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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
.

User: ""
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	12 Dec 2004 01:12:31 AM

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 8 Dec 2004 09:20:38 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Erasmus Darwin was a proponent of evolution, but presumed the

mechanism

was use and disuse, and the product was the inheritance of acquired
characteristics. In other words, he accepted Lamarck's ideas.
Darwin's contributon was not the "discovery" of evolution, since the
fact of evolution had been known for decades before he was even

born.

Darwin's contribution was his emphasis on natural selection and
differential reproduction, which neither Erasmus Darwin nor Lamarck,
nor anyone else had recognised as the significant driving force of
evolution prior to Darwin's work. So your first claim is simply

false.

Your second claim is also quite clearly false. If evolutionary
thinking were responsible for evil, no evil would have existed prior

24 November, 1859 when OtOoS was published. The Bible (which I

assume

is your authoritative reference) clearly describes the existence of
evil prior to Darwin's publication (there was that whole expulsion

from

the garden and flood bit in Genesis, you will recall). If Darwin's
ideas were truly responsible for evil, there would have been no
expulsion from the garden and no flood until the second half of the
19th century. So even if I were to accept your own frame of

reference,

your second claim must be false (unless you are calling the authors

Genesis liars).

Evolution belief was around thousands of years before
you think it was.

If you *meant* to say that the idea [that evolution happens] existed
long before Darwin explained *how* it happens, you are correct. That
fact has no bearing on the current discussion, of course. Darwin
demonstrated that natural selection is responsible for a lot of
evolution (although he acknowledged that NS was not the *only*
mechanism).
The question remains. You made a statement that can *only* be
interpreted as implying that the notion of evolution was responsible
for Hitler's racism, and you *implied* with that statement that
Darwin's idea about the mechanism of evolution (i.e. natural selection)
was somehow responsible for or inspired Hitler's racism. I tried to
help you by clarifying that, when properly understood, Darwin's notion
of natural selection provides one of the strongest arguments *against*
racism in particular and hierarchies in general, since it discards the
"Great Chain of Being" notion of a direction of progress. (Your
response to that correction was one word, "no.") You rejected my
attempt to help you, and in the process, called me an insulting name.
You have therby demonstrated that you are *not* *only* ignorant of the
details of evolution (for which you can be forgiven) but also ignorant
about the teachings of most major religions, including the one you
claim to profess.
If you want to learn something about evolution, I'm happy to offer you
any help I can, but if your main goal in posting to Usenet is to
alienate as many people as possible from following Christianity (or any
other religion), I can not, and do not wish to, help you to do so
better than you are already doing yourself. Your behaviour offers a
much better argument in favor of atheism than my words ever could.
Frankly, I'm surprised that more Christians aren't ganging up to tell
you to stop making them look bad, but that's their choice.
.

User: "Pastor Dave"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	12 Dec 2004 08:02:13 PM

On 11 Dec 2004 23:12:31 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 8 Dec 2004 09:20:38 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Erasmus Darwin was a proponent of evolution, but presumed the

mechanism

born.

false.

Your second claim is also quite clearly false. If evolutionary
thinking were responsible for evil, no evil would have existed prior

24 November, 1859 when OtOoS was published. The Bible (which I

assume

is your authoritative reference) clearly describes the existence of
evil prior to Darwin's publication (there was that whole expulsion

from

reference,

your second claim must be false (unless you are calling the authors

Genesis liars).

Evolution belief was around thousands of years before
you think it was.

If you *meant* to say that the idea [that evolution happens] existed
long before Darwin explained *how* it happens, you are correct.

Darwin did not explain how it happens and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how.
Darwin was a plagiarist. I of course can not prove that statement either
using the same standard of proof I demand from you, nor can I prove the
Creation story in Gensis without resorting to circular logic.
--
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
.

User: "JimC"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	12 Dec 2004 09:11:39 PM

Pastor Dave

Darwin was a plagiarist.

Right. His journey on the ship The Bagel was invented whole
polyester.

I of course can not prove that statement either
using the same standard of proof I demand from you, nor can I prove the
Creation story in Gensis without resorting to circular logic.

Son, there are times when you must invoke the Big Whammy, St. Aryus.

"I have more understanding than all my teachers:
for thy testimonies are my meditation." - Psalm 119:99

/
o{}xxxxx[]::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::>
\

Neat sword. You should become a Sikh and
drive a cab.
.

User: "Pastor Dave"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	12 Dec 2004 11:44:15 AM

On 11 Dec 2004 23:12:31 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 8 Dec 2004 09:20:38 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Erasmus Darwin was a proponent of evolution, but presumed the

mechanism

born.

false.

Your second claim is also quite clearly false. If evolutionary
thinking were responsible for evil, no evil would have existed prior

24 November, 1859 when OtOoS was published. The Bible (which I

assume

is your authoritative reference) clearly describes the existence of
evil prior to Darwin's publication (there was that whole expulsion

from

reference,

your second claim must be false (unless you are calling the authors

Genesis liars).

Evolution belief was around thousands of years before
you think it was.

If you *meant* to say that the idea [that evolution happens] existed
long before Darwin explained *how* it happens, you are correct.

Darwin did not explain how it happens and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how. Darwin was a plagiarist.
--
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
.

User: "BudikkaMAPS"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	18 Dec 2004 10:35:37 AM

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 11 Dec 2004 23:12:31 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Darwin did not explain how it happens and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how. Darwin was a plagiarist.

Lie. It happens through mutation, heredity, and natural selection.
Darwin got the last two of these and the third was added later.
So quit your pathetic griping. You cannot do science by simply posting
on Usenet. Science is done in science labs and in the field and in the
minds of theorists using available evidence. The evidence is published
in standard science journals throughout the world.
When you have some evidence to support your position, please do post
it. Otherwise accept that you're a clueless and desperate loser who
can offer nothing but empty whining.
Evolution has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Now it's the
turn of the creationists to do some science if they want to try to
overturn it. I won't hold my breath.
Budikka
.

User: "Pastor Dave"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	18 Dec 2004 01:13:29 PM

On 18 Dec 2004 08:35:37 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest, "BudikkaMAPS" <budikka1@netscape.net>
pontificated:

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 11 Dec 2004 23:12:31 -0800, while scaling the Mt.

Darwin did not explain how it happens and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how. Darwin was a plagiarist.

Lie.

Truth.

It happens through mutation, heredity, and natural selection.

That is a claim, not proof.
--
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
.

User: ""
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	12 Dec 2004 04:11:24 PM

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 11 Dec 2004 23:12:31 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 8 Dec 2004 09:20:38 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Erasmus Darwin was a proponent of evolution, but presumed the

mechanism

was use and disuse, and the product was the inheritance of

acquired

characteristics. In other words, he accepted Lamarck's ideas.
Darwin's contributon was not the "discovery" of evolution, since

the

fact of evolution had been known for decades before he was even

born.

Darwin's contribution was his emphasis on natural selection and
differential reproduction, which neither Erasmus Darwin nor

Lamarck,

nor anyone else had recognised as the significant driving force

evolution prior to Darwin's work. So your first claim is simply

false.

Your second claim is also quite clearly false. If evolutionary
thinking were responsible for evil, no evil would have existed

prior

24 November, 1859 when OtOoS was published. The Bible (which I

assume

is your authoritative reference) clearly describes the existence

evil prior to Darwin's publication (there was that whole

expulsion

from

the garden and flood bit in Genesis, you will recall). If

Darwin's

ideas were truly responsible for evil, there would have been no
expulsion from the garden and no flood until the second half of

the

19th century. So even if I were to accept your own frame of

reference,

your second claim must be false (unless you are calling the

authors

Genesis liars).

Evolution belief was around thousands of years before
you think it was.

If you *meant* to say that the idea [that evolution happens] existed
long before Darwin explained *how* it happens, you are correct.

Darwin did not explain how it happens

If natural selection is *not* a proposed mechanism for evolution, what
is it?

and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how.

There were species alive in the past that are not alive today, and
there are species alive today that were not alive in the past. There
are only two possible explanations for that observation. 1) The
species in the past were *all* destroyed (Not "most", all. There is no
Noachian back door to this argument) and then a second, third, fourth,
Nth creation event took place (successive waves of extinction and
replacement). OR 2) the species that were present in the past are
ancestral to the species that are present today. There is no other
explanation for the observation that the fossils of organisms in
successive strata differ from each other. Philosophers have understood
this concept since at least the late 17th century, following the work
of Nicholas Steno (Niles Stensen). Replacement and transformation are
the only rational explanations for the observation.
Hypothesis 1, the replacement hypothesis, implies that God (or some
other force) regularly wipes out all species and replaces them. This
hypothesis suggests that God is tempermental and becomes dissatisfied
with His own handiwork. Such a hypothesis therefore implies that God's
creations are imperfect, and therefore that God is not capable of
making a perfect species, and therefore that God is less than perfect.
In other words, the idea leads inevitably to some very unpleasant
theological conclusions, which is a large part of the reason that it
was rejected back in the 18th century.
Hypothesis 2, the transformation hypothesis, implies that species can
change. For the "natural theologians" of the 17th-19th centuries (the
predecessors of today's scientists), the transformation hypothesis
suggested that God made species capable of altering the world around
them *and* responding to the alterations. Therefore, to the natural
theologians, "transformism" was considered theologically more sound.
Thus religious ideas inspired the conclusion that evolution must have
happened.
Since the late 18th century, we have gained a considerable amount of
insight into the process by which evolution occurs, but *that* it
occurs has been known since the late Middle Ages.

Darwin was a plagiarist.

In what way? Your accusation, unsupported by any evidence, is not
convincing, particularly in light of your history of making claims that
are demonstrably incorrect. Who do you think he plagarised? For what
published material did he take undeserved credit? I assume that you
threw this accusation in here just because you know that plagarism is a
violation of academic standards, and you wish to discredit Darwin
personally, in hopes that doing so will help to discredit his ideas.
Your plan will not work, however, because the validity of the ideas is
not based on the character of the person who espoused them.
Let me put it bluntly. If Darwin regularly killed and ate the children
of good Christians and bathed in their blood while performing gay sex
with his own family members and shooting heroin straight into his eye
socket, it would have *no* effect on the validity of his ideas. The
validity of the ideas lies in how well they describe and explain the
natural world, *not* in the character or moral worthiness of their
author. (Darwin, by the way, was a very good, upstanding, and moral
individual, and his emotional struggle upon receiving Wallace's 1858
manuscript is itself sufficient to refute your false accusation.)
Pol Pot thought 2+2=4. Pol Pot was a horrible dictator and a ruthless,
murdering psychopath. The validity of the equation 2+2=4 is not called
into question on the grounds that Pol Pot accepted it. The same is
true of evolution. It doesn't matter *who* agrees with it (which is
why your Hitler tirade last week was irrelevant, even if it wasn't
*also* false), it only matters how well it explains the observations.
I am beginning to sincerely doubt your willingness to learn anything
about this topic. That's fine, you are free to remain ignorant. Of
course I assume that you will also be foregoing the use of antibiotics,
flu vaccine, and all the other practical applications of evolutionary
theory, aren't you? No probably not. Your behaviour is inconsistent
with the tenets of the faith you claim to espouse, and I am
increasingly suspicious that you are in fact a troll who is attempting
to turn people away from Christianity. Since I am not going to alter
my religious beliefs on the grounds of what some jerk on Usenet says,
there is no point corresponding with you on those grounds, and since
you appear either unwilling or unable to carry on a civil conversation,
I see no point in communicating for eentertainment purposes, and third,
since you are either unwilling or unable to learn anything about the
subject that you are attempting to criticise, I see no need to continue
communicating with you on the grounds of teaching as a professional
responsibility. You could potentially change my mind, simply by asking
sincere questions rather than making false accusations and insulting
people, but I doubt that strategy will appeal to you.
.

User: "Pastor Dave"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	13 Dec 2004 01:05:00 PM

On 12 Dec 2004 14:11:24 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Darwin did not explain how it happens

If natural selection is *not* a proposed mechanism for evolution, what
is it?

Natural selection can only select from what is already
available in the genetic code.

and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how.

There were species alive in the past that are not alive today, and
there are species alive today that were not alive in the past.

This you must prove. However, even that would not
prove what you claim. For example, some canidae are
alive today, that were not alive before. So what?
They're still canidae.

Darwin was a plagiarist.

In what way?

Read grandpa's work and the work of others before him.

I am beginning to sincerely doubt your willingness to learn anything
about this topic.

You have nothing to teach me. At least not that you've
revealed thus far. Posting a hypothesis about how God
created animals to be able to change the world and then
adapt to the change, doesn't prove anything. In fact,
if they are already suited to the world, why would they
change it? Your statement also implies a great amount
of intelligence on the part of the animals.

That's fine, you are free to remain ignorant. Of
course I assume that you will also be foregoing the use of antibiotics,
flu vaccine, and all the other practical applications of evolutionary
theory, aren't you?

Those deal with microevolution, which is a fact of
science.

No probably not. Your behaviour is inconsistent
with the tenets of the faith you claim to espouse, and I am
increasingly suspicious that you are in fact a troll who is attempting
to turn people away from Christianity.

Where does the Bible say that man evolved from ape?
Where is there proof that anything in the Bible is true?
--
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
.

User: "Pastor Dave"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	13 Dec 2004 11:30:44 AM

On 12 Dec 2004 14:11:24 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Darwin did not explain how it happens

If natural selection is *not* a proposed mechanism for evolution, what
is it?

Natural selection can only select from what is already
available in the genetic code.

and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how.

There were species alive in the past that are not alive today, and
there are species alive today that were not alive in the past.

This you must prove. However, even that would not
prove what you claim. For example, some canidae are
alive today, that were not alive before. So what?
They're still canidae.

Darwin was a plagiarist.

In what way?

Read grandpa's work and the work of others before him.

I am beginning to sincerely doubt your willingness to learn anything
about this topic.

Those deal with microevolution, which is a fact of
science. Now as we both know, the only response you
have available is, "What mechanism would stop
macroevolution from happening?". You see, that's where
you demand that I prove a negative, because you have
zero proof for macroevolution. It means that you
cannot support your claim and thus, must convince
yourself that since I won't try to prove a negative,
that means that you win. You must also convince
yourself that you're not asking me to prove a negative.
The fact is, that if we were in a court of law, accused
of murder and you demanded (as is your right) that I
prove that you killed someone, turning to you and
saying, "What mechanism would have stopped you from
killing him/her?", would not be considered proof. Nor
is it here.

Where does the Bible say that man evolved from ape?
--
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
.

User: ""
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	13 Dec 2004 05:34:42 PM

Pastor Dave wrote:

On 12 Dec 2004 14:11:24 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Darwin did not explain how it happens

If natural selection is *not* a proposed mechanism for evolution,

what

is it?

Natural selection can only select from what is already
available in the genetic code.

Correct, and since the particular sequence of bases in each organism
differs from the sequence in every other organism of the same
population, selection has an awful lot of variation upon which to act.
Mutations create the phenotypic variation in a population (along with
gene flow from other populations in some cases) and selection (along
with drift) sorts it.

and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how.

There were species alive in the past that are not alive today, and
there are species alive today that were not alive in the past.

This you must prove.

It's been done. http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/fossils.html
It was done *long* before Darwin was even born.

However, even that would not
prove what you claim. For example, some canidae are
alive today, that were not alive before. So what?
They're still canidae.

Ok, (of course there are strata below the Oligocene that contain no
Canids), so in your opinion, evolution *within* a Linnaean "family"
such as the Canidae is real, and you only question evolution at levels
above that, correct? So if two species are members of the same
Linnaean "Family", they are equivalent to what Baraminologists refer to
as a "single kind", right? If any species is *more similar* to another
species than the two most distant members of the Canidae, they must be
members of the same "kind" and therefore evolutionary relationships
between them are simply documented and acceptable examples of what you
are calling "microevolution". Is that your position? Please answer
this question.

Darwin was a plagiarist.

In what way?

Read grandpa's work and the work of others before him.

I have. Erasmus Darwin did support the idea that evolution happens.
He believed that Lamarck's mechanism of the inheritance of acquired
characteristics was the main mechanism by which it happened. Darwin
agreed with his grandfather *that* evolution happened, but disagreed
about the mechanism. Still others had noted *that* natural selection
occurs (all those pigeon fanciers and dog breeders had already clearly
demonstrated that deliberate "artificial" selection occurs, and others
including Malthus implied that it must also occur in nature). So both
parts of Darwin's model (the fact of evolution and the mechanism of
natural selection) were recognised before he wrote. What Darwin did
was to combine those two ideas in a novel way to conclude that natural
selection was the main (but not exclusive) motive force in evolution,
and it is that novel combination of previously seperate concepts for
which he is remembered.
Or did you mean his other grandfather, Josiah Wedgewood? If so, I am
not aware of any of Wedgewood's writings on the subject of biology.

I am beginning to sincerely doubt your willingness to learn anything
about this topic.

You have nothing to teach me.

I can't fill a sieve with a teaspoon. You have to actually try to
learn if you want to, nobody can force knowledge on you.

At least not that you've
revealed thus far. Posting a hypothesis about how God
created animals to be able to change the world and then
adapt to the change, doesn't prove anything.

I was *trying* to help you understand the history of how the notion of
evolution came to be and why the notion of a single act of creation was
rejected as theologically unacceptable. I was quite obviously *not*
proposing that scenario as an hypothesis, since it is fundamentally
untestable. Your failure to grasp the distinction is unfortunate.

In fact,
if they are already suited to the world, why would they
change it?

I assume that you are aware that organisms consume food and excrete
waste, and that animals consume oxygen and excrete CO2. That is, I
assume you are aware that organisms obey the Newtonian laws of physics.
If you do *not* accept that fact, you are again correct, there is
nothing I can teach you.

Your statement also implies a great amount
of intelligence on the part of the animals.

Not really. Animals eat food, and then excrete waste. Doing so
changes the world around them. Some animals dig burrows, other build
nests, and still others construct dams. All of those activities alter
the structure of the physical world. Some animals eat a lot more food
than others, leaving other members of their population smaller amounts
of resources to consume, and those other members are either able to
survive on less or they die. These are basic observations of the
physical world. Again, if you can not accept the evidence of your
senses, then you are correct, I can teach you nothing.

That's fine, you are free to remain ignorant. Of
course I assume that you will also be foregoing the use of

antibiotics,

flu vaccine, and all the other practical applications of

evolutionary

theory, aren't you?

Those deal with microevolution, which is a fact of
science. Now as we both know, the only response you
have available is, "What mechanism would stop
macroevolution from happening?".

My half of "we" knows no such thing. I have *observed* macroevolution,
so I know it happens. I have also observed irrefutable evidence that
it has happened in the past. But of course you probably have some
obscure personal definition of the meaning of "macroevolution" that
differs from mine. If you will be willing to share your personal
definition of macroevolution, perhaps I will be able to point out a
case in which it has been observed.

You see, that's where
you demand that I prove a negative, because you have
zero proof for macroevolution.

Other than my observation of it happening, you mean.

It means that you
cannot support your claim and thus, must convince
yourself that since I won't try to prove a negative,
that means that you win. You must also convince
yourself that you're not asking me to prove a negative.
The fact is, that if we were in a court of law, accused
of murder and you demanded (as is your right) that I
prove that you killed someone, turning to you and
saying, "What mechanism would have stopped you from
killing him/her?", would not be considered proof. Nor
is it here.

Nope. Although the combination of (1) seeing me holding the weapon
while I walk into a house where (2) the victim is known to be alive,
(3) seeing no other person walk into that house, (4) seeing me leave,
still holding the weapon, (5) investigating the house and finding that
no other person is present and that (6) the victim is now deceased
might lead one to form a rather convincing circumstantial case. That
case would be nearly, but not quite as strong as the case in favor of
evolution.

No probably not. Your behaviour is inconsistent
with the tenets of the faith you claim to espouse, and I am
increasingly suspicious that you are in fact a troll who is

attempting

to turn people away from Christianity.

Where does the Bible say that man evolved from ape?

That depends. How do you define "apes"? Whether or not the Bible
suggests that we descended from apes depends entirely on the definition
of apes, so if you will define it, I will point out the passage in
scripture where it is suggested.
However, as you are well aware, that is not what I was talking about.
I was referring to your consistent rudeness, your persistent attempts
to insult, your recurrent bearing of false witness, and your general
attitude towards your fellow humans. On those grounds, you have
neglected the teachings of Jesus and instead adopted the methods of
Satan. You are not currently passing the test set by the tenets of
your own religion. Fortunately for you, there is still time to change
your behaviour. I hope you take the opportunity and start acting like
your saviour suggested.
.

User: "Pastor Dave"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	13 Dec 2004 06:35:07 PM

On 13 Dec 2004 15:34:42 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Pastor Dave wrote:
On 12 Dec 2004 14:11:24 -0800, while scaling the Mt.
Everest,

pontificated:

Darwin did not explain how it happens

If natural selection is *not* a proposed mechanism for evolution,
what is it?

Natural selection can only select from what is already
available in the genetic code.

Now you're adding fantasy. Demonstrate mutations
adding wings where there was no ability in the genetic
code to add wings.
You people throw the word "mutations" around like it's
a magic wand that makes every objection go away. Prove
that mutations bring about one kind turning into
another.
You also claim gene flow from other populations. I'm
sorry, but if you wish to prove anything, you'll need
to stop spitting out the evolutionists mantra and give
some hard, specific facts, that prove what you believe.

and first you
must prove that it happens, in order to say that he
explained how.

There were species alive in the past that are not alive today, and
there are species alive today that were not alive in the past.

This you must prove.

It's been done. http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/fossils.html
It was done *long* before Darwin was even born.

There is nothing there that proves what you believe
happened. First of all, evolutionists make claims
about times and cannot back them up. Secondly, some
drawing of shells, etc., does not prove that one came
from the other. Take each and every entry and give
concrete proof that one evolved from the other. What
you have done amounts to nothing more than hold up a
dino fossil and a dog fossil and claiming that one came
from the other. Prove it.

However, even that would not
prove what you claim. For example, some canidae are
alive today, that were not alive before. So what?
They're still canidae.

First, you are calling different strata different ages
and you have no proof of that. The Geologic Column is
a construct of man and dating the fossils by the rocks
and the rocks by the fossils, is circular reasoning.
Second, you are assuming that it is the same the whole
world over. It isn't. Now what?

Darwin was a plagiarist.

In what way?

Read grandpa's work and the work of others before him.

What you've said, is that others had come up with the
idea, agreeing with my statement.
What you've also said, is that dog breeders have bred
different types of dogs, from dogs and that they
concluded that this meant that dogs came from
non-canidae. The first part is fact, the second is
fantasy.

I am beginning to sincerely doubt your willingness to learn anything
about this topic.

You have nothing to teach me.

I can't fill a sieve with a teaspoon. You have to actually try to
learn if you want to, nobody can force knowledge on you.

You have nothing to teach me. You assume that you have
a superior working knowledge. You assume that just
because you believe it happened, that means that you
know more about it.

At least not that you've
revealed thus far. Posting a hypothesis about how God
created animals to be able to change the world and then
adapt to the change, doesn't prove anything.

I was *trying* to help you understand the history of how the notion of
evolution came to be and why the notion of a single act of creation was
rejected as theologically unacceptable.

1) Don't play games. You were trying to convince me
that it did happen and you did a poor job.
2) The notion of a single act of creation was not
theologically rejected and to claim it was, is
dishonest. That makes you a liar.

I was quite obviously *not*
proposing that scenario as an hypothesis, since it is fundamentally
untestable. Your failure to grasp the distinction is unfortunate.

You proposed hypothesis and started each paragraph off
with the word, "hypothesis".

In fact,
if they are already suited to the world, why would they
change it?

I assume that you are aware that organisms consume food and excrete
waste, and that animals consume oxygen and excrete CO2.

Yes and guess what? More food grows and more oxygen is
made. Or do you think all life is dead on this planet?

Your statement also implies a great amount
of intelligence on the part of the animals.

Not really. Animals eat food, and then excrete waste. Doing so
changes the world around them.

Not since many times, it acts as fertilizer. Taking a
crap out in the woods is not going to destroy the
ecosystem.

Some animals dig burrows, other build
nests, and still others construct dams. All of those activities alter
the structure of the physical world. Some animals eat a lot more food
than others, leaving other members of their population smaller amounts
of resources to consume, and those other members are either able to
survive on less or they die. These are basic observations of the
physical world. Again, if you can not accept the evidence of your
senses, then you are correct, I can teach you nothing.

None of what you stated changes the way the world
functions. Build a dam and water still exists.
Animals may move, or die, but you won't find dead
animals evolving. You seem to think that if a change
kills off animals, that dead animals evolve so that
they can live.

That's fine, you are free to remain ignorant. Of
course I assume that you will also be foregoing the use of

antibiotics,

flu vaccine, and all the other practical applications of

evolutionary

theory, aren't you?

Those deal with microevolution, which is a fact of
science. Now as we both know, the only response you
have available is, "What mechanism would stop
macroevolution from happening?".

My half of "we" knows no such thing. I have *observed* macroevolution,
so I know it happens.

Where? When?

I have also observed irrefutable evidence that
it has happened in the past.

Then provide said "irrefutable evidence".

But of course you probably have some
obscure personal definition of the meaning of "macroevolution" that
differs from mine.

No, the reality is that when it was proved that it
doesn't happen, evolutionists tried to change the
definition to be one of microevolution.

However, as you are well aware, that is not what I was talking about.
I was referring to your consistent rudeness, your persistent attempts
to insult, your recurrent bearing of false witness, and your general
attitude towards your fellow humans.

You label anyone who does not bow to your god of
evolution as being those things.

On those grounds, you have
neglected the teachings of Jesus and instead adopted the methods of
Satan. You are not currently passing the test set by the tenets of
your own religion. Fortunately for you, there is still time to change
your behaviour. I hope you take the opportunity and start acting like
your saviour suggested.

I would not point fingers if I were you. You reject
Christ and the word of God. One cannot believe the
Bible and evolution (beyond microevolution) and make an
honest statement.
--
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
.

User: "wbarwell"
Title: Re: DARWIN AT NUREMBERG	15 Dec 2004 09:17:31 PM

Al Klein wrote:

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:35:07 GMT, Pastor Dave
<newsgroupmail@nospam-tampabay.rr.com> said in alt.atheism:

You people throw the word "mutations" around like it's
a magic wand that makes every objection go away. Prove
that mutations bring about one kind turning into
another.

Science doesn't prove.

Baloney, often it does exactly that.
Example, in the lab, a scientist can selectively knock
out genes one by one in a bacterium, to see what results.
By doing so, they can prove what a gene does.
Prove, with a small p, showing evidence to explain why
something works is done all the time.

---
CellPhonesEtc at optonline dot net

--
Apes bad! Dust good!
Apes bad! Dust good!
21st Century American Christianity
in a nutshell.
Cheerful Charlie
.