The Road to the Holocaust — Darwin or the Pope?

_{William Dembski

April 20, 2008

Expelled}

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Mainstream reviews of Ben Stein’s EXPELLED are going apoplectic over the movie’s connection between Darwin and Hitler. Take, for instance, the review in the Village Voice: it describes the connection between Darwinism and Naziism as “bizarre and hysterical.”

Yet this weekend saw the opening not only of EXPELLED but also of CONSTANTINE’S SWORD. Here’s what the Village Voice has to say about that film:

X marks the spot, literally, where Christianity and the Catholic Church fostered the centuries of religious hatred and anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust…. But if his film is more provocative personal inquiry than reportorial knockout punch, it still pokes needed holes in the concept of papal infallibility and provides historical context for the dangers of linking the church and military. If nothing else, it demonstrates why we should feel cold shivers whenever President George W. Bush bandies the term “crusade.” GO HERE FOR FULL REVIEW

So a film that shows how Christianity “culminated in the Holocaust” constitutes cutting-edge cultural commentary. But a film like EXPELLED, which shows explicitly how the Nazis appropriated Darwin’s ideas, is “bizarre ad hysterical.”

Thank God for EXPELLED, which is holding the secular media’s feet to the fire.

Comments

Reg wrote:
I’ve found books far older than ‘Origin of Species’ and ‘Descent of Man’, which (unlike those works) directly advocate the wholesale slaughter or enslavement of perceived enemies - women and children included - along with the looting of their property. They’re in the Old Testament.
Once again, a non-sequitur. Warfare and genocide, both justified and unjustified, are as old as recorded history. The question is, can this be linked to the Nazis' justifications for their actions? I don't recall any of them quoting Jewish sources like the Tanakh.angryoldfatman_{April 20, 2008
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AngryOldFatMan re; scientific legitimacy I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Darwin extened the principles of artificial selection to explain the origin of species. Eugenics, which was hardly confined to Nazi Germany, and indeed was widely embraced in the U.S. before anyone heard of Hitler, is based on artificial selection. Darwin didn't invent artificial selection. So my question is: are you saying there is no scientific legitimacy to selective breeding of livestock for desireable traits? Surely you're not. That doesn't require scientific legitimacy. Farmers have known about what can be accomplished through artificial selection for a very long time. It was legitimized by non-scientist farmers. I doubt anyone wants to blame farmers for the holocaust. Artificial selection is an inanimate fact. It takes a person to turn knowledge into actions. DaveScot_{April 20, 2008
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Reg wrote:
That’s uniquely fascinating historical scholarship. Do you have a source for it?
You really don't have to be much of a history scholar to know the source. Let me help you by quoting the pertinent sections: Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. 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 of organic living beings would be unthinkable. [...] In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development. If the process were different, all further and higher development would cease and the opposite would occur. For, since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health. No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, night be ruined with one blow.angryoldfatman_{April 20, 2008
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evo_materialist at 15, and Reg at 16 Apologies. Corrected communism to Nazi Germany. Pope Benedict XVI experienced the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany.
His youthful years were not easy. His faith and the education received at home prepared him for the harsh experience of those years during which the Nazi regime pursued a hostile attitude towards the Catholic Church. The young Joseph saw how some Nazis beat the Parish Priest before the celebration of Mass.
Pope John Paul II lived in Poland under Nazi German occupation, and then under Soviet Communism.
During the Nazi occupation Karol clandestinely pursued both his studies and his acting while working as a stonecutter to support himself and to hold the work permit he needed to avoid deportation or imprisonment. Karol Wojtyla was active in the UNIA, a Christian democratic underground organization. B'nai B'rith and other authorities have testified that he helped Jews find refuge from the Nazis.

In 1958 Father Wojtyla was named auxiliary bishop of Krakow and four years later he assumed leadership of the diocese with the title of vicar capitular. He was a visible leader, often taking a public stand against communism and government officials.
If you do any serious searching, you will find that Darwin's principles of evolution were foundational to both Nazis and Communist totalitarianism.DLH_{April 20, 2008
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Either people are purposely and deceptively leaving out the context of Darwin's writings or they are being mislead by other sources. So it's either disgusting or sad.mathstudent_{April 20, 2008
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Bill, Darwin also wrote that it was man's noble nature that prevented him from employing artificial selection to the human population as we do with livestock. I don't read that as Darwin advocating the abandonment of those noble qualities. From "The Descent of Man"
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
DaveScot_{April 20, 2008
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Reg: How about starting with EXPELLED and listening to the speech Hitler gives in it: "Wir haben gegen die Natur gesuendigt."William Dembski_{April 20, 2008
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I've found books far older than 'Origin of Species' and 'Descent of Man', which (unlike those works) directly advocate the wholesale slaughter or enslavement of perceived enemies - women and children included - along with the looting of their property. They're in the Old Testament. Numbers 31:
The LORD said to Moses, "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people." ... They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. ... The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest ... Moses was angry with the officers of the army who returned from the battle. "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "...Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." ... The LORD said to Moses, "You and Eleazar the priest and the family heads of the community are to count all the people and animals that were captured. Divide the spoils between the soldiers who took part in the battle and the rest of the community. ..."
1 Samuel 15:
This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'
So the ideas of self-righteous massacre, slavery and theft predated Darwin. As far as being a necessary condition for Nazism is concerned, isn't that sort of thing at least as relevant as anything Darwin wrote?Reg_{April 20, 2008
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Bill at 12, What is interesting is that if intelligence is just the product of nature then in effect it is nature. Hence, if people chose to preserve the weak then we are doing exactly what Darwinists claim nature doesn't do. That is to say the artificial is the official rebuke to their theory and people like Hitler's commitment to the so called natural process is exposed as nothing not a world view or religion. A completely perverted one.Frost122585_{April 20, 2008
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Jorde and his sockpuppet Dragos wrote:
Before Darwin there were materialists, people performing artificial selection, antisemitism, what was Darwin’s contribution?
Dr. Dembski has already answered you in a more eloquent fashion than I will, but here is my two-word answer anyway: scientific legitimacy. There were materialists before Darwin, but they were mostly philosophers who held a minority view. As you can imagine, this made for little to no impact on the societies of their times. There were primitive eugenicists before Darwin, such as the Laconians and the ancient Romans. The collapse of their societies is a testament to their legitimacy. Anti-semitism preceded Darwin by many thousands of years, if one can believe the Bible is at least a partially historical book. The most mentioned anti-semite I've seen in Expelled threads is Martin Luther. Had Hitler plagiarized Luther in Mein Kampf as he did Darwin, there might be a legitimate issue here. Also, if Hitler and his henchmen had started and ended their murderous campaign with the Jews, there might also be some legitimacy to the claim. But these are not true, so therefore the mention of Luther is a non-sequitur. Addiing to this is the fact that according to Christian theology, if Luther was indeed an anti-semite, he was denouncing the very heritage of his own Messiah, and the fact that Luther's anti-semitism having a substantial impact on 20th Century German thought is a very recent innovation by Massachusetts historian Robert Michael.angryoldfatman_{April 20, 2008
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alext at 6 Consider: CHARLES R. DARWIN on Race
A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.
Thus to be "victorious over most other tribes" is essential to "natural selection". Can you now see any connection with Hitler's actions? or those of Stalin? or of Mao? or of Pol Pot? "Natural Selection" is indeed "effective"! Contrast the outworkings of Repubics established on the Common Law, the Law of Nations, and the Constitution, which build on the principle "love your neighbor as yourself." DLH_{April 20, 2008
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Dragos or Jorde, Because along with the natural selection process came the idea that those who survived were somehow better. While the term survival of the fittest was not Darwin's term, he adopted it. There was a value judgment being made. And this expanded the idea of artificial selection to a process that could select for what was whatever thought to be of value such as intelligence, various abilities or cosmetic features. But in the process to get these supposed superior characteristics they killed and sterilized large numbers. I personally do not believe it is of any use to make the connection between Darwin and Nazi eugenics based on natural selection. Darwin's theory was a natural one while the Nazi's and the eugenicists practiced an artificial one. Though Darwin based a lot of his arguments on artificial selection and the two ideas get blurred. The idea of selective breeding among humans was an old one but not the way the Nazis and many eugenicists practiced it. The more appropriate connection is between Darwin and any atheistic philosophy and that to me is the more pernicious one. Atheistic philosophies cannot exist with out Darwin's basic ideas. And without the underpinnings of atheism there is most likely to be a moral component that might have been there and prevented the Nazi and other mass atheistic movements such as communism from their vast exterminations. Any moral component associated with atheism is arbitrary and while many atheists are very moral persons according to non atheist standards, their particular code is arbitrary. While the Nazis were a deplorable group, the connection between Darwin and them may not be as direct as many are making. I have not read Weikert's book so I do not know the details. If the Nazi evoked Darwin or his ideas they may have been doing it incorrectly. I will have to read about the connections more carefully.jerry_{April 20, 2008
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DLH:
Pope Benedict XVI just described the corrosive influence of Darwinism as worked out in Communism
In the linked article the Pope mentions neither Darwinism nor Communism. Has he addressed these topics in other recent speeches? Dr Dembski:
For Hitler, Jews, Gypsies, etc. were holdovers from not allowing natural selection to do its thing. So Hitler did NOT see himself as doing artificial selection but as reasserting what natural selection should have done in the first place [and] saw himself as undoing a negative form of artificial selection due to society.
That's uniquely fascinating historical scholarship. Do you have a source for it?Reg_{April 20, 2008
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DLH [10], I read the article, and I didn't see a single mention of either Darwinism or Communism, much less the "corrosive influence of Darwinism as worked out in Communism." Did you link to the wrong article, or did you simply extrapolate wildly?evo_materialist_{April 20, 2008
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-----Jorde: "Could you please explain to me why Darwinism is necessary. Hitler’s crimes seem in line with the artificial selection that had been active for centuries. What did Darwin add that was not already present. Before Darwin there were materialists, people performing artificial selection, antisemitism, what was Darwin’s contribution?" Inasmuch as the American eugenics movement popped up at the same time as the Nazi movement, and inasmuch as biological textbooks promoted it in the name of Darwinistic science, and inasmuch as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood was also a Darwinist and sought to "purify" humanity from lower the lower races, it might be time for you to start connecting a few dots.StephenB_{April 20, 2008
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Jorde/Dragos: Here's the weird twist. In his DESCENT OF MAN, Darwin remarks that in nature the unfit are weeded out, but in civilization they are preserved, thus increasing the weak in society. For Hitler, Jews, Gypsies, etc. were holdovers from not allowing natural selection to do its thing. So Hitler did NOT see himself as doing artificial selection but as reasserting what natural selection should have done in the first place. In other words, Hitler saw himself as undoing a negative form of artificial selection due to society. Hence, when David Berlinski says that something like Darwinism was a necessary condition for Nazism, he is spot on.William Dembski_{April 20, 2008
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Bill, after seeing that movie, I never realized how close the two are linked. The Nazi's were not just trying to take over the world, or kill the Jews for various reasons they were trying to purify the race. The movie talks about and shows how then just murdered all of the disabled people they could get their hands on to stop them from reproducing. This is a hugely serious issue for various reasons. One, the Nazis were people just like you and me. Normal people who were raised and brain washed by a mass movement to do the most horrible things ever done. This speaks to the possible social power of a Darwinian world view. In other words ideas and theories have consequences. And two, no body today in the mainstream is advocating the slaughters of disabled people. The idea while atrocious is almost humors because it seems so far fetched. But under the Darwinian world view there is no God. No intelligent designer. No morality no truth. There is only hopeless belief in the purification process and the benefit of seeing those deemed fit inherit the earth. One of my favorite lines in the movie is when Ben Stein poses the question "How could he have done this. Wasn't Hitler insane?" And the two historical "experts" say NO he wasn't insane just misguided. This scared me. There are people with real mental problems in this world that are far more harmless and respectable then Hitler and his types. Our definition of insane should not just be limited to the cognitive smoothness by which one's brain operates. I don't care how smart or in control of your body you are. If you advocate the elimination of an entire race of people you are nothing short of insane. This to me exemplifies the main problem with the Darwinian world view. They say its all about your genes. Its not. Thoughts, and efforts and actions, and decisions and purity of heart mind and soul DO matter. They are the MOST important ways we can judge the quality of our fellow man. And Darwinism has little or nothing to do with those qualities. The end is the best as they pan the camera around an empty auditorium and Ben Stein asks the question “If we don’t stand up against this now will there be anyone left to?” The implicit point is that in a true Darwinian world view eventually all species are weeded out and brought to extinction. No species is ultimately fit to survive and natural selection will get rid of ALL of us eventually. We ought not just sit back and let this world view be facilitated by the INSANE people in power. While we are the ones that often get called the fascists after this movie its becomes obvious who the real Nazis were.Frost122585_{April 20, 2008
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It has always been so. Liars are not content to live a lie, they are always seeking to rewrite history so that everyone else must live the lie. Intellectual dishonesty by its very nature cannot remain a private vice, because misery loves company.StephenB_{April 20, 2008
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Pope Benedict XVI just described the corrosive influence of Darwinism as worked out in Nazi Germany.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday recalled growing up during the Nazi era in his native Germany and stressed the "fundamental importance of freedom" as he addressed a rally of young people in New York. Pope Benedict XVI greets the audience at a rally at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York, on Saturday. "My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers," he told the crowd at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers. "Its influence grew, infiltrating schools and civic bodies as well as politics and even religion before it was fully recognized for the monster it was," the pope said. "Many of your grandparents and great-grandparents will have recounted the horror of the destruction that ensued. Indeed, some of them came to America precisely to escape such terror." As he praised the spread of democracy and respect for human rights, the pope cautioned about the dangers people face in the modern world.
See full article {PS Corrected Communism to Nazi Germany per comment below} DLH_{April 20, 2008
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Could you please explain to me why Darwinism is necessary. Hitler's crimes seem in line with the artificial selection that had been active for centuries. What did Darwin add that was not already present. Before Darwin there were materialists, people performing artificial selection, antisemitism, what was Darwin's contribution?Dragos_{April 20, 2008
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Could you please explain to me why Darwinism is necessary. Hitler's crimes seem in line with the artificial selection that had been active for centuries. What did Darwin add that was not already present. Before Darwin there were materialists, people performing artificial selection, antisemitism, what was Darwin's contribution?Jorde_{April 20, 2008
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Any purportedly Christian rationalization for the holocaust can be easily refuted on Christian grounds -- via "love thy neighbor," the parable of the good Samaritan, etc., etc., etc. But on what Darwinian grounds can Social Darwinism be refuted? Regarding Godwin's Law Wikipedia says as of this time stamp:
The rule does not make any statement whether any particular reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that one arising is increasingly probable.
jstanley01_{April 20, 2008
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i think it should be clear to everyone by now that eugenics is the exact opposite of Darwinian "Natural Selection". "social engineering" has been around as long as humans have been breeding animals and plants.alext_{April 20, 2008
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Dear Dave, We're informal on this forum, so call me Bill. I agree that linkages to the Holocaust and anti-semitism need to be argued carefully. But EXPELLED does that. Berlinski prefaces the whole discussion by making clear that something like Darwinism is necessary for Nazism but not sufficient. On another forum you cited Godwin's Law. Bringing in the Nazis/Hitler always risks hijacking a discussion. But ignoring the Darwinian roots of Nazism can subvert a discussion as well, especially when it's apropos.William Dembski_{April 20, 2008
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Professor Dembski, You make a great point about bias in the media where they are willing to embrace blame for the holocaust on Christianity. However, I don't believe the appropriate response to an inane linkage of Christianity to the holocaust should be answered by an inane linkage of Darwinism to the holocaust. The holocaust was an unconscionable act committed by people who either didn't know the difference between right and wrong or ignored the difference. Individual Christians and atheists alike are accountable. The groups as a whole are not.DaveScot_{April 20, 2008
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What is often overlooked is that Nazis were exterminating not only Jews but Gypsies (Roma) and Slavs, in particular Serbs. And list does not stop there. So how exactly is that equal to sporadic pogroms Jews experienced by the hands of "Christians"?inunison_{April 20, 2008
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I'll get in the queue for the popcorn - somehow I think there's going to be a response to this on Pharyngula.Bob O'H_{April 20, 2008
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