…and this is a 
D. James Kennedy: BUSTED!
Category: Creationism
Posted on: August 22, 2006 7:15 PM, by PZ Myers
The Anti-Defamation League has condemned Kennedy and Darwin's Deadly Legacy, and Francis Collins has announced that he is "appalled," calling the program "misguided and inflammatory." Whew. It looks like this bit of propaganda has blown up in their faces.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."
After being contacted by the ADL about his name being used to promote Kennedy's project, Dr. Collins said he is "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory," he told ADL.
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement:"This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.
"It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to "reclaim America for Christ" and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law."
Nice slam against the Christian Supremacists. Also, if you take a look at Coral Ridge Ministries' blurb for the program, there have been some changes. Last week's version is on the left, the current copy is on the right.
The one-hour program features Ann Coulter, author of Godless; Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler; Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution; Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial; Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box; Ian Taylor, author of In the Minds of Men, and Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project.
This 60 minute special featuring Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler, Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution; Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial; Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, and Ian Taylor, author of In the Minds of Men will show why evolution is a bad idea that should be discarded into the dustbin of history.
I wonder if they're frantically editing the show right now, rushing to expunge Collins from it? And isn't it interesting that Ann Coulter was also dropped from the list of featured commentators?
Comments
Oh - What shysters would associate with *that* show?
Now for two completely random links:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archive...
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archive...
Posted by: Rich | August 22, 2006 7:36 PM
I think Coulter is being put on the back shelf, behind the can of beets, until after the elections, just as you see Republican candidates hiding their Republican affiliation on web sites and tucking the old pics of them with GW Bush into the bottom desk drawer. They still like to pull them out and look at them, but they don't want to be seen in public with them until after elction time.
Posted by: QrazyQat | August 22, 2006 7:37 PM
Could it be that Coulter's never ending desperate need for attention has finally met its limit? Collins deserves a pat on the back despite his faith. He is not without some integrity. This certainly improves a dismal situation---slightly.
Posted by: B. B.Breece | August 22, 2006 7:43 PM
The fact that they're burying Coulter actually gives me a little twinge of hope. Hell, I'll take 'em where I can get 'em.
Posted by: nashtbrutusandshort | August 22, 2006 7:49 PM
Wow... looks like they've lost the only two names with any street cred outside of their sad, incestuous little industry. I, too, am curious about the absence of Ann Coulter's name from the subsequent blurb.
Posted by: RedMolly | August 22, 2006 7:51 PM
Since when has a rightwing christian ever let a jewish person ever get in the way of their agenda?
The oil execs have been using Israel's security as an excuse to take over the middle east oilfields for years.
This incident won't even slow them down a bit.
In fact I say it'll embolden them like never before.
It'll piss off so many of the anti-semites on the right that they'll be making southern crosses by the thousands in no time.
MYOB'
.
Posted by: MYOB | August 22, 2006 7:51 PM
Is it possible Coulter herself has withdrawn from the thing?
Posted by: Hank Fox | August 22, 2006 8:01 PM
Perhaps Coulter was infuriated at having her name associated with such inflammatory propaganda and demanded that it be removed.
Posted by: junk science | August 22, 2006 8:01 PM
Dr. Collins was scammed by the scammer par excellence. Dr Kennedy. Fortunately for us we can call them on their lies and we see the results of that immediately. The best thing we can do is to pass this information about Kennedy to as many people as possible. He has marginalized himself by lying and now must be put in the spotlight. Why did Dr. Kennedy willfully lie? If this Darwin to Hitler idea has validity then why do so many scientists think it is such a detestable pile of nonsense? Dr. Kennedy has shown his true colors so many times before. Lying aobut this is just the type of xianity I expect from him. Maybe we should start by saying "From Liars for Xianity" The life and times of James Kennedy. Or "How to be Xian without changing a thing"
Posted by: JamesR | August 22, 2006 8:04 PM
Well, it is well known what a stickler Coulter is for appropriate use of citations and quotes.
:O
Posted by: Coin | August 22, 2006 8:04 PM
Ann Coulter defines inflammatory propoganda.
Posted by: Hawkeye | August 22, 2006 8:15 PM
"Perhaps Coulter was infuriated at having her name associated with such inflammatory propaganda and demanded that it be removed."
***Spit take**** Pshhshhhtttttttt!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Siamang | August 22, 2006 8:20 PM
Nothing says that Mr Kennedy loves God more than the fact that he's breaking the commandments of "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness," "Love Thy Neighbor," and "Thou Shalt Not Take The Lord's Name In Vain," in order to gain more power over his percieved enemies and make a profit while doing so.
...
Hypocrite.
Posted by: Stanton | August 22, 2006 8:26 PM
Rich... what are those links? They seem broken.
Posted by: siamang | August 22, 2006 8:37 PM
Maybe Coulter was being injected into the program in the same way Collins was -- without her knowledge -- and when she found out she demanded an appearance fee. Just speculation.
Or maybe ... maybe so many people have been drawing little hitler moustaches on her book cover photo that Kennedy's crowd got queasy.
Posted by: Gerry L | August 22, 2006 8:40 PM
take 2..
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1448
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1432
(again, completely random)
Posted by: Rich | August 22, 2006 8:50 PM
Coral Ridge has fired back:
Apologies for posting their garbage.
http://www.coralridge.org/specialdocs/PR_ADL_Darwin.htm
Coral Ridge Ministries Answers Anti-Defamation League Blast Against New Darwin-Hitler TV Special
Fort Lauderdale, FL, August 22, 2006 -- Coral Ridge Ministries issued a call today for "more history and less hysteria" in response to harsh, unfounded Anti-Defamation League accusations leveled against a new Coral Ridge Ministries produced television special linking Charles Darwin to Adolf Hitler.
The special, Darwin's Deadly Legacy, which airs August 26 and 27 nationwide features historians and scholars who connect the dots between Hitler and the ideas penned by Darwin in his On the Origin of Species and later works.
When ADL National Director Abe Foxman, who has not viewed our television program, calls it "twisted" and asserts that "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people," he ignores the historical fact that Adolf Hitler was an evolutionist.
"Among German historians, there's really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist," according to historian Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler and a featured guest on the Coral Ridge Ministries television special. "He clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas," said Weikart.
British evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith wrote in the 1940s: "The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist. He has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."
Even leading evolutionist Niles Eldredge freely admits the link between Darwin and Hitler. Eldredge, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has written that "social Darwinism," which he regards as an illegitimate offspring of Darwin's theory, "has given us the eugenics movement and some of its darker outgrowths, such as the genocidal practices of the Nazis in World War II--where eugenics was invoked as a scientific rationale to go along with whatever other 'reasons' Hitler and his fellow Nazis had for the Holocaust."
But evolution was not incidental to Hitler's thought. It was a "central aspect of his worldview," according to Weikart, a leading scholar on the Darwin-Hitler nexus. "It drove pretty much everything that he did. It was not just a peripheral part of his ideology."
The argument for evolution's impact on Hitler is strengthened by the fact that Darwinian thought heavily influenced Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hitler was hardly alone in his racist ideas fueled by Darwin and his intellectual progeny, who include Ernst Haeckel and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics which was a critical component of the Nazi killing machine. Hitler, according to Weikart, "was drawing on what many other scholars, biologists, and geneticists in Germany were preaching and teaching in the early twentieth century."
Dr. D. James Kennedy, President of Coral Ridge Ministries and host of Darwin's Deadly Legacy, stated, "We have had nearly 150 years of the theory of Darwinian evolution. And what has it brought us--whether Darwin intended it or not? Millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed 'inferior,' the devaluing of human life, and increasing hopelessness. Darwin's legacy has been deadly indeed."
###
Coral Ridge Ministries has also published a companion book to the television special, Evolution's Fatal Fruit: How Darwin's Tree of Life Brought Death to Millions, which examines the social consequences of Darwin's theory. Written by Tom DeRosa, Executive Director of the Creation Studies Institute (an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries), the book explains how Hitler tried to use genocide to speed up evolution and reveals how the American eugenics movement is likewise indebted to Darwin.
To request review copies, or interviews with Dr. Kennedy, Darwin's Deadly Legacy producers Jerry Newcombe and John Rabe, or Evolution's Fatal Fruit author Tom DeRosa, please contact John Aman at j.aman@crministries.org or (954) 334-5330.
Coral Ridge Ministries is a Christian broadcasting organization with radio and television programming that reaches into 200 nations.
Posted by: Siamang | August 22, 2006 9:10 PM
I transcribed all of the dialogue spoken by Ann Coulter in the lengthy promo for Darwin's Deadly Legacy that was broadcast last weekend after D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Hour. You can check it out in Liar, liar. She was prominently featured in that promo and is appears in the preview currently on the Coral Ridge website. I think you can expect to see Coulter's anti-evolution rant featured in Kennedy's propaganda video.
Posted by: Zeno | August 22, 2006 9:10 PM
Coulter was taken off the list so it'll be a surprise when she jumps naked out of the cake shaped like the 10 Commandments tablets.
Oh, crap, now I blew the surprise, too.
Posted by: Jon H | August 22, 2006 9:10 PM
Maybe Coulter was being injected into the program in the same way Collins was -- without her knowledge -- and when she found out she demanded an appearance fee.
Probably. Or she objected to being in an idiotic propaganda stunt that she didn't come up with?
Posted by: Kayla | August 22, 2006 9:19 PM
You know, California State University, Stanislaus, in the Central Valley city of Turlock, is a nice little college. I have good friends who teach there. Still, Turkey Tech is not the place to find "leading scholars" on the burning issues of the day. This shows the lengths to which Kennedy and his Ministry of Truth have to go in order to dress up their lies with a veneer of scholarship.
Posted by: Zeno | August 22, 2006 9:21 PM
"Among German historians, there's really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist,"
I wonder if they'll mention that Darwin wasn't a social Darwinist.
Posted by: junk science | August 22, 2006 9:24 PM
Coral Ridge Ministries Answers Anti-Defamation League Blast Against New Darwin-Hitler TV Special
Fort Lauderdale, FL, August 22, 2006
Aw rats, I thought Kennedy would be turning over a new leaf after he got busted. I thought his next documentary would be called From Luther to Hitler or something. I thought he would be sprouting wings so he could fly out of his own
Posted by: 386sx | August 22, 2006 9:26 PM
While I have no personal stake in the issue, this comment is such a vicious, hateful slander that I feel as a human being I must speak against it.
...comparing these Demented Fuckwits to the incestuous is slandering the incestuous. :P
Posted by: Azkyroth | August 22, 2006 9:28 PM
Or [Coulter] objected to being in an idiotic propaganda stunt that she didn't come up with?
Kayla--If that's the case, you have to wonder if Kennedy asked anyone's permission before dragging their names into this televised cesspool?
Posted by: Molly, NYC | August 22, 2006 9:35 PM
I wonder if they'll mention that Darwin wasn't a social Darwinist.
Have they ever noticed that Christ wasn't a Christian?
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | August 22, 2006 9:35 PM
I seriously doubt it. Coulter spells "inflammatory propaganda" O-X-Y-G-E-N.
I suspect Gerry L's hypothesis is nearer the mark.
Posted by: Millimeter Wave | August 22, 2006 9:57 PM
A few regular posters here and on PT have shown in hitler's own words that he thought he was doing Christian work. Maybe those posters could send the relevant quotations to CRM?
Posted by: fnxtr | August 22, 2006 10:30 PM
Richard Weikart should be appalled too.
Posted by: Unsympathetic reader | August 22, 2006 11:33 PM
I thought Weikart's book was, itself, a PR production of the Discovery Institute -- they certainly flacked it like it was, even awarding him "fellow" status. (Do all these evil things lead back to Discovery Institute?)
I wonder how it is that German historians decided Hitler got his stuff from Darwin, when Hitler himself denied it. I wonder if Weikart, like most other Discovery Institute Fellows, has citation difficulties. Has anyone ever read his book? Anyone?
Posted by: Ed Darrell | August 22, 2006 11:34 PM
Oh, and now he's citing Niles Eldredge? Does Eldredge know that?
Posted by: Ed Darrell | August 22, 2006 11:59 PM
Plus, Red State Rabble had an exchange with Weikart, which shows, to my understanding, that Weikart has no compunction against putting words in Darwin's mouth. He quotes Darwin out of context, and then stretches to put new, dastardly meanings to what Darwin actually said. For example, when Darwin laments that aboriginals will probably be reduced in number by collisions with European cultures with guns, Weikart accuses Darwin of advocating the stuff Darwin actually laments.
Go see: http://tinyurl.com/m6qja
Posted by: Ed Darrell | August 23, 2006 12:08 AM
I've read bits of Weikart's essays from his site. He is a very fuzzy thinker. Or
at least a fuzzy writer. I hope he's a fuzzy thinker, otherwise he is dishonest,
in the way he says that Darwinism must be overthrown or else you'll have to
kill your babies. Or something like that. He's full of dark implications, short
on actual application to the real world.
rich
Posted by: Rich Hammett | August 23, 2006 12:23 AM
So Darwinism has negative implications for human nature. Freudianism does too, I guess. All this materialistic science looks at man and sees him as a wretched, animalistic cretin. Even if it doesn't presume to posit ethical axioms.
Tell me again, how does this differ from the concept of original sin?
Posted by: Max Udargo | August 23, 2006 12:53 AM
Sure, it's called Eugenics. It's nothing new, and didn't start with Hitler, nor Darwin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
People have always wanted to "improve" or "protect" the human race, or some small subset of it. The problem has always been, who gets to decide who is "superior", and who is allowed to breed or live? As an "enlightened" society, we've come to the conclusion that this isn't something we want to do, because it has lots of potential for abuse. That's why today we have the whole field of bioethics. Our scientific knowledge provides the potential for abuse, and so we remain on guard to prevent such abuse. Just because someone like Hitler takes an idea to its darkest extreme, doesn't mean that the idea is the "cause" of their monstrous acts, any more than a piece of knowledge is the "cause" of an act of virtuosity. It's the person, not the knowledge that's to blame.
Nerve agents are the source of seriously nasty chemical weapons. Yet anyone can buy them off the store shelves as insecticides. Should we demonize the developers of insecticides because some people use that knowledge to kill other people? Fire is a very useful took but some people use fire to kill other people.
Get over it.
Posted by: Scott | August 23, 2006 1:26 AM
Science does no such thing, that's just a lie you believe.
Posted by: Zarquon | August 23, 2006 1:27 AM
What Eugenicists fail to realize is that if a people aren't fit to live, they probably wouldn't be living. And if you breed the best people into a slightly better people and send the SBP's into war so that they might die, you lose the genes for the slightly better people and then the entire race would be slightly less good.
Posted by: Bobryuu | August 23, 2006 2:04 AM
Max Udargo:
There are a lot of ways one could answer your question, but I think the most obvious answer is this: the evolutionary endorsement of common descent (and hence our animal nature) is based on facts about the natural world, and speaks to our unity with the rest of life, and this can be a very ennobling conception. Original sin is not based on facts, and claims that we are by our nature in someway degraded, alienated and isolated from the rest of Creation. It is, to put it mildly, not ennobling.
Comments? Scott
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | August 23, 2006 2:08 AM
PZ:
If, as we hope, the dog-and-pony show from Kennedy's outfit is "blowing up in their faces", it is only because a lot of us stood together shoulder-to-shoulder in support of evolution, and took steps to take the challenge to them. I thank you for doing your part.
Scott
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | August 23, 2006 2:27 AM
I don't know, maybe I'm just bored, but I am looking forward to watching the outcome of this trainwreck when it is aired. Is it too much to hope for that this destroys the careers of these shills? Probably...
Too bad the "donations" on coral ridge's website for acquiring the DVD and book are not voluntary like they are over at FotF....
Posted by: jeffperado | August 23, 2006 3:00 AM
This is just another case of the ADL pushing its personal agenda. Foxman considers himself and his organization as the final arbiter on how to use the Holocaust. Please consult him before you can say anything about it.
At its origin, ADL was an honest organization working for Americans, now it lobbies primarily for Israel. From their site,
"ADL seeks to explain the political and security issues confronting Israel, educates about the complexities of the peace process, urges support of Israel and explains why a strong Israel is important and valuable to the United States and the Western world. The League also combats efforts to delegitimize Israel by the Arab world, the international community and the media."
http://www.adl.org/focus_sheets/focus_overview.asp
This is typical self-serving ADL propaganda.
Posted by: bernarda | August 23, 2006 3:12 AM
Another way of looking at it: While the naturalistic depiction is of humanity as being an animal like all other animals, humanity nonetheless has mananged to develop greater intelligence, imagination, and compassion than our nearest species relatives.
That doesn't mean that more should be read into that than there is: evolution did not have that as a goal, nor does evolution always mean mental uplift and improvement, nor do all of the individuals of humanity exhibit those better qualities. But progress does exist as a possibility; out of all of the potential results of evolutionary variations, there is hope for improvement in the natural world, and in a species' ability to understand the world and cooperate with each other.
The idea of original sin is ultimately a despairing one: That the best of God's creatures, by one single action, utterly destroyed all hope of goodness in this world, tainting it with a pollution that utterly stains it even today. There is the further sense that God has withdrawn from his creation, and the absolute best that he can do about the taint in the natural world is to eventually utterly destroy the world and every living thing in it.
Posted by: Owlmirror | August 23, 2006 3:25 AM
Coulter probably didnt object to being used without her permission in a propoganda piece. She probably objected to not being paid.
Posted by: drtomaso | August 23, 2006 3:33 AM
Take a look at Coral Ridge's experts.
http://www.coralridge.org/darwin/experts.asp?ID=crm&ec=I1301
Posted by: DEW | August 23, 2006 5:56 AM
If Coulter jumps naked out of a cake, the audience might face some other, more profound surprises.
But back (sorta) on topic:
Utter tripe. But wait! It can be salvaged with a bit of text replacement:
s/[evolution|Darwin]/Wagner/
Posted by: Grumpy Physicist | August 23, 2006 7:40 AM
Posted by: swivel-chair | August 23, 2006 7:40 AM
I wonder how many of these right-wing nuts are social darwinists themselves? Don't they realize that selection among variants by competition underlie both evolution and capitalism? If they really believe their own argument against evolution, shouldn't they also be against capitalism?
Posted by: CursedOne | August 23, 2006 8:18 AM
At its origin, ADL was an honest organization working for Americans, now it lobbies primarily for Israel.
Patty Buchanan, is that you?
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | August 23, 2006 8:40 AM
"You can get the show's compainion book, "Evolution's Fatal Fruit", for a donation of $1, but the DVDs & tapes all have fixed minimums."
Cheap bas#@&%s! Guess I won't be adding their stuff to my eBay account. FotF is MUCH more generous.
This whole situation, just like all creationists activities, boils down to them attempting to "prove" the existence of their God by disproving established scientific fact. Of course they have no qualms with lying and cheating to advance their aims. I mean seriously, is their God that weak? Is he that puny that they have to lie to prove he exists? What does that say about their faith? What does that say about their God?
Posted by: paleotn | August 23, 2006 9:11 AM
Dr. Collins said he is "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory," he told ADL.
I am shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Posted by: quork | August 23, 2006 10:07 AM
Has anyone inundated CRM's site with disapproving letters yet? I propose we do so and make a case out of this ASAP.
Posted by: BlueIndependent | August 23, 2006 10:11 AM
Posted by: quork | August 23, 2006 10:12 AM
Someone needs to write up something for the mainstream press and really make this thing come around and bite CRM inthe ass.
If, as they assert, (ab)using a scientifc theory about the diversity of life to support extermination of large groups of people makes the theory bad/evil/whatever, then things like 9/11 can, with much less mental gymnastics, quite easily lead us to the idea that religion is bad/evil/whatever, right?? :D
Of course, we know how they will react, but they want to eat their cake and have it too, and we should not let them get away with this very obvious hypocrisy.
Cheers.
Posted by: Fastlane | August 23, 2006 10:13 AM
Why is the ADL concerned only about Collins? There are probably other people featured in the show who do not want to be in it, either.
I think that under the "fair use" doctrine, Collins and others might not have any legal recourse if Coral Ridge Ministries insists on including them in the program against their will.
To me, the most important question is whether the historical facts presented in the show are accurate. Which historical facts are selected and how they are interpreted are different matters.
I feel that the connections between social Darwinism and Nazism should be discussed openly. There is no question in my mind that social Darwinism or something similar influenced the Nazis, but I feel that this TV show exaggerates that influence. And I don't feel that this influence counts against Darwinism -- Darwinism should be evaluated just on its own scientific merits.
ADL's Foxman does not explain how the show insults the Nazis' victims. All he said was, "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people." But the ADL was silent when a book titled "IBM and the Holocaust" claimed that Hitler needed IBM's help to carry out this plan -- see http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
To the ADL, anything that in its opinion "trivializes" the holocaust is verboten. The ADL has its own ax to grind and should not be taken seriously.
And what about the Darwin Day Celebration's efforts to associate Darwin with Lincoln? Isn't that propaganda too? What in hell connection is there between the two men other than a shared official birthdate?
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | August 23, 2006 10:44 AM
Adolf Hitler also used words. Let us not forget that it was Gutenberg's printing of the Bible that greatly expanded Western literacy -- and those Bibles were printed from cotton rag paper made from the clothing left by those dying in the Black Death.
So clearly, reading, literacy, and printing the Bible lead directly to the Black Death and Nazi Genocide.
I'm going to stop reading right now... er, now... now. Now.
Posted by: El Cid | August 23, 2006 10:59 AM
The BIG question -- what could Collins have possibly said that could be interpreted as supporting the theme of this TV program? I am really curious. Honest.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | August 23, 2006 10:59 AM
Harbison, I showed you from the ADL site that it is an Israeli front group. What more proof do you need? Foxman seems to think that "Holocaust" is a registered trademark by the ADL.
Posted by: bernarda | August 23, 2006 11:12 AM
I have great faith that evolution will deal with these occultists.
Posted by: John Kee | August 23, 2006 11:21 AM
Science does no such thing, that's just a lie you believe.
You keep working on those reading comprehension skills, you hear?
Posted by: Max Udargo | August 23, 2006 12:01 PM
Comments? Scott
I don't know. Reading my post I can see how the point might not be clear at first, but it certainly seems to me that by the final line it would be obvious.
It had simply occurred to me that all this whining about the negative social implications of materialistic sciences that see humans as animals doesn't make much sense when their alternative is a worldview that regards humans as sinful creatures who are born bad. How is that any better?
Sigh. I don't see how it is any better, okay?
Although it occurs to me now that Original Sin is the problem to which they have the solution. So they would rather humans accept that they are wretched creatures for the right reason. If you are a wretched creature because grandpa was a monkey, then what good is Jesus going to do you?
(And yes, I understand that grandpa wasn't a monkey and we didn't descend from monkeys, etc.)
Posted by: Max Udargo | August 23, 2006 12:12 PM
Did anyone else notice that in the original WND article, the caption "The results of Darwin's theories" underneath the picture of a Holocaust prison camp has no question mark, but after ADL released their response, and WND rejoined, they changed the caption so that it says, "The results of Darwin's theories?"
Interesting and politically-correct maneuver, eh? Elsewise, WND would almost classify as a bastion of fringe stupidity...
Posted by: Daniel Morgan | August 23, 2006 12:15 PM
They're desperate to associate Hitler with social Darwinism (which has little to do with real Darwinism, let alone modern evolutionary theory, which has evolved quite a bit since Darwin's day) in order to distract people from his avowed Christianity. And the way his rise to power was only possible because of the longstanding tradition of hating Jews, sponsored for centuries by Christian churches.
If there was one primary cause of the beliefs of the Nazis and their ability to rise to power and act on those beliefs, Christianity is that cause.
Now, of course, this is not to say that any modern Christian is responsible for Nazism. Most of them weren't even born yet. Indeed, this form of reasoning simply underlines the invalidity of collective-responsibility reasoning.
But the main reason some Christians are so frantic to pin Hitler on someone else is to detach him from themselves. (This is similar to the way they describe Stalinist/Maoist socialism as "atheist" - ignoring the way it deifies its leaders and its roots in religious authoritarianism.)
Posted by: Chris | August 23, 2006 12:19 PM
So the ADL despises Kennedy?
What else is new? They despise Christians generally, almost as much as PZ does.
But unfortunately, be that as it may, Darwin realls WAS a racist. sexist, Victorian elitist.
Of course, the defense often is that he was a product of his time.
Granted.
And so he was a rascist, sexist, Vitorian elitist.
And he praised the work of Francis Galton, best known in our own time as the father of eugenics and loved by Hiter, in The Descent of man.
Posted by: Goldstein | August 23, 2006 1:21 PM
When so called christians spew this kind of hate and intolerance, I always have to remind myself that we were given a free will by God, hopefully to do and choose thr right thing.
If we take their logic further, then how do they explain all the Holy wars fought before Darwin?
How many people have been killed and tortured in the name of religion or race
BD(before Darwin)?
Shouldn't the US be included with Hitler because of our Adventures in Iraq?
We don't like their leader, their religion or their politics so we are killing them to make them more like us????
Posted by: Diane | August 23, 2006 1:31 PM
Far more were killed after Darwin that before, Diane.
Practitioners of atheistic a secular philosophies killed 100 million people in the 20th dentury alone, far outstripped the deaths from so called religious was in the past 2000 years.
(The Black Book of Communism, Harvare Univeristy Press.
Also see War Against the Weak, www.waragainsttheweak.com)
Posted by: Goldstein | August 23, 2006 1:35 PM
Goldstein, you fail to note that the Anti-Defamation League does not hate Christians at all, let alone "hate them as much as PZ does." The Anti-Defamation League has no tolerance for those Christians who abuse their own faith in order to promote hate and Anti-Semitism, or who attempt to politically manipulate tragedies in order to turn a profit, like what Mr Kennedy is doing right now.
...
Furthermore, if Charles Darwin was a racist like you claim, why was it that he thought that the American slave-owners were fat hypocrites for claiming to be God-Loving Christians, or that he often argued with Captain Fitzgerald of the Beagle that slaves were not, in fact, happy with their lot? If Charles Darwin was a racist, then does that make Queen Victoria an even bigger racist because she ran an empire that made a point of exploiting all of their colonies with a bare minimum of concern for the various indigenous peoples there? People who call Charles Darwin a racist appear extremely hypocritical when they don't mention Queen Victoria being racist, also. They also appear quite hypocrital in that they never seem to get around to mentioning that George Cuvier, a Creationist contemporary of Darwin, was a racist, too, given as how, unlike Darwin, Cuvier thought that Africans were of a different (and inferior) species than Europeans.
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Also, Goldstein, did you honestly expect Charles Darwin to openly denounce his cousin?
Posted by: Stanton | August 23, 2006 1:35 PM
Fascism has nothing to do with atheism or Darwin.
Posted by: Steve_C | August 23, 2006 1:52 PM
Indeed, Fascism involves deification of the "Grand Leader," and how "The Grand Leader Is Never Wrong Because (God/Party Doctrine/Grand Leader) Says So!"
Posted by: Stanton | August 23, 2006 1:57 PM
Essentially, their argument amounts to the logical fallacy of guilt by association. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html
IMO, thier argument is logically equivalent to asserting that the Theory of Flight is responsible for events of 9/11/01 and should therefore be discarded.
The fact that terrorists used the knowledge of flight to perpetrate such a heinous act, does not implicate the theory or those who developed and refined it.
Likewise, even if Hitler used evolutionary theory (or Social Darwinism) to his twisted ends, the theory itself should not stand accused by association.
The concluding statement (the theory of evolution should be discarded into the dustbin of history) is a consequence of the belief that evolutionary theory has produced nothing of value. No doubt they will site Math 7:15-20 (figs don't grow on a rose bush).
Posted by: John | August 23, 2006 2:05 PM
The Holocaust was simply the end result of 2000 years of Christian Anti-Semitism, the secret desire to deal with the Christ Killers who we all know took the blood of innocent Christians for their evil ritual. This was all part of the World Zionist plan for global domination.
Don't rightly know where Darwin fitted in all of this, but I sure as hell know how the majority of the Catholic and Protestant churches reacted to the Nazi regime. With silence or approval.
Posted by: commander ogg | August 23, 2006 2:13 PM
Of course, the defense often is that Darwin was a product of his time. Granted. And so he was a rascist, sexist, Vitorian elitist.
Posted by: Goldstein
So when are you going to Washington to crusade against the Monument of:
And have you dropped the "Emanuel" (with one "m") before the "Goldstein"?
Posted by: Foggg | August 23, 2006 2:24 PM
If one wanted to make a historical correlation between one instance of human culture and mass slaughter -- as some commenters are doing above connecting pre- versus post-Darwin slaughters -- it would be far more logical and easy to tie mass slaughters of civilians with industrialization than with a scientific understanding of evolution.
After all, a dictator who had tanks, guns, bombs, communications, roads, and fairly centralized industrialized agriculture could just as easily slaughter his own population if he believed in Darwinist evolution or if he believed that he himself created the Universe.
What matters are the tanks, guns, bombs, communications, roads, and industrialized agriculture, not society's views on "evolution."
King Leopold slaughtered the innocents in the Congo with guns and with fear, not with lectures on the Origin of Species.
Posted by: El Cid | August 23, 2006 2:59 PM
Coulter isn't off the list - she's the featured star at the top of the release:
They got her mug on the page!
Posted by: Chasm | August 23, 2006 3:13 PM
Far more were killed after Darwin that before, Diane.
A fan of false causal fallacies I see. Try again, Goldstein. There's no way you can point to Darwin's theories of biological evolution and make the case that he says society is structured this way as well. Oh, and eugenics != evolution, so go back to the hole you came from and read some actual science.
Christians practicing their faith were responsible for:
-The Inquisition
-The slaughter of the Cathars and the Bogomils
-The flaying of Hypatia
-The Crusades
-St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
-Many other vile acts of cruelty
See, that's how you make a causal argument. I could say that this means Christianity is evil, but I'll leave it at that.
Posted by: JackGoff | August 23, 2006 4:18 PM
I don't think that social Darwinism directly caused the holocaust, but I do think that social Darwinism helped cause the Nazi programs for eliminating mentally and physically impaired people, homosexuals, etc.. So I think it can be argued that social Darwinism helped create a "slippery slope" of believing that it was morally OK to exterminate undesirables and that this slippery slope was a contributing cause of the holocaust.
Anyway, as has been pointed out on this thread, the ADL does not have a copyright on historical interpretation of the holocaust.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | August 23, 2006 5:04 PM
stanton obviously did not read my posts about the racist ADL.
He should do so.
Posted by: bernarda | August 23, 2006 5:13 PM
social Darwinism helped create a "slippery slope"
Ok, but was Darwin's theory of natural selection about social constructs? NO! Try again, Larry.
Posted by: JackGoff | August 23, 2006 5:17 PM
I heard Kennedy interviewed on Fresh Air. I can't decide whether he is a particularly dangerous con man who knows exactly what he's doing, or if he is truly stupid enough to believe that crap he spews. His whole argument for a Christian theocracy seems to be rest solely on the fact that the word "Creator" was used in the Declaration of Independence. Which to Kennedy means the Founding Fathers were obviously fundamentalist Christians who intended America to be a fundamentalist Xian theocracy. In any case that interview has to be heard to be believed. You should check it out sometime. He is truly a wackjob.
Posted by: r€nato | August 23, 2006 5:51 PM
"Eugenics is applied Darwinism," said Coulter. "And it sticks out like a sore thumb that all of these German eugenicists preceding the Nazi regime were enthusiastic Darwinists."
well actually eugenics is a result ultimately of the work that Gregor Mendel did. He is considered the father of genetics.
And Mendel was... a monk!
Christianity, j'accuse!
Posted by: r€nato | August 23, 2006 6:01 PM
"Since when has a right-wing Christian ever let a Jewish person ever get in the way of their agenda?"
I can't help but notice that this can be taken in an entirely different context -- something along the same lines as Ambrose Bierce definition of a Christian as "one who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."
Posted by: Turcano | August 23, 2006 6:49 PM