Courtesy of DarwinCentral.org
Posted on 04/24/2008 11:04:16 PM PDT by RussP
Darwin critics know Ernst Haeckel as the German philosopher whose faked embryo drawings helped generations of clueless students accept Darwinism – "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and all that.
But there is still another problem with Haeckel, a darker one than mere fraud. Critics of the Ben Stein film, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," apparently do not know this.
If they had, they would not have savaged Stein for daring to connect Adolf Hitler to Charles Darwin. In Scientific American, for instance, editor John Rennie describes this connection as "heavy-handed." In Reuters, Frank Scheck calls it "truly offensive."
In reality, it is neither. If anything, Stein and the makers of "Expelled" understate this historically irrefutable link, and the key to understanding it is Haeckel.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
I just saw the movie, and I thought it was great.
As David Berlinski said in the movie, Darwinism is not "sufficient" to produce something like Nazism, but it does seem to be "necessary." Obviously not all evolutionists are Nazis, but all Nazis may be evolutionists.
As for those who will almost surely point out that Hitler touted Christianity on occasion, that is largely irrelevant to the point here. Hitler extreme hostility to Christianity is well documented, and the lip service he occasionally paid to it was clearly a cynical ploy to gain or consolidate power. Darwinism, on the other hand, he truly believed in, and he sought to actively advance its "progress."
Have a ball!
Darwin's works do not mention Jews. Anti-semitism pre-dates Darwin. German Christian Ministers supported the persecution of the Jews.
Nazi eugenics went beyond anti-Semitism to killing the weak and the mentally retarded, among others.
What Darwin did was to lay the “scientific” framework for the notion that man is just part of nature and therefore “nothing special.” If that is true, then killing men is fundamentally no more immoral than killing animals or, for that matter, destroying machines.
Courtesy of DarwinCentral.org
I thought we were all supposed to pretend ID has no connection to religion.
Nazism would never have developed its genocidal characteristics without Darwinism....
Yeah, because there was NEVER a history of “pogroms” against the Jews in Europe before Darwin./s
I would have posted it in the philosophy forum, but that seems to have disappeared.
ID does potentially have religious implications, of course. So does evolution, obviously. But since when do the “implications” of an idea determine whether or not it is “scientific”? Shouldn’t science follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of the implications?
The Big Bang Theory was originally met with hostility by many scientists because it was perceived to have religious implications. Yes, science came around on that one, and they will on ID as well because the evidence is so overwhelming. The question is only how long it will take — and how many careers will be sacrificed to the gods of political correctness in the process.
If evolution is only science then why is Dawkins writing “The God Delusion”?
Apparently according to one person who wrote after Hitler's death, in his heart of hearts he hated Christianity.
But when we speak of what motivated Nazis, rather than what might have motivated Hitler in private; wouldn't it be prudent to look at the actual words that the Nazi leaders used to whip up Jew hatred?
For an so called obvious historic link there seems to be surprisingly sparse material linking the two that was written or spoken contemporaneously.
Did they say...
“We are all descendants of apes, but we are the SUPERIOR descendants of apes.”
Or did they say....
“We are the Master Race, the Chosen of God, not those *&$#% Jews!”
Well?
Can anyone come up with any PUBLIC pronouncement of a Nazi leader whipping up Jew hatred using Evolutionary rhetoric? There sure are plenty of examples of them calling for revenge for Jesus’s “Blood upon the cross”. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Beuller?
That is a moral argument that isn't contained in natural selection and not supported by Darwin himself. Natural selection is also responsible for cultural evolution that produces morals that say that killing is wrong and ultimately leads to the "Golden Rule", which predates Christianity.
Wouldn’t “The Descent of Man” fill that gap?
The word “evolution” has several definitions — even as it pertains to biology. At the far end of the spectrum is purely naturalistic evolution of all life. Evolution in that sense is 1% science and 99% philosophy — bogus philosophy. And that’s being generous.
Pure nonsense. Christians were massacring Jews long before Darwin, and eugenics goes back to the dawn of time. The Spartans practiced it and Socrates supports it in Plato's Republic. Study the facts and don't just pull talking points off of creationist websites
Also cultural evolution would lead to the same tautology as natural selection: The fittest survive. Who are the fittest? Those that survive.
Culturally then, had Hitler won, then the Holocaust would be moral.
ID doesn't offer any supporting scientific evidence. It relies solely on the unproven and unsupported claim that "complex things require a designer".
Apparently he either believes that those who believe in God are delusional; wants to make money; or both. Richard Dawkins has opinions too. Not all opinions are based on science, and faulty opinions do not negate the validity of the scientific method. Dawkins would be the first to admit that science can not prove that God doesn't exist.
“Natural selection is also responsible for cultural evolution that produces morals that say that killing is wrong and ultimately leads to the “Golden Rule”, which predates Christianity.”
This is typical of the non-scientific speculation and hand waving that passes for “thinking” by evolutionists.
Please provide me with a reference to the specific, random genetic sequences that produced “morals that say killing is wrong.”
You or someone else concocted that one out of thin air, and because it seemed vaguely plausible and supports your grandiose “theory,” you announce it as “scientific fact.”
Then what does he base his atheism on?
First, this is hypothetical. National Socialism didn't survive. Second, survival doesn't imply morally good. The meme of morally good has evolved because it is the glue that holds together societies. Societies (groups) have an advantage over individuals. Therefore the moral meme offers an evolutionary advantage for individuals that accept it.
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