Posted on 04/19/2012 7:47:32 PM PDT by Chuckmorse
April 19 is Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. In order to honor the day and to remember the dead, it is proper to reflect upon how the genocide against the six million Jews of Europe happened and why. The answers to this question are obviously complex and varied but the question must nevertheless be asked continuously and not a stone must be left unturned in the quest for understanding. Only in this way can we insure that it never happens again.
The influence of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution on the Nazi movement and the Nazi way of thinking must be considered as part of the mix of ideas that made up the Nazi core. Darwin’s theory, in its essence, is a theory of breeding, what Darwin called “natural selection.” The word “species” is Latin for race and Darwin used the words species and race interchangeably in his writings. Darwin’s work was infused with the idea of impending doom for the human “species” unless the evolutionary process was advanced. Darwin wrote of the survival of the fittest and he viewed this as a natural process in which the superior, or the more evolved members of the human species would advance while the so-called inferior members would naturally die off or be annihilated. Darwin was heavily influenced by the scarcity theories of Thomas Malthus, the world’s first advocate of population control as a means to save mankind.
The belief in biological evolution formed the core of Nazi thinking. They believed that the Aryan race, a mythic conception that they derived partially from the theosophy of Madame Helena Petrova Blavatsky, was a more evolved species or, to use the vernacular, a superior race. They believed that if the Aryan were properly bred, and if the blood of inferior races were bred out of the potential Aryan population, than a new and more evolved species would emerge, what they called the Ubermench, or the Superman. The Ubermench, bred from the blood of German Nordic stock, would be blond, with blue eyes, would possess a perfect physique, would live up to two centuries, and would possess cosmic consciousness. Like Darwin, and like many of his followers, the Nazis believed in the concept of scarcity and that time was running out to save mankind. They believed that the best way forward was to evolve a better species of human beings. They believed it was their moral duty to isolate and to cull the populations of lesser species as they defined the term. Ironically, they did not believe that the Jews were an inferior species but rather they considered the Jews to be a highly evolved species that posed as a lethal threat to the supremacy of the Aryan species. Thus, they reasoned, in order for the Aryans to lead mankind toward the more evolved and perfected stage of biological human development, the Ubermenchen, the Jews had to be annihilated.
From a Darwinian perspective, the Nazi theory actually made sense. Unlike the Judeo-Christian concept, which holds that all men and women are created in the image of God, and are therefore created equal, the Nazis, deriving their idea from the scientific notions of the theory of evolution, believed that men and women were born un-equal and in different stages of the evolutionary cycle. Thus, to the Nazis, the German was more evolved than the non-German and was therefore more fit to survive.
Darwin captured the essence of the Nazi outlook in the following quote from his second book The Descent of Man:
At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even then the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Lol.
Seriously.
Lol
Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279
-snip-
6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism.
http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm#guidelines
The Nazis were largely against the Enlightenment because they believed the movement tried to elevate itself above Nature and her natural racial laws. They believed that ‘primitive’ Darwinism was Victorian and Anglo-Saxon and therefore too indebted to universal values, all of which was seen as Jewish disease that eminated from the Judeo-Christian worldview. It was the Judeo-Christian worldview that taught people to take care of the weak, which the Nazis believed was contrary to Nature and was ruining the evolution of the races. The Nazis aslo rejected some of Ernst Haeckel’s (evolutionary) Monism that was based on Enlightenment principles, but they still swallowed whole many of his concocted ideas. In fact, thanks to Haeckel, the Nazis adopted Social Darwinism in place of Darwinism. In other words, Aryan Social Darwinism was superior to ‘primitive Darwinism.’ In short, the Aryan Nazis had evolved beyond Darwin.
Wo....Just shows that evil people hide behind God but they actually serve the devil unwittingly.
oops..wow, not wo
Many intellectual German got all caught up in the Nazi movement, including Martin Heidegger, the most important philosopher of the 20th century who still has great influence in the halls of academia today. Fascism emphasizes holism, and so the Nazis adopted all kinds of various historical strands from their past into their ideology. Hitler believed that he was the culminating representative of the Volksgemeinschaft. So some of Hegel’s ideas do indeed come into play for the Nazis even though they rejected his basic philosophy since it was too universal. Yet Hegel gave to the Nazis the cult of the state, and that man progresses through warfare (Darwin took Hegel’s philosophy of history and undergirded it with ‘scientific’ biology). Nietzsche was not a rabid anti-Semite, but he was not a friend of the Jews. Nietzsche hated Christiany far more and emphasized an existential will to power ethic which the Nazis adopted into their ideology. The Nazis also adopted Romanticism and much of Ernst Haeckel’s Social Darwinism. Hitler himself loved Arthur Schopenhauer, the original guru of natural existentialism and environmental ethics. Schopenhauer is very difficult reading, but Hitler could quote him verbatim. The SS itself loved the Aryan cult worship, but Hitler was far more political and secular.
Nazi ideology was based on the supposed separate creation of a succession of "Root Races", based largely on the theories of Scott-Elliot and Besant. In other words, they were creationists.
Root races has nothing to do with creationism since according to Genesis 1 all men are created in God’s image and are thus equal. In the 1800’s Darwinism was loaded to the gills full of racism until they became more politically correct after World War II.
Here: Inbred Science: Darwinism-Eugenics
“As an agency making for progress, conscious selection must replace the blind forces of natural selection; and men must utilize all the knowledge acquired by studying the process of evolution in the past in order to promote moral and physical progress in the future.The nation which first takes this great work thoroughly in hand will surely not only win in all matters of international competition, but will be given a place of honour in the history of the world.”—Leonard Darwin, Presidential address, First International Eugenics Congress, 1912.
Hitler spoke of fixed kinds “A fox will always be a fox”.
Genetic diversity is good for a population if one understands evolution. Hitler thought that diversity consisted of a dichotomy of “weak” and “strong” and sought to (through government action) eliminate the so-called “weak”.
Creationists cannot seem to escape blatant lies and historic revisionism. From testimony on the stand at Dover to the constant false equivalence of acceptance of a scientific theory with Nazism, Communism, or atheism - complete with accompanying historic revisionism - those that think they are on the side of God cannot seem to help serving the father of lies.
Besant was an anti-christian marxist God-hating atheist who became head of the anti-christian Theosophical Sociey. If I recall correctly (I'll have to check) she was involved with a publishing house that published translations of Ernst Haeckel's works. Also, it is quite possible that Hitler read Wilhelm Boelshe, the biographer of Ernst Haeckel. Boelshe's ridiculous book "The Evolution of Man" was popular with communists too. I think Boelshe joined the Nazi party shortly before he died.
I have to say I like this thread, I learn from all the opinions and insights. There seems to be so many things that went into creating the poisonous witches brew of Nazism. I think anybody could agree that loving thy neighbor was not in there. There are some great quotes I have read in the past from our founding fathers in the United States about the importance of morality and spirituality in building a state, apparently they knew what they were talking about.
Hitler was an evolutionary pantheist, not a creationist. He believed that in the struggle for existence, the lower and weaker animals and races were bound to die out. As such, Hitler promoted the notion that “the consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc (Mein Kampf).” Thus on the same page, Hitler placed both man and animals under the same natural laws which must be obeyed, “you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination towards mice.” Thus, Hitler adopted the Haeckelian-Darwinian survival of the fittest scheme with a vengeance, especially with regard to its application to people, “and the struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development.” What in the world this has to do with creationism is a figment of the leftist imagination. As such, Hitler professed the idea that gradual natural evolutionary development over time led to a SEPARATION of the species. Nature’s “most patent rule” was preserving the purity of the races in which all living species developed their own “inner segregation.”
By the way, with regard to the foxes being always the same, this is undoubtedly borrowed from Nietzsche who basically said the same thing. Hitler’s second favorite philosopher behind Schopenhauer was Nietzsche. Nietzsche was not completely sold on the biological theory of evolution, but still assumed the Darwinian struggle for existence to be a law of life.
Hitler spoke to the German people about his Savior's blood upon the cross. Was that a pantheistic deity upon the cross?
“A fox will always be a fox” is a rejection of Darwin's theory - and an acceptance of fixed “kinds” common to creationist belief.
Hitler called the German people “the highest image of God”.
Is that too, like saying “a fox will always be a fox” an embracing of Darwin’s theory?
How does “the highest image of God” fit into being an “evolutionary pantheist”?
It fits it perfectly. Pantheism was leading Germany to the highest evolutionary race.
If you read posts 6 and 9, this will clear the so-called problem you bring up.
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