Posted on 08/22/2006 2:04:20 PM PDT by js1138
ADL Blasts Christian Supremacist TV Special & Book Blaming Darwin For Hitler
New York, NY, August 22, 2006 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."
After being contacted by the ADL about his name being used to promote Kennedy's project, Dr. Collins said he is "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory," he told ADL.
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement:"This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.
"It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to "reclaim America for Christ" and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law."
The documentary is scheduled to air this weekend along with the publication of an accompanying book "Evolution's Fatal Fruit: How Darwin's Tree of Life Brought Death to Millions."
A Coral Ridge Ministries press release promoting the documentary says the program "features 14 scholars, scientists, and authors who outline the grim consequences of Darwin's theory of evolution and show how his theory fueled Hitler's ovens."
It is a reaction to the interminable attempts of the anti-evolutionists to invalidate the SToE through (the misguided) guilt by association.
If they want to invalidate the applications, misguided or not, then let them invalidate those. The SToE can only be invalidated by falsifying evidence (which at this point would be very difficult to do).
"Eugenics as practiced by the Nazis has been rejected on moral, not scientific, grounds.
Please quote the context along with the point made.
The quote of mine above was not about why or how we reject eugenics, it was a response to a poster trying to claim that we must accept processes and events if they can be considered 'natural' or part of natural selection.
That said, our moral fabric is very much based on what we consider to be best for our in-group, whether that in-group is our immediate family or the entire species. Not all moral rules are developed at the conscious level, many, especially those we consider universal, develop at the gene level. We are unique in the ability to articulate, consider and reject if necessary those gene level moral behaviours.
If you want to consider the world given Evolution as the only moral guide then you have to consider all of the mechanisms and their consequences not just the (subjectively) negative.
Most anti-evolutionists want to posit a Godless world of base Evolution in all of it's violence, death and struggle while ignoring the equally 'natural' morally positive aspects of Evolution - families, cooperation, sacrifice, support, caring, and compassion.
"It would be wrong to condemn them as bad experiments, if they were carried out on mice."
"- Benno Müller-Hill, Professor of Genetics at the University of Cologne, referring to Nazi experimentation upon human subjects (1984).
I agree with the author.
Are you suggesting that the way we treat mice should be identical to the way we treat humans and that the way we treat humans should be the same as the way we treat mice?
Are you suggesting that our morals are not 'natural' and natural selection could not produce such values?
Why are you giving the rejection of eugenics a 'special' moral position?
Eugenics is not just a process of 'improvement of the species' but carries a lot of other baggage.1
It brings with it one group of humans determining the future of another group.
It brings with it the oppression of one group by another.
It brings with it the extinction of one group.
It brings with it the benefit to one group at the expense of another.
It brings with it the control of one group by another.
It brings with it the restriction of freedom of one group by another.
Even if we accept all of the above for organisms other than humans it does not mean we should accept them for humans.
1: I have to note here that Evolution is not about 'improvement' but about whatever features allow the organism to produce more offspring. If the eugenicists were really trying to use the ToE they would work on the reproductive ability not intelligence, hair color or ancestry. In todays climate that would be the best athletes, actors or rappers. ;)
If I viewed just as an improvement to humans, probably not.
Fortunately for my decision making process, eugenic style improvement carries with it a lot of other moral baggage that would encourage me to make the same judgment call and reject eugenics.
actually the point would posit the negative are just as valid as the positive...
rape murder lying can be selected for
with equal validity that
kindness or generousity be selected for.
the ends (survival and prolifieration) determine the validity of the trait/behavior.
the ends (survival and prolifieration) determine the validity of the trait/behavior.
Wrong. Study some anthropology and get back to us when you have some understanding of the subject on which you are posting.
studying anthropology is meaningless to future selection, it can only tell you what was selected for in past...it doesn't invalidate anything since evironmental condition (which includes all human activity) can change so can the direction of selection...and 20th century being the most violent/deadliest would suggest it may its becoming more selected for?
I've read the original Table Talk, in German. Looking at all of the evidence, not just quote-mined passages critical of Christianity, I came to the conclusion that Hitler was a deviant, heretical Christian. He endorsed a personal God, original sin, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, etc. Werner Jochmann, the editor of the Heim version of the Table Talk, and an expert on the Nazi era, came to a similar conclusion.
arrier, who has an agenda to convince the world that Hitler was some kind of a Christian, found some translation problems.
ROFL! 'Translation problems'. What a curious euphemism for 'outright fabrications'!
Like Jesus being an Aryan? LOL.
Notice, though, he did not question the existence of Jesus. Isaac Newton did not believe Jesus was God. Christians over the years have come up with many, many weird theories - that the English were a lost tribe of Israel, for example.
Spencer was a Darwnist.
Spencer was a philosopher in his own right, whose ideas on 'social evolution' preceded the Origin of Species
Are you attempting to suggest that evolution would posit that murder is morally acceptable?
>>>The moral values (which you specifed in your previous post) are absolute, and also common to most folks, as I indicated.<<<
That is a myth perpetuated by Moral Relativists, like yourself. Answer this: prior to the Christians and early Jews, which nations practiced the Law of the Lord (e.e., "...all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them..." - Matthew 7:12)? Just curious.
studying anthropology is meaningless to future selection, it can only tell you what was selected for in past...it doesn't invalidate anything since evironmental condition (which includes all human activity) can change so can the direction of selection...and 20th century being the most violent/deadliest would suggest it may its becoming more selected for?
I had in mind cultural anthropology more than physical/biological anthropology.
Learn a bit about interactions within and between groups, for example.
according to the idea of commmon decent doesn't "environmental conditions" include all "human activity" in which case culture is collective human activities within groups. and the interaction between "cultures" would also be subject to and be part of "environmental conditions" this would cause interactions to change, or not, become more violent or less, moral or less, depending on selective pressures?
Culture is quickly changed; environmental pressures and the responses to them are slower.
An individual prone to murder or other disruption (to return to the original issue) is likely to be run out of a group.
Study some cultural anthropology and reexamine your original post.
common decent, means culture would be both part of and subject to environmental pressures .
"is likely to be run out of the group"
as I said, common decent would as mean this is subject to change...or not..depending on selective pressures.
likely may be come unlikely, or not at all or always and back again..
That is a myth perpetuated by Moral Relativists, like yourself.
Proposing that moral values are absolute is an indication that the speaker is a moral relativist?
You're obviously hopelessly confused.
Substitute earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, disease, famine and war for "the struggles of living things on earth" and the sentence reads the same and carries the same intellectual weight. Religion is not science, and if religious people insist on asserting themselves to be authorities on natural phenomena, they will look like fools and discredit their religion.
just insist that God is the author and authority of natural phenomena. Man religious or not is not the final authority on nature or morality..
Natural phenomena do not care whether you believe in them.
nope, but God does care if we trust him.
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