Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Soliton

It is obvious to anyone that Hitler was speaking about “survival of the fittest.”


85 posted on 05/07/2008 10:54:51 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies ]


To: wagglebee
It is obvious to anyone that Hitler was speaking about “survival of the fittest.”

So what if he was? Does that have any bearing on the scientific veracity of evolution?

No.

Hitler used rockets to reign fire upon Britain; Wernher Van Braun used slave labor to build the V-2.

That doesn't make rocket engineers Nazis, nor does it make rocket science Hitlerian.

86 posted on 05/07/2008 11:01:37 AM PDT by GunRunner
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 85 | View Replies ]

To: wagglebee
It is obvious to anyone that Hitler was speaking about “survival of the fittest.”

Herman Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", not Darwin. Further, Darwin was concerned with the evolution of one species into another, Hitler was committed to creating a master race within our species. His concept of eugenics has much to do with Plato's Republic and nothing to do with Darwin. That's why he NEVER mentioned Darwin.

87 posted on 05/07/2008 11:02:42 AM PDT by Soliton
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 85 | View Replies ]

To: wagglebee; Soliton

Concur with Soliton, the idea of selective breeding goes back far before Darwin, who merely observed that populations experience natural selection in the absence of any human interference.

Hitler’s statements rely heavily upon human breeding of plants and animals to produce strains with collections of traits we consider desirable, and the dilution of these traits upon interbreeding of two different strains. There is nothing about, say, labrador retrievers that make them “better” than huskies, but a human might object to interbreeding the two strains since the offspring probably would combine traits in ways we don’t necessarily desire in a dog. This says nothing about the inherent value of the offspring (labrahusky?), it’s a human opinion based upon ideas that might or might not be defensible.

The observation of natural selection (slow rabbits get eaten!) is insufficient to draw conclusions for moral behavior. Attempting to do so is illogical and irrational (see Hume’s guillotine). Hitler did not base his motivation for eradication of the Jews upon the premise that ‘slow rabbits get eaten’, but upon the religious notion that his race best typified the image of God, so breeding with other lineages would dilute desirable traits and debase the image of God. This, IMO, is an indefensible opinion.


88 posted on 05/07/2008 11:47:41 AM PDT by ahayes ("Impenetrability! That's what I say!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 85 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson