My friend Mike Flannery has a great post on ENV about the intimate connection between Nazism and Darwinism. Mike links to Richard Weikart's new paper on the Nazi-Darwin connection. Richard is a leading historian of Nazism whose book From Darwin to Hitler is a masterpiece and a landmark in the field. Flannery's post and Weikart's paper are must-reads.
You would think that a political ideology based on racial biology that views human affairs as evolutionary selection and a struggle for existence between fitter and less fit races would be universally acknowledged as Darwinian. And of course Nazism is largely acknowledged as Darwinian in the community of academic historians.
Yet a few Darwin-Nazi deniers persist, unwilling to admit the truth about their "science" and the impact it has had on humanity. The denial of the Darwin-Nazi connection puts the deniers' embrace of an organization that demands the removal of the Star of David from a Holocaust memorial in a harsher light.
Just as communism is State Atheism, Nazism is State Darwinism.
I think you stirred up a hornet's nest on this one, Egnor.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to read the post later.
Darwin may not have been Hitler's ideological grandfather but he was pretty racist, like most people in nineteenth century England. The superiority of the white race was to him as apparent as the nose on your face.
Nobody's perfect.
Ben
Egnor wrotes: Yet a few Darwin-Nazi deniers persist, unwilling to admit the truth about their "science" and the impact it has had on humanity.
DeleteHe's got it exactly backwards. In real life, very few historians take the Darwin-to-Hitler link seriously. Richard Weikart is generally viewed as a crackpot.
Whether you agree or disagree with Weikert, suggesting that his views are widely shared and his opponents are few is either a mendacious lie or an attempt at self-delusion.
Hoo
Self-delusion is the more likely answer in this case. I recall how Egnor confidently predicted Romney's victory in the 2012 elections, despite all the poles indicating the contrary.
DeleteEgnor was hardly alone in that. National Review Online's Election Crystal Ball makes for an entertaining read. Reality has a liberal bias.
Hoo
Hoots: "Richard Weikart is generally viewed as a crackpot."
DeleteLet me fix that for you:
Richard Weikart is viewed by Sander Glibhoff as a crackpot.
You have more work to do to get to the "generally viewed" category. Put your google goggles back on!
Hugh Hewitt: Feels like 1980 to me: Same failed president, same crisis-plagued globe, same upbeat GOP nominee written off four years ago who won the key debate, same chance to get the Senate. Romney is the president-elect on Wednesday, with Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Colorado. Senate tied 50–50 after Ohio brings in Josh Mandel. Let the rebuilding begin.
DeleteGood old Hugh is of course a cheerleader who isn't deluded. He knew full well that Romney would lose. He was lying through his teeth.
Hoo
Oh, admiral! Which side are you on? Deluded or lying for a good cause?
DeleteSander Glibhoff is a respected historian of science at the University of Indiana. Recipient of the 1999 Ivan Slade Prize by the British Society for the History of Science. Surely his opinion counts.
And Glibhoff is hardly alone in criticizing Weikart. Here is Robert J. Richards, the Morris Fishbein Professor of the History of Science at the University of Chicago:
There is no doubt that each of us comes to history with a background of assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes. The historian, though, must be self-reflective and vigilant; if not, such help will be provided by others.
There is more if you're interested. Don't hesitate to ask!
Hoo
Let's add to the list of Weikart's critics Paul Lawrence Farber, former President of the History of Science Society. His review of Weikart's book can be found here: doi:10.1007/s10739-005-4230-0
DeleteHoo
You're generally viewed as a crackpot too, Hoo. By me, for example.
DeleteYour posts only prove that the man has a message that some people don't want to hear.
I've never read this Darwin/Hitler book. Have you?
Let me put it this way. If one tenth of it is true, it's more truthful than the crappy reports that the IPCC churns out, written by nonexperts, summarized by political appointees, and headed up by a railroad engineer/soft porn novelist.
Ben
I have no interest in reading a book that has been thoroughly panned by a substantial number of respected historians, Ben. What you think of me is also not particularly important to me.
DeleteAll the best,
Hoo
In other words, you're close-minded.
DeleteLet me ask you this. Do you deny that Darwin was deeply racist, like most people from the era that he lived in?
Ben
Silly question, Ben. Darwin was a man of his time. People's sense of what is appropriate and what is not has changed. What's the point of measuring him and his contemporaries by the current yardstick?
DeleteIn 150 years, your views and mine will be out of sync with the times. So fucking what?
Hoo
So what?
DeleteWell, for starters, I think he qualifies as a crackpot. He's also deeply racist. He seems pretty jazzed about the coming age of the master race. Sound familiar?
I think he and Hitler shared a lot of ideas about who's on top of the heap when it comes to races. In their shared view, some are barely more than monkeys, while others are blazing a path toward a more perfect man. Dare I say, an Aryan superman?
If you put Hitler and Darwin in the same room, they'd agree on some pretty substantive issues. The question that remains is if Hitler somehow imbibed some of his ideas from Darwin. I think that's what the book is about, which neither of us has read. But you're absolutely sure that Hitler could not have gotten his ideas, which were so similar to Darwin's, from a book that was one of the most influential of the century into which he was born.
Ben
And why would you read a book from a known crackpot like Charlie Darwin? He sounds like David Duke when he rants about blacks. Sheesh. And he's a male chauvanist pig, too!
DeleteBen
Hardly, naidoo.
DeleteJohn's monumentally stupid claim was that the title of Darwin's book was "racist." And that he didn't have to read beyond the title to see that.
Well, John is wrong. Darwin used the word race interchangeably with species. The title didn't refer to preferred human races, as John seemed to think. The cabbage example clearly illustrates that.
And read Crus's comment. He seems to be the only conservative with a functioning brain here.
Adios, muchacho.
Hoo
Misuse of evolutionary theory to justify bigotry doesn’t make evolutionary theory invalid, so what’s your point? Are you arguing that should ignore the best and only scientific theory that explains the development of life on earth because 70 years ago it was used to justify bigotry and eugenics?
ReplyDeleteIf anything Racism and bigotry are more prevalent today in religious populations that explicitly reject Evolution. Just yesterday the crazy Admiral referred to the Palestinians as “Paleostinians”. I’m not sure if the Admiral rejects evolution, but his bigoted and dehumanizing term for an entire population undoubtedly stems more from his religious convictions that his scientific beliefs.
-KW
Popeye: "Just yesterday the crazy Admiral referred to the Palestinians as 'Paleostinians'."
DeleteStill do today!
By the way, Pops, "paleo-" refers to the Stone Age. Those people were fully human.
DeleteSince it was, as you sagely point out, unfair to paint all paleolithic peoples as violent and unstable, I should have clarified my description as "Jew-hating, child-murdering Paleostinians".
I suppose the same can be said about paleoconservatives? Like Pat Buchanan and John Derbyshire?
DeleteHoo
How many Jews has Pat Buchanan killed? I forget.
DeleteHoots: "I didn't say Buchanan killed the Jews..."
DeleteI didn't say you said that. You are, of course, free to imagine anything you need to imagine.
I'm sure Ben is right, Doc. You just threw a rubber snake in the monkey house. It is imperative for the ideologues of the Left to defend a narrative that imagines certain condemned versions of Socialism to be "right-wing".
ReplyDeleteI'm no expert on National Socialist political ideology but it seems a stretch to me to think that individuals who believe in a "Master Race" would quail at an invocation of evolutionary theory as a justification. After all, selective breeding was the means of getting from Huxley's 1931 to Huxley's Brave New World and Well's social darwinist notions got him from 1895 to his future of Morlocks and Eloi in The Time Machine.
Darwinism is, in its very essence, materialist, and Hitler himself said " "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, [National Socialism] takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism."
And the nation that gave us the German Shepherd, the Doberman, and the German Shorthaired Pointer (my beloved breed) is going to know a thing or two about - and value - breeding and breed "purity". And know how to get there.
Racial theory is just that: A theory. It is not a cannon or philosophical musing. It is not an art.
ReplyDeleteBigotry, of course, is as old as the hills. But racialism is the scientific justification for holding such views based on 'race'. Darwin was a racialist and a supremacist, of that there is no doubt.
So, movements like (most famously) the Nazis used his ideology (and those of Darwin's fellow travellers) to justify their racial policy and breeding programs.
There is no mystery there.
I do not know that I would say this idea is widely accepted among my academic peers, but it has been gaining momentum for years. The connections are impossible to ignore. The resistance is purely political.
Finally, Weikart's book is a well written and well read work (I own it, myself) in the field.
Crus: "I do not know that I would say this idea is widely accepted among my academic peers"
DeleteIt looks like not everyone here is deluded.
Hoo
Hoots, in English, "not widely accepted" does not mean "crackpot".
DeleteNot necessarily, but sometimes. In this case, surely.
DeleteHoo
In whose opinion?
DeleteI have quoted at least three well-regarded historians of science, admiral. Their names might not mean much to you, but then again, why does your opinion matter?
DeleteHoo
I looked at those references, and I did not see the word "crackpot". AFAIK, only you have used that word.
DeleteAnd the "experts" are not always right. Michael Bellesiles won the Bancroft Prize and his book was hailed as a "tour de force". It agreed with and supported the Progressive "wisdom". Until he was exposed as a liar and fired from his academic position.
Lastly, did I say my opinion does matter? Where? Or is that another imaginary rabbit trail you're trying to lay out? You don't even know what my opinion, if I have one, is. You're just blattering on like a brain-damaged logorrheic with cap-n-gown envy, as usual.
"Crackpot" is not a term that people normally use in scholarly reviews. Reading the three reviews, however, leaves little doubt that their authors have a rather low opinion of Weikart's work. Whether or not they directly call him a crackpot is not particularly important.
DeleteWhat is important is that these opinions represent the mainstream historians of science, whereas Weikart is way out on the margins. The opposite of what Egnor seems to suggest in his post.
So you resort to the usual crackpot defense that the experts can be wrong. (What's with the scare quotes, by the way? Don't these guys' impeccable credentials make them real pros?) True, you can have one expert who is off the mark, and I have seen that in my field (Bob Schrieffer, one of the authors of superconductivity theory, has gone mad, literally.) But here we have not one but three experts penning negative reviews of Weikart's signature work. Show me three experts saying otherwise and maybe you can have a point.
Hoo
The complete title of Darwin's famous work is
ReplyDelete'THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION
OR
THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.'
By CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S., &c.
Not musc to get confused about there.
darwin also proposed the extermination (his word) of certain races to preserve and protect....
well, you can guess the rest.
I used the Darwin = Nazism framework for a lunch time History Club I ran when I was teaching in the Channel Islands. Very well received. In fact students told me their parents were reading the handouts I proposed. Rather rare in my experience.
People are suckers for the truth, especially if it has been concealed from them previously.
John Richardson
John Richardson,
DeleteDo you know which sense of the word race Darwin used in his book? I am guessing not. Here are a few excerpts from the book to clue you in:
"Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable, that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil..."
"When we look to the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic animals and plants, and compare them with species closely allied together, we generally perceive in each domestic race, as already remarked, less uniformity of character than in true species."
Enjoy!
Hoo
'Do you know which sense of the word race Darwin used in his book? I am guessing not. Here are a few excerpts from the book to clue you in: '
DeleteWell, obviously I have read all relevant elements of the title.
As you should be aware, this text can be used to demonstrate Darwin's humanity, and also to demonstrate his obvious racism.
This is why i decided not to 'cheery pick' a quote but instead to use the title.
Your quote suggests that you do not know the text was significant ONLY because to claimed a theoretical origin of the HUMAN species.
No cabbage has ever been regarded as being so important. Honest.
John R.
This is a pretty solid compendium of the stupid, John R. Congratulations! Keep up the good work.
DeleteHoo
What are you trying to say, Crus? Come on, spit it out!
DeleteHoo
'I do not know that I would say this idea is widely accepted among my academic peers, but it has been gaining momentum for years. The connections are impossible to ignore. The resistance is purely political.'
DeleteYes to all that.
It seems to be generational. The older Marxist Historical hegemony in the West is gradually thawing; younger Historians seem less afraid to join the dots regarding Darwin and has political and spiritual progeny.
ps I felt sure from memory 'exterminate' was used by Darwin in the direct sense. Your quote confirmed this. Thanks for that C.R.
Hoo,
Delete"What are you trying to say, Crus? Come on, spit it out!"
LOL!
Very well, I will attempt to be concise and direct:
I think Darwin was clearly a racialist.
There is a wealth of his own writings to back this up. The above example with it's contrast of the differences between a Caucasian and a Baboon and those between an African and a Gorilla clearly show this to be the case.
His predictions about genocides (accurate and on topic, I might add) also feed into this belief.
I must also add this, though: Darwin does not seem, to me, to be gleeful or happy about these observations. He seems to be gripped with a nihilistic view that such divisions are natural and unavoidable, if unpleasant.
He also writes in a similar fashion about slavery.
If Crusader's quote is true, then I suppose we have confirmed two things. First, that Darwin is a genocidal racist and second, that Hoo was being disingenuous when he suggested that Darwin was talking about cabbages. All he did was find one example of Darwin using the word race in reference to cabbage, then deduced--for all of our benefit--that Darwin was always talking about cabbages when he talked about race. That's how he came to the conclusion that Darwin didn't share Hitler's passion for killing inferior races.
DeleteAnyway, I've never read The Origin of the Species. Probably won't either. I like mysteries and cop stories.
Aborigines and Indians still exist so they can't possibly have been exterminated. And again, no one is suggesting that Darwin was the world's first racist. All I'm saying is that Darwin's ideas lend themself to notions of racial superiority and inferiority. Your non-sequiters aside, can you answer my original question?
The Torch
If Crusader's quote is true, then I suppose we have confirmed two things.
DeleteIt's on Wikiquote, if you care for that source.
Such words were not shocking in Darwin's time. They were quite normal. That didn't change until the mid-Twentieth Century. The Holocaust may have had something to do with that.
Funny that liberals can detect coded racism in policy disagreements with President Obama but can't see Darwin as the genocidal racist that he was.
When he speaks of the "preservation of favoured races" he doesn't mean garden vegetables, genius. He means people. He considers the "negro" and the Australian to be just a step above a gorilla. They'll soon be the missing links, according to him.
Ben
Torch: "[...] Hoo was being disingenuous when he suggested that Darwin was talking about cabbages. All he did was find one example of Darwin using the word race in reference to cabbage..."
DeleteHoo does that. His modus operandi is to look briefly at a post (in this case "Nazism is State Darwinism"), toddle out with his google goggles, do a keyword search, find a discrepancy from some internet reference whose relevance is at the margin of the post's argument, and begin beating that drum.
See the discussion above about the meaning and relevance of the word "crackpot", which in fact only he has used.
Hoo really doesn't seem to know much about anything beyond the internet pages he references, and he usually misinterprets those. For example, here's a classic, where he claimed (9/18/2013) the paraphrase meant something different from the original quote :
Quote: [T]he annual homicide rate in Russia has been comparable to or greater than the rate in the United States [since 1965].
Paraphrase: In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet Union’s murder rates paralleled or generally exceeded those of gun‐ridden America.
Don't waste a lot of time on Hoo. He really craves attention. See his comments above about the 2012 election. Very needy guy.
The Torch:
DeleteYou're pretty stupid, torch. Maybe you should read closely what Crus wrote: I must also add this, though: Darwin does not seem, to me, to be gleeful or happy about these observations. He seems to be gripped with a nihilistic view that such divisions are natural and unavoidable, if unpleasant. He also writes in a similar fashion about slavery.
Darwin wasn't calling to exterminate inferior human races. He was merely stating a fact that they were being exterminated.
Hoo
Right, Hoots. Gotta break a few eggs to get an omelet.
DeleteSilly twit.
It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children -- those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own -- being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.
Delete-- Charles Darwin
"Darwin wasn't calling to exterminate inferior human races. He was merely stating a fact that they were being exterminated."
DeleteSays Crus. How do you deduce that from the quote? Does Darwin not want "inferior" races to fall away into extinction?
I love how you haven't even tried to refute the notion that Darwin considered the caucasian race to be the highest, only that he wasn't looking forward to the coming extinction of all of the other "inferior" ones.
You also don't refute that the word "race" in this context has the same meaning that we ascribe to it. He's not talking about cabbages, he's talking about aborgines, "negroes", and white people. You might think that he was concerned about the "preservation of favoured races" of humans. The preservation of certain "races" of cabbage doesn't usually make for interesting reading.
Now, can you answer my original question?
The Torch
Hoo once mentioned that he is of Asian descent. That makes sense. Hu is a common family name in China. Hu Jintao, for example.
DeleteI wonder where Asians fall into Darwin's racial hierarchy. Possibly he considers them one of the civilized races. Race here is plural. He doesn't say. Where do they fall in the continuum between whites on the one hand and baboons on the other?
Joey
I didn't say that I believe that. I said that Darwin believes that. So thank you for proving that Darwin is racist.
DeleteHe clearly lists a hierarchy. Whites are on the top. They will go extinct too, because something more advanced will replace them, but he is clearly implying that they are among the "civilized races." They're on top. Perhaps there is another race there too because of the plural form, though he doesn't name which one.
You must have lied to me then about being Asian.
I even asked where they fall into DARWIN'S racial hierarchy! There's no way you could have possibly misunderstood that.
DeleteJoey
Or maybe your memory is faulty, Joey, and you you simply made up my Asian descent.
DeleteHoo
Well Hoo, if you're too chickenshit to answer my question, I'll just open it up to the floor. You know, I was asking you because I honestly wanted an answer.
DeleteHeres' my question. Actually, there are three.
(1) If we all arrived here through evolution, what proof do you have that all groups evolved equally?
(2) Wouldn't that be an incredibly amazing feat?
(3) So why would we all have the same IQ across all races and ethnicities?
The Torch
The Torch,
DeleteIf you like mysteries and police stories, have you ever read Barry Maitland? He's an Australian author who has a series set in London involving Scotland Yard. I'm on the third, and they're very good so far. The first is 'the Marx Sisters'.
No, I haven't. I'll have to try them.
DeleteThe Torch
The Torch,
DeleteI've just finished the third. It's very good, with an enigmatic ending. I think you'll enjoy them.
Correction; 'proposed' should read 'prepared'.
ReplyDeleteHoo,
ReplyDeleteI don't think Torch is insinuating that bigotry began or ended with Darwin. I think the question is: Does Darwinism not basically infer racialist (ie scientific) justification for racial/ethnic prejudices via the process of evolutionary competition? Does the theory not hold that group could possibly be 'equal' by the very nature of that competition?
I can understand the question.
I see Darwin's theory (as it is) as inherently racialist.
The only question in my mind is if the adherent is a magnanimous, tolerant, closet racialist, or a bitter bigot who justifies their xenophobia by use of a Victorian theory on origins.
Which flavour of racism do they espouse.
But, I would not extend that to assume that all people who believe in some form of evolutionary theory to be racial/ethnic bigots. Such a (modern) belief obviously not counter racialism as it has no ethical or moral foundation, but it does not necessitate it either.
I would, once again, compare any theory to a tool. A mental tool. Evolutionary theory can be used to build bridges or weaponized. Which form it takes is entirely dependent on the mind wielding the tool and the fashion in which it is used. The potential for either outcome in built in.
Evolutionary theories can be used to illustrate the minimal differences between the 'races' of men, or alternately to draw attention to those differences in a very mean spirited fashion. The direction is determined by the moral compass of the personality of those individuals and groups who adhere to that theory and/or put it into social/political practice.
I think you mean Martin Luther. Different chap from a different century.
ReplyDeleteI recall reading somewhere that Martin Luther did not care for Europe's Jewish minority. But did he really think they were inferior? Many people harbor resentment against them precisely because Jews excel. And, correct me if I'm wrong, Martin Luther didn't believe that Jews were less (or more) evolved because he didn't believe in evolution. So I don't understand where you're going with this.
All I'm saying is that evolution kind of lends itself to the idea of superior and inferior races. We aren't all created equal. Someone has to be the fittest. Who could it be?
The Torch
Yes, CrusadeRex, I'm not implying that Darwin invented racism. No one did. It has always existed. Hoo's reference to Martin Luther (King) is somewhat perplexing in that regard. It's almost like he's implying that racism and religion go hand in hand.
ReplyDeleteThe Torch
Darwin is sexist to boot!
ReplyDeleteThe chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, —comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman. ... Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.
Ben
Maybe Hoo should refrain from reading Darwim. As a male chavanist and hardened racist, I think he qualifies as a crackpot. And we all know that Hoo doesn't read the works of crackpots.
ReplyDeleteBen
I love it when Egnor can't control himself and shows his Janus face. Blaming "Darwinism" for the Holocaust when he knows full well that Christian antisemitism is at the root of it. That's enough right there to burn in hell. Too bad there is no hell.
ReplyDeleteIt must hurt the gullible believers that evolutionary biology (aka "Darwinism") shows beyond reasonable doubt that there never was an Adam-and-Eve population bottleneck, that "The Fall" is therefore just a fairy tale, and that therefore the alleged Jesus story is rubbish as well. So they blame "Darwinism" for Hitler's crimes, hoping that doubting believers will get angry with the evil scientists, stick to their fairy tales and keep handing over the dough to the greedy clergy.
You know you are losing when you have to resort to such pathetic tactics.
Beware. Troi is a Hoo in a eurotrash costume with less class, more nastiness, but equally ignorant. They both have Troll Resumes (as does KW), thinking somehow that an online avatar will provide gravitas despite the fact that their comments don't.
DeleteOh look, it's the fake Admiral without a legacy, the childless convert without meaning in his life. He calls me a troll. I'm shocked. Yet he is smart enough to know that Egnor is lying but won't call him out because they are fellow converts and slaves to the pedophiles in Rome.
DeleteTroi: "without meaning in his life..."
DeleteTypical of a materialist, reading minds.
I'm surprised your eyes don't bleed from the cognitive dissonance. :-)
Typical of a materialist, reading minds.
DeleteThat's funny, seeing as you just wrote
thinking somehow that an online avatar will provide gravitas despite the fact that their comments don't.
You're a sad man, "Admiral".
By the way, Troi... I'm surprised you object so much to pedophilia. If human beings are simply meat machines, with no free will, surely you can't hold them responsible for their sexual predilections.
DeleteEven the APA's DSM-5, American psychiatry's diagnostic "bible", regards pedophiilia as simply a paraphilia, like exhibitionism, S&M, and fetishes. Surely a good Dutchman like you doesn't condemn those paraphilias as well? Where would your economy be without them?
Or do you condemn them? I'm curious. Just for Catholics, maybe... :-)
Troi: "You're a sad man, "Admiral.'"
DeleteI'm a happy man, Troi. Your mind meld no worky.
Dear all:
DeleteIt seems that this topic is indeed like throwing a torch in a vat of gasoline. That's a good thing, because any honest reading of Nazism leads to the obvious conclusion that it was applied Darwinism.
Darwin's understanding of man-- an animal evolved by a brutal process of struggle between more and less fit races-- is obviously the foundation on which Nazi racial policy and anti-Semitism was built.
An apt analogy is that racism and anti-Semitism were like an uncatalyzed chemical reaction in historical European civilization. They were real, and dynamic, for thousands of years prior to Darwin. But the Darwinian understanding of man was like an enzyme-- it sped up the dynamics of racial hatred and anti-semitism astronomically, because it offered a scientific imprimatur to man's basest instincts. If mankind was to prosper, the strong must exterminate the weak. It is an imperative of the species-- science says so.
Nazism was the co-factor on the Darwinian enzyme-- it potentiated the Darwinian catalysis of racial hate and anti-Semitism, causing an explosion of evil.
Face it, my Darwinian friends, Nazism was State Darwinism.
Hey Egnor,
DeleteThe only people who take Weikart seriously are your buddies at Discovery 'tute and their fan base. No serious historian of science is among them.
How does it feel being on the margins of history, buddy?
Hoo
Hoo:
Delete"Historian of science"?
We're talking about historians of Nazism.
We are talking about two subjects that you attempt to relate: the history of science and the history of Nazi Germany.
DeleteI have shown that Weikart is not taken seriously by historians of science (by quoting reviews of three history professors with excellent credentials).
We can take a look at the other side. Go ahead, find some reviews and cite them.
Hoo
By the way, Troi... I'm surprised you object so much to pedophilia. If human beings are simply meat machines, with no free will, surely you can't hold them responsible for their sexual predilections.
DeleteSeriously? You wonder why I object against pedophilia? Were you in favor of or neutral towards pedophilia when you were still an atheist a few years ago?
Speaking of pedophilia, wasn't Mary the Virgin 13 years old when she was with the Child? Wasn't that the norm back in the days?
DeleteHoo
Troi: "You wonder why I object against pedophilia?"
DeleteYes. Rather than dodging the question by asking me a question, answer the question. How can a meat machine with no free will be held responsible for its behavior, shaped as it was by genetics and social contingencies?
Hoots, I don't know how old she was and neither does anyone else.
DeleteMichael,
DeleteNo. National Socialism came directly from traditional European Christian anti-semitism, nationalism, the Great War and Germans' need to find someone to blame (to scapegoat) for Germany's defeat and humiliation (the mythical 'stab in the back' so beloved by German conservatives).
We know that you don't know much, admiral. However, not everyone is at your level. Catholic Encyclopedia estimates that "Mary gave birth to her Son when she was about thirteen or fourteen years of age."
DeleteHoo
bach:
DeleteTraditional Europeans never saw Jews as an inferior race to be exterminated based on biological science-- the slogan that Germany must protect itself by "Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" is a fine precis of Nazi racial policy, that the full title of Origin of Species.
Michael,
DeleteNo, but traditional Europeans were happy to expel Jews (as the Nazis were considering doing by deporting them to Madagascar) or to indulge in violent pogroms when they needed a scapegoat in times of disaster, such as the Black Death.
Hitler hated the Jews because he thought that they were traitors and harming the war effort. He thought exterminating the Jews would make Germany stronger and more united.
Man.... I went and made Tacos for the gang, and now look at this thread.
DeleteYou sure kicked the hornets nest, Mike.
I don't really know where to begin....
Let's try here:
Hoo,
"Darwin wasn't calling to exterminate inferior human races. He was merely stating a fact that they were being exterminated. "
I would agree with that, judging by what I have read of his work. He is far less enthusiastic about these urges than Huxley or the young Wells, for example. But it must be noted, Hoo, that he believed these people biologically 'inferior' and justified the position scientifically. That is the core of suggestion: That others used those justifications to bolster their own far less neutral position on the matter.
Torch,
"Says Crus. How do you deduce that from the quote? Does Darwin not want "inferior" races to fall away into extinction? "
I am not sure if this question is aimed at myself or Hoo. But I will attempt to answer it just the same.
I get the impressions I do from reading the entirety of his book 'Descent of Man'. It has been a while, I will grant; but, when I did read it through, the work itself seemed to be drenched with a kind of nihilistic futility. The genocides were predicted, rather than called for, so far as I can recall. The whole of his works had an air of the unavoidable about them. As or his personal feelings on whether it SHOULD happen and to whom by whom, I am far less certain. He came of as rather ambiguous.
It seemed to me that the impression he wanted to deliver is that such horrors would inevitably occur due to the very biology of man. One could look at this as a kind of preemptive excuse making, or alternately as a kind of Nietzsche-esque doom-saying. Either way, he wrote it for all to read.
Mike,
"[...]the Darwinian understanding of man was like an enzyme-- it sped up the dynamics of racial hatred and anti-semitism astronomically, because it offered a scientific imprimatur to man's basest instincts. If mankind was to prosper, the strong must exterminate the weak. It is an imperative of the species-- science says so."
Precisely what I was also driving at. Darwinism (and similar theories such as those of Haeckel) was used as a justification for the various genocidal and eugenic programs of regimes like (and including) the Nazis. One only has to read Mein Kampf to see this justification in black and white.
Finally on the paedophilia: The predation of prepubescent children (not teens) is abhorrent. It is a violation of innocence that creates the outrage, whether or not it is a biological urge in some very sick minded, evil people (as is sadism). They could resist the urge, but they choose (ie free will) to satiate it and in doing so succumb to one of the most vile temptations known to human kind.
As for the Virgin Mary... the title says it all. How old she was (teenager?) or whether that was culturally acceptable at the time is irrelevant. She did not have sex. She was not a 'victim' of anything during the Immaculate Conception. That she slept with God to conceive is a common (pagan rooted) misconception.
I hope that addresses some of the points at hand....
Now to my coffee and something sweet.
Crusader Rex,
Delete'You sure kicked the hornets' nest'.
Telling lies tends to do that.
Lies?
DeleteLet's see what Adolf Hitler himself said, shall we?
From Mein Kamp (Nation and Race, Chaper XI)
"Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable."
[...]
"If the process were different, all further and higher development would cease and the opposite would occur. For, since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health."
"Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people. North America, whose population consists in by far the largest part of Germanic elements who mixed but little with the lower colored peoples, shows a different humanity and culture from Central and South America, where the predominantly Latin immigrants often mixed with the aborigines on a large scale. By this one example, we can clearly and distinctly recognize the effect of racial mixture. The Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed, rose to be master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall a victim to defilement of the blood."
On the Jews...
"In the Jewish people the will to self-sacrifice does not go beyond the individual's naked instinct of self-preservation. Their apparently great sense of solidarity is based on the very primitive herd instinct that is seen in many other living creatures in this world. It is a noteworthy fact that the herd instinct leads to mutual support only as long as a common danger makes this seem useful or inevitable. The same pack of wolves which has just fallen on its prey together disintegrates when hunger abates into its individual beasts. The same is true of horses which try to defend themselves against an assailant in a body, but scatter again as soon as the danger is past."
As you can see from his ravings, Hitler did not justify what he was about to do with pseudo scientific blather.
Crusader Rex,
DeleteHitler was 'inspired' by nationalistic pseudoscientific genetics, but not by Darwinism. He persecuted the Jews as a scapegoat for Germany's defeat in the Great War for the mythical 'stab in the back'.
Bach,
DeleteHitler's inspiration are not what I am discussing here. That would require much more than a blog post reply and is not as simple as 'Darwin' or 'scapegoat'; even as much as we can construe.
It is, rather, the justifications that he and his movement made I am concerned with.
If you cannot pick out the natural selection blather from the ravings above (and there are entire chapters, speeches, interviews, and periodicals just like it!) then I would suggest having someone read the entire chapter of Mein Kampf (11) aloud to you.
If you simply choose not to see it... well then it is you who are lying...to yourself.
Crus,
DeleteSo when Hitler said "You can put two and two together," he relied on math to further his ideology and you should be concerned, too.
Right?
Hoo
The phony admiral:
DeleteTroi: "You wonder why I object against pedophilia?"
Yes. Rather than dodging the question by asking me a question, answer the question. How can a meat machine with no free will be held responsible for its behavior, shaped as it was by genetics and social contingencies?
That's a new question, and totally irrelevant. Who is "responsible" for The Fall? Was it Eve, or The Lord, shaped as she was by Him?
Did you marry your Hispanic Catholic housekeeper? Is that why you signed up with the pedophiles?
Hoo,
DeleteNo. That's not at all what I am getting at. The Nazis did indeed used mathematics and computers to calculate, for a single example, the numbers exterminated in the their gas chambers. But that does not mean we should abandon maths or computers. Mathematics did not, however, provide the twisted justification for genocide, merely the most efficient model.
The justification was to be found in Hitler's own words (above) about natural selection.
Does that mean we should abandon the theory for those reasons? No. I don't think so.
But, I think it would be wise to understand what the theory, when applied in a social setting (ie social Darwinism) to human beings (via policy) looks like.
It looks like Nazism.
Some (as Bach did on the next post) might argue that selective breeding has been around for centuries and hence the connection (clearly shown above) with natural selection is invalid.
That is a silly argument, but it does further illustrate the banality of the theory.
can we all just admit that darwin believed that blacks and monkeys were cousins? i suppose that's hard for people who are still clinging to the excuse that darwin really had a grudge against produce. i wonder how he determined which 'race' of cabbage was the favored one. i'm partial to red cabbage myself but surely that's all very subjective.
ReplyDeletenaidoo
"i wonder how he determined which 'race' of cabbage was the favored one. i'm partial to red cabbage myself but surely that's all very subjective."
ReplyDeleteThe proof, as they say, is in the coleslaw!
A big part of the problem here is that most of you, on whatever side, really do not understand the primary meaning of the word 'race' ... and, for that matter, the word 'species' -- I mean, this problem is even aside from the fact that far too many of you care only about squabbling, and certainly not about getting at the truth of anything.
ReplyDeleteMost of you think that the derivative sense of the word 'race' -- much beloved of leftists-- is its primary sense/meaning. You'd be completely thrown for a loop to encounter such utterly correct usage as in the phrases "the race of fishmongers" or "the French race", because you mistakenly believe that 'race' is about biology, and particularly about skin-color. It is not about either; it is about classifying entities (which may or may not be organisms, and may or may not be humans) according to some identified commonality -- thus, "the race of fishmongers" refers to all those who earn their livings selling fish, and "the French race" is another way to say "the French as distinct from, say, the English".