I don’t know how esteemed Richard Weikart is a historian. It seems as if he’s made the focus of his short academic career writing about “Darwinism” and the Nazis.
But the whole concept is flawed. Let’s say some of the freaks in the Nazi Party were intent on creating the Super Race. They wouldn’t look to Darwin. They would look to Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. And perhaps they did.
Mendel was an Augustinian Priest, though.
The Nazis were not trying to craft the Super Race through random mutations and natural selection of the effects of that.
So Ben Stein picked the wrong villain. You can’t smear evolution with a sideline story between Nazis and a priest completely unrelated to either Darwin or evolution.
Well, you can, because Ben Stein tried.
Weikart is a Discovery Institute fellow and ID proponent. His book was underwritten by the Discovery Institute, and it has been deployed by creationists and IDers as a supposedly independent, academic confirmation of their “Darwin Caused The Holocaust” thesis.
The book is shoddy scholarship at best, and frankly dishonest if one wishes to be a little less charitable.
You can read some of the criticism of it here:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/06/from_darwin_to_1.html
I guess you're a history buff. Who are all the "eminent" historians with respect to the origins of the Nazis' desire to create a super race and what are all the papers, books etc. they've written about it? And what makes those particular ones eminent?
It seems as if he’s made the focus of his short academic career writing about “Darwinism” and the Nazis.
What's that got to do with anything? You keep making these completely irrelevant points. Have any "eminent" historians refuted what he wrote? You're grasping at straws. "His career is short, so his research doesn't count."
Let’s say some of the freaks in the Nazi Party were intent on creating the Super Race. They wouldn’t look to Darwin. They would look to Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. And perhaps they did.
Now you're just creating your own theory unsupported by any facts whatsoever. The very thing you accused Stein, and apparently also Weikart and all the other historians who recommend his book, of doing, without having read his book of course. Is there any evidence of any advocates of eugenics of the first half of the 20th century mentioning Mendel? In fact by your "logic" you're now smearing genetics. I guess smearing genetics is okay, it's just smearing Darwin that's verboten.
The Nazis were not trying to craft the Super Race through random mutations and natural selection of the effects of that.
Another irrelevant point. They believed certain races already were superior. So they had to get rid of inferior races. You don't need to use random mutations to get rid of inferior races. You just get rid of them. Eugenics is artificial selection.