Think About The Connection Between Hitler And Darwin

Klnghoffer's thought processes refute intelligent design. Indeed, they might prove unintelligent design. His self serving use of the great biologist, Adolf Hitler, to equate anti-Semitism with Darwinism, disregards the fact that anti-Semitism predates Darwinism by many centuries. Klinghoffer reveals a mind that has been dwarfed and is unfit to survive. Perhaps he could become a lawyer.

Nowhere in the article did the author make the claim that Darwinism is equal to anti-Semetism. He argued that Darwinism leads logically to the idea that one group of people is justified in the murder all of the members of another group of people. Hitler combined this idea with anti-Semetism and his particular take on the Jewish tradition to produce his evil philosophy.

 http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/ 

This article has serious logical flaws and is also disconcerting.

(1) The fact that Hitler abused Darwinisim to justify antisemitism does not void the Theory of Evolution any more than the bombing of Hiroshima voids nuclear physics.

(2) The fact that Hitler claimed that "overcoming Nature" is "Jewish nonsense" does not mean he had any insights at all into Judaism, even if some Jewish scholars upheld "overcoming nature". Hitler used the word "Jewish" as a general derogatory, and other religions also advocate overcoming nature and human nature. Most notably Christianity with which Hitler was certainly more familiar, but also Islam, Zen-Buddhism, etc.

(3) The essence of the argument is: Darwinism led to extermination, therefore Darwinisim is morally bad. But didn't religious Christian Theology also lead to Anti-Semitism, persection, the Inquisition, burnings at the stake etc.? Neither Darwinism nor Theology are essentially evil, but rather, the Human Nature is such, that evil persons will find whichever theory that attracts them to justify their actions.

Liamalpha.

"Defy Nature, he wrote, and then “whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow.” The major Hitler biographers – Toland, Fest, Kershaw, Bullock -- all agree on Hitler’s debt to Darwinism."

If Toland, Fest, et al agree on this point, this says more about their biological  misunderstandings than it does about Hitler's debts.

There is nothing specifically Darwinian about the notion that some examples of plant or animal life are more suited to human purposes than others and that humans have historically acted to promote them and to suppress other, less desirable variants, which is all the Hitler quote suggests. Of course, the vicious little scumbag was talking about people, not legumes or Labradors, but his remarks could have just as well been uttered had Darwin never lived.

The piece that Darwin added to this non-controversial and centuries-old conventional wisdom about breeding was his speculation about the appearance of entirely new species via the homely and non-teleological operations of dispassionate Nature. This insight-that mutation and natural selection were enough to populate the earth with its breathtaking diversity of life-is why we remember him. 

Poor Darwin! Has any public intellectual, except maybe Freud, been as misapprehended and pressed into ideological service on the basis of a cartoon version of his views? 

Or to put it more bluntly in Klinghoffer's case, this is so stupid it hurts. That a psychotic genocidal maniac tried to justify his atrocities by using Darwin's work tells you exactly nothing about the validity of the "Origin of Species". We have almost 150 years of the rigorous application of scientific method to confirm and validate his theory. For this ID hack to trot out this type of false syllogism is but just another example of their inability to find any provable scientific proof for their nonsense.

Discovery Institute Fellow. 'Nuff said.

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z261/pixologic/n565190216_2696358_4303.jpg

Hitler abused the idea of Darwinism.  That's true, but how does this incriminate evolution?  Evolution does not include any kind of conscious eradication of certain groups in order to create  a master race.  It isn't based on the 'survival of the fittest,' it's based on the survival of organisms best suited for their environments.  Evolution is also fundamentally not totalitarian in nature.  It occurs through individual successes and advantages; there is no centralized authority controlling how life advances.  It is an individualist idea, more in line with capitalism than totalitarianism. The idea of faith in a God that can just create all life and decide which life forms are most worthy is much more totalitarian.   This idea of researching 'intelligent design' is very anti- science.  There is no way to research and prove faith.  If you have faith, why should it need to be proven? Anything that can't be proven rationally requires faith.  There is no way intelligent design belongs in science classrooms.

“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.”  Mein Kampf

“The anti-Semitism of the new [Christian Social] movement was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.”, Mein Kampf 

“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.”

 Adolf Hitler, in 26 April 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933

So maybe the real connection is with Christianity and not Darwin?

If one man can do it, then so can another....can you say: abortion? Can you say Euthanasia? I don't care what you think about the theory of evolution or Darwin...the idea that there was no order or purpose to our existance eventually takes certain men down Hitlar's road.  

And any man that calls himself "Christian" and persecutes a Jew has no care for his soul. After all, our own Christ was one. I wouldn't consider this persecutor a Child of God by any means.

Atheistic/Materialistic/Naturalistic Evolutionists -- and please note the construction; I am not equating the four terms, merely using the first three as interchangeable modifiers of a subcategory of the forth -- routinely portray themselves as champions of reason over faith.  They pride themselves on their intellectual acuity and courage; but what they continually demonstrate is intellectual paucity and timidity.

I have been waiting 30 years for one of them to refute CS Lewis' arguments for the necessity of a supernatural basis for either morality (Mere Christianity) or reason (Miracles: A Preliminary Study).  Most of the attempts I've been pointed to have simply failed to grasp the argument (paucity).  Most of the others, like Prof. Sarkar in his response (linked above), have lacked to courage to follow the logical necessity of their position; that, in fact, if "We have evolved [i.e., by purely natural means] a mind and, with it, culture as well as moral capacities and what we think of as free will ..." then both reason and morality are simply accidents of nature.  Indeed, it was Prof. Sarkar's "great British evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane," who said:  "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms [or neurons] in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." (Possible Worlds, p. 209, as quoted by Lewis in Miracles)

Then are those few who are brave enough to allow that if materialistic evolution is true then "morality" and "reason" must be accidents of nature, and what we mean by them must be an illusion ... and immediately proceed to champion one accident of nature, reason, over another, faith, and/or take an equally nonsensical position that, oh, say for example, that "'Intelligent Design' Creationism Is An Immoral Fraud."

I have difficulty seeing how a desire to overcome nature (our own nature) sets Jews somehow apart.  Most Christian faiths speak of the need to overcome nature - our sinful nature.  These faiths speak of man as being naturally corrupt and degraded, and this must be overcome through faith and God.  So why pick on the Jews? 

Logically my ass.

Evolution is a description of what happens. Nowhere in it is written when what happens is good, or bad. All of what evolution says on what man should or shouldn't do can be boiled down into one sentence: 'Nature is red in tooth and claw.' It's not exactly a novel observation.

Why are accidents of nature so much worse than accidents of God? If one day God should change his mind, would murder become good? If a voice in your head told you to sacrifice your son, would you do it?

Why would it be the case that making something an accident of nature automatically makes it an illusion, whereas something made by a supreme being, who, being subject to no laws of his own, can arbitarily draw and redraw reason and morality based on no cause or meaning at all is automatically real? And worse, morality (and sadly, even reason) so frequently diverges between cultures and people. It's not just a philosophy that people's beliefs are an accident of nature - given how easily minds are moulded by preaching, parents, and education, it is a clear fact. If there is a supernatural basis, then it would appear to be a different one if you live in different countries. And if a strong liquor can disrupt someone's reason, does God get drunk? At some point, this 'accident' needs to be recognised, and confronted, and I don't think recognising and confronting it leads logically to either faith or nihilism.

 The error of Lewis is to underestimate nature, and the error of Haldane is to think of atoms as solely their theoretical entities, clean abstract things with simple formulae. What materialists believe, and what others often fail to realise, is that there is much more mystery and many more surprises in the margins than you'd ever know. There is nothing supernatural, because to a materialist, there is no point ever setting a dividing line between what is natural and what isn't. There's nothing cowardly about it.

And in the end, as close as its possible to be, objectively intelligent design *is* an immoral fraud, if you at all believe that lying is wrong.

"Then are those few who are brave enough to allow that if materialistic evolution is true then "morality" and "reason" must be accidents of nature, and what we mean by them must be an illusion ... and immediately proceed to champion one accident of nature, reason, over another, faith, and/or take an equally nonsensical position that, oh, say for example, that "'Intelligent Design' Creationism Is An Immoral Fraud."

 Reason allows us to gain knowledge in a systematic, scientific way.  Our evolved ability to reason may be a mistake of nature, but it will never be illusory, because we have demonstrated ability to think. Reason is what has resulted in the scientific knowledge we have today.  It's a very concrete fact.  Would we have antibiotics if we all waited for God to give them to us?  Reason is grounded in Observable Reality.  Faith is only "faith" because it can't be proven to exist.  It may, and may be as strong a force as reason, but it's not something we can manipulate.   It's not something that empowers individuals.  Whether reason is an "accident" is irrelevent.  It obviously has resulted in human advancement. 

First, on Hilter and Darwin, apparently Hitler was more stuck up on a metaphor of the immune system, rather than as a battle between the races, see here. So we should really blame Koch and Pasteur! Right?...

Second, on overcoming nature. I find it funny that God would create an imperfect world for us to constantly overcome (and if so, Nietzsche understood God better than the Jews - "man is a thing to be overcome"), but that's just one of his little jokes, I suppose. More to the point, I'm reminded by Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, a most wonderful book which taught me and many others evolution, where he says: "We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if
necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss
ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested
altruism-something that has no place in nature, something that has
never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as
gene machine and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to
turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the
tyranny of the selfish replicators." This is perhaps the closest we can come to overcoming nature (for the laws of physics we certainly can't defy), and is an approach Dawkins advocates. Sounds suspiciously likes our sage's advice? Maybe, only Dawkins isn't well-versed in Jewish theology, apparently contrary to Hitler. He's well-versed in reality, though.

Hmmm, reality. I'll have another slice of that, please.

Darwinism, eugenics, and Nazism, and Communism!

Marx too endorsed Darwin; wanted to dedicate Das KKKapital to him.  

I just completed reading many articles on Ben Stein's movie, EXPELLED, including
one by David Klinghoffer. Am expecting to see the film next week.

This piqued my interest to review some old video files (VHS Archives) - a multi-part PBS TV Series, "The Occult History of the
Third Reich".
It was amazing to see how this series told so well and
in such great detail how Hitler and his cohorts drew on Darwin in their
formulation of Nazi Eugenics and the extermination of the Jews.

I hope they keep the heat on this Darwinist crowd. I, for one, am tired of their linear
repetition of dogma and "just so" stories. Their arrogance and elitism
knows no bounds. Michael Polanyi long ago destroyed their naive claims
to objectivity. At least Aldous Huxley had the honesty to admit to
his personal bias when he wrote, "I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning:
Consequently assumed that it had none, and was able to find satisfying
reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in
the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure
metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason to
prove he should not do as he wants to . . . For myself, the philosophy
of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual
and political."

- Aldous Huxley, in Ends and Means

Ismail's right about this one. It's the jump from the Origin of the Species, which is biology, to Social Darwinism, and insane sociology. I would be surprised if Charles Darwin gave his blessings to Herbert Spencer.

This, and many of the comments in a "positive" vein, demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of natural processes.  Life is not a race to the bottom, violence at the fore: it is a jostling for resources, accommodation, and population drift.  Altruism is the primary reason we are multicellular organisms, and as a fundamental tenet of organisms is much more powerful than simple predation or "survival of the fittest." 

Moral frameworks are things that societies of humans agree to so we all get along: our very nature of being social animals means we have to have a framework, imperfect as it might be, over none at all.  But that doesn't mean it has to come from outside and that without an imposed one we degenerate to savages that would murder at a glance.  We innately have a sense of fairness and justice, of wanting to punish those who violate this pact, outside of any system of written laws.  To overcome this man has to dehumanize other men, like Hitler with the Jews, or like the makers of Expelled with people who disagree with them.  Yes, I know, Godwin's law, but in this case the analogy is apt as it is not my own petard but theirs. 

Funny in a discussion relating to the origins of the Holocaust there's been no mention of Martin Luther, whose later views on Jews are an obvious input into anti-Semitism in Germany. Ask yourself how many Germans had heard of Darwin compared to how many had heard of Luther, how many Germans had read Darwin compared to how many had read Luther.

BTW, among the books the Nazis warned against were "6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)." and several of Haeckel's books were specifically banned in Nazi Germany. See http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm .

I am the farthest you could get from any leftist, totalitarian, collectivist, and I believe in evolution.  I believe that it is the way life has progressed on Earth.  I believe there is a possibility God set evolution in motion, but I do not believe he consciously decided which organisms should die.  Evolution is simply a description of how life has changed and continues to change.  It has been proven, and anyone that ignores it is denying reality.  Does Hitler's using knowledge of real science make science corrupt?  The genocide he practiced came from a corrupt philosophy of improving the world for the "common good."  He believed that individuals do not have rights, should live only for the state, and that flawed individuals should be exterminated.  These ideas have nothing to do with Darwin's science.  Genocide that has occurred in the name of the church has happened because of religious ideas.  Millions of people were killed for centuries during the dark ages because they didn't believe what they were supposed to and had to sacrifice their lives for the good of the church and other people.  The self-sacrificial, collectivist ideals of the left have more in common with religion that they could ever possibly have with science and reason.  Science should not include religion or politics.  It's also not elitist "Big Science."  How could a philosophy that promotes individual thought and rational capabilities be elitist?  How could that be more elitist than a religion that tells others to believe unquestioningly what other people preach as truth?   

An article by Arthur Caplan, Director of the Center for Bioethics at U Penn, in which he argues that Expelled's attempt to link evolution with the Holocuast is itself a form of Holocuast denial: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24239755/

To lay blame for the Holocaust upon Charles Darwin is to engage in a
form of Holocaust denial that should forever make Ben Stein the subject
of scorn not because of his nudnik concern that evolution somehow
undermines morality but because in this contemptible movie he is
willing to subvert the key reason why the Holocaust took place — racism
— to serve his own ideological end. Expelled indeed.

Faith and Altruism lead to brutality, not Science and Reason

 "Only three brief periods of history were culturally dominated by a philosophy of reason: ancient Greece, the Renaissance, the nineteenth century. These three periods were the source of mankind’s greatest progress in all fields of intellectual achievement—and the eras of greatest political freedom. The rest of human history was dominated by mysticism of one kind or another, that is: by the belief that man’s mind is impotent, that reason is futile or evil or both, and that man must be guided by some irrational “instinct” or feeling or intuition or revelation, by some form of blind, unreasoning faith. All the centuries dominated by mysticism were the eras of political tyranny and slavery, of rule by brute force—from the primitive barbarism of the jungle—to the Pharaohs of Egypt—to the emperors of Rome—to the feudalism of the Dark and Middle Ages—to the absolute monarchies of Europe—to the modern dictatorships of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and all their lesser carbon copies." Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason

 "I have said that faith and force are corollaries, and that mysticism will always lead to the rule of brutality. The cause of it is contained in the very nature of mysticism. Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible. Why do we kill wild animals in the jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind—a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence. And more: no man or mystical elite can hold a whole society subjugated to their arbitrary assertions, edicts and whims, without the use of force. Anyone who resorts to the formula: “It’s so, because I say so,” will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later. Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same." Ayn Rand, “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World”

"The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality—with the code of self-sacrifice—is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state. Soviet Russia is the ultimate result, the final product, the full, consistent embodiment of the altruist morality in practice; it represents the only way that that morality can ever be practiced." Ayn Rand, Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal

 "

What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good." Faith and Force, The Destroyers of the Modern World

Why, how else could Haman possibly have sought to exterminate the Jews, since his story in the book of Esther predates On the Origin of Species by over 2100 years, and we all know Darwin is the source of anti-semitism?

Seriously Dave, did the Discovery Institute pay you to think up all these hard words yourself, or did they just crib something from the Wedge document filing cabinet, jam in the words 'Ben Stein' and 'Expelled', and promise you an indulgence if you added your byline to it?

This was clearly a satire based on Godwin's Law. How do you folks not see that? There is absolutely no way Klinghoffer would seriously attempt in any way to discard scientific method by resorting to invocation of supposedly "shared" Nazi ideas.

Kilnghoffer would never actually seriously resort to such despicable tactics. This is surely a joke.

As Caplan noted, when Stein says the REAL cause of the Holocaust was Charles Darwin--and not typical Germanic / European / Christian anti-Semitism with better machines--he's basically giving the real killers an excuse.  They were only following orders!  From Darwin!  The Nazis are innocent, Jew-killing has no history, it was all invented by a British guy writing about Galapagos giant tortoises.  And, uhhh, just ignore the Martin Luther and pogroms and Inquisition and passion plays and forced conversions and expulsions behind that curtain. 

 Nobody who supports putting I.D.-ocy into our classrooms because America is a "Christian nation" can pretend to be a friend of the Jewish people.  Once you turn the public schools into an indoctrinating unit that specially favors one religion--ANY one religion--you make it that much easier for the pretty much inevitable disenfranchisement and persecution of minority religions. 

That is a great insight. I saw Expelled this weekend and then read all the secular reviews and interviews with Dawkins afterwards. This link between evolution theory and Hitler has really caused an upset across the nation. But a necessary one in my opinion, different ideas and opinions cannot be suppressed in the world academia. Good job, this is a great article!

If there's such a link between Darwin and Hitler, why was there anti-Semitism for 1900 years before Darwin?

Frankly, I can't believe that you published a Discovery Institute wanker. Repeat after me: THERE IS NO EVOLUTION CONTROVERSY, except what the creationists make up. 

"This link between evolution theory and Hitler has really caused an upset across the nation."

 Let's think logically here.  Evolution happens with no manipulation of nature or conscious design.  Intelligent design occurs through conscious manipulation in an effort to arrive at Homo sapiens sapiens, an organism in God's image.  Hitler wanted to kill Jews so he could create a race of blonde, blue- eyed gentiles. Which plan sounds the most like Hitler's? 

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/bioethicist_art_caplan_understands.php

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/a_question_for_ben_stein_why_are_you_sin.php

Quotes from the article:
"...Hitler used Darwinian language..."
"...where the Darwinist flavor is most pronounced..."
These are inferences to Darwin.  But there is no quote you can write as Hitler never mentions Darwin in his entire drawn out treatise of personal philosophy.  Not even once but you say it is a primary cause for Hitler's philosophy, and morality, and actions beyond. 
Basically, while Darwin put forward ideas on how nature processed change, Hitler had a personal philosophy that has roots in hudreds of years of anti semitism.  And that's Darwin's fault?

Another quote: "...he predicted that the logic of natural selection made inevitable something like what Hitler attempted..."
So Darwin actually predicted and therefore warned that this would happen.
So are you trying to say Darwin was right as his theories about Natural Selection provided a hypothesis and it is verified. Or are you saying that Hitler read this and thought, "Wow! I'm going to be the one.", an thereby still proving Darwin's theory right via the verified hypothesis.

I honestly thought this article was a joke.
Please learn some critical thinking.  Please!!!

In an atheistic system, there is no objective morality. There is no abusing or not abusing Darwinism.  There just is. And the author never said this makes Darwinism false.

What should be noted that the Nazis used Darwinian elements. Is there anything in Darwinism that makes Nazi thinking invalid? Darwinism makes no comments on who should survive but says the fittest survives. What that boils down to is survivors survive.

 It is the naturalism/atheism which undergirds Darwinism which does away with meaningful morality and gaves aid an comfort to might makes right thinking which is the concern. 

Thank you.

"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase which is shorthand for a concept relating to competition for survival or predominance. Originally applied by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology of 1864, Spencer drew parallels to his ideas of economics with Charles Darwin's theories of evolution by what Darwin termed natural selection.

Although Darwin used the phrase "survival of the fittest" as a synonym for "natural selection",[1] it is a metaphor, not a scientific description.[2] It is not generally used by modern biologists, who use the phrase "natural selection" almost exclusively.

An interpretation of the phrase to mean "only the fittest organisms will prevail" (a view common in social Darwinism) is not consistent with the actual theory of evolution. Any organism which is capable of reproducing itself on an ongoing basis will survive as a species, not just the "fittest" ones. A more accurate characterization of evolution would be "survival of the fit enough", although this is sometimes regarded as a tautology.[3][4]

Holy Father Benedict XVI:

Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called “creationism” and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God. 

This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man? I believe this is of the utmost importance.

This is what I wanted to say in my lecture at Regensburg: that reason should be more open, that it should indeed perceive these facts but also realize that they are not enough to explain all of reality. They are insufficient. Our reason is broader and can also see that our reason is not basically something irrational, a product of irrationality, but that reason, creative reason, precedes everything and we are truly the reflection of creative reason. We were thought of and desired; thus, there is an idea that preceded me, a feeling that preceded me, that I must discover, that I must follow, because it will at last give meaning to my life. This seems to me to be the first point: to discover that my being is truly reasonable, it was thought of, it has meaning. And my important mission is to discover this meaning, to live it and thereby contribute a new element to the great cosmic harmony conceived of by the Creator.

Meeting with the Clergy of the Dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso, Church of St Justin Martyr, Auronzo di Cadore, Tuesday, 24 July 2007

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/2008/BOOKLET_10.pdf

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