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Darwin and the Nazis

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Richard Weikart summarizes his devastating research into the Darwinian foundations of Nazis – and the continuation of those themes by modern evolutionists.
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Darwin and the Nazis
By Richard Weikart Published 4/16/2008 12:07:03 AM American Spectator

Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and some other Darwinists are horrified that the forthcoming documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, will promote Intelligent Design to a large audience when it opens at over a thousand theaters nationwide on April 18. Ironically, their campaign to discredit Ben Stein and the film confirms its main point, which is to expose the persecution meted out by Darwinists to those daring to criticize Darwinian theory.

One aspect of Expelled that troubles Dawkins and some of his colleagues is its treatment of the ethical implications of Darwinism, especially its discussion of the historical connections between Darwinism and Nazism. Isn’t this a bit over-the-top, suggesting that Darwinism has something to do with Nazism? After all, Darwinists today are not Nazis, and Darwinism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.

However, what is most objectionable about the Nazis’ worldview? Isn’t it that they had no respect for human life? Their rejection of the sanctity of human life led the Nazi regime to murder millions of Jews, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, and about 200,000 disabled Germans. Where did the Nazis get the idea that some human beings were “lives unworthy of life”?

As I show in meticulous detail in my book, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, the Nazis’ devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology (this does not mean that all Nazi ideology came from Darwinism). There were six features of Darwinian theory that have contributed to the devaluing of human life (then and now):

1. Darwin argued that humans were not qualitatively different from animals. The leading Darwinist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, attacked the “anthropocentric” view that humans are unique and special.

2. Darwin denied that humans had an immaterial soul. He and other Darwinists believed that all aspects of the human psyche, including reason, morality, aesthetics, and even religion, originated through completely natural processes.

3. Darwin and other Darwinists recognized that if morality was the product of mindless evolution, then there is no objective, fixed morality and thus no objective human rights. Darwin stated in his Autobiography that one “can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.”

4. Since evolution requires variation, Darwin and other early Darwinists believed in human inequality. Haeckel emphasized inequality to such as extent that he even classified human races as twelve distinct species and claimed that the lowest humans were closer to primates than to the highest humans.

5. Darwin and most Darwinists believe that humans are locked in an ineluctable struggle for existence. Darwin claimed in The Descent of Man that because of this struggle, “[a]t some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

6. Darwinism overturned the Judeo-Christian view of death as an enemy, construing it instead as a beneficial engine of progress. Darwin remarked in The Origin of Species, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”

These six ideas were promoted by many prominent Darwinian biologists and Darwinian-inspired social thinkers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All six were enthusiastically embraced by Hitler and many other leading Nazis. Hitler thought that killing “inferior” humans would bring about evolutionary progress. Most historians who specialize in the Nazi era recognize the Darwinian underpinnings of many aspects of Hitler’s ideology. . . .

See Full Article at the American Spectator

Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (Palgrave Macmillan).

Comments
Huxley Historical Society honors The Fjord...   Saturday noon, April 9, at the Nord-Kalsem Community Center, Huxley area residents were invited to a Norwegian Fjord dinner, prepared and served just like the good ol’ days. In a recent project to preserve history, Duane Finch has researched and ......TasteBand.com
April 21, 2011
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congregate (146): "In 1491 there were millions of “savages” in the New World. By 1859 that population had dropped drastically. It had nothing to do with the fact that Darwin noticed and described the nature of natural selection. His theory was not “applied” by the Europeans who came over and unintentionally spread diseases which the “savages” had no immunity to, it was exemplified by them."
Sorry, but I wasn't clear enough. You've misunderstood my statement concerning "applying his theory of biological development to humans and their variations". I was and am referring to the intellectual exercise of considering the implications of his theory. If Darwin is right, then what should one expect when one considers what these ideas mean in the particular context of human affairs? As I pointed out to Allen_MacNeill, the fact that Darwin did not personally prefer the extermination of the lesser races only strengthens, not weakens, the conclusion that his prediction comes out of his theory, not his preference.
"Do the commenters who think Hitlerism was a result of “Darwinism” think we should suppress the facts, in order to prevent it happening again? So much for academic freedom!"
What suppression are you alluding to? If there is anyone who has been objecting to facts being raised concerning this topic, it is those who object to those who document how the Nazis saw their final solution to be the logical conclusion from Darwin's theory applied to (supposedly) benefit humanity. In order to prevent new versions of this evil from happening again, it is important to not only remember their means, but to also remember how they could think this was a good thing. Otherwise, what protects against the old evil via new means and in new forms? It is too bad that Allen_MacNeill did not answer my questions to him above, but you are free to offer your own answer if you care to.ericB
April 19, 2008
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Hi Sal, I've always appreciated and taken into account your respect for Allen MacNeill. But, as he says, disagreeing with him, even vehemently, is not disrespectful. Nor does it mean we can't be friends. I disagree with both his assessment of many facts and many of his posting behaviours. Pointing these out ought not make us enemies.Charlie
April 19, 2008
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if he had admitted that he made a mistake, would you have jumped all over him, and tried to make him feel bad now that you had caught him? No.(speaking for myself of course). I would have felt one more person would have been enlightened to the indisputable and unyielding fact that Hitler was an anti-Christian and I would have happily welcomed Allen into the club.tribune7
April 19, 2008
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I do not believe Hitler was a creationist in the traditional sense, and neither can Hitler's words be seen as a trustworthy confession of a creationist in the Christian sense. Even if I disagree with Allen, I felt his argument would hold water with those less familiar with history (as I was). I certainly am delighted to hear counter arguments... As far as why I have lent my support to Allen, he has received glowing admiration from the persecuted pro-ID IDEA students at Cornell and he has defended their academic rights at some peril to his own career, particularly in 2006 when he hosted one of the best design courses for college credit ever offered. For those of us in the IDEA chapter at GMU, who experience meaness and hostility from the facutly there, Allen by comparison at Cornell has shown himself to be a gentleman. Let us not make enemies of those who have shown great kindness to persecuted pro-ID students. It would be hard to set aside my gratitude for what he did on their behalf.scordova
April 19, 2008
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All, It looks to me like Charles (152) is only partly right. Allen MacNeill (147) has chosen to look like he chose the fourth option (again), but this time he actually chose the third. We can be reasonably certain that he read comment 124, as it was just 4 comments below his last one, and he obviously read comment 135, as he mentioned it accurately in 147. That means that in all probability he did not just disappear leaving us to wonder whether he read comment 124 or not; he in fact read it and chose not to respond. He thus gives evidence that although he admires those who apologize for their mistakes (see comment 107), and "hope[s] to live up to" their "example", he can't quite bring himself to do so. Maybe he should hang around the Friends some more (36). The excuse he gave in comment 147, that "I generally do not post on threads that have exceeded 100 posts", is not adequate (see here, comment 148). It especially should not be good enough to nullify an obligation to correct the record. I hope nobody feels elated about this. I personally was hoping that he could be noble enough to recognize an obvious mistake and admit it. I feel sad that someone of his stature, who strove in other areas to be fair, would prove to be so here, and there is some sense of loss as I realize that his sense of fairness was not enough to allow him to admit his mistake. But for those who disapprove of his decision, you need to ask yourself an important question; if he had admitted that he made a mistake, would you have jumped all over him, and tried to make him feel bad now that you had caught him? Would you have tried to argue that he had been wrong once, and he really ought to revamp his whole philosophy because of this one mistake? Has someone else ever done that to him, and could that have made him reluctant to ever again admit to an adversary that he was wrong? We can train people to do wrong if every time they do the right thing they get punished. I do remember something about motes and beams. I'm not accusing everyone. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't put it on. However, if the shoe fits, . . . grow out of it.Paul Giem
April 19, 2008
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Allan_MacNeill at 148 asserts that blog BEGAN (sic) with Godwin's law i.e.
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
See Meme, Counter-meme, By Mike Godwin. Godwin's purpose:
the comparisons trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis. It was a trivialization I found both illogical (Michael Dukakis as a Nazi? Please!) and offensive (the millions of concentration-camp victims did not die to give some net.blowhard a handy trope).
. . .the counter-meme mutated into even more useful forms. (As Cuckoo's Egg author Cliff Stoll once said to me: "Godwin's Law? Isn't that the law that states that once a discussion reaches a comparison to Nazis or Hitler, its usefulness is over?")
MacNeill's apparent efforts fall foul of "Quirk's Exception"):
It is considered poor form to raise such a comparison arbitrarily with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Godwin's law will be unsuccessful (this is sometimes referred to as "Quirk's Exception").
Godwin admonished:
The best way to fight such memes is to craft counter-memes designed to put them in perspective. The time may have come for us to commit ourselves to memetic engineering - crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones.
Let us take Godwin's admonition to heart.DLH
April 19, 2008
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Churchill said in his address after Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt at appeasement at Munich, 1938 (emphasis added): ‘… there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism , which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen with pitiless brutality, the threat of murderous force. That power cannot be the trusted friend of the British democracy …’ William Donovan, a prosecutor at Nuremberg, documented copious proof that the Nazis planned to exterminate Christianity. German kids had to confess that Germany had "sinned against natural selection". Vox Day has pointed out: "A comparison of a 2000 survey of the British prison population with the 2001 national census revealed that whereas individuals claiming atheism or no religion make up only 15.5 percent of the British population, they comprise 31.9 percent of those imprisoned. "Of course, it stands to reason that those who do not believe in biblical morality would not subscribe to it. The fact that so many atheists behave as well as anyone else is not testimony to superior atheist morality, but rather, the moral inertia fortuitously intrinsic to Western civilization."Jonathan Sarfati
April 18, 2008
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See also the recent thread: What’s wrong with uttering “Darwin” and “Hitler” in the same breath?DLH
April 18, 2008
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The world belongs to the strong tribune7
April 18, 2008
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Darwin influenced early 20th century China. e.g. Biology and Revolution in Twentieth-Century China By Laurence Schneider P 43
“Two chapters of the Origin of Species were carefully translated into Chinese and published in 1903-1904, and the first complete translation appeared in 1920. Typically, however, Darwin’s ideas were conveyed darkly through social Darwinist literature aimed at social and cultural reform in China. Among the earliest and most celebrated of this genre was the interpretation of T.H. Huxley’s Evolution and ethics by the reformer Yan Fu (1853-1921). This was required reading by generations of Chinese revolutionaries and reformers, and for China’s post-1911 revolution “enlightenment intellectuals” whose cultural reform agenda was suffused by a belief in an “evolutionary cosmology” and a natural law of progress”.
DLH
April 18, 2008
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Some readers probably cannot refute the similarities in mentality and reasoning but still think, "Well, I know a professor who thinks like that and he seems to be a nice fellow. He is nice but Nazis are not nice so it doesn't matter that they think the same way." Given the complexity of human nature you're right in some sense, a nice fellow who believes some degenerate ideas may remain a nice fellow by being double minded. It's his students that know nothing of what originally shaped the mind that is now double minded who may be different. If history is any measure then at some point the moral capital built up by venerable traditions/"religion" which define what it is to be a nice fellow tend to run out. Everyone is "nice" in person, until they aren't.mynym
April 18, 2008
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...this is my last post on this thread. Good. In some ways I don't blame you for the rather stupid and ignorant views you promoted here. They are the type thing that the majority of biologists tend to believe. For example, many believe in associating religion with criminality. Change the "ID/creationism" to the "Jewish influence" and the ravings of some scientists could be those of any Nazi. For example:
The intellectual virus named 'intelligent design.' ...This virus certainly is a problem in the country...the 'creationists'...have decided some years ago...to dress up in academic gear and to present themselves as scholars...laugh off this disguise. [...] Feeding like leeches on irrational beliefs...offensive little swarm of insects...must be taken care of by spraying biological knowledge....(The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinksi :185)
As with all metaphors no one really means anything literal by them, except when they do. The tendency of Darwinists to associate religion with criminality and disease showed up in an article on the National Geographic on Darwinism which asked "Was Darwin wrong?" on the cover. (It answered nearly full page NO! next to the article.) It was a ridiculous little article which promoted some of Haeckel's ideas:
Embryology too involved patterns that couldn’t be explained by coincidence. Why does the embryo of a mammal pass through stages resembling stages of the embryo of a reptile? Why is one of the larval forms of a barnacle, before metamorphosis, so similar to the larval form of a shrimp? Why do the larvae of moths, flies, and beetles resemble one another more than any of them resemble their respective adults? Because, Darwin wrote, “the embryo is the animal in its less modified state” and that state “reveals the structure of its progenitor”....
It's as if proto-Nazi ideas evolve from this highly irrational form of thinking. There seems to be a high level of hatred for Johnathan Wells for disputing such reasoning. The article ends with a picture of a Russian convict with a big tattoo of a cross on his chest. The association is of religion and crime , criminals and religion and so on as is typical to proto-Nazi thinking. The article notes something about how he picked up the tattoo and a virulent disease in a Russian prison and goes on to say that his best hope for a cure is medical science. Given the arguments of association involved it's not entirely clear if they mean a cure for religion or for the disease. But if religion is like a disease then people shouldn't be quarantined based on medical science?mynym
April 18, 2008
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Allen_MacNeill @ 147: Let the record reflect MacNeill chose door No. 4: Through long experience, I generally do not post on threads that have exceeded 100 posts. ... Ergo, this is my last post on this thread. I’m sure we will encounter each other again. Auf wiedersehen! 4. You can simply disappear from this thread, like you did from this thread (see comment 79 ff) and this thread (see comment 64 ff) and hope everyone forgets, and you can come back later and continue to post with some people trusting you to play it straight as you see it. I don’t have time to follow all of the threads to which I have posted (especially now, with final exams and my summer courses looming). i.e. "I can't be expected to follow rebutals to my posts. I'm only a university instructor with exams and summer courses, and I exhaust all my discretionary time right about time proof of my allegations are required."Charles
April 18, 2008
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Hi/bye Allen MacNeill, I would hope that you would find that even those of us who disagree with you are gentlemen as well. Your latest ad hominem is no reply, of course. To sum up my participation here: Allen MacNeill read Darwin selectively. Darwin's scientific published writing indicates not only that the Caucasian race is evolved to a higher state than those of barbarians and savages, but that the Caucasians would, in the not distant future, exterminate the other races. In so doing, the human race would have achieved a higher evolutionary level. Additionally, allowing the unfit to marry and propagate is highly injurious to the development of the human race and its evolution. Allen MacNeill, while commendably attempting to become the gentleman scholar, continues to be too quick to label others liars. In the case of Provine, Demski's statements were a warranted and fair interpretation. Provine likens learning about evolution to becoming an atheist and polls his students' personal beliefs and the changes in them. Allen MacNeill, too, thinks that learning about science has religious implications. Like many preachers, Allen MacNeill fails to meet his own standards. MacNeill read Hitler just as selectively in making his case about Hitler's supposed Creationism. Hitler was an opportunist and presented contrary public and private faces. Privately he was a de facto atheist, hated Christianity, was trying to destroy it, and was influenced thoroughly by the biological theories of his day. I read with great interest the statistics on prisoners and their faith and found Allen MacNeill misread and misrepresented those as well. Some people write a lot more online and are more enamoured of their own writing than those who find one thread important enough to maintain participation even after the magical 100-comment mark.Charlie
April 18, 2008
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On the importance of human rights see: Pope Benedict's address to the UN April 18. 2008DLH
April 18, 2008
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-----Sal: "Allen MacNeill on his website gave a very good argument that Hitler was a creationist." Sal, please! Don’t fall for this. Everyone knows that Hitler was a demagogue, who would and did say anything to attain power. His pro-Christian comments were calculated only to play to a Christian audience. Everyone knows that he hated Christianity and renounced it as a child.. Further, all of his henchmen were Darwinists. What do you think all the “experiments” were about? No serious thinker believes that Hitler was of one mind while his enforcers were of another mind. You have to look at the big picture. This is a slam dunk case if you know all of the facts.StephenB
April 18, 2008
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To the rest of those still following this thread (all five of you): Through long experience, I generally do not post on threads that have exceeded 100 posts. Not only do I have an abhorrence of Godwin's Law (although this thread started out by adhering to it), I have found that by 100 posts the only people following the thread are those who have an inordinate desire to see their own writing online. Also, I don't have time to follow all of the threads to which I have posted (especially now, with final exams and my summer courses looming). Ergo, this is my last post on this thread. I'm sure we will encounter each other again. Auf wiedersehen!Allen_MacNeill
April 18, 2008
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Sal (#135): Thank you, Sal: your have always been, in all of your interactions with me, a gentleman and a scholar.Allen_MacNeill
April 18, 2008
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EricB at 132-
His prediction about the expected extermination of lesser races is obviously and inescapably the natural conclusion from applying his theory of biological development to humans and their variations. Surely you are not seriously suggesting the two are disconnected, are you?
In 1491 there were millions of "savages" in the New World. By 1859 that population had dropped drastically. It had nothing to do with the fact that Darwin noticed and described the nature of natural selection. His theory was not "applied" by the Europeans who came over and unintentionally spread diseases which the "savages" had no immunity to, it was exemplified by them. Do the commenters who think Hitlerism was a result of "Darwinism" think we should suppress the facts, in order to prevent it happening again? So much for academic freedom!congregate
April 18, 2008
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This is priceless. A college lecturer cites Hitler's propaganda as evidence of what Hitler really thinks. So much for critical thinking! How much are they charging the sheep up there in Ithaca? Now, there are only two possibilities. Either his argument is disingenuous and a demonstration of the will to power--i.e., he thinks that the noble end of saving Darwinism justifies dishonest means and dissimulation. Or he's in over his head and has no understanding of rhetoric or politics. Hitler was an enthusiastic Darwinist, a virtual worshipper of the "blonde beast," and an enemy of God and religion. To think otherwise is to demonstrate the same willingness to be duped as the German masses. So again we will pose the good Dean's question to our favorite local Darwinist: which are you, Sir--a knave among fools or a fool among knaves?allanius
April 18, 2008
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MacNeill's "like a creationist" speech is specious and selective. He says Hitler claimed we were made in the image of God and created from the beginning. In Table Talk #51 Hitler said:
But there have been human beings, in the baboon category, for at least three hundred thousand years.
MacNeill says Hitler took Jesus as his Lord and savior, but Hitler did not accept any teachings of the Bible on Jesus as they are all Jewish fabrications, and did not believe in Jesus as the Son of God but the son of a soldier and a whore. His Jesus was an Aryan warrior, not the Jesus of history or Christianity. Hitler was unlike a creationist.Charlie
April 18, 2008
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DaveScot, Scordova: MacNeill’s arguments are a load of crap from top to bottom. Further evidence of same: Allen MacNeill on his website gave a very good argument that Hitler was a creationist. at Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion - Nuremberg and therein: http://www.lawandreligion.com/publications/churches.pdf "(2) The Nazi conspirators, by promoting beliefs and practices incompatible with Christian teaching, sought to subvert the influence of the Churches over the people and in particular over the youth of Germany. They avowed their aim to eliminate the Christian Churches in Germany and sought to substitute therefore Nazi institutions and Nazi beliefs and pursued a programme of persecution of priests, clergy and members of monastic orders whom they deemed opposed to their purposes and confiscated Church property." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_and_Religion "Other members of the Hitler government, including Rosenberg, during the war formulated a thirty-point program for the "National Reich Church" which included: * The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches. * The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800. * The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible. * The National Church will clear away from its alters all Crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of Saints. * On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf and to the left of the altar a sword." So much for Allen MacNeill's research. One wonders if his evolution research is any more grounded in fact.Charles
April 18, 2008
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Amongst the religions practiced today, there is none that goes back further than 2500 years. But there have been human beings, in the baboon category, for at least three hundred thousand years.
Table Talk
All that is left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.
(Table Talk, 14th October, 1941) From Bormann's Circular on God and Christianity:
When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not understand by God, like naive Christians and their spiritual opportunists, a human-type being, who sits around somewhere in space...The force of natural law, with which all these innumerable planets move in the universe, we call Almighty or God. The claim that this world force is concerned about the fate of every single being, of every smallest earth bacillus, or can be influenced by so-called prayers or other astonishing things, is based on a proper dose of naivety or alternatively on a commercial shamelessness.
That's in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of natural selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure.
(Table Talk, 10th October, 1941) http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/Radical%20Ecology.htm Quoting Ernst Haeckel almost word for word:
"[It is] useful to know the laws of nature - for that enables us to obey them. To act otherwise would be to rise in revolt against heaven." -- Adolf Hitler Source: Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1945 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953), p. 116. [Sounding very Descent Of Manlike]:For as soon as the procreative faculty is thwarted and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which allows only healthy and strong individuals to survive is replaced by a sheer craze to ‘save’ feeble and even diseased creatures at any cost. And thus the seeds are sown for a human progeny which will become more and more miserable from one generation to another, as long as Nature’s will is scorned." -- Adolf Hitler Source: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter 4. "Difference which exists between the lowest, so-called men, and the other higher races is greater than between the lowest men and the highest apes." -- Adolf Hitler Source: Hitler quoted in Heinz Bruecher, Ernst Haeckels Bluts- und Geisteserbe (München: Lehmann, 1936), p. "[Hitler] stressed and singled out the idea of biological evolution as the most forceful weapon against traditional religion and he repeatedly condemned Christianity for its opposition to the teaching of evolution . For Hitler, evolution was the hallmark of modern science and culture, and he defended its veracity as tenaciously as Haeckel."—*Daniel Gasman, Scientific Origins of Modern Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (1971), p. 188. "Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary thinking—probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas, quite undisguised, lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf and in his public speeches. A few quotations, taken at random, will show how Hitler reasoned . . [*Hitler said:] ‘He who would live must fight; he who does not wish to fight, in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.’ "—*Robert E.D. Clark, Darwin: Before and After (1948), p. 115.
Charlie
April 18, 2008
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Hitler's suport of creationism:
In the New Age envisioned by National Socialism, biblical Christianity was politically subversive, even a "rebellion ... against nature"(page 91 . It's perceived absurdity had been impressed on Hitler during his Austrian schooldays, when, as he mockingly recalled, students attended a catechism class at ten A.M. to hear the biblical story of Creation, only then to listen, at eleven A.M., to Darwin's version of it in a natural science class - the latter winning hands down. (page 92) During the war years Hitler recommended a slow "natural death" for Christianity by exposing its dogmas to the light of science.(page 93)
Harvard historian, Steven Ozment's A Mighty Fortress: A New History Of The German People.Charlie
April 18, 2008
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Here's Hitler's idea of what god he believed in:
"Man has discovered in nature the wonderful notion of that all-mighty being whose law he worships. Fundamentally in everyone there is the feeling for this all-mighty, which we call god (that is to say, the dominion of natural laws throughout the whole universe)." -- Adolf Hitler Source: Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1945 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953), p. 5.
This is the same kind of non-deity, monism supported by Haeckel - no surprise.Charlie
April 18, 2008
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from a 1942 German 5th grade biology textbook for girls
Those who do not do so are unsuitable for the refined, yet just as relentless. form of our struggle for survival, and will perish. Our Führer tells us: He who wants to live must fight, and he who does not want to fight in this world of perpetual struggle does not deserve to live!" (Mein Kampf, p. 317) II. All living creatures that succeed in the struggle for survival are not satisfied merely with existence, but seek to preserve their species as well. Here too is a drive that corresponds to natural law. Without this drive, species would long since have vanished.
tribune7
April 18, 2008
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Sal MacNeill's arguments are a load of crap from top to bottom. He lied here for over a year letting people call him doctor and professor without correction. He's all hat and no cattle. Here's a tip from your old pal Dave, one of those things my momma taught me: If you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas.DaveScot
April 18, 2008
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Allen MacNeill on his website gave a very good argument that Hitler was a creationist. You could make a much better argument that Jefferson was a creationist, hee hee. I think it would be important to point out, though, that Hitler would be a TE rather than a seven 24-hour days, Bible believing type.
If we do not respect the law of nature, imposing our will by the might of the stronger, a day would come when the wild animals would again devour us, and the insects would eat the wild animals, and finally nothing would exist except the microbes... The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. --Adolph Hitler (Table Talk)
I have no problem describing Osama Bin Laden as a creationist, either. Of course, Mao, Lenin, Stalin and Pol Pot were clearly atheists, and Stalin specifically credited Darwin for his enlightenment.tribune7
April 18, 2008
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One thing I credit MacNeill for is his use and defence of Table Talk as historical. The claims about its fraudulence are usually swallowed hook-line-and-sinker. Table Talk also tells us that Hitler disbelieved all Biblical miracles, discounted the entire Old Testament, denied the divinity of Christ, bought into the old argument that Jesus was the son of a Roman Soldier, thought Paul was a lying Judaizer, wanted to destroy Christianity, thought it a sick lie, etc. Not sure what kind of Creationist he was, but definitely not a Biblical one. I certainly don't choose Hitler's public speeches and Mein Kampf over his private conversations about Christianity.Charlie
April 18, 2008
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