BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
I appreciate the intensity and depth of your epexegetical orgasm above, but you seem hell-bent (pun not intended) on defending Hitler. Why?
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The biogeographic evidence for evolution
- Thread starter Rational Agnostic
- Start date
I appreciate the intensity and depth of your epexegetical orgasm above, but you seem hell-bent (pun not intended) on defending Hitler. Why?
gnostic
The Lost One
Social Darwinism has nothing to do with this thread.
This thread is about evidence for evolution, not Social Darwinism.
Evolution has nothing to do with politics, racism and genocide, BilliardsBall. This thread has nothing to do with Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Lenin or any other dictators. The thread has nothing to do with atheism.
If you want to talk about Social Darwinism, than start a new thread in Political Debates forum. Stop hijacking the thread with your foolishness.
And the slaughter on millions has NOTHING to do with the science of evolution.
Social Darwinists mistook the evolution perspective to say 'the survival of the fittest', which they interpreted to mean that the 'weak' should not be allowed to survive and that only the strong should be. This was used to support laissez-faire capitalism and the dominance of society by 'strong men'.
This has NOTHING to do with the scientific theory. Just take your lumps and move on.
Sure, it is a term adopted by some who mistook what Darwin said and applied it to their views of how societies should be. In particular, they incorrectly understood Darwin as saying supporting 'survival of the fittest' in a social context and that only the 'fit' *should* survive. Since societal structures are not genetic, their was a complete misunderstanding of what Darwin claimed.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
This thread is also not about your anti-Semitism and hate, so stop saying I'm not a Jew!
Social Darwinism is called "Social Darwinism" because why?
If you can't answer ONE question above, why should I change the subject of this thread?
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
So "race" is not involved and quotations from Darwin and evolutionists is not involved and...
They are Social Darwinists not "Survival of the Fittians".
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Yet on the other post I read today, you claim it's a problem with a Spencerian concept rather than anything to do with Darwin! Above you admit they are using the words of Darwin! Do you even read what you write?
Or this NONSENSE you wrote: "Since societal structures are not genetic..."
They killed almost half my RACE because we were considered an inferior Jewish RACE. I believe race as a concept is stupid and we're all one in Jesus Christ.
Grow up! Your Holocaust whitewashing is just short of Holocaust denial. Hitler and Stalin got excited about evolution and used it as a springboard for some of the worst crimes, ever.
WHAT???
I am in *no* way excusing the Holocaust. I am in *no* way denying the Holocaust. It was a horrible time for our species and many people. My ex wife's father had to hide in a coal cellar during that time and his aunt was killed in Auschwitz.
What I *am* denying is that Darwin had anything at all to do with this. It was the work of nasty, insane, authoritarians who blamed those they disagreed with for all their problems. it wasn't because of evolution that this atrocity happened. In fact, the perpetrators *denied* the scientific theory of evolution.
THAT ISN'T DARWINISM.
Once again, it is called social Darwinism because of *misunderstandings* of what Darwin said and their attempts to use these misunderstandings to bolster their power. This is NOT something Darwin would have supported in any way.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Where did that poster defend Hitler???
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Why do you think people are whitewashing the Holocaust?
What on earth are you talking about?
That is some major twisting of peoples' words.
When it has been pointed out that the Bible has been used to justify atrocities over the last 2000 years, then the creationist position shifts to it being about those evil people misusing the Bible. Funny how hypocrisy is such a versatile position for creationism.
He *isn't* defending Hitler. He is defending Darwin from your smears.
gnostic
The Lost One
@BilliardsBall
No one is defending Hitler, his Holocaust, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, or any other dictators, BilliardsBall.
You have been twisting everyone’s words.
And you are bloody off-topic with m
Evolution has nothing to do with these political regimes, because what you are talking about involved politics and wars. There are nothing in evolution that talk of wars or politics or genocides or racism.
Have you even read Darwin’s On Origin, Descent Of Man, or his 1830s travel journal? None of them involved politics or wars, BilliardsBall.
Beside all this, Darwin has never any of his works, “Darwinism” or “Darwinian”. He always referred to as “Evolution” or “Natural Selection”.
Just because someone else applied his name “Darwin” into “Social Darwinism” in some social-political philosophy or ideology, doesn’t mean Darwin was in any way its author.
Did Darwin tell human experiments on Jews, tortured people or tell Germans to build gas chambers and exterminate Jews or Romany people?
Anti-Semitism in predated world war 2, predated Charles Darwin who wasn’t even German.
If you were a Jew at all, you would know this. You only seemed to focused on Hitler and Nazi Germany. If you want to talk of anti-Semitism, tried the Renaissance’s German Protestant preacher, Martin Luther. Have you forgotten about Luther?
But hatred for Jews, even predated Luther, and existed in many Western European cities during the Middle Ages, which included German states or the Holy Roman Empire, but also in France, Spain, and to lesser extent, in England (because there weren’t a large population of Jews in medieval England). which started segregation of Jews, forcing Jews to live in separate quarters of city, forced to wear clothes to distinguish them from other subjects, forced them to convert, or to torture them, damaged their homes and properties.
During the medieval Europe, Jews weren’t allowed to work in particular trades or professions, so what they did work for living that Christians didn’t want to do, they became quite wealthy. Their Christian neighbors became jealous or envious of Jews, so would accuse them of either heresy or witchcraft. Their arrests would have their wealth and properties confiscated, and they would be tortured and executed simply because their Christian neighbors were jealous of Jews becoming wealthy than them.
All this anti-Semitism in medieval and Renaissance Europe, definitely predated 19th century Charles Darwin, and yet you chose to ignore this parts of history, centuries before Darwin ever written On Origin.
Let's face it, if you were really a Jew, you would know all this, long history of hatred for Jews, and I shouldn’t have to tell you any of this.
Do you think Darwin was also responsible for anti-Semitism centuries before his time?
No one is defending Hitler, his Holocaust, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, or any other dictators, BilliardsBall.
You have been twisting everyone’s words.
And you are bloody off-topic with m
Evolution has nothing to do with these political regimes, because what you are talking about involved politics and wars. There are nothing in evolution that talk of wars or politics or genocides or racism.
Have you even read Darwin’s On Origin, Descent Of Man, or his 1830s travel journal? None of them involved politics or wars, BilliardsBall.
Beside all this, Darwin has never any of his works, “Darwinism” or “Darwinian”. He always referred to as “Evolution” or “Natural Selection”.
Just because someone else applied his name “Darwin” into “Social Darwinism” in some social-political philosophy or ideology, doesn’t mean Darwin was in any way its author.
Did Darwin tell human experiments on Jews, tortured people or tell Germans to build gas chambers and exterminate Jews or Romany people?
Anti-Semitism in predated world war 2, predated Charles Darwin who wasn’t even German.
If you were a Jew at all, you would know this. You only seemed to focused on Hitler and Nazi Germany. If you want to talk of anti-Semitism, tried the Renaissance’s German Protestant preacher, Martin Luther. Have you forgotten about Luther?
But hatred for Jews, even predated Luther, and existed in many Western European cities during the Middle Ages, which included German states or the Holy Roman Empire, but also in France, Spain, and to lesser extent, in England (because there weren’t a large population of Jews in medieval England). which started segregation of Jews, forcing Jews to live in separate quarters of city, forced to wear clothes to distinguish them from other subjects, forced them to convert, or to torture them, damaged their homes and properties.
During the medieval Europe, Jews weren’t allowed to work in particular trades or professions, so what they did work for living that Christians didn’t want to do, they became quite wealthy. Their Christian neighbors became jealous or envious of Jews, so would accuse them of either heresy or witchcraft. Their arrests would have their wealth and properties confiscated, and they would be tortured and executed simply because their Christian neighbors were jealous of Jews becoming wealthy than them.
All this anti-Semitism in medieval and Renaissance Europe, definitely predated 19th century Charles Darwin, and yet you chose to ignore this parts of history, centuries before Darwin ever written On Origin.
Let's face it, if you were really a Jew, you would know all this, long history of hatred for Jews, and I shouldn’t have to tell you any of this.
Do you think Darwin was also responsible for anti-Semitism centuries before his time?
dad
Undefeated
If the survival of the fittest applies to nations, I guess there is some connection. If some people think their race is superior to others, and want only it to survive, I guess there is a connection. If the survival of the most ferocious dirty fighting lying scoundrel in politics I guess evolutionary ideas apply also. Once man starts omitting the creator, then it gets to animalistic behavior. I suppose Darwin contributed to that as do most evos today.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
No you won't.
You ignore refutations of your ill-informed pap all the time.
Heck - you don't even read the things you link to supposedly in support of your own claims, why should anyone think that you will read (or understand) things presented that refute your fallacious and desperate well poisoning?
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gnostic
The Lost One
There is absolutely no connection between Evolution and any forms of political or social ideology, because evolution only concerned itself what can be passed through genes.
Social or political philosophies and racism are not built into your genes or your DNA, dad, and your children and descendants won’t naturally inherit your politics and social agenda through your DNA and genes.
Are you really going to be as ignorantly biased as BilliardsBall?
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Yes, we've been through your sad desperation before.
Do I really have to quote your claim AGAIN to remind you what YOU wrote?
I guess so...
TX Lt. Gov. Blames El Paso Shooting on Not Letting Kids “Pray in Our Schools”
"Hitler and Stalin did what they did as Darwinists. "
You made that claim (and obviously still believe it) despite the fact that you also linked to a paper supposedly supporting that lie, yet it demonstrated that such a position is based on malicious ignorance and dishonesty.
Remember?
I do:
Hitler and Darwin: http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Was Hitler a Darwinian.pdf and
From Darwin to Hitler Quotes by Richard Weikart
From Darwin to Hitler Quotes by Richard Weikart
Which was a really dumb thing to do, such is your "scholarship":
***************************************************************************************************************************
I categorically reject anything by Weikart due to many instances of his shoddy scholarship:
"Weikart is best known for his 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany.[24][25] The Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, funded the book's research.[26] The academic community has been widely critical of the book.[4][13] Regarding the thesis of Weikart's book, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards wrote that Hitler was not a Darwinian and criticized Weikart for trying to undermine evolution.[27] Richards said that there was no evidence that Hitler read Darwin, and that some influencers of Nazism such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain were opposed to evolution.[27]"
But I do thank you for linking the Roberts article, for it would appear that you did not read it, for it concludes, any emphases mine:
"Countless conservative religious and political tracts have attempted to undermine Darwinian evolutionary theory by arguing that it had been endorsed by Hitler Darwinian evolutionary theory by arguing that it had been endorsed by Hitler and led to the biological ideas responsible for the crimes of the Nazis. These dogmatically driven accounts have been abetted by more reputable scholars who have written books with titles like From Darwin to Hitler [was that not written by your hero, Weikart the righty propagandist?] . Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s great German disciple, is presumed to have virtually packed his sidecar with Darwinian theory and monistic philosophy and delivered their toxic message directly to Berchtesgaden or at least,individuals like Daniel Gasman, Stephen Jay Gould, and Larry Arnhardt have so argued. Many more scholars are ready to apply the casual, but nonetheless, telling sobriquet to Hitler of "social Darwinian.” In this essay I have maintained these assumptions simply cannot be sustained after a careful examination of the evidence.
To be considered a Darwinian at least three propositions would have to be endorsed: that the human races exhibit a hierarchy of more advanced and less advanced peoples; that the transmutation of species has occurred over long stretches of time and that human beings have descended from ape -like ancestors; and that natural selection — as Darwin understood it — is the principle means by which
transmutation occurs. Hitler and the Nazi biologists I have considered certainly claimed a hierarchy of races, but that idea far antedated the publication of Darwin’s theory and was hardly unique to it. There is no evidence linking Hitler’s presumption of such a hierarchy and Darwin’s conception hierarchy and Darwin’s conception. Moreover, Hitler explicitly denied the descent of
species, utterly rejecting the idea that Aryan man descended from ape - like predecessors. And most of the Nazi scientists I have cited likewise opposed that aspect of Darwin’s theory. Hitler did speak of the “struggle for existence,” but likely derived that language from his friend and supporter Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an avowed anti-Darwinian. Moreover, by Hitler’s own testimony, his anti-Semitism had political, not scientific or biological roots; there is no evidence that he had any special feeling for these scientific questions. And in any case, remote and abstract scientific conceptions can hardly provide the motivation for extreme political acts and desperate measures.
Among Nazi biologists, at least those publishing in an official organ of the Party, Mendelian genetics and de Vriesian mutation theory were favored, both vying at the beginning of the twentieth century to replace Darwinian theory. Moreover, the perceived mechanistic character of Darwinism stood in opposition to the more vitalistic conceptions of Nazi biologists and that of Hitler — or at least vitalism accords with the
drift of his thought about race. Finally, though his own religious views remain uncertain, Hitler often enough claimed religious justification for racial attitudes, assuming thereby the kind of theism usually pitted against Darwinian theory.
If “Social Darwinian” is a concept with definite meaning, it would have to refer to individuals who apply evolutionary theory to human beings in social settings. There is little difficulty, then, in denominating Herbert Spencer or Ernst Haeckel a social Darwinian. With that understanding, Darwin himself also would have to be so called.
But how could one possibly ascribe that term to Hitler, who rejected evolutionary theory? Only in the very loosest sense, when the phrase has no relationship to the theory of Charles Darwin, might it be used for Hitler.
In order to sustain the thesis that Hitler was a Darwinian one would have to ignore all the explicit statements of Hitler rejecting any theory like Darwin’s and draw fanciful implications from vague words, errant phrases, and ambiguous sentences,neglecting altogether more straight -forward, contextual interpretations of such utterances. Only the ideologically blinded would still try to sustain the thesis in the face of the contrary, manifest evidence.
Yet, as I suggested at the beginning of this essay, there is an obvious sense in which my own claims must be moot. Even if Hitler could recite the Origin of Species by heart and referred to Darwin as his scientific hero, that would not have the slightest bearing on the validity of Darwinian theory or the moral standing of its author.
The only reasonable answer to the question that gives this essay its title is a very loud and unequivocal No!
To be considered a Darwinian at least three propositions would have to be endorsed: that the human races exhibit a hierarchy of more advanced and less advanced peoples; that the transmutation of species has occurred over long stretches of time and that human beings have descended from ape -like ancestors; and that natural selection — as Darwin understood it — is the principle means by which
transmutation occurs. Hitler and the Nazi biologists I have considered certainly claimed a hierarchy of races, but that idea far antedated the publication of Darwin’s theory and was hardly unique to it. There is no evidence linking Hitler’s presumption of such a hierarchy and Darwin’s conception hierarchy and Darwin’s conception. Moreover, Hitler explicitly denied the descent of
species, utterly rejecting the idea that Aryan man descended from ape - like predecessors. And most of the Nazi scientists I have cited likewise opposed that aspect of Darwin’s theory. Hitler did speak of the “struggle for existence,” but likely derived that language from his friend and supporter Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an avowed anti-Darwinian. Moreover, by Hitler’s own testimony, his anti-Semitism had political, not scientific or biological roots; there is no evidence that he had any special feeling for these scientific questions. And in any case, remote and abstract scientific conceptions can hardly provide the motivation for extreme political acts and desperate measures.
Among Nazi biologists, at least those publishing in an official organ of the Party, Mendelian genetics and de Vriesian mutation theory were favored, both vying at the beginning of the twentieth century to replace Darwinian theory. Moreover, the perceived mechanistic character of Darwinism stood in opposition to the more vitalistic conceptions of Nazi biologists and that of Hitler — or at least vitalism accords with the
drift of his thought about race. Finally, though his own religious views remain uncertain, Hitler often enough claimed religious justification for racial attitudes, assuming thereby the kind of theism usually pitted against Darwinian theory.
If “Social Darwinian” is a concept with definite meaning, it would have to refer to individuals who apply evolutionary theory to human beings in social settings. There is little difficulty, then, in denominating Herbert Spencer or Ernst Haeckel a social Darwinian. With that understanding, Darwin himself also would have to be so called.
But how could one possibly ascribe that term to Hitler, who rejected evolutionary theory? Only in the very loosest sense, when the phrase has no relationship to the theory of Charles Darwin, might it be used for Hitler.
In order to sustain the thesis that Hitler was a Darwinian one would have to ignore all the explicit statements of Hitler rejecting any theory like Darwin’s and draw fanciful implications from vague words, errant phrases, and ambiguous sentences,neglecting altogether more straight -forward, contextual interpretations of such utterances. Only the ideologically blinded would still try to sustain the thesis in the face of the contrary, manifest evidence.
Yet, as I suggested at the beginning of this essay, there is an obvious sense in which my own claims must be moot. Even if Hitler could recite the Origin of Species by heart and referred to Darwin as his scientific hero, that would not have the slightest bearing on the validity of Darwinian theory or the moral standing of its author.
The only reasonable answer to the question that gives this essay its title is a very loud and unequivocal No!
So, yes, I accept your own reference as proof that Hitler was not a Darwinian or follower of Darwin, and thank you for enlightening me on yet another act of desperation and dishonesty undertaken by MANY creationist and right-wing extremist religionists in their sad, pathetic efforts to employ fallacious and dishonest methods to try to prop up their own failing ideology.
Thank you again @BilliardsBall for making so clear an admission. Very brave of you to have undermined and dare I say, debunked one of your own mantras.
***************************************************************************************************************************
Your game is well known, not very clever, and a sure sign of sad desperation to attack evolution any way that you can, seeing as how you failed, utterly, why trying to attack it using science.
How sad - do you use these same pathetic, snowflake antics in your "sermons"?
tas8831
Well-Known Member
I do have to wonder what your Jesus thinks of your abject and obvious dishonesty?
Is this all you have left in your right-wing "Christian" bag of tricks? Strawman lies?
Pathetic.
Nobody is defending Hitler, rather, we are exposing your sad creationist disinformation. Your silly rhetoric fools nobody - I suspect not even yourself. It is beneath you. No, wait - clearly nothing is beneath the Trumpian creationist evangelical.
Yes, we've been through your sad desperation before.
Do I really have to quote your claim AGAIN to remind you what YOU wrote?
I guess so...
TX Lt. Gov. Blames El Paso Shooting on Not Letting Kids “Pray in Our Schools”
"Hitler and Stalin did what they did as Darwinists. "
Remember that?
Darwinists. Not 'social Darwininsts', but Darwinists.
I guess when you realized how stupid you had been to make that claim, you decided to pull the ol' bait and switch to see if there was any traction there.
Nope.
You fail on all points.
You made that claim (and obviously still believe it) despite the fact that you also linked to a paper supposedly supporting that lie, yet it demonstrated that such a position is based on malicious ignorance and dishonesty.
Remember?
I do:
Hitler and Darwin: http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Was Hitler a Darwinian.pdf and
From Darwin to Hitler Quotes by Richard Weikart
From Darwin to Hitler Quotes by Richard Weikart
Which was a really dumb thing to do, such is your "scholarship":
***************************************************************************************************************************
I categorically reject anything by Weikart due to many instances of his shoddy scholarship:
"Weikart is best known for his 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany.[24][25] The Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, funded the book's research.[26] The academic community has been widely critical of the book.[4][13] Regarding the thesis of Weikart's book, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards wrote that Hitler was not a Darwinian and criticized Weikart for trying to undermine evolution.[27] Richards said that there was no evidence that Hitler read Darwin, and that some influencers of Nazism such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain were opposed to evolution.[27]"
But I do thank you for linking the Roberts article, for it would appear that you did not read it, for it concludes, any emphases mine:
"Countless conservative religious and political tracts have attempted to undermine Darwinian evolutionary theory by arguing that it had been endorsed by Hitler Darwinian evolutionary theory by arguing that it had been endorsed by Hitler and led to the biological ideas responsible for the crimes of the Nazis. These dogmatically driven accounts have been abetted by more reputable scholars who have written books with titles like From Darwin to Hitler [was that not written by your hero, Weikart the righty propagandist?] . Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s great German disciple, is presumed to have virtually packed his sidecar with Darwinian theory and monistic philosophy and delivered their toxic message directly to Berchtesgaden or at least,individuals like Daniel Gasman, Stephen Jay Gould, and Larry Arnhardt have so argued. Many more scholars are ready to apply the casual, but nonetheless, telling sobriquet to Hitler of "social Darwinian.” In this essay I have maintained these assumptions simply cannot be sustained after a careful examination of the evidence.
To be considered a Darwinian at least three propositions would have to be endorsed: that the human races exhibit a hierarchy of more advanced and less advanced peoples; that the transmutation of species has occurred over long stretches of time and that human beings have descended from ape -like ancestors; and that natural selection — as Darwin understood it — is the principle means by which
transmutation occurs. Hitler and the Nazi biologists I have considered certainly claimed a hierarchy of races, but that idea far antedated the publication of Darwin’s theory and was hardly unique to it. There is no evidence linking Hitler’s presumption of such a hierarchy and Darwin’s conception hierarchy and Darwin’s conception. Moreover, Hitler explicitly denied the descent of
species, utterly rejecting the idea that Aryan man descended from ape - like predecessors. And most of the Nazi scientists I have cited likewise opposed that aspect of Darwin’s theory. Hitler did speak of the “struggle for existence,” but likely derived that language from his friend and supporter Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an avowed anti-Darwinian. Moreover, by Hitler’s own testimony, his anti-Semitism had political, not scientific or biological roots; there is no evidence that he had any special feeling for these scientific questions. And in any case, remote and abstract scientific conceptions can hardly provide the motivation for extreme political acts and desperate measures.
Among Nazi biologists, at least those publishing in an official organ of the Party, Mendelian genetics and de Vriesian mutation theory were favored, both vying at the beginning of the twentieth century to replace Darwinian theory. Moreover, the perceived mechanistic character of Darwinism stood in opposition to the more vitalistic conceptions of Nazi biologists and that of Hitler — or at least vitalism accords with the
drift of his thought about race. Finally, though his own religious views remain uncertain, Hitler often enough claimed religious justification for racial attitudes, assuming thereby the kind of theism usually pitted against Darwinian theory.
If “Social Darwinian” is a concept with definite meaning, it would have to refer to individuals who apply evolutionary theory to human beings in social settings. There is little difficulty, then, in denominating Herbert Spencer or Ernst Haeckel a social Darwinian. With that understanding, Darwin himself also would have to be so called.
But how could one possibly ascribe that term to Hitler, who rejected evolutionary theory? Only in the very loosest sense, when the phrase has no relationship to the theory of Charles Darwin, might it be used for Hitler.
In order to sustain the thesis that Hitler was a Darwinian one would have to ignore all the explicit statements of Hitler rejecting any theory like Darwin’s and draw fanciful implications from vague words, errant phrases, and ambiguous sentences,neglecting altogether more straight -forward, contextual interpretations of such utterances. Only the ideologically blinded would still try to sustain the thesis in the face of the contrary, manifest evidence.
Yet, as I suggested at the beginning of this essay, there is an obvious sense in which my own claims must be moot. Even if Hitler could recite the Origin of Species by heart and referred to Darwin as his scientific hero, that would not have the slightest bearing on the validity of Darwinian theory or the moral standing of its author.
The only reasonable answer to the question that gives this essay its title is a very loud and unequivocal No!
To be considered a Darwinian at least three propositions would have to be endorsed: that the human races exhibit a hierarchy of more advanced and less advanced peoples; that the transmutation of species has occurred over long stretches of time and that human beings have descended from ape -like ancestors; and that natural selection — as Darwin understood it — is the principle means by which
transmutation occurs. Hitler and the Nazi biologists I have considered certainly claimed a hierarchy of races, but that idea far antedated the publication of Darwin’s theory and was hardly unique to it. There is no evidence linking Hitler’s presumption of such a hierarchy and Darwin’s conception hierarchy and Darwin’s conception. Moreover, Hitler explicitly denied the descent of
species, utterly rejecting the idea that Aryan man descended from ape - like predecessors. And most of the Nazi scientists I have cited likewise opposed that aspect of Darwin’s theory. Hitler did speak of the “struggle for existence,” but likely derived that language from his friend and supporter Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an avowed anti-Darwinian. Moreover, by Hitler’s own testimony, his anti-Semitism had political, not scientific or biological roots; there is no evidence that he had any special feeling for these scientific questions. And in any case, remote and abstract scientific conceptions can hardly provide the motivation for extreme political acts and desperate measures.
Among Nazi biologists, at least those publishing in an official organ of the Party, Mendelian genetics and de Vriesian mutation theory were favored, both vying at the beginning of the twentieth century to replace Darwinian theory. Moreover, the perceived mechanistic character of Darwinism stood in opposition to the more vitalistic conceptions of Nazi biologists and that of Hitler — or at least vitalism accords with the
drift of his thought about race. Finally, though his own religious views remain uncertain, Hitler often enough claimed religious justification for racial attitudes, assuming thereby the kind of theism usually pitted against Darwinian theory.
If “Social Darwinian” is a concept with definite meaning, it would have to refer to individuals who apply evolutionary theory to human beings in social settings. There is little difficulty, then, in denominating Herbert Spencer or Ernst Haeckel a social Darwinian. With that understanding, Darwin himself also would have to be so called.
But how could one possibly ascribe that term to Hitler, who rejected evolutionary theory? Only in the very loosest sense, when the phrase has no relationship to the theory of Charles Darwin, might it be used for Hitler.
In order to sustain the thesis that Hitler was a Darwinian one would have to ignore all the explicit statements of Hitler rejecting any theory like Darwin’s and draw fanciful implications from vague words, errant phrases, and ambiguous sentences,neglecting altogether more straight -forward, contextual interpretations of such utterances. Only the ideologically blinded would still try to sustain the thesis in the face of the contrary, manifest evidence.
Yet, as I suggested at the beginning of this essay, there is an obvious sense in which my own claims must be moot. Even if Hitler could recite the Origin of Species by heart and referred to Darwin as his scientific hero, that would not have the slightest bearing on the validity of Darwinian theory or the moral standing of its author.
The only reasonable answer to the question that gives this essay its title is a very loud and unequivocal No!
So, yes, I accept your own reference as proof that Hitler was not a Darwinian or follower of Darwin, and thank you for enlightening me on yet another act of desperation and dishonesty undertaken by MANY creationist and right-wing extremist religionists in their sad, pathetic efforts to employ fallacious and dishonest methods to try to prop up their own failing ideology.
Thank you again @BilliardsBall for making so clear an admission. Very brave of you to have undermined and dare I say, debunked one of your own mantras.
***************************************************************************************************************************
Your game is well known, not very clever, and a sure sign of sad desperation to attack evolution any way that you can, seeing as how you failed, utterly, why trying to attack it using science.
How sad - do you use these same pathetic, snowflake antics in your "sermons"?
Last edited:
tas8831
Well-Known Member
I cannot wait for your in-depth exegesis on how Newton is to blame for the use of aerial bombardment during wartime.