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More Than a Theory: The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought

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There is much disagreement over evolution but it is not controversial that evolution is the most influential theory in the history of modern science. This is particularly true in areas outside of science. Evolutionary thought has permeated, for example, education, media, law, public policy, and environmentalism. And just as evolutionary theory is deeply flawed its various influences have had disastrous results. A prominent example from the twentieth century was evolution’s role in the formation of racial thought in Nazi Germany, as historian Richard Weikart documents in a recentpaper. Here is how Weikart summarizes the ways that Nazi racial thought was shaped by Darwinism:  Read more

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And Eugenicists think they're doing Darwin a favor. Maybe we should stop doing each other "favors." -QQuerius
December 31, 2013
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NickMatzke_UD @ 18,19 Heh. We try not to make fun of each other's typos and grammatical errors. The bigger picture is much more important. Similarly, I think there's a profound difference between, statements such as "You're an idiot." and "Here's where I think you're going wrong." As I previously stated elsewhere, based on my reading and from my conversations with people who were there, I do not believe that belief in Darwinian evolution was the cause of the Nazi holocaust. The Nazis styled themselves as modern, youth-oriented, forward-thinking, nationalistic socialists who supported "racial hygiene" and "the leadership principle" (structuring all society hierarchically), incorporating and *coordinating* all institutions of society, including marriage and the church, for the common good. They felt that they had a "manifest destiny" for reorganizing Europe, displacing the "less-developed races" to the East. The popular ideas behind Eugenics played a major role in their philosophy, while Darwinism was hardly mentioned in the public narrative. Incidentally, the hotbed of Eugenics was in California. The founding president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 book "Blood of a Nation." http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Nation-David-Starr-Jordan/dp/1110414862 David Starr Jordan was also a peace activist, an expert witness at the Scopes trial, and worst of all, an Ichthyologist! ;-) Also, both Hitler and Mussolini read The Crowd; Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon. According to Wikipedia, "His writings incorporate theories of national traits, racial superiority, herd behavior and crowd psychology." http://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-Mind/dp/1434100553 It's amazing how popular ideas are eventually incorporated by politicians to the detriment of the people. When referring to the genocidal atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, it should not be forgotten that the Germans were purposely starved by the Allies following WWI, perhaps 1-2 million people if you count babies under 1 years old and casualties among displaced people (the official totals were lower, only about 750,000 people or so). There's been a lot of genocidal reciprocation in history under various justifications---sadly, I'm sure that there will be more.
"But," I asked, "how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?" - from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Apparently so. And some people think they're doing God a favor. -QQuerius
December 31, 2013
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mahuma -> mahuna. Friggin pseudonyms.NickMatzke_UD
December 31, 2013
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Just came back to this. Apologies for the mapou/mahuna confusion. Methinks like mahuma was some Holocaust-denier drive-by.NickMatzke_UD
December 31, 2013
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Querius, It's always some bold faced lie or another with those Darwinists and atheists. Darwinism is so stupid and moronic, it should have perished a hundred years ago. What's keeping it alive up is ideology and politics in high places.Mapou
December 30, 2013
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Q: on the holocaust, I would add another cluster of groups, typically clumped together as "Russians." It seems there was an intent to do Stalin's 1930's massacre of Ukrainians one better by simply confiscating the food of tens of millions of the conquered in the East in 1941/2, winter. This was apparently not fully carried out. However was it 20 - 30 million "Russians" who died, and of these only 5 - 6 mn seem to have been actual battlefield deaths. (Which is bad enough, that is one of the worst tolls ever.) Worse, this cannot be shuffled off unto the SS and isolated, as most of the troops involved on the East Front were German Army soldiers. Yes, Jews were a particular target, and a large fraction of the 3 mn non-Polish Jews killed came from areas to the East of Poland. (BTW, our image of Jews murdered in gas chambers disguised as mass showers is misleading, most of the murdered Jews were murdered before that got fully going, probably mostly by shooting and CO gassing in specially modified vehicles that pumped their exhaust into a back compartment.) But the numbers of "Russians" needlessly and willfully dead because of Hitler's invasion is utterly staggering. Plainly Hitler tried to wipe out the peoples of Eastern Europe, the Slavs. The holocaust is one of the worst crimes in history, and it is much bigger than we usually think. KFkairosfocus
December 30, 2013
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Mapou reminded Professor Matzke
We want to see a progression of many skeletal fossils leading to trilobites, not unlike the one you guys love to show as evidence for the evolution of modern man from ancient ape-like animals.
Unfortunately, while he will not be able to provide any exoskeletal fossils, professor Matzke will most certainly provide his personal assurance that this is simply because they haven't been found yet, and that someday they most certainly will. This quasi-scientific religion is termed, the "Darwin of the Gaps" faith---a sweet, childlike belief in future discoveries that will hopefully rescue an obsolescent 19th-century idea---is slowly collapsing under the load of modern genetic, epigenetic, and paleontological discoveries. -QQuerius
December 30, 2013
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To elaborate on professor Matzke's incomplete response regarding the holocaust, here's some data from the Jewish Virtual Library on the victims of the holocaust: Total murdered....11 million Polish Jews............3 million Polish Christians....3 million Other Jews............3 million Other non-Jews.....2 million ... These other victims included about 3 million Jews and 2 million non-Jews people from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Holland, France and Germany. The targeted groups for extermination included: - Polish people (all of them) - European Jews (forced resettlement had been considered, but rejected) - Roma (nearly all half-million "gypsies") - Jehovah's Witnesses - Resistors against the Nazi empire - Homosexuals - The "confessing" Christian church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other pastors and priests) - All people considered physically or mentally disabled, Germans included - Homeless, beggars, etc. ... http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/NonJewishVictims.html This is not a complete list. I've read that about a half-million Serbs were also murdered in Pro-Nazi Croation death camps. Incidentally, most nations did not grant Jews asylum at the time. For example, http://www.jspace.com/news/articles/state-dept-apologizes-for-turning-away-jews-in-wwii-video/10934 -QQuerius
December 30, 2013
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Velikovskys, In response to your request for references, the citation for Nazis indoctrinating school children with Darwinism was the link in the OP to the paper by Richard Weikart: (http://www.csustan.edu/history/faculty/weikart/darwinism-in-nazi-racial-thought.pdf). See section titled “Darwinism in the Nazi Biology Curriculum” starting on page 6 of the pdf which references original German sources. Specifically, the “official curriculum handbook…stipulated, ‘The student must accept as something self-evident this most essential and most important natural law of elimination [of unfit] together with evolution and reproduction.’” As to the NCSE, its Darwin-only advocacy is well known. For information on the NCSE, you can review their website http://ncse.com/ which provides a list of cases where NCSE has fought against academic freedom bills and is opposed to teaching students about the scientific evidence that contradicts Darwinism. Whether the Nazis actually pushed Darwinism as hard as the NCSE, that was a personal opinion due to the Nazi efforts to speed up natural selection by encouraging selective human breeding while simultaneously murdering millions of people they considered to be inferior. While the Darwin-only lobbying of the NCSE is non-controversial, I recognize there is some degree of controversy as to whether Nazis were Darwinists. But I consider the Nazi world-view to be a direct result of Darwinian theory. Thank you for asking.Piltdown2
December 30, 2013
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Piltdown 2, Would you mind providing a reference for this claim? I imagine it must hurt at least a little to realize the Nazis pushed Darwinism on the German school children just as hard as NCSE pushes it here in America. Thanksvelikovskys
December 30, 2013
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I don't agree it was the most or close influential scientific theory ever! In science it contributed nothing and explained nothing. The error of it might matter in biological origin circles. True it was a attack on Christian, especially protestant, biblical presumptions but this never affected true believers. I don't see it affecting politics very much or at all. The Jewish problem was aseen as a problem before Darwin as I understand it. Its like the errors of false religions. It had some traction but still human nature is behind most everything. Christianity simply recognizes this point and brings remedy. Evolution embraces human failure as a natural evolved thing.Robert Byers
December 29, 2013
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By the way, Matzke, we're still waiting for the evidence of the graduated fossils that support incremental Darwinian evolution between Precambrian shellies and trilobites. What's taking you so long? We want to see a progression of many skeletal fossils leading to trilobites, not unlike the one you guys love to show as evidence for the evolution of modern man from ancient ape-like animals.Mapou
December 29, 2013
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Dr Matzke, your cite @ 6 "Jews were added to the list rather late" came from Mahuna @ 3, not Mapau. I imagine it must hurt at least a little to realize the Nazis pushed Darwinism on the German school children just as hard as NCSE pushes it here in America.Piltdown2
December 29, 2013
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Nick Matzke:
And idiotic is giving Mapou the benefit of the doubt, since the other alternative is straight-up racism/apologetics for the Holocaust.
Aha! Now the truth comes out. And here I was thinking that it was the ID side that was accusing some Darwinists of using Darwinian evolution to promote racism. Shows you what I know. The truth, hidden between the lines, is that you choose your side in scientific debates based on where you think your opponent's lies politically or ideologically, truth be damned. That's totally gutless, man. And it shows you got a huge chip on your shoulders that's affecting your judgement. People like you are not to be trusted. You're a liar and a deceiver by choice. The hell with honor. The end justifies the means. That's pathetic and weak, man. You just lost the last bit of respect I had for you. By the way, I hope you're not accusing me of being either a racist, a Holocaust denier or what have you? Given my ethnic background and my current circle of friends, I'm none of those. I refuse to be labeled by anybody, right or left, atheist or theist, black, white or what have you.Mapou
December 29, 2013
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And idiotic is giving Mapou the benefit of the doubt, since the other alternative is straight-up racism/apologetics for the Holocaust. Who came earlier on Hitler's list? http://www.h-net.org/~german/gtext/kaiserreich/hitler2.htmlNickMatzke_UD
December 29, 2013
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Race is one of the great lies about the Nazis. “Aryan” means the same thing as “Indo-European”. The English and French are Aryans. Even the Jews are Aryans. The Nazis were focused on anti-social elements, starting with pure German invalids and crippled children. The next group sent to “supervised labor” was the Gypsies (whose main failure was that the were “vagabonds”, itinerant workers who didn’t hold steady jobs). Jews were added to the list rather late.
Well, that's just idiotic on multiple levels.NickMatzke_UD
December 29, 2013
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True origins writes that: "Altogether Hitler’s killing machine murdered 5 million Jews, and 7 million Christians — a little published fact that caused Jewish historian Max Dimont to declare that “the world blinded itself to the murder of Christians” by Nazi Germany (Dimont, 1994, pp. 391-392). In Poland alone 881 Catholic priests were annihilated (Azar, 1990, p. 154). In time many more priests would end up in concentration camps." Anyone know if this statistic is correct?sixthbook
December 29, 2013
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Darwinists and materialists are fascist totalitarians by nature. This is the only reason that the theory has lasted for as long as it has. They use the force of law and the threat of police action to perpetuate their religion. Our children are being forcefully indoctrinated in the schools and in the media. How those miscreants are able to get away with this in a democracy is a mystery. If school curricula were decided at the ballot box, Darwinism would be eradicated in less than a decade.Mapou
December 29, 2013
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Read Weikart's book "From Darwin to Hitler" and then read Pichot's "The Pure Society". Darwinism is the excuse for dropping morality. Darwin also says that the groups that out-compete their neighbors are inherently superior and therefore the most desirable. Minorities that hold the superior societies back should be eliminated to allow the superior majority to compete better. Race is one of the great lies about the Nazis. "Aryan" means the same thing as "Indo-European". The English and French are Aryans. Even the Jews are Aryans. The Nazis were focused on anti-social elements, starting with pure German invalids and crippled children. The next group sent to "supervised labor" was the Gypsies (whose main failure was that the were "vagabonds", itinerant workers who didn't hold steady jobs). Jews were added to the list rather late. The Germans simply took English and American ideas on Eugenics and Euthanasia and carried them out with German efficiency. Read Edwin Black's "War Against the Weak". Note that Margaret Sanger and her Planned Parenthood organization were about Eugenics: breeding Super-men for the Master Race. Abortion was their tool for reducing births among the "wrong" people. Even today, Blacks represent something like 12% of the US population, yet Black women have 40% of the abortions, and Planned Parenthood is, by far, the largest abortion provider. But the key in all this is accepting that Darwin's atheistic explanation of Life means that there is no Right or Wrong. Anything that allows the group to triumph over lesser people is "good" by definition.mahuna
December 29, 2013
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THe title should read: "Not Even A Theory"Joe
December 29, 2013
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A few facts that the Nazis would have, and current Darwinists 'should', find very embarrassing towards their belief that humans evolved from some chimp/ape-like ancestor. First and foremost, the genetic differences between individuals is now known to be much greater than the genetic differences between races.
Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations - 2007 Excerpt: The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
This fact caused Craig Venter to remark:
‘The Human Genome Project shows there is no such thing as race’. Craig Venter
In fact instead of evolving upwards as the Nazis presupposed, researchers have found that the differences of the younger human races (Chinese, Europeans, American Indians, etc.. etc..) are losing genetic information when compared to the supposed original race of humans in east Africa.
"We found an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations," Tishkoff told attendees today (Jan. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. "Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians." Tishkoff; Andrew Clark, Penn State; Kenneth Kidd, Yale University; Giovanni Destro-Bisol, University "La Sapienza," Rome, and Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins, WITS University, South Africa, looked at three locations on DNA samples from 13 to 18 populations in Africa and 30 to 45 populations in the remainder of the world.- New analysis provides fuller picture of human expansion from Africa - October 22, 2012 Excerpt: A new, comprehensive review of humans' anthropological and genetic records gives the most up-to-date story of the "Out of Africa" expansion that occurred about 45,000 to 60,000 years ago. This expansion, detailed by three Stanford geneticists, had a dramatic effect on human genetic diversity, which persists in present-day populations. As a small group of modern humans migrated out of Africa into Eurasia and the Americas, their genetic diversity was substantially reduced. http://phys.org/news/2012-10-analysis-fuller-picture-human-expansion.html
In fact, Genetic Entropy in Human Genome is found to be 'recent':
Human Genetic Variation Recent, Varies Among Populations - (Nov. 28, 2012) Excerpt: Nearly three-quarters of mutations in genes that code for proteins -- the workhorses of the cell -- occurred within the past 5,000 to 10,000 years,,, "One of the most interesting points is that Europeans have more new deleterious (potentially disease-causing) mutations than Africans,",,, "Having so many of these new variants can be partially explained by the population explosion in the European population. However, variation that occur in genes that are involved in Mendelian traits and in those that affect genes essential to the proper functioning of the cell tend to be much older." (A Mendelian trait is controlled by a single gene. Mutations in that gene can have devastating effects.) The amount variation or mutation identified in protein-coding genes (the exome) in this study is very different from what would have been seen 5,000 years ago,,, The report shows that "recent" events have a potent effect on the human genome. Eighty-six percent of the genetic variation or mutations that are expected to be harmful arose in European-Americans in the last five thousand years, said the researchers. The researchers used established bioinformatics techniques to calculate the age of more than a million changes in single base pairs (the A-T, C-G of the genetic code) that are part of the exome or protein-coding portion of the genomes (human genetic blueprint) of 6,515 people of both European-American and African-American decent.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121128132259.htm
I wonder what Hitler would have thought of all these studies that indicate that East Africans are actually more genetically robust than Europeans? Along that line, blue eyes are the result of a loss of genetic information, not a gain:
Daily thought: blue eyes and other gene mutations, April 25, 2013 Excerpt: "Research on blue-eyes has led many scientist to further affirm that humans are truly mere variations of the same origin. About 8% of the world's total population has blue eyes so blue eyes are fairly rare. In fact, blue eyes are actually a gene mutation that scientist have researched and found to have happened when the OCA2 gene "turned off the ability to produce brown eyes." http://www.examiner.com/article/daily-thought-blue-eyes-and-other-gene-mutations
Same too with hair color and skin color. i.e. it is the result of a loss, not gain, of genetic information:
Melanin Excerpt: The melanin in the skin is produced by melanocytes, which are found in the basal layer of the epidermis. Although, in general, human beings possess a similar concentration of melanocytes in their skin, the melanocytes in some individuals and ethnic groups more frequently or less frequently express the melanin-producing genes, thereby conferring a greater or lesser concentration of skin melanin. Some individual animals and humans have very little or no melanin synthesis in their bodies, a condition known as albinism. per wikipedia
Also of note: The 'Bell curve' I.Q. tests, that have supposedly shown large differences in the intelligence between races of humans, are all shown to be biased by overlooked environmental factors:
Myth: The black/white IQ gap is largely genetically caused. Fact: Almost all studies show the black/white IQ gap is environmental. (i.e. children from an enriched learning environment always perform equally well on I.Q. tests, no matter what their race may be.) http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-IQgapgenetic.htm
Along that line:
Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds - May 2011 Excerpt: Villagers belonging to an Amazonian group called the Mundurucú intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal math education,,, Mundurucú adults and 7- to 13-year-olds demonstrate as firm an understanding of the properties of points, lines and surfaces as adults and school-age children in the United States and France,,, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/universal-geometry/
In fact, I'm pretty certain Hitler and his henchmen would have been thoroughly shocked by the following fact;
If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? - January 20, 2011 Excerpt: John Hawks is in the middle of explaining his research on human evolution when he drops a bombshell. Running down a list of changes that have occurred in our skeleton and skull since the Stone Age, the University of Wisconsin anthropologist nonchalantly adds, “And it’s also clear the brain has been shrinking.” “Shrinking?” I ask. “I thought it was getting larger.” The whole ascent-of-man thing.,,, He rattles off some dismaying numbers: Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. “I’d call that major downsizing in an evolutionary eyeblink,” he says. “This happened in China, Europe, Africa—everywhere we look.” http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking
Supplemental note, just this last year it has been shown that,,,
Human Origins(?) by Brian Thomas, M.S. - December 20, 2013 Excerpt: Three major pillars supporting a human-chimp link crashed in 2013. 1. Genetic similarity (70% instead of 98%) 2. beta-globin pseudogene (functional instead of leftover junk) 3. Chromosome 2 fusion site (encodes a functional feature within an important gene instead of a being a fusion site) All three key genetic pillars of human evolution (for Darwinists) turned out to be specious—overstatements based on ignorance of genetic function. http://www.icr.org/article/7867/
Verse and Music:
Numbers 12:1 & 9-10 And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.,,, And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them; and he departed. And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow: and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous. Mandisa - Esther - Born For This - music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxFCber4TDo
bornagain77
December 29, 2013
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