Posted on 05/24/2008 9:04:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The folks at Scientific American are steamed at Ben Stein: (see links):
Ben Stein's Expelled: No Integrity Displayed (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie)
Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know)
Stein's controversial movie Expelled links Charles Darwin to Adolf Hitler, the ultimate scientific hero to the ultimate manifestation of human evil. "A shameful antievolution film tries to blame Darwin for the Holocaust," shouts John Rennie's headline. Rennie then declares that its "heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency."
The problem is, that the link is quite real. In fact, undeniable. One doesn't need to see the film to make that link. Simply read Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Darwin's Descent of Man applies the evolutionary arguments of his more famous Origin of Species to human beings. In it, Darwin argues that those characteristics we might think to be specifically human—physical strength and health, morality, and intelligence—were actually achieved by natural selection. From this, he infers two related eugenic conclusions.
First, if the desirable results of strength, health, morality, and intelligence are caused by natural selection, then we can improve them by artificial selection. We can breed better human beings, even rise above the human to the superhuman. Since human beings have been raised above the other animals by the struggle to survive, they may be raised even higher, transcending human nature to something—who knows?—as much above men as men are now above the apes. This strange hope rests in Darwin's very rejection of the belief that man is defined by God, for "the fact of his having thus risen" by evolution to where he is, "instead of having been aboriginally placed there" by God, "may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future."
Second, if good breeding gives us better results, pushing us up the evolutionary slope, then bad or indiscriminate breeding drags us back down. "If…various checks…do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men," Darwin groaned, "the nation will retrograde, as has occurred too often in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule."
Now to Hitler. The first, most important thing to understand is that the link between Darwin and Hitler was not immediate. That is, nobody is making the case that Hitler had Darwin's eugenic masterpiece The Descent of Man in one hand while he penned Mein Kampf in the other. Darwin's eugenic ideas were spread all over Europe and America, until they were common intellectual coin by Hitler's time. That makes the linkage all the stronger, because we are not talking about one crazed man misreading Darwin but at least two generations of leading scientists and intellectuals drawing the same eugenic conclusions from evolutionary theory as Darwin himself drew.
A second point. We misunderstand Hitler's evil if we reduce it to anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism had, of course, multiple causes, including his own warped character. That having been said, Nazism was at heart a racial, that is, a biological political program based up evolutionary theory. It was "applied biology," in the words of deputy party leader of the Nazis, Rudolph Hess, and done for the sake of a perceived greater good, racial purity, that is, for the sake of a race purified of physical and mental defects, imperfections, and racial inferiority.
The greater good. We need to remember that, even though we rightly consider it the apogee of wickedness, the Nazi regime did not purport to do evil. In a monstrous illustration of the adage about good intentions leading to hell, it claimed to be scientific and progressive, to do what hard reason demanded for the ultimate benefit of the human race. Its superhuman acts of inhumanity were carried out for the sake of humanity.
Hitler had enormous sympathy for the downtrodden he witnessed as a young man in Vienna. "The Vienna manual labourers lived in surroundings of appalling misery. I shudder even to-day when I think of the woeful dens in which people dwelt, the night shelters and the slums, and all the tenebrous spectacles of ordure, loathsome filth and wickedness."
He believed that the social problems he witnessed in Vienna needed a radical, even ruthless solution if true change were to be effected. As he says with breathtaking concision, "the sentimental attitude would be the wrong one to adopt."
"Even in those days I already saw that there was a two-fold method by which alone it would be possible to bring about an amelioration of these conditions. This method is: first, to create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, to combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved."
The proposed ruthlessness of his solution was in direct imitation of nature conceived according to Darwinism. "Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation—which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development."
How do we secure a better road for future development? By ensuring that only the best of the best race, the Aryan race, breed, and pruning away all the unfit and racially inferior. That isn't just a theory; it's eugenic Darwinism as a political program. As Hitler made clear, "the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind." Jews have to be pruned away, but also Gypsies, Slavs, the retarded, handicapped, and any one else that is biologically unfit.
That's Darwinism in action. Does that mean that Darwin would have approved? No. Does that mean that Darwin's theory provided the framework for Hitler's eugenic program? Yes.
And other distortions, such as those noted in the article cited.
I lost respect for Ben Stein with this stunt of his. :-(
yup
"The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil." --Charles Darwin
They have tried for 150 years to refute the theory of evolution -- and have failed.
All the while, science has moved ahead with increasing speed and the evidence supporting the theory of evolution has become broader and deeper. Radiometric dating could have been a problem, but it supported the theory, as did the geological record. The new field of genetics could have overturned the theory of evolution, but instead it made it stronger. Paleontologists have been finding important new fossils and filling in those gaps.
Increasingly creationists have been put in a position where they have had to deny both scientific methods and a large percentage of scientific findings.
Having failed for all of these years to make a dent in the theory of evolution, creationists are now reduced to the shameful argument that Hitler used Darwin's ideas, so Darwin is discredited and "his-theory-of-evolution-is-no-good-we-told-you-so-so-there."
Expelled tried it, and this website has had numerous threads making a big deal about the assumed Darwin-Hitler connection.
What a joke. But I guess that type of logic and reasoning is a part of creation "science."
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I suggest you do as the post suggests which is to read “The Descent of Man” and “Mein Kampf” together. Neither, BTW, is a book of science.
The question is not so much whether Darwin would have approved but on what basis he would have disapproved.
Law? Morality? Economics? Darwin certainly would’ve considered Hitler a monster but he could hardly argue with his goals.
Thanks, but I'm busy studying the latest articles on mtDNA and human migration. I'm trying to keep up with the exciting discoveries there, and maybe even producing a few discoveries from my own work.
You deal with 130 year old books and supposed connections which, even if documented, would have no effect on the accuracy of the theory of evolution.
"It is idle to argue which race or races were the original representative of human culture and hence the real founders of all that we sum up under the word 'humanity.' It is simpler to raise this question with regard to the present, and here an easy, clear answer results. All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word 'man.' He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose bright forehead the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times, forever kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illumined the night of silent mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path to mastery over the other beings of this earth. Exclude him-and perhaps after a few thousand years darkness will again descend on the earth, human culture will pass, and the world turn to a desert. - Mein Kampf, Chapter XI, Nation and Race
"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."and then this speech...
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."-–Adolf Hitler; April 12, 1922It would be preposterous to pin either Christianity or Darwinism to Hitler's madness.
Yup, but it's the latest creationist tactic.
(I'm goin' to bed. I'll check tomorrow to see if this thread has evolved.)
Darwin’s idea that evolution means “the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life” eventually led to Nazism and the Jewish holocaust - even though Darwin himself would have been appalled at the thought.”
Sir Arthur Keith wrote: “The leader of Germany is an evolutionist, not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him, the ‘national front’ of Europe is also the ‘evolutionary front;’ he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people.”59 and “Christianity makes no distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In this respect the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long ages to produce?”
In Mein Kampf, Hitler used the German word for evolution (Entwicklung) many times, citing “lower human types.” He criticized the Jews for bringing “Negroes into the Rhineland” with the aim of “ruining the white race by the necessarily resulting ization.” He spoke of “Monstrosities halfway between man and ape” and lamented the fact of Christians going to “Central Africa” to set up “Negro missions,” resulting in the turning of “healthy . . . human beings into a rotten brood of s.” In his chapter entitled “Nation and Race,” he said, “The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.” A few pages later, he said, “Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.”
The success in breeding cattle, dogs and other animals with certain desired characteristics gave empirical support to the concept of racial breeding as advocated by eugenicists and later Hitler and others.
Hitler exterminated over 273,000 people even before the Holocaust! “The first to be killed were the aged [those who are an economic burden, who detract from the happiness of society as a whole], the infirm, the senile, the mentally retarded, and defective children [that included epileptics]. Then there were WW I veterans - amputees - still in hospitals. Their reward for giving an arm or leg for Germany was extermination as ‘undesirable.’ Even bed wetters and children with badly modeled ears were put to death - all part of the euthanasia project of Germany.”
Instead of letting chance factors dominate reproduction decisions, Hitler proposed that the scientists use the power of the state to influence these decisions so that the gene pool would shift to what “informed conclusions” concluded was the desired direction. Consequently, Hitler encouraged those individuals that he perceived as having Aryan traits to mate, and discouraged “interbreeding,” supposing that this policy would gradually cause the Aryan race to evolve “upward”. He believed that the Nazi race programs would further evolution by intelligently deciding which traits were not beneficial, and preventing those with them from reproducing.
An important argument that Hitler used to support his programs of racial genocide of the Jews, Blacks and other groups was that they were genetically “inferior” and that their interbreeding with the superior Aryan race would adversely affect the latter’s gene pool, polluting it, and lowering the overall quality of the “pure race.”
“From the ‘Preservation of favored races in the struggle for life’ [that is, Darwin ‘s subtitle to Origin of Species] it was a short step to the preservation of favored individuals, classes or nations - and from their preservation to their glorification . . . Thus, it has become a portmunteau of nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and dictatorship, of the cults of the hero, the superman, and the master race . . . recent expressions of this philosophy, such as Mein Kampf are, unhappily, too familiar to require exposition here.” -— Gertrude Himmelfarb, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1962
...uh-huh...those who supposedly believe we should not bear false witness.
So we should believe leftist claims rather than the actual texts themselves. hmmm..
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