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"Words of Truth" |
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05 Dec 2004 08:18:01 PM |
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DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
DARWIN AT NUREMBERG
PART I
The Darwin Papers
James Foard
I don't claim that Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the
holocaust; but I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the
atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust
possible"
Jewish scholar Edward Simon (1)
Now we must look into one of the darker, more ominous sides to
Darwin's theory. We are going to investigate how our world-view
affects our lives and see whether Darwin's world-view contributed to
the genocidal Nazi holocaust of the 20th century. Indeed, there are
certain very serious issues that need to be answered here. Do our
ideas of our origin and destiny have significance for our everyday
lives, and the lives of others around us? Does it affect the criterion
we use by which we place value on human life and conduct? How do we
define man? Is he merely the product of natural selection and of the
society he lives in and hence merely a subject of the secular state,
or is he a moral and spiritual being as well as a rational and
physical being who answers to a higher set of laws and standards?
There are some momentous historic reasons why we should seek answers
to the questions just posed. Do ideas of our origin and destiny take
the form of actions that have moral and/or spiritual consequences to
them, and if so, what has been the result of applying Darwinian
theories in the world politic: how has the theory of evolution
affected human life and culture; by what set of principles should
people and nations be governed, and thus ultimately we must ask
ourselves what is the purpose of human government and social
institutions, whose set of laws and morals should we obey, and what
should be the standard of accountability for the common citizen and
for those in public office?
Mention was made in the earlier chapters of the notion of racial
superiority implicit in Darwin's concept of evolution through natural
selection. Did Darwin consider some races of man to be sub-species,
not as equals created in the image of God, and did these evolutionary
ideas make their way into the manner that nations conducted their
social policies during the latter part of the nineteenth and well into
the twentieth centuries?
From his own journal in Chapter One we have read where Darwin regarded
the Indians of South America as little better than beasts that should
be slaughtered to make way for better grazing land for cattle. Did
writings in his Origin and in his Descent of Man contain these same
ideas, ideas that some took and applied to human populations, ideas
that Hitler and Stalin carried out, or is this simply an unwarranted
criticism of his work? Is it unfair to suggest that the death camps at
Auschwitz and the entire culture of death that spawned them were
merely the next horrible and logical step in the application of his
theory?
Often when it is pointed out by Darwin's critics that there is a
historical link between Darwin's writings and the holocaust of the
Nazis, apologists for Darwin will object that this was a perversion of
his original idea, and that there is nothing in what he wrote that
would imply or advocate a racist ideology. Is this indeed the truth or
was there really a connection between what Darwin wrote and what
Hitler carried out on a massive scale in Nazi Germany? In order to
find out the truth of the matter, let us look at what Darwin actually
had to say on the subject.
It may surprise some people to find out the dark truth about Darwin,
but the fact remains nevertheless that he did indeed propose in his
second major work, The Descent of Man, that certain races of human
beings were actually sub-species, that a race war among mankind's
different races, with the extermination of one race and the survival
of another, would bring beneficial results in evolutionary terms, and
he did explicitly state that black people were intermediate on the
evolutionary ladder between apes and white people. He also wrote that
it was his hope that in the near future blacks, aborigines, and the
African gorillas would become extinct, thus enhancing the evolutionary
potential of the Caucasian race.
Darwin began the very first chapter of his Descent of Man by posing
this interesting question:
"He who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of
some pre-existing form, would probably first enquire whether man
varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties;
and if so, whether the variations are transmitted to his offspring in
accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals."
Thus Darwin is asking whether the same law or laws that govern the
evolution of what he refers to as the lower animals also govern in the
affairs of man as well.
What law could he be referring to? To find this out, we must go back
to his Origin of Species, where in the final paragraph of his chapter
on Instinct, he wrote: "Finally, it may not be a logical deduction,
but to my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such
instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants
making slaves, the larvae of ichneumonidae feeding within the live
bodies of caterpillars, not as specially endowed or created instincts,
but as small consequences of one general law leading to the
advancement of all organic beings--namely, multiply, vary, let the
strongest live and the weakest die."
Thus Darwin is asking at the beginning of his Descent if this law of
his leading to the advancement of all organic beings, "multiply, vary,
let the strongest live and the weakest die," also applies to the race
of humankind as well.
He goes on to ask in his Descent if the races of man actually differ
enough to be divided up into what he later refers to as sub-species of
man: "It might also naturally be enquired whether man, like so many
other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races, differing
but slightly from each other, or to races differing so much that they
must be classed as doubtful species?"
Finally, again all on the very first page of his Descent of Man, for
any reader to see, he poses the genocidal question as to whether or
not a race war might produce "beneficial" results for mankind, with
one race of man surviving and another race being exterminated:
"The enquirer would next come to the important point, whether man
tends to increase at so rapid a rate, as to lead to occasional severe
struggles for existence; and consequently to beneficial variations,
whether in body or mind, being preserved, and injurious ones
eliminated. Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be
applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally
become extinct?"
To even pose such a question should naturally revolt any intelligent
and moral person in a civilized society, however Darwin not only posed
these questions at the beginning of his Descent of Man, we also find
out that his own answer to all three questions, again on the very
first page of his Descent of Man was YES!
"We shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in
respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the
same manner as with the lower animals."
Thus Darwin said that his "general law leading to the advancement of
all organic beings . . . let the strongest live and the weakest die"
also applied to the various races of man, and he saw "beneficial"
results coming from a race war between the different races, or what he
called later on in the same chapter the "sub-species" of man, with one
race surviving and one race being exterminated!
Further on in his Descent, Darwin elaborates on this theme describing
his dream of a future for mankind when the black races of man, as well
as the mountain gorilla of Africa, will hopefully become extinct, thus
enhancing the chances for the evolutionary advancement of the more
"civilized" races of man: "At some future period, not very distant as
measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost
certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the
world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor
Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break
between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will
intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even
than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now
between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." (Descent of Man,
Chapter Six: On the Affinities and Geneology of Man, On the Birthplace
and Antiquity of Man)
Darwin proposed in quite horrifying and explicit language that black
Africans and Australian aborigines occupied a sub-species position
between white Europeans and baboons! He not only stated this as his
belief, but proposed that in the near future "as we may hope"
according to his evolutionary theory, these "sub-races" of man will
eventually be exterminated in a struggle for survival, along with the
endangered mountain gorilla of Africa!
This type of statement makes the term "ethnic cleansing" seem mild by
comparison.
Certain evolutionists, in attempting to excuse Darwin, have made the
claim that Darwin was merely an impartial observer of the natural
processes, and that he was only noting the historical fact that
extinctions have and are occurring. This type of reasoning completely
misses the point.
There is a vast difference between observing that there are endangered
species, such as the gray whale, the mountain gorilla, etc., and
encouraging the extinction of those species, which Darwin did! He was
anything but impartial. And it should be noted that he made those
predictions according to his theory, and said that they would be
"beneficial" to evolution, and he applied the “beneficial”
results of extinction, as can be clearly seen by anyone with a
reasonable degree of intelligence from the above quotes, to the
different races of man as well! To blur the line between observation
and advocating would be like saying that Hitler was a social scientist
who was concerned that the Jews were an endangered ethnic group!
This was Darwin's "final solution" to the race problem years before
the Nazi's had their bloody hand in it. (In light of this, I think it
seems a great disservice to our distinguished sixteenth President,
Abraham Lincoln, that the most notorious modern adulator of Darwin's
theory, evolutionist Steven Jay Gould, wrote this kind of fawning
praise for Darwin in a noted scientific journal: "I have long
considered Abraham Lincoln to be Charles Darwin's American
soul-mate-for they were born on the same day of February 12, 1809."
(Steven Jay Gould, On A Toothed Bird's Place In Nature, This View Of
Life, Natural History, February 1996, pp.23.-Note: Since writing this,
Steven Jay Gould, life-long enemy of Christ, who learned Marxism at
his father's knee, went to his eternal reward on May 20, 2002)
When I brought up Darwin's endorsement of racial genocide to some
evolutionists whose opposition to creationism bordered on fanaticism
on the CNN Web discussion board (03/13-15/01) under the evolution
topic, I was accused of taking Darwin out of context and of
paraphrasing Darwin even after providing the quotes that anyone with
enough energy, intellect and interest could easily look up for
themselves, but the icing on the cake came when the evolutionist
moderator of the discussion board accused me of spamming when quoting
myself; for using my own written material in the debate, material
which is freely distributed for anyone to read, I was censored. Also
the traditional evolutionist's argument was made that Darwin was
merely expressing the prevalent view common to the intellectual
climate of his day, and an evolutionist by the name of Brennan
attempted to excuse Darwin by claiming that when Darwin was using the
term "sub-species" to refer to the various races of man, this term in
the English language did not mean the same as it does today.
For one thing, for anyone to make the excuse that Darwin was merely
reflecting the contemporary attitude of his day completely ignores the
fact that Darwin's Descent was published some fifty years after the
great Christian, Wilberforce, lobbied successfully to outlaw slavery
in England; ten years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation; and
seven years after the end of the American Civil War. Also, there were
some very prominent blacks at that time in England and America who had
attained financial prosperity and achieved notable educational success
and who would not have appreciated Darwin’s designation of their
status.
As noted already, to use this type of historical revisionism to excuse
Darwin one might just as well say that what Hitler was saying about
the Jews in Germany during the Third Reich was not so bad because,
well after all, it was being said all over Germany back then.
Regarding Brennan’s contention that species and sub-species did
not meant the same thing back then as it does now, let it be said that
Darwin was not using medieval English. The Linnean binomial system of
scientific classification had been in use for well over a hundred
years when Darwin published his Descent of Man and African blacks were
definitely classified within the genus and species Homo sapiens, i.e.
human beings, and Darwin was surely aware of this. The word
“species” meant the same thing then as it does now, and
when Darwin called certain races of man "sub-species", that is exactly
what he meant, in all of it's xenophobia and racism.
Let it never be said that Darwin was overflowing with the milk of
human kindness in his evolutionary theory when applying it to mankind.
Could anything more horrible be imagined from the writings of Adolf
Hitler than what Darwin plainly stated in the above quote.
Darwin was a zealous advocate of the extinction of species (see
Chapter Fourteen of The Darwin Papers) and of the extermination of
certain races of man, and were he alive today he would be beating the
drum to the clubbing of the baby harp seals in Alaska. He was no mere
impartial observer of nature. And he left his stamp on the National
Socialist and Marxist totalitarian dictatorships that led to the
deaths of millions of people in the twentienth century in the name of
evolutionary "social progress".
Some defenders of Darwin have noted that he followed the fashionable
trend among the wealthy elite in England during the American Civil war
in writing against slavery in his correspondences. This is indeed
true, for Darwin did not want to make slaves of the blacks and
aborigines, he preferred the much more deadly, efficient and brutal
solution to the race problem. After all, Hitler did not want to make
slaves of the Jews, he wanted to exterminate them. And it should be
born in mind that Darwin’s ideas on the eventual extermination
of the black races were written years after slavery had already ended,
thus if there was any shift in his attitude or opinion concerning
black-white relations, it was from a moderate position to an extreme
position of advocacy of ethnic cleansing.
I am continually amazed at how evolutionists and liberals (I have yet
to meet a liberal who is not an evolutionist; evolutionism is the
underlying creed of liberalism) will go to any extreme to defend
Darwin whenever any type of criticism of him or his theory is put
forth. They will literally bend over backwards to excuse him of any
fault in his person or argument, and yet these same defenders of
Darwin, “straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel”, will
jump to join in with any attack on or imagined fault of great men of
principle, faith, courage and vision such as Washington, Jefferson and
Columbus.
To return to our subject, regarding Darwin’s viewpoint of
certain races of man as subspecies, he wrote in Chapter Seven of his
Descent: "It is not my intention here to describe the several
so-called races of men; but I am about to enquire what is the value of
the differences between them under a classificatory point of view, and
how they have originated."
After quoting various opinions on both sides of the issue, Darwin gave
us his opinion on the subject: "Some naturalists have lately employed
the term "sub-species" to designate forms which possess many of the
characteristics of true species, but which hardly deserve so high a
rank. Now if we reflect on the weighty arguments above given, for
raising the races of man to the dignity of species, and the
insuperable difficulties on the other side in defining them, it seems
that the term "sub-species" might here be used with propriety. But
from long habit the term "race" will perhaps always be employed. The
choice of terms is only so far important in that it is desirable to
use, as far as possible, the same terms for the same degrees of
difference."(Descent, Chapter 7, p.347, Benton Edition)
Darwin often referred to the different races of mankind as
sub-species:
"In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like
creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any
definite point when the term "man" ought to be used. But this is a
matter of very little importance. So again, it is almost a matter of
indifference whether the so-called races of man are thus designated,
or are ranked as species or sub-species; but the latter term appears
the more appropriate." (Descent, Chapter Seven: On the Races of Man:
Sub-species)
Thus Darwin restated his view that the various races of man were of
different species, again calling some races "sub-species," even
proposing that certain races had differing mental capabilities: "The
races differ also in constitution, in acclimatization and in liability
to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very
distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in
their intellectual faculties." (Descent, Chapter Seven: On the Races
of Man, pp.343)
Darwin not only had a racially biased view of the non-Aryan races, he
even held other Europeans who were not of English descent with
contempt. Here is his opinion of the Irish, taken from his Descent of
Man:
"A most important obstacle in civilised countries to an increase in
the number of men of a superior class has been strongly insisted on by
Mr. Greg and Mr. Galton, namely, the fact that the very poor and
reckless, who are often degraded by vice, almost invariably marry
early, whilst the careful and frugal, who are generally otherwise
virtuous, marry late in life, so that they may be able to support
themselves and their children in comfort. . .Those who marry early
produce within a given period not only a greater number of
generations, but, as shewn by Dr. Duncan they produce many more
children. Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of
society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and
generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: 'The
careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like
rabbits..."(Descent, Chapter Five: On the Development of the
Intellectual and Moral Faculties During Primeval and Civilised Times:
Natural selection as affecting civilised nations.)
Darwin quoted Greg here in referring to his Irish neighbors as
degraded members of society.
He also wrote that the western nations of Europe owed none of their
"superiority" to Greek ancestry: "The western nations of Europe, who
now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand
at the summit of civilisation, owe little or none of their superiority
to direct inheritance from the old Greeks", to whom he referred in a
quote from Greg as "'corrupt to the very core.'" (Descent, ibid.)
Darwin shared with us his evolutionary viewpoint on what happens to
more primitive cultures when encountering more "advanced" (i.e.
European) cultures in Chapter Seven of the Descent, On the Races of
Man: On the Extinction of the Races of Man: "The partial or complete
extinction of many races of man is historically known . . . Extinction
follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race
with race . . .the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter,
cannibalism, slavery, and absorption . . .When civilized nations come
into contact with barbarians the struggle is short, except where a
deadly climate gives its aid to the native race."
Darwin also stated that the wealthy nations would eventually replace
the less privileged races in the struggle for life, and it is apparent
that he believed this to be a good thing:
"But the inheritance of property by itself is very far from an evil;
for without the accumulation of capital the arts could not progress;
and it is chiefly through their power that the civilised races have
extended, and are now everywhere extending their range, so as to take
the place of the lower races."(Ibid)
This very concept of the strong ruling over the weak by brute force
was precisely what Hitler advocated in the Tenth chapter of Mein
Kampf:
"Man must realize that a fundamental law of necessity reigns
throughout the whole realm of Nature and that his existence is subject
to the law of eternal struggle and strife . . .where the strong are
always the masters of the weak and where those subject to such laws
must obey them or be destroyed,"echoing Darwin's idea of a struggle
for existence, survival of the fittest, and his "one general law
leading to the advancement of all organic beings . . . let the
strongest live and the weakest die."
Darwin's idea of a battle for survival sounds eerily like the speech
that Hitler gave in Munich on April 13, 1923, where he stated:
" So the strength which each people possesses decides the day. ALWAYS
BEFORE GOD AND THE WORLD THE STRONGER HAS THE RIGHT TO CARRY THROUGH
WHAT HE WILLS. History proves: He who has not the strength - him the
'right in itself' profits not a whit. A world court without a world
police would be a joke. And from what nations of the present League of
Nations would then this force be recruited? Perhaps from the ranks of
the old German Army? THE WHOLE WORLD OF NATURE IS A MIGHTY STRUGGLE
BETWEEN STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS - AN ETERNAL VICTORY OF THE STRONG OVER
THE WEAK. There would be nothing but decay in the whole of Nature if
this were not so. States which should offend against the elementary
law would fall into decay. You need not seek for long to find an
example of such mortal decay: you can see it in the Reich of
today...."
It should be remembered that the subtitle to Darwin's Origin of
Species was The Preservation of favored Races in the Struggle For
Life, which we now see he applied to the races of man as well. What we
are beginning to see is a chapter largely neglected by historians, a
chapter that chronicles one of the darkest pictures of human history;
the attempted extermination of entire races of human beings based on
the evolutionary concept that some races are more advanced than others
and that according to Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest and a
struggle for survival there should be open competition between the
different races of man for dominance on this planet.
There is an amazing similarity between what Darwin wrote and what the
Nazis were expounding during the reign of Adolf Hitler. The Nuremberg
Law passed by the Nazis in Germany in 1933 was specified as a "Law for
the Protection of Hereditary Health: The Attempt to Improve the German
Aryan Breed."
Article I Section 1 of the Nuremberg Law stated: "Anyone who suffers
from an inheritable disease may be surgically sterilized if, in the
judgement of medical science, it could be expected that his
descendants will suffer from serious inherited mental or physical
defects."
Article I Section 2 stated: "Anyone who suffers from one of the
following is to be regarded as inheritable diseased within the meaning
of this law:"
Congenital feeble-mindedness
Schizophrenia
Manic-depression
Congenital epilepsy
Inheritable St. Vitus dance (Huntington's Chorea)
Hereditary blindness
Hereditary deafness
Serious inheritable malformations
Article II Section 1 of the Nuremberg Law states:
"Anyone who requests sterilization is entitled to it. If he be
incapacitated or under a guardian because of low state of mental
health or not yet 18 years of age, his legal guardian is empowered to
make the request. In other cases of limited capacity the request must
receive the approval of the legal representative. If a person be of
age and has a nurse, the latter's consent is required."
These laws sound as though they could have been taken directly from
the conclusion to Darwin's Descent of Man, where Darwin wrote that
only those deemed physically fit should have children, and that those
deemed physically or mentally inferior should not breed:
"Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his
horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to
his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. . .Yet he
might by selection do something not only for the bodily constitution
and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral
qualities. Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in
any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but such hopes are Utopian
and will never be even partially realised until the laws of
inheritance are thoroughly known. Everyone does good service, who aids
towards this end. When the principles of breeding and inheritance are
better understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our
legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for ascertaining whether or
not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man. . . .The
advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem: all
ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for
their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its
own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On the other
hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage,
whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the
better members of society. Man, like every other animal, has no doubt
advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for
existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to
advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject
to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the
more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life
than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate of increase, though
leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by
any means. There should be open competition for all men; and the most
able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best
and rearing the largest number of offspring. (Darwin, Descent of Man,
Conclusion)
Darwin even advocated that the poor, the sick, the lame and the
socially disadvantaged should be discouraged from producing offspring,
and in fact suggested that vaccinations against disease, aid to help
the poor, and asylums and hospital care for the sick were wrongly
directed and would lead to the degeneration of our species! "I have
hitherto only considered the advancement of man from a semi-human
condition to that of the modern savage. But some remarks on the action
of natural selection on civilized nations may be worth adding . . .
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those
that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised
men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of
elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is
reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a
weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the
weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who
has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this
must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon
a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of
a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any
one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. . . .The
surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he
knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were
intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a
contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must
therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and
propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in
steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society
do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be
indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from
marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected " (Descent
of Man, Chapter Five, On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral
Faculties during Primeval and Civilized Times: Natural Selection as
affecting Civilized Nations.)
It was precisely this evolutionary ideology that led to the
sterilization, torture and murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs
and children of mixed racial heritage and to the Nazi concentration
camps of Dachau, Ravensbruck, Treblinka and Auschwitz in the years
just prior to and during the era of the Third Reich in Germany. The
Sterilization Law eventually led to the legalization of euthanasia in
Germany in 1939, which in turn led to the murder of millions of
"undesirables". Hitler's ideas were rooted firmly in Darwin's theory
of evolution and eugenics. This was not borderline lunatic science but
was in the vanguard of respectable genetics in what was one of the
most progressive scientific and technological societies of its day.(2)
The similarity between Darwin's writings and Hitler's is scandalous,
yet even more scandalous is the fact that this has not been pointed
out before among most scholars on evolution and Darwin. Some
Christians, in a myopic attempt to bring Darwin within the fold of the
Church, have made the patronizing claim that Darwin himself was a
Christian during much of his life, or that he had a death bed
repentance and conversion from his evolutionary views to more
conventional Christian beliefs. One might as well boast that Hitler or
Stalin were Christians in that case. As far as Darwin's own feelings
for religion and his objectivity towards the Biblical account of
creation, after his abandoned candidacy for Holy Orders he said of the
Old testament that "from its manifestly false history of the
earth...and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful
tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the
Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian."
Of his view of the New Testament of Jesus Christ, he could not see how
"anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain
language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe,
and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best
friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable
doctrine."" (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, Edited by Nora
Barlow, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, London, 1958.)
Here we have Darwin's views on Christianity, and it appears that those
were the views he was brought up around as well, so there was no
gradual conversion, as he sometimes claimed, depending on whom he was
trying to convince, from Christian beliefs to evolution. He did state
categorically, nonetheless, that by the time he was forty years old he
had totally given up on Christianity, (Desmond and Moore, pp. 658),
saying to one correspondent "I am sorry to have to inform you that I
do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in
Jesus Christ as the Son of God." (Ibid, pp. 635). He also wrote that
he did not believe that there ever has been any Revelation. (Ibid, pp.
635)
He further wrote in his Autobiography that his belief in evolution was
incompatible with the belief in the immortality of the human soul,
stating that if the soul were immortal, and if this life were not the
all in all, then evolution would be meaningless: "Believing as I do
that man in the distant future [through evolutionary development] will
be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable
thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete
annihilation [referring to the Christian belief that this world will
be consumed someday, but that there shall be a new heavens and earth
afterward] after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully
admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world
will not appear so dreadful". (Autobiography of Charles Darwin and
Selected Letters, Edited by Francis Darwin, 1892)
Here Darwin was criticizing the Christian belief in the immortality of
the human soul, stating that those who adhere to this belief, along
with the belief that there would be an after-life in a better world
after this one, and that this present world will come to an end
someday, thus that this present life was not the end result of
existence, were in direct contradiction to his hope that evolutionary
development would go on and on forever in this life.
Hitler, whom we have seen also emphasized the struggle for existence
as a mainstay of his belief system, also repudiated Christianity in
his private conversations. In fact we find out that Hitler's hatred of
Christianity and the Jews was tied in with his attempt to apply
Darwinian theories of a master race on a worldwide scale. He said on
October, 10, 1941: "Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a
protest against nature. Taken to its logical conclusion, Christianity
would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure."(From
Hitler's Secret Conversations, October 10, 1941)
Hitler was not referring to the Natural Law spoken of in the
Declaration of Independence, which acknowledged that all men were
created equal, but he was referring to the law of "survival of the
fittest," found in Darwin's writings, and from which he gained much of
his fuel for his propaganda campaign.
Having read of Darwin's views on religion in the first chapter, should
it seem like much of a surprise that Karl Marx, the author of the
Communist Manifesto desired to dedicate his book to Darwin? Even
though Darwin declined the offer, Marx, who stated that religion is
the "opiate of the people,"wrote to his friend Engels: "Darwin's book
is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the
class struggle." (3)
University of Columbia historian Jacques Barzun wrote, "The path from
Darwin to Marx to Wagner is an unbroken circle, and our world of
action lies within it as in an iron wring." (4)
Jonathan Miller wrote, "Like Freud and Marx, Darwin exploited the
monotonous security of a happy marriage to work undisturbed at a
revolutionary theory. Under the cover of respectable matrimony, all
three men succeeded in hatching ideas which did much to undermine the
world upon which traditional family life was based."(5)
Darwin stated that one reason that he did not accept the idea of the
Judeo-Christian God was because of so much suffering in the world. It
has still to be estimated how many millions of people died under the
cruel blow of the hammer and sickle during the seventy year reign of
atheistic Communism in the Soviet Union, the reign of Mao Tse Tung in
China, and the communist regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia, but the high
estimates in the twentieth century alone suggest that more than 100
million people have been slaughtered in the name of Communism, over 50
million in the Soviet Union, and more recently three million in
Southeast Asia under the regime of Pol Pot, the mad dictator
responsible for the "Killing Fields."
Barzun wrote, "Darwin did not invent the Machiavellian image that the
world is the playground of the lion and the fox, but thousands
discovered that he had transformed political science . . . War became
the symbol, the image, the inducement, the reason, and the language of
all human beings on the planet. No one who has not waded through some
sizable part of the literature of the period 1870-1914 has any
conception of the extent to which it is one long call for blood . . .
" (6)
Ralph Ross, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities and Chairman of the
Humanities Program at the University of Minnesota has written: "We can
probably guess what Hitler means if we see how Christianity as 'the
systematic cultivation of the human failure' is 'a rebellion against
natural law' if natural law includes human equality, justice, and
liberty, as eighteenth-century thinkers conceived it. But if
"Christianity" here means chiefly . . . moral precepts like Love your
neighbor, The meek shall inherit the earth, and If you are slapped on
one cheek, turn the other, then it is, "a protest against nature" if
nature is thought of as opposed to these. 'Nature red in fang and
claw,' the battle ground of the struggle for survival, dog eat dog!
Nature is thus conceived as the survival of the fittest. That would be
opposed to the Christianity of the Gospels. And surely Hitler, from
what the world knows of him, worshiped strength and abhorred weakness.
Failures, in his mind, would be the weak . . .Then natural law would
be Darwinism: the survival of the fittest (7)
Unfortunately Ross, as many apologists for Darwin have done, made the
mistaken claim that Darwin was not talking about human society in his
writings, but only about animal species, thus absconding Darwin from
any responsibility for the horrors we have seen perpetuated on the
human race during the twentieth century, but we have seen that this is
anything but the truth. Darwin was clearly referring to human society
as well as animals when applying his law of survival of the fittest.
Adrian Desmond and James Moore, in their epic 808 page work Darwin,
write: “‘Social Darwinism’ is often taken to be
something extraneous (to Darwin’s theory), an ugly concretion
added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing
Darwin’s image. But his notebooks make plain that competition,
free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality
were written into the equation from the start -‘Darwinism’
was always intended to explain society.” (8)
Thus Darwin suggested as perfectly consistent with his theory the
odious “final solution” to the race problem, a solution as
simple and barbaric as anything uttered by Goebbels or Hitler during
the period of Nazi domination, written in Darwin’s Descent
before either of them were born.
The Britannica said of Darwin: "He had no historical or political
sense whatever, as may be seen in what he wrote to the Austrian
explorer Karl von Scherzer (December 26, 1869): 'What a foolish idea
seems to prevail in Germany on the connection between Socialism and
Evolution through Natural Selection."(9)
In other words, it was foolish on Darwin's part not to see the obvious
connection between belief in natural selection and Socialism, the
mixture that produced the bitter fruit of National Socialism later on
in the next century with the frightening concept of a "master race"
and "inferior races" and the idea of eliminating those "unfit to
breed"; applying the horrific scientific implications of Darwinian
natural selection to human populations.
Jewish scholar Edward Simon wrote: “I don’t claim that
Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the holocaust; but I
cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the atheism it
engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust
possible.”(10)
According to Alan Bullock, the basis of Hitler’s beliefs was
Social Darwinism.(11)
Echoing Darwin’s law of a struggle for survival and “let
the strongest live and the weakest die”, Hitler wrote:
"“Man has become great through struggle . . .Whatever goal man
has reached is due to his originality plus his brutality . . .All life
is bound up in three thesis: struggle is the father of all things,
virtue lies in the blood, leadership is primary and
decisive.”(12)
Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf his theory of struggle, nearly identical to
Darwin’s ideas on the struggle for existence and survival of the
fittest: “He who wants to live must fight, and he who does not
want to fight in this world where eternal struggle is the law of life
has no right to exist.”(13)
Is it any wonder that Hitler, the philosophic step-child of Charles
Darwin, persecuted Christians in Germany under the Third Reich. He
jailed hundreds of Protestant ministers and shut down many Catholic
monasteries in Germany. Is it surprising then in light of
Hitler’s evolutionary beliefs that he could say “The
heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of
Christianity.”? (Hitler’s Secret Conversations, July 11,
1941.) And in calling Christianity “the invention of the
Jew” we find out at least one reason for his horrible gassing
and burning six million of the fellow countrymen of the Lord. (Ibid,
pp. 131)
There is generally a history to the growth of an idea. The philosophy
of the superiority of the Aryan race did not spring up overnight when
Adolph Hitler seized control of the government in Germany in 1932,
although most historians when writing about this period of history
have grossly oversimplified the reasons behind his rise to power and
of the Nazi movement in general, making it appear as though he was
just one isolated, foaming at the mouth racist madman with a group of
like-minded thugs who assumed the reigns of power in Germany because
he promised the people jobs and a return to tradition, and since the
German economy was in a terrible depression the people voted him in.
This is often portrayed as merely an issue of German nationalism,
which to a certain degree it was, yet seldom mentioned is the fact
that the inhuman policies of exterminating "inferior races," Jews and
other non-Aryan peoples, was not just some private idea of Hitler's
own concoction, nor did it originate from the band of socialists who
supported him. That terrible experiment conducted on innocent human
beings by Germany during the Third Reich to "improve the breeding
stock" of humanity did not spring up out of an intellectual void. The
idea of the superiority of the Aryan race had been around for quite a
few years before Hitler's rise to power in Germany. Josiah Strong,
Herbert Spencer, and the notorious Earnst Haeckel all enthusiastically
promoted this concept and claimed that the idea was intrinsically tied
in with Darwin's ideas of natural selection. The German people, indeed
the intellectual elite the world over had been actively lapping up
these ideas ever since the publication of the Origin of Species and
later of his Descent of Man.
Now we have traced these ideas back to Darwin himself, we have seen
what Darwin had to say on this issue in his second major work. Darwin
held that some races were more "evolved" than others, which led to the
idea of a "master race" and "inferior races", along with the prospect
of "improving" our breeding stock through elimination of those unfit
to breed.
The connection between Darwin and Hitler and Stalin runs like an iron
thread through this dark period in history, and Darwin's conclusions
regarding this issue must be taken at their full weight of seriousness
in evaluating the man and his work, for since we have now seen that he
did come to the conclusion that the extinction of certain races of
mankind would be beneficial in the evolutionary scheme of things, and
put this odious concept into his major writings, then we should have a
new referendum on this man, it would be time for a reassessment of the
applicability of the theories of Charles Darwin to human species, lest
we wander down that same slippery slope again
But what was the precise chain of intellectual events that led from
Darwin to the Holocaust?
Who were the men involved in this transmission of genocidal ideas that
fueled Adolf Hitler's idea of a master race? And who was the man
related to Darwin and whom Darwin made frequent reference to in his
Descent of Man who developed the ghoulish pseudo-science of eugenics,
which the Nazis used to sterilize hundreds of thousands of people
during the Third Reich?
We will attempt to answer some of these questions in the next issue of
The Darwin Papers.
1. Taken from a quotation by Edward Simon, (Another Side to the
Evolution Problem, Jewish Press, Jan. 7,1983, pp.248), also from Henry
Morris's excellent book, History of Modern Creationism, Master Book
Publishers, 1984, pp. 49.
2. Art Caplan, “What's Morally Wrong With Eugenics”,
University of Pennsylvania,
Bioethics.net, The Moral Implications of Science, Medicine and
Research, 7/10/2000,
Http:health/upenn.edu/~bioethics/library/papers/art/EugenicsNotreDame.html
3. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought,
1860-1915, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944),
pp.31.
4. Barzun Darwin, Marx, and Wagner, Little, Brown and Company, 1941,
pp.17-18.
5. Jonathan Miller, Darwin For Beginners, Pantheon Books, Random
House, New York, 1982, pp.83.
6. Barzun, pp.100.
7. Ralph Ross, John Berryman, and Allen Tate, The Art of Reading, pp.
128, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1966.
(8)Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, Warner Books, 1991.
(9)Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol.16, pp.1029, Darwin, (1986)
(10)Taken from a quotation by Edward Simon, (Another Side to the
Evolution Problem, Jewish Press, Jan. 7,1983, pp.248), from Henry
Morris’s excellent book, History of Modern Creationism, Master
Book Publishers, 1984, pp. 49.
(11)Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, p. 11
(12)Speech at Chemnitz, April 2, 1938
(13)Mein Kampf, Murphy trans. P. 242
http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/oldsite/number12/Darwinpapers12HTML.htm
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| User: "Pastor Dave" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
18 Dec 2004 10:59:47 AM |
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On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 18:45:57 GMT, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, Elroy Willis <elo@airmail.net> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote in alt.atheism
while scaling Mt. Everest, Elroy Willis pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote in alt.atheism
while scaling Mt. Everest, Elroy Willis <elo@airmail.net> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote in alt.atheism
while scaling Mt. Everest, <manutter51@yahoo.com> pontificated:
Hmm, I wonder what you think the "attack" on the Gospel is. Demanding
the same proofs that you require from evolutionary science?
You act like a child. You claimed that evolution is a
scientific fact.
It's an observable fact that children are not carbon-copies of either
parent,
Microevolution does not prove what you believe. Now
prove beyond any doubt that man evolved from non-human.
Prove that people didn't once consider dark-black-africans and
even Australian Aboriginees as "less than human." You can't
disprove that, since it's a well-known fact, and some people today
still believe it...
You despise the man-from-monkey idea just as the white-supremecists
despise the coal-black niggers who they claim they aren't realted to,
no way...
Prove what you believe. Insulting me does not
accomplish that. All you do, each time you respond
without said proof, is demonstrate that you believe it
by faith and yet, ridicule the faith of Christians.
I've already proven everything I need to prove to support my
position,
Well then, I guess you count zero proof as valid.
but you're lagging far behind when it comes to supporting
your talking snake and man made from clay one day dogma...
And there it is folks. They cannot support what they
claim is scientific fact, so they insult God's word.
--
Pastor Dave Raymond
"I have more understanding than all my teachers:
for thy testimonies are my meditation." - Psalm 119:99
/
o{}xxxxx[]::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::>
\
"And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
the Spirit, which is the word of God:" - Ephesians 6:17
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| User: "Elroy Willis" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
18 Dec 2004 11:42:08 AM |
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Pastor Dave wrote in alt.atheism
while scaling Mt. Everest, Elroy Willis <elo@airmail.net> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote in alt.atheism
while scaling Mt. Everest, Elroy Willis pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote in alt.atheism
while scaling Mt. Everest, Elroy Willis <elo@airmail.net> pontificated:
It's an observable fact that children are not carbon-copies of either
parent,
Microevolution does not prove what you believe. Now
prove beyond any doubt that man evolved from non-human.
Prove that people didn't once consider dark-black-africans and
even Australian Aboriginees as "less than human." You can't
disprove that, since it's a well-known fact, and some people today
still believe it...
You despise the man-from-monkey idea just as the white-supremecists
despise the coal-black niggers who they claim they aren't realted to,
no way...
Prove what you believe. Insulting me does not
accomplish that. All you do, each time you respond
without said proof, is demonstrate that you believe it
by faith and yet, ridicule the faith of Christians.
I've already proven everything I need to prove to support my
position,
Well then, I guess you count zero proof as valid.
So you deny the fact that many people considered and still consider
dark-black niggers or natives of some country or region as "inferior
humans" and even less than human actually, since they were sold
into slavery, and called "jungle bunnies" and "spear chuckers" all
by people whom were supposed to be "better" than them because
of your pretended god whom you believe created it all?
--
Elroy Willis
www.elroysemporium.com
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| User: "wbarwell" |
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| Title: Pastor Frank, militant fool |
18 Dec 2004 12:07:15 AM |
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Pastor Dave wrote:
On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:29:42 GMT, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, Elroy Willis <elo@airmail.net> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote in alt.atheism
while scaling Mt. Everest, <manutter51@yahoo.com> pontificated:
Hmm, I wonder what you think the "attack" on the Gospel is. Demanding
the same proofs that you require from evolutionary science?
You act like a child. You claimed that evolution is a
scientific fact.
It's an observable fact that children are not carbon-copies of either
parent,
Microevolution does not prove what you believe. Now
prove beyond any doubt that man evolved from non-human.
We have fossils. The proof is there.
DNA shows we are realted to great aps.
Evoluition is there.
Now,. lets turn teh tables on you.
Prove god exists.
Hard evidence only.
What? You say you don't have any?
Then evolution wins by default!
No matter how ignorant YOU are.
Are you telling us that god every so often creates stuff?
Prosimian ancesters? later creates homo erectus
and other hominids? Then a few million years later creates
homo neanderthal? Then sometime later creates Homo Spaien?
Because that is what you have to prove to show we should
take you seriously.
Otherwise, evolution wins be default, because we do
have the fossils! We know evolution works, even YOU
have to admit THAT!
What you are saying is that evolution only goes so far and
then.. what? God steps in and makes homo erectus?
Really, you are NOT thinking about this are you?
Ther eis only evolution, which you admit does occur.
Now, all you have to do is say, well god sure doesn't prove
anything as a theory".
So when did god create homo erectus anyway? And when did
god create homo sapiens? Prove god did it.
Hard evidence now. And if you don't have a coherent theory and hard
evidence, you are a blathering fool.
Now hop to it and show us that theory you have and hard evidence
to support your claim.
Start with proving god exists.
You wanna play the angry, braying *****?!
The aggressive badgering moron?
Well, we will do the same to you and put you in your place,
little man!
--
Apes bad! Dust good!
Apes bad! Dust good!
21st Century American Christianity
in a nutshell.
Cheerful Charlie
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| User: "Elroy Willis" |
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| Title: Re: Pastor Frank, militant fool |
20 Dec 2004 10:45:49 AM |
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wbarwell <wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> wrote in alt.atheism
Are you telling us that god every so often creates stuff?
Prosimian ancesters? later creates homo erectus
and other hominids? Then a few million years later creates
homo neanderthal? Then sometime later creates Homo Spaien?
Not to mention all those new stars being created out there in
the stellar nurseries in the billions of galaxies out there...
The archaic and superstitious drivel about a god who took Saturnday
off after creating the entire universe is obviously a load of rubbish,
don't you think?
--
Elroy Willis
www.elroysemporium.com
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: Pastor Frank, militant fool |
20 Dec 2004 07:39:52 PM |
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On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 16:45:49 GMT, Elroy Willis <elo@airmail.net> said
in alt.atheism:
The archaic and superstitious drivel about a god who took Saturnday
off after creating the entire universe is obviously a load of rubbish,
don't you think?
Why would the creator of the entire universe care about one planet?
---
CellPhonesEtc at optonline dot net
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| User: "wbarwell" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
17 Dec 2004 11:56:00 PM |
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Pastor Dave wrote:
On 16 Dec 2004 18:40:53 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, "manutter51@alethian.org"
<manutter51@yahoo.com> pontificated:
Hmm, I wonder what you think the "attack" on the Gospel is. Demanding
the same proofs that you require from evolutionary science?
You act like a child. You claimed that evolution is a
scientific fact.
You act like a fool. Whol elibraroes are there to educate you and you
refuse to exert effort.
you sit here and bray and bray and bray ignorantly and nobody can in a mere
post, show you all teh facts. You are utterly bone, stone stick hard core
ignorant of facts and will not educate yourself.
And being ignorant of facts, you think that because you are ignorant of
facts facts do not exist.
Yes, there are facts.
But people here see yoy cannot deal with facts.
And yet, you squat at your keyboard demanding facts
that when people present to you you ignore.
I have been keeping up wit hstuff lik etyhis in teh scientific press for 30
years. yet I am supposed to pour thirty years of backroud knowldge in your
teeny, empty, angry, christian head at the press of a few buttons?
No can do, you are too angry, stupid and bigotted to take
anybody's word for anything and proof cannot be presented in a few posts
to an ignorant and angry superstitous, unpleasant blaring, braying fool
without the intellectual and education backround to understand any of this.
Yes, macro-evolution is a fact and your moron god is disporovable, so
together these facts make you a loser.
And tthis is how it stand. A few people understand this an dteh rest of
you are ignoramnt, angry assholes without a clue and a head full of stone
ages superstition.
As half of people by definituion have an IQ less than 100,
most people never will understand any of this at all anyway,
its forever beyond their meager intellectual capabilities.
So, lets turn the tables on YOU.
Prove god exists. Now. Hard evidence only.
If you cannot to our satisfaction, your religion is a stupid fairy tale and
evolution must be true by default.
You don't have any evidence, do you? What you say?
The Bible is proof? What? the BIBLE!? With its contradictory tall tales
and ignorant myths!?
And what about those stupd claims of miracle working ability?
If the bible is true, you clowns, and you are clowns, could work
big, bad assed miracles? Where are all those miracles?
If you cannot work miracles the bible is false and untrue.
You can't work miracles, therefore the bible is untrue.
If you are too stupid to notice that, and you are,
you are obviously too stupid to understand evolution.
I understand evolution and why your bible is untrue
and why you are a idiot.
You? You are an angry braying idiot.
That is all.
********************************************
Mark 11:23-4
For verily I say this unto you, That
whosoever shall say unto this mountain,
Be thou removed, and be thou cast
into the sea; and shall not doubt
in his heart, but shall believe that
those things which he saith shall
come to pass; he shall have whatsoever
he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things
soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe
ye recieve them and ye shall have them.
Matthew 18:19-20
Again I say unto you, that if two
of you shall agree on earth as
touching anything that they shall
ask, it shall be done for them of
my father which is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered
in my name, there I am in the midst
of them.
Matthew 21:22
And all things,whatsoever ye shall ask
in prayer, believeing, ye shall recieve.
John 14:12-14
12: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that
believeth on me, the works that I do shall he
do also; and greater works than these shall
he do;because I go unto my Father.
13: And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name,
that will I do, that the Father may be
glorified in the Son.
14: If ye shall ask any thing in my name,
I will do it.
***********************************************
--
Apes bad! Dust good!
Apes bad! Dust good!
21st Century American Christianity
in a nutshell.
Cheerful Charlie
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| User: "Pastor Dave" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
16 Dec 2004 06:56:45 PM |
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On 16 Dec 2004 13:39:46 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, "manutter51@alethian.org"
<manutter51@yahoo.com> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote:
On 16 Dec 2004 09:41:18 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, "manutter51@alethian.org"
<manutter51@yahoo.com> pontificated:
You demand that evolutionary theory must meet a standard of proof
that
the Gospel itself cannot meet. Why, then, do you doubt evolutionary
theory, yet believe the Gospel?
I have demanded that if you call it a scientific fact,
that you present the proof that it is.
Ok, so the Gospel does not need the kind of proof you demand, because
the Gospel is not scientific fact. Thanks for setting us straight
about that. Same for creationism, I presume? But what you are saying
is that one cannot rely on "proof" to settle the question of whether
something is truth or fantasy. Proofs are for mathematicians and
distilled beverages; science is based on evidence. So the question
becomes not "which claim has proof?" but "which claim is most
consistent with the evidence?"
There is no "proof" of any scientific fact, because science needs to
keep an open mind and a willingness to admit that there might be more
to learn, whereas one who has "proof" of something thinks the case is
closed and no further investigation is necessary. It is unscientific
to have proof; scientific fact is based on evidence, and preferably
lots of it.
Impossible standards of "proof" aside, how do you explain the fact
that
the scientific evidence, across a broad spectrum of disciplines,
consistently displays a specific pattern of characteristics that
evolutionary theory implies ought to be there?
Once again, you demonstrate that you have zero proof
and so, must try to play a word game.
Yet you assert that the Gospel is true, despite a similar lack of
proof. So you yourself would have to agree that a thing can be true
even if it fails to meet the standard you set up for "proof." In which
case it is no mere word game, but a logical imperative, to consider the
evidence which is consistent with a particular conclusion. So how do
you explain the fact that the verifiable scientific *evidence*, across
a broad spectrum of disciplines, consistently displays a specific
pattern of characteristics which evolutionary theory implies ought to
be there, but which is not implied by creationist claims? How do you
explain the obvious and pervasive *lack* of characteristics that are
consistent with the implications of virtually any creationist scenario?
Does it not strike you as at all significant that the real world is so
one-sided in its conformity to evolutionary expectations versus
creationist expectations?
Microevolution is a fact of science. Macroevolution is
fantasy.
Can you prove your claim that it is fantasy? You cannot live up to
your own standard of proof even for your own claims about
macroevolution. It's an impossible standard, a mere rhetorical device
used to disguise a baseless repudiation of the evidence.
Microevolution is science. Macroevolution
has zero evidence.
Ah, you slipped up. You said "evidence" instead of "proof," and there
*is* scientific evidence which is consistent with the characteristics
that are implied by macroevolution. There's a *lot* of evidence which
is consistent with that theory, and no other theory that is as
successful at predicting the characteristics which we ought to find,
and do find, in the scientific data. I think you meant to say, "there
is no individual piece of evidence which, taken on its own in isolation
from other evidence, is sufficient to prove evolution all by itself."
Your argument is that no single tree is a forest, and therefore one can
disprove the forest by "disqualifying" each and every individual tree,
and then claiming that there can be no forest since there is no *valid*
tree.
You can't deny that the trees are there; your case depends on taking
each tree in isolation, apart from all the other evidence. Otherwise,
how do you account for the fact that there are so many independent
observations, in so many different disciplines, that all have the
characteristics which evolutionary theory says we should expect them to
have? A massive, global-scale series of pure coincidences? What are
the odds of that? No, the big picture is bad for your case; tunnel
vision is your friend. Stick to isolating the individual bits of
evidence, and taking them out of their real world context.
If you believe otherwise, then
prove it. Not with words and drawings and web sites
which make claims that I should believe it, but give no
proof.
See? You're on much safer territory when you stick with the word
"proof." Evidence is bad for your argument--there's too much of it,
and it's all more consistent with evolutionary predictions than it is
with creationist predictions (or rather, with what creationism ought to
be predicting, if it were to try and approach the topic
scientifically). Together, the facts are against you. You need to
break them up into small enough bits that you can plausibly, if merely
rhetorically, make the claim that no single morsel of evidence, taken
on its own in isolation from the rest of the evidence, is sufficient to
qualify as "proof."
Meanwhile the rest of us will have no trouble showing the "forest" of
evidence to anyone who is willing to look at it without your
preconceived bias against evolution. That pattern of consistency with
evolutionary theory is pretty hard to deny, and in the absense of what
you consider "proof" either way, the evidence will be more than
sufficient for scientific purposes.
By the way, you were pretty hard on Georgann for believing in a Rapture
doctrine that dates back only to the early 1800's. Did you realize
that the doctrine of "immutable kinds" is even more recent than that?
Nobody prior to Darwin ever claimed that "kinds" meant that one kind
could never evolve into another, and certainly no passage of the Bible
ever says that. You are going to a lot of trouble to defend an
extrabiblical doctrine that is even younger than the idea of a
pretribulational Rapture. After what you said to Georgann, don't you
think that's more than a bit ironic?
And there it is, folks. No proof of evolution. Just
an attack on the Gospel, when asked for said proof.
This sums up their entire argument for evolution.
Mention transitional fossils to a creationist and you will most likely
get a dirty look. Transitional fossils are frequently misunderstood, and
like macroevolution, creationists tend to redefine the term to suit their
purposes. As explained above, transitional fossils are fossils that have
characteristics that are intermediate between other organisms. If the
transitional fossil can be dated to a time between the organisms it is an
intermediate to, it is strongly suggestive of an evolutionary
relationship between the organisms.
Creationists will critique transitional fossils in a variety of ways.
They might claim that a transitional fossil is not proof of an
evolutionary relationship since you can't prove that it is, in fact, an
ancestor of any later organism. They are right. We can't prove that. As
has been explained, transitional fossils are suggestive of an
evolutionary relationship - they are not proof of it. Once again we run
into problems with creationists looking for proof when science deals
rather with supporting evidence.
--
Pastor Dave Raymond
"I have more understanding than all my teachers:
for thy testimonies are my meditation." - Psalm 119:99
/
o{}xxxxx[]::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::>
\
"And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
the Spirit, which is the word of God:" - Ephesians 6:17
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| User: "Pastor Dave" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
16 Dec 2004 02:20:26 PM |
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On 16 Dec 2004 09:41:18 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, "manutter51@alethian.org"
<manutter51@yahoo.com> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote:
Let me help you out.
1) Feathers from feathers does not prove that wings
grew where there was previously no genetic code for
wings.
2) Bacteria from bacteria does not prove single celled
organisms to man.
You quote microevolution and claim macroevolution.
You demand that evolutionary theory must meet a standard of proof that
the Gospel itself cannot meet. Why, then, do you doubt evolutionary
theory, yet believe the Gospel?
I have demanded that if you call it a scientific fact,
that you present the proof that it is.
Impossible standards of "proof" aside, how do you explain the fact that
the scientific evidence, across a broad spectrum of disciplines,
consistently displays a specific pattern of characteristics that
evolutionary theory implies ought to be there?
Once again, you demonstrate that you have zero proof
and so, must try to play a word game.
Microevolution is a fact of science. Macroevolution is
fantasy. Microevolution is science. Macroevolution
has zero evidence. If you believe otherwise, then
prove it. Not with words and drawings and web sites
which make claims that I should believe it, but give no
proof.
In general, creationist arguments that transitionals are not real
transitionals are based on their ignorance of what a transitional fossil
is or simply on outright distortions of fact. It is not that there isn't
room for debate on the nature or categorization of various fossils,
because there is always room for debate. However, creationist debates are
almost never informed debate and as such do not accomplish much.
Finally, creationists will sometimes belabor the fact that there are gaps
in the fossil record. Even if we have a transitional fossil between two
groups of organisms that is suggestive of an evolutionary relationship,
creationists will demand intermediaries between the intermediaries. And,
if those are found, creationists will want intermediaries between the new
organisms. It's a no-win situation. Since creationists try to put forth
the strawman that you need "absolute proof" of an evolutionary
relationship to accept it, they insist that if we do not have a record of
every single organism in the chain we can't say some organism is an
ancestor of another.
This is a useless and spurious criticism. I have already shown how we
cannot say for certain that any particular fossilized organism was
definitively in the evolutionary history of any other organism. But that
doesn't matter. The fossil record is still extraodinarily suggestive of
evolution in general, and specific fossils are suggestive of evolutionary
relationships between specific organisms. We can make very well informed,
provisional conclusions (this is science) as to the evolutionary history
of many organisms. And these conclusions are supported by the evidence;
in many cases by both fossil and nonfossil evidence.
--
Pastor Dave Raymond
"I have more understanding than all my teachers:
for thy testimonies are my meditation." - Psalm 119:99
/
o{}xxxxx[]::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::>
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"And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
the Spirit, which is the word of God:" - Ephesians 6:17
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| User: "Pastor Dave" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
16 Dec 2004 07:21:25 PM |
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On 16 Dec 2004 09:41:18 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, "manutter51@alethian.org"
<manutter51@yahoo.com> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote:
Let me help you out.
1) Feathers from feathers does not prove that wings
grew where there was previously no genetic code for
wings.
2) Bacteria from bacteria does not prove single celled
organisms to man.
You quote microevolution and claim macroevolution.
You demand that evolutionary theory must meet a standard of proof that
the Gospel itself cannot meet. Why, then, do you doubt evolutionary
theory, yet believe the Gospel?
I have demanded that if you call it a scientific fact,
that you present the proof that it is. Note that this is a neat dodge of
the central issue: demanding proof from one side and assumption of truth by
me.
--
Pastor Dave Raymond
"I have more understanding than all my teachers:
for thy testimonies are my meditation." - Psalm 119:99
/
o{}xxxxx[]::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::>
\
"And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
the Spirit, which is the word of God:" - Ephesians 6:17
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| User: "BDK" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
08 Dec 2004 09:56:58 AM |
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In article <itpbr0hoeroq2f67a38kc2dd7jushtl1kh@4ax.com>,
pastordave38@nospam-yahoo.com says...
On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 16:31:12 -0500, while scaling the
Mt. Everest, wbarwell
<wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote:
On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 22:25:31 -0600, while scaling the
Mt. Everest, Lars Eighner <eighner@io.com>
pontificated:
In our last episode, <3d02dea6.0412051818.8213136@posting.google.com>, the
lovely and talented Words of Truth broadcast on alt.atheism:
DARWIN AT NUREMBERG
PART I
The Darwin Papers
James Foard
I don't claim that Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the
holocaust; but I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the
atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust
possible"
Jewish scholar Edward Simon (1)
Nonsense. Hitler was a professing Catholic and most of his deputies
were Catholics or Lutherns.
Hitler believed in evolution. Why do you think he
considered black men closest to ape?
Because of the racist garbage of Comte Gobineau and others who created
racist theories before Darwin and published them widely and formed racist
societies and organizations.
Darwin was a hack who stole his grandpas work.
Don't blame Darwin for racist crap created and published long before Origin
of the species.
Fact: Evolutionary thinking has been the driving force
behind much of the evil in this world.
And religion almost all the rest. Your point??
BDK
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| User: "Cary Kittrell" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
08 Dec 2004 10:14:07 AM |
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In article <MPG.1c20ee5ae6c010fe989e81@news.buckeye-express.com> BDK <kingratboyoboy@buckeye-express.com> writes:
In article <itpbr0hoeroq2f67a38kc2dd7jushtl1kh@4ax.com>,
pastordave38@nospam-yahoo.com says...
On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 16:31:12 -0500, while scaling the
Mt. Everest, wbarwell
<wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> pontificated:
Pastor Dave wrote:
On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 22:25:31 -0600, while scaling the
Mt. Everest, Lars Eighner <eighner@io.com>
pontificated:
In our last episode, <3d02dea6.0412051818.8213136@posting.google.com>, the
lovely and talented Words of Truth broadcast on alt.atheism:
DARWIN AT NUREMBERG
PART I
The Darwin Papers
James Foard
I don't claim that Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the
holocaust; but I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the
atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust
possible"
Jewish scholar Edward Simon (1)
Nonsense. Hitler was a professing Catholic and most of his deputies
were Catholics or Lutherns.
Hitler believed in evolution. Why do you think he
considered black men closest to ape?
Because of the racist garbage of Comte Gobineau and others who created
racist theories before Darwin and published them widely and formed racist
societies and organizations.
Darwin was a hack who stole his grandpas work.
Don't blame Darwin for racist crap created and published long before Origin
of the species.
Fact: Evolutionary thinking has been the driving force
behind much of the evil in this world.
And religion almost all the rest. Your point??
His point seems to be that if someone can do evil and rationalize it
with a scientific theory, then the theory itself must be bogus. Or
alternatively, that the theory could be true, but should be surpressed
anyway. Or perhaps Pastor D. simply hasn't thought it through this
far, who knows. If he had, he would see that the either argument applies
equally well to religion.
-- cary
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| User: "MDFranklin" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
05 Dec 2004 10:58:04 PM |
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What credible evidence do you have that "evolution rests on overwhelming
evidence"? How can you be so dense as to deny that Darwinism wasn't part and
parcel of the mind-set of the Nazis (national socialism/communism) and
Communists (international socialism/communism)? Are you a Mensan? Are you or
have you ever been a member of the Nazi or Communist Party?
"Lars Eighner" <> wrote in message
news:slrncr7njs.s40.eighner@goodwill.io.com...
In our last episode, <3d02dea6.0412051818.8213136@posting.google.com>, the
lovely and talented Words of Truth broadcast on alt.atheism:
DARWIN AT NUREMBERG
PART I
The Darwin Papers
James Foard
I don't claim that Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the
holocaust; but I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the
atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust
possible"
Jewish scholar Edward Simon (1)
Nonsense. Hitler was a professing Catholic and most of his deputies
were Catholics or Lutherns.
Now we must look into one of the darker, more ominous sides to
Darwin's theory. We are going to investigate how our world-view
affects our lives and see whether Darwin's world-view contributed to
the genocidal Nazi holocaust of the 20th century.
Evolution rests on the (overwhelming) evidence, not on Darwin's
world view or character.
--
Rev. Lars Eighner, ULC, Atheist #1965
http://www.io.com/~eighner
Christianity: Safer than a lobotomy, but just as effective.
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| User: "The other Donald" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
05 Dec 2004 11:32:29 PM |
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"MDFranklin" <mdfranklin@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:wFRsd.7739$714.4115@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
What credible evidence do you have that "evolution rests on overwhelming
evidence"?
For you dipshits that only think in four-second blurbs, the answers are much
too complex for you to comprehend, and include lots of words with more than
three syllables.
Feel free to beat up your strawman versions, since they are easier for you
to grasp.
How can you be so dense as to deny that Darwinism wasn't part and
parcel of the mind-set of the Nazis (national socialism/communism) and
Communists (international socialism/communism)?
Prove the assertion that Darwinian theory *IS* part of it. First, though,
you may want to learn what 'Darwinian Theory' really is.
(Free clue: You'll be looking for a while.)
Now, for a smack in your face with the reality bat....
Hitler stated explicitly that he was doing the work of the Lord(tm) in
exterminating the Jews:
"You will find it in Mein Kampf: 'Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting
as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's
Work.' "
"Hitler said it again at a Nazi Christmas celebration in 1926: 'Christ was
the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews
.... The work that Christ started but could not finish, I -- Adolf Hitler --
will conclude.' "
"In a Reichstag speech in 1938, Hitler again echoed the religious origins of
his crusade. 'I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty
Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work.' "
"Hitler regarded himself as a Catholic until he died. 'I am now as before a
Catholic and will always remain so,' he told Gerhard Engel, one of his
generals, in 1941."
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hitler.html
Hitler was a good Catholic to the very end.
Are you a Mensan?
Huh? With the content of your post, you'd certainly qualify as a Densan.
Are you or
have you ever been a member of the Nazi or Communist Party?
Are you Joe Fucking McCarthy?
I hope like hell your post was sarcastic. If not, I'd wager that the closest
you get to MENSA is serving their coffee and cleaning up after they leave
the restaurant.
....update: A cursory search of Google would indicate that you certainly are
an arrogant *****. Please note that my sentence does not end with a
preposition.
--
-Donald in Austin
AA #2104
Apatriot #22
Atheist FF/EMT
.....and ordained minister
Stork Pin recipient: May 1, 2003 -Madelyn
(tm) 2004 G.O.P. All names used without permission from the copyright
holder. ***** 'em.
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| User: "C.J.W." |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
07 Dec 2004 07:16:06 PM |
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The other Donald wrote:
"MDFranklin" <mdfranklin@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:wFRsd.7739$714.4115@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
What credible evidence do you have that "evolution rests on overwhelming
evidence"?
For you dipshits that only think in four-second blurbs, the answers are much
too complex for you to comprehend, and include lots of words with more than
three syllables.
Feel free to beat up your strawman versions, since they are easier for you
to grasp.
How can you be so dense as to deny that Darwinism wasn't part and
parcel of the mind-set of the Nazis (national socialism/communism) and
Communists (international socialism/communism)?
Prove the assertion that Darwinian theory *IS* part of it. First, though,
you may want to learn what 'Darwinian Theory' really is.
(Free clue: You'll be looking for a while.)
Now, for a smack in your face with the reality bat....
Hitler stated explicitly that he was doing the work of the Lord(tm) in
exterminating the Jews:
"You will find it in Mein Kampf: 'Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting
as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's
Work.' "
"Hitler said it again at a Nazi Christmas celebration in 1926: 'Christ was
the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews
... The work that Christ started but could not finish, I -- Adolf Hitler --
will conclude.' "
"In a Reichstag speech in 1938, Hitler again echoed the religious origins of
his crusade. 'I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty
Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work.' "
"Hitler regarded himself as a Catholic until he died. 'I am now as before a
Catholic and will always remain so,' he told Gerhard Engel, one of his
generals, in 1941."
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hitler.html
Hitler was a good Catholic to the very end.<snip>
Hitler, "The blacks (Catholics) should not have any illusions.
Their time is up. They have reached the end of their game.
I am a Catholic. Fate decreed that things should be
this way. Only a Catholic knows the weak points of the
Church. I know how one has to attack the brothers."
(Hermann Rauschning, Gesprache mit Hitler (Zurich, 1939), p.
6: cf. Also B.J.J. Visser, Gewalt gegen Wissen (Wurzburg, 1974), p.
246ff.)
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/antiholo/struggle.html
"Taken to it’s logical extreme,
Christianity would mean the systematic
cultivation of human failure…." --Hitler
"Christianity is an invention of sick brains,"
-- Adolf Hitler, 13 December 1941.
"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves
now into a struggle with the Churches. The best
thing is to let Christianity die a natural death,"
-- Adolf Hitler, 14 October 1941
"On July 25.... the German government promulgated a
sterilization law, which particularly offended teh
Catholic Church. Five days later the first steps were
taken to dissolve the Catholic Youth League.
During the next years thousands of Catholic priests,
nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many of them on
trumped-up charges of 'immorality' or of 'smuggling
foreign currency.' Erich Klausner, leader of Catholic
Action, was, as we have seen, murdered in the June
30, 1934, purge. Scores of Catholic publications were
suppressed, and even the sanctity of the confessional
was violated by Gestapo agents. By the spring of
1937 the Catholic hierarchy of Germany, which, like
most of the Protestant clergy, had at first tried to
co-operate with the new regimes was thorougly disillusioned.
On March 14, 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an
encyclical, "Mit Brennender Sorge" (With Burning
Sorrow), charging the Nazi government with 'evasion' and
'violation' of the concordat [based on "separation of church and state"]
and accusing it of sowing 'the tares of suspicion, discord,
hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility
to Christ and His Church.' On 'the horizon of Germany' the Pope
saw 'the threatening storm clouds of destructive religious w
ars [i.e. subpagan vs. Jew and xian] .... which have no other
aim than .... of extermination."
(The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi
Germany. William L. Shirer. (Simon and Schuster) 1990 :234-35)
National Socialism is "the arrogant apostasty from
Jesus Christ, the denial of His doctrine and of His
work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry
of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty
and dignity." --Pope Pius XII Ib.
The literalization of the metaphoric, spiritual....
http://mynym.blogspot.com/2004/10/little-about-evil.html#comments
I noticed a distinct lack of citations on your site.
--
--W
http://mynym.blogspot.com/
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| User: "mel turner" |
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| Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG |
06 Dec 2004 12:22:02 AM |
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"MDFranklin" <mdfranklin@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:wFRsd.7739$714.4115@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
What credible evidence do you have that "evolution rests on overwhelming
evidence"?
The evidence is there, throughout all of comparative biology. It is
indeed "overwhelming".
[Biological evolution is readily observed to occur both in nature
and in the lab, which seems pretty "overwhelming", and there is
further overwhelmingly abundant evidence that it has occurred
throughout the 3-plus-billion-year history of life on earth...]
http://www.talkorigins.org/
and its links are good beginners' sources if you're actually
interested [BTW, the newsgroup talk.origins is the most
appropriate home for debates on evolution vs. antievolutionism.
They limit the number of crossposts] :
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/outline.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-mustread.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://evolution.mbdojo.com/evolution-for-beginners.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/other-links-gensci.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/other-links.html#evolution
http://evolution.berkeley.edu
etc.
How can you be so dense as to deny that Darwinism wasn't part and
parcel of the mind-set of the Nazis (national socialism/communism) and
Communists (international socialism/communism)?
"How can you be so dense" as to insinuate that it played any
significant part in any of it? It very evidently didn't.
Or, can you document any evidence to the contrary? Perhaps you can
find any references to evolution, Darwin or "Darwinism" anywhere in
"Mein Kampf", or some documentation to show that Stalinists weren't
so virulently anti-Darwinian after all..
Are you a Mensan? Are you or
have you ever been a member of the Nazi or Communist Party?
Huh? Are you actually a silly person, or do you just play one on
Usenet? [Or, was the entirety of your post meant to be sarcastic,
in which case "nevermind"?]
cheers
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