random events rather than as a fellow child of God.
Here is know-nothingism at its finest. What about raving theism? Eh? What about that?
This is just not true. Has it ever occurred to you that meat byproducts might look upon their fellow meat bypoducts with great affection? Or that children of God might look upon their fellow children of God with great disapprobation? It's all much of muchness, don't you know. It's elementary.
What is there to know about raving atheism? If you've heard one raving atheist you've heard them all.
Thanks for the input on this.
Also Darwin is the ultimate scientific hero? His theories did nothing to really help humanity.
I consider the tireless researchers who find cures for diseases to be heroes.
10 miilion years of evolution selecting for social cooperation. Much more reliable than serving a "greater good", be it Aryan Destiny or The Will of God
What a stupid suggestion. Don't you know wikipedia is controlled by "lieberuls" and is mocked and derided by True Conserbatives (except when it agrees with them)?
Thanks for the input on this.Darwin's work has had *amazing* impact across a huge variety of fields. Including oddly enough, economics. It's really bizarre, liberals have embraced the social aspects of darwin's work(reciprocal altruism especially) while conservatives have embraced the economic aspects(economic darwinism). Few thinkers have altered the course of western thought nearly as much as Darwin.Also Darwin is the ultimate scientific hero? His theories did nothing to really help humanity.
I consider the tireless researchers who find cures for diseases to be heroes.
Evolution is garbage science and, as garbage science goes, a spectacularly dangerous and pernicious variety with two world wars and a couple of hundred million dead bodies lying around on account of it. The out of control arms races and isms which brought those wars and the massacres associated with communism and naziism about all began with the idea of a peson viewing his neighbor as a meat byproduct of random events rather than as a fellow child of God."Children of God" had been murdering each other for ages(remember the pope wars? To be accused of "popery" in England was a death sentence). Industrialization and the rationalization of human government were the cause of the suffering of the 20th century. One thing that people forget is that many of the totalitarian monsters of the 20th century(Mao, Stalin and Hitler) had huge beneficial effects on the standards of living of their respective societies. Life expectancy and standards of living in China(even counting the starvation in Mao's little "experiments") skyrocketed.
The existence of a bona fide skeletal remain does not prove its ‘evolutionary’ heritage or age. It provides a platform on which, however, tests can be made although DNA may be similar in very dissimilar creatures.
In the bigger picture, let the Theory be put to the test, if it proves true, many bona fide skeletal remains will be found, including transitionals, so no fear, right? Truth will out. Meanwhile teach both origin theories side-by-side, as theories. Be scientifically and intellectually rigorous, precise and honest.
Put the whole theory and your premises to the test. Don’t be, as you say, easy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.