…and this is a 
The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled
Category: Creationism
Posted on: March 28, 2008 9:48 PM, by PZ Myers
I have to make this really, really simple for the "Hitler was an evolutionist" dimwits.
There is a central, incredibly obvious fact in Darwin's insight.
If members of a population die or are killed off, they will leave no descendants for subsequent generations.
It isn't razzle-dazzle genius. Any idiot can figure that one out — and many idiots have. Farmers have known it for millennia, when they set aside particularly fruitful seed stock or especially robust farm animals for breeding, and eat the rest. Nazis used this elementary logic when they decided to exterminate Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals. Eugenicists used it when they wanted to argue for shifting the distribution of certain properties in a population.
It ain't "Darwinism". It's self-evident, obvious, selbstverständlich, apparent, évidente, transparent. The KKK knows it, farmers know it, dog and horse breeders know it, the Nazis knew it, they didn't need Darwin to spell it out for them. Blaming that on Darwin is awesomely stupid.
Darwin's real contribution, the one that had everyone smacking themselves in the forehead and wondering why they didn't think of it first, was the realization that the natural environment does the killing — that natural selection shapes heredity. The idea of culling populations is not only so easy that a hate-mongering cretin can think of it, but that weather, bacteria, viruses, parasites, predators, etc. have been doing it for eons, with no intelligence required, and that mindless microorganisms have been far greater agents of hereditary change than the worst the Nazis ever accomplished; does Charles Darwin also get the blame for that? Darwin realized that the environment has consequences and can shape the generation-by-generation passage of hereditary traits in populations, and that examination of the natural world reveals that it has been doing exactly that. He realized that ubiquitous forces that are so simple we take them for granted have been quietly and slowly sculpting our heredity since the beginning of life on earth.
When clueless creationists argue that Darwin led to Hitler, or worse, throw away buckets of money making elaborate propaganda films arguing such nonsense, it's worse than inane. It's as if they have completely missed the point of the idea they are damning.
Comments
(standing round of applause) Best post yet, Professor Myers, and thank you.
Posted by: speedwell | March 28, 2008 9:53 PM
Great post!
Posted by: dox^2 | March 28, 2008 9:57 PM
Damn, you are on a roll these last few days, churning out gem after gem!
Posted by: Coturnix | March 28, 2008 9:57 PM
Nicely put. However the obviousness of your point is likely to be lost on those who believe the tripe. Recognizing obvious things is not their strong suit.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 28, 2008 9:59 PM
Well, done; good frame.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | March 28, 2008 10:00 PM
Let's see, Martin Luther, father of the Protestant branch of Christianity, wrote a little screed. No, I don't mean the one he nailed to the church door, the other one, the one Hilter liked. It was called:
"On the Jews and their Lies."
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hitler+martin+luther&btnG=Google+Search
Hitler got his ideas from the same guy that started Protestant Christianity.
Fight fire with bigger, badder fire.
Posted by: SteveC | March 28, 2008 10:00 PM
I'm afraid this is still to complicated. It's more then a whole paragraph of words and it doesn't mention Jeebus anywhere.
Posted by: Dutch Delight | March 28, 2008 10:06 PM
A thought experiment:
Take away Darwin from the stage of 19th century Europe, pretend he never existed. How does that affect the slide of Europe into the early and mid 20th century? Not much at all. The religious and nationalistic intrigues and wars, the economic and social upheavals that were the foundation for 20th century European fanaticism, they unfold pretty much unaltered by the absence of a theory about the relatedness of living things. The Christian (yes, they were Christian thru and thru) zealots who (eventually) gave us Hitler would have latched onto any old scientific idea to promote their cause.
OTOH, take away Christianity from the historical stage. Erase it from Europe's past. Guess what! No Holocaust.** For the simple reason that the foundations of anti-Semitism in Europe are gone.
The Holocaust, Hitler, the deranged leaders of mid 20th century Europe, they're all the children of Christianity. Not Darwin.
** I'm not so naive as to be claiming that Europe would have been a peaceful Eden without the scourge of Christianity. Unfortunately, that scourge has no monopoly on inhuman behavior.
Posted by: Art | March 28, 2008 10:09 PM
I second the much-deserved ovation.
It's just stunning how we've gotten to this point, isn't it? Creationists seem to seek to defame a great man of science so as to justify their own gleaming ignorance. Indeed, they really are trying awfully hard to find a place in this challenging society for their superstitious nonsense.
Is it simple laziness of thought that drives them? I mean, yes. Biology class was a bitch for me, but never once did I stop and choose the easy way out by saying some magic man created everything and that's that. I'd like to think I'm better for it too.
It's a crushing thing to watch America continually fail and grow dumber and dumber as people concoct the easiest answer available and try to promote it as a legitimate course of study. There is absolutely nothing to intelligent design which would separate a college professor's mind from that of a garden-variety five-year-old. Only the vocabulary is different, I guess.
Sorry about that. It just pisses me off.
Posted by: Dan | March 28, 2008 10:13 PM
It's as if they have completely missed the point of the idea they are damning.
Ah, but that's exactly it! It isn't just that they're missing the point, they're blind to it - everything from animal husbandry to Nazi eugenics requires some sort of human agency. Corn, Briards, and the mythical Nazi "aryan" are all intelligently designed... by people. In a spiritual/magical tradition, that same kind of agency needs to be present in the [super]natural world. Since obviously the weather and geology and microorganims don't have that kind of agency, they couldn't possibly be responsible for the kinds of selection that we ourselves do. Really, this isn't a view that relies on the existence of a conscious creator as it is one that requires humans to be above nature (and, consequently, that there also be something like us and above us to explain why we're as clever as we are).
Posted by: Jeremy | March 28, 2008 10:15 PM
You forgot "selvindlysendede".
Thank you. That was nice a succint. Pretty sure that I'm smarter for reading it. Never paying attention to any biology before encountering this blog has undoubtedly left me with tonnes of misconceptions. But every day I'm here I believe I lose some of them. I may not get as smart as your students, but I do appreciate your taking your time to blog so much.
Posted by: Sili | March 28, 2008 10:16 PM
Don't forget the Dawkins Rap : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFXIALf9zDA
Eugenie Scott's dancing is particularly enticing, but you do a mean rap too PZ:-)
Posted by: Brian Coughlan | March 28, 2008 10:17 PM
Youll never get religious people to stop spouting off about Hitler wether its on evolution or atheism because its their big gun in the arsenal of fear. Tell younguns about hell tell adults about Hitler to keep them inline and believing it works too sadly.
Posted by: jaffacakes | March 28, 2008 10:18 PM
They sell the "sizzle" and not the steak.
Posted by: teac | March 28, 2008 10:24 PM
http://digg.com/comedy/Richard_Dawkins_Beware_the_Believers
Diggit!
Posted by: Justin | March 28, 2008 10:27 PM
Jeez, haven't they even read the Bible? Specifically, Gen 30:35-43? Even Jacob knew about selective breeding (though he had to start it off with a few carved poplar sticks). If they're going to blame the holocaust on anyone, maybe it should be Jacob.
Posted by: catman | March 28, 2008 10:32 PM
Hitler's policies were developed from the Eugenics movement which had it's origins in Mid-West US. Protestantism.
Posted by: tsiatko | March 28, 2008 10:36 PM
Well, this is the part that backs the theistic evolutionists into the corner, doesn't it? In order to accept the idea that the Creator is responsible for setting up evolution and letting it "roll" they have to go far beyond theodicy to justify their faith in a God Who Has Mysterious Ways; and that Hitler would be far more comforting. With Natural Selection, their God is no mere tweaker of genes at opportune moments. It is a Creator who programs through destruction, hunger and all manner of death.
The Theistic Evolutionists Creator, if it had the foresight they wish to see which leads to the Glory of Man, designed the system of natural selection to weaken the ability of predecessor iterations of hominids to reproduce faster than they died off.
It's enough to turn an agnostic into an atheist, it is.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | March 28, 2008 10:40 PM
You're going to hate me for this . . .
Great reframing.
Sometimes all it take is saying it in a different way, and it all just clicks. You didn't say anything new for me, but turning it around a little bit gives a great demonstration of exactly where some people get it wrong and how to correct them. Not that it will help much against all the closed minds in the world, but the key is to keep going at it and going at it, like a bulldog, or maybe a squid whose shark is trying to get away.
I plan to bookmark this page and pass it on at the first relevant opportunity.
Posted by: SamDyuaa | March 28, 2008 10:44 PM
"...or worse, throw away buckets of money making elaborate propaganda films arguing such nonsense..."
Well, it provides employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that's the main thing
Posted by: Wazza | March 28, 2008 10:47 PM
PZ... eloquently and succinctly put as always... so when are you going to publish a book of your thoughts?
Posted by: SteadyEddy | March 28, 2008 10:59 PM
It's as if they have completely missed the point of the idea they are damning.
More like, coming at it from the other end, like this:
--We know God made the world and all its animals.
--Darwin sez evolution did it. (note the reification here -- a process is made into a thing by means of the language used to describe it)
--Ergo Darwin is defying God.
Well duh. If we say the river carved out great caves in limestone, not even the most confuzzled deist will say "Not so! God did it!"
But when the river in question is the river of life, a few steps removed from the movement of water but quite similar in effect, confuzzlement is rife.
Noni
Pharyngula's token pagan mystic
.
Posted by: Noni Mausa | March 28, 2008 11:04 PM
Should we then blame Newton for discovering the laws of motion that allowed the Nazis to develop the V2 rockets?
Posted by: Mark Borok | March 28, 2008 11:05 PM
Gott Mit Uns! Stein shit on every Jew slaughtered by the Nazis. The Nazis practiced industrilized murder, not any form of natural selection. My father saw the death camps. He saw women hanging from trees with their stomachs slashed open and their babies hanging out like hogs to slaughter. This slaughter was done in the name of the Christian God, not science. I can only assume that Stein is that much of a money whore to side with a group of creationist wingnuts that would be the first in line to push him into the furnace if given a chance. I simply don't understand!!
Posted by: king j | March 28, 2008 11:06 PM
Not just selective breeding. The idea that your particular ethnic/cultural group is the Chosen People (a concept hard to reconcile with Darwins own work) and that other groups can or should be eliminated as needed predates Darwin by quite a bit.
There's some old book that talks about this. I'm hear it's rather more widely read Darwins works, and Hitler and his cronies were fond of it.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=9&chapter=15
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=5&chapter=2&version=31
Uh huh. That doesn't sound anything like what Hitler had in mind, does it ?
Posted by: Reed | March 28, 2008 11:06 PM
Oh come on, PZ, next you'll be claiming that genocide is a concept that dates back to the Bible.
What? Who are these "Midianites" you speak of? (Numbers 31:7-18)
Hmm. Well, but that's not really genocide. Moses told them to spare the female virgins.
Besides, it's not like any modern Christian leader would defend such a slaughter, right?
"God told the Israelites to kill them all: men, women and children; to destroy them. And that seems like a terrible thing to do. Is it or isn't it? Well, let us assume that there were two thousand of them or ten thousand of them living in the land, or whatever number, I don't have the exact number, but pick a number. And God said, 'Kill them all.' Well, that would seem hard, wouldn't it? But that would be 10,000 people who probably would go to hell. But if they stayed and reproduced, in thirty, forty or fifty or sixty or a hundred more years there could conceivably be ... ten thousand would grow to a hundred, a hundred thousand conceivably could grow to a million, and there would be a million people who would have to spend an eternity in Hell! And it is far more merciful to take away a few than to see in the future a hundred years down the road, and say, 'Well, I'll have to take away a million people, that will be forever apart from God because the abomination is there.' It's like a contagion. God saw that there was no cure for it. It wasn't going to change, and all they would do is cause trouble for the Israelites and pull the Israelites away from God and prevent the truth of God from reaching the earth. And so God in love -- and that was a loving thing -- took away a small number that he might not have to take away a large number."
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/patmidframe.htm
Posted by: jdb | March 28, 2008 11:15 PM
This is a great post that ought to end all debate (as if there really is any), but how long before some creationist claims PZ secretly supports the Nazis by twisting this quote?
Posted by: jjberg | March 28, 2008 11:25 PM
It would require divine intervention to keep evolution by natural selection from occurring.
Posted by: jeh | March 28, 2008 11:31 PM
Another great post PZ!!
Posted by: bobby | March 28, 2008 11:33 PM
Clearly the solution is that all citizens of the United States with a PhD* (that didn't come in the mail) should be able to invoke the right of "Prima nocturn".
If we can't teach them out, we'll breed them out...
Who says we can't learn from Mel Gibson.
*in order to extradite the process, those currently enrolled in grad school are also eligible.
Posted by: Abyss | March 28, 2008 11:33 PM
This is NOT to disagree, since I agree completely, but I'm currently in the middle of reading Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", and one of his main theses is that what makes Darwin's idea so revolutionary is that he identifies evolution as an ALGORITHMIC process: variations in output get filtered through environmental factors, and then have offspring whose variations etc.... I suppose it's just the same thing with the camera focused on a different area, metaphorically speaking.
Posted by: Vic | March 28, 2008 11:36 PM
Here is what really kills me about the people who argue against Darwin: they think that Darwin claimed we descended from apes, which he never did....he suggested that we and the apes have common ancestors, which is not the same as one being the ancestor of the other.
But if you get very far into an argument with one of them, pretty soon it'll be "Well, all I know is I didn't come from no monkey"
Posted by: Matt | March 28, 2008 11:42 PM
Ok, It'll be me
PYGMIES AND DWARVES
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 28, 2008 11:51 PM
last year I visited the Creation Museum. Every time someone said god created man from the dust of the earth, I'd yell "I didn't come from no dirt!"
Posted by: Abyss | March 28, 2008 11:54 PM
That wasn't written by Luther. No - I'm sure it must have been Darwin who wrote that
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/2909/jewlyingra2.jpg
Posted by: Quidam | March 28, 2008 11:54 PM
Hmm. The Assyrians effectively eradicated the Israelites around 700 BCE. I don't think Darwin was around then.
Posted by: thadd | March 29, 2008 12:04 AM
It is even simpler than that. If you kill people you don't like, then they are gone forever.
So simple, a fundie Death Cultist can understand it. Not hard to see where the next Nazis mass murderers could come from.
Posted by: raven | March 29, 2008 12:05 AM
some people are so stubbornly ignorant that it is difficult to talk to them about ordinary things let alone more profound ideas like Evolution. Very clear when explained like that and it does seem obvious now that it seems incredible to me that no one thought of it before Darwin.
the other problem that those who are skeptics of evolution is the time involved. I do not have any idea how that can be made clear when some I have talked to do not believe that radio-carbon dating is real. How long is long ago?
you can say that the processes that are going on today are the same ones that where going on in the past and another to get the truly ignorant to understand it.
I second the motion that PZ should write a book!
frogy
Posted by: uncle frogy | March 29, 2008 12:24 AM
Hold on, the Bible has spotted animals being separated from non-spotted animals in order to produce a certain breed. Couldn't it be said then that Hitler based his eugenics beliefs upon the Bible? Since the story is in the Old Testament, the scripture of the Jews then we can, using Expelled logic, blame the Jews for the Holocaust.
Posted by: Doug | March 29, 2008 12:35 AM
As I understand it, the most recent common ancestor of humans and the handful of extant primates we identify as "apes" would, if alive today, be classified as an ape.
Nevertheless, humans are not descended from MODERN apes.
Posted by: Azkyroth | March 29, 2008 12:59 AM
PZ Myers: "Darwin's real contribution, the one that had everyone smacking themselves in the forehead and wondering why they didn't think of it first, was the realization that the natural environment does the killing -- that natural selection shapes heredity. The idea of culling populations is not only so easy that a hate-mongering cretin can think of it, but that weather, bacteria, viruses, parasites, predators, etc. have been doing it for eons, with no intelligence required, and that mindless microorganisms have been far greater agents of hereditary change than the worst the Nazis ever accomplished"
Of course the Nazis knew about the agency of natural selection. Hitler himself may have directly read the debased and ultra-racist revisions of Darwinism by Ludwig Woltmann. Alfred Ploetz and other early German eugenicists who founded what became Nazi biopolitics sought to reconcile socialism, nationalism, and Darwinism.
True, Ben Stein is an ignorant ideologue on these matters. Hitler and many other top Nazis accepted a extremely heterodox doctrine called 'Positive Christianity.' But it is the case that national socialist eugenic and racist thought was influenced by Darwinism, especially its Haeckelian revision. Not that the Nazis were generally willing to admit these influences, given that Darwin and Haeckel's works were banned.
Mein Kampf, James Murphy translation, A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Allusions to natural selection:
"Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is
less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation--which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred--and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development."
"Under certain circumstances, in periods of distress or under bad climatic condition, or if the soil yields too poor a return, Nature herself tends to check the increase of population in some countries and among some races, but by a method which is quite as ruthless as it is wise. It does not impede the procreative faculty as such; but it does impede the further existence of the offspring by submitting it to such tests and privations that everything which is less strong or less healthy is forced to retreat into the bosom of tile unknown. Whatever survives these hardships of existence has been tested and tried a
thousandfold, hardened and renders fit to continue the process of procreation; so that the same thorough selection will begin all over again. By thus dealing brutally with the individual and recalling him
the very moment he shows that he is not fitted for the trials of life, Nature preserves the strength of the race and the species and raises it to the highest degree of efficiency."
"Man is not carved from Nature's wood. He is made of 'human' material. He knows more than the ruthless Queen of Wisdom. He
does not impede the preservation of the individual but prevents procreation itself. To the individual, who always sees only himself and not the race, this line of action seems more humane and just than the
opposite way. But, unfortunately, the consequences are also the opposite.
By leaving the process of procreation unchecked and by submitting the individual to the hardest preparatory tests in life, Nature selects the best from an abundance of single elements and stamps them as fit to live and carry on the conservation of the species. But man restricts the procreative faculty and strives obstinately to keep alive at any cost whatever has once been born. This correction of the Divine Will seems to him to be wise and humane, and he rejoices at having trumped Nature's
card in one game at least and thus proved that she is not entirely reliable. ...
For as soon as the procreative faculty is thwarted and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which allows only healthy and strong individuals to survive is replaced by a sheer craze to 'save' feeble and even diseased creatures at any cost. And thus the seeds are sown for a human progeny which will become more and more miserable from one generation to another, as long as Nature's will is scorned."
Hitler's allusions to macroevolutionary history in Mein Kampf:
"Just as many varieties of prehistoric animals had to give way to others and leave no trace behind them, so man will also have to give way, if he loses that definite faculty which enables him to find the weapons that are necessary for him to maintain his own existence."
"Should the Jew, with the aid of his Marxist creed, triumph over the people of this world, his Crown will be the funeral wreath of mankind, and this planet will once again follow its orbit through ether, without any human life on its surface, as it did millions of years ago."
Posted by: Colugo | March 29, 2008 1:08 AM
jeh says:
Abyss says:
WIN x 2!
Abyss, I hope you went there before lunch. It's very, very wrong to waste food.
Posted by: themadlolscientist | March 29, 2008 1:18 AM
Finally we have the explanation for the faithful who praise god for delivering them from a natural(?) disaster.
It turns out that the evil Magic-Zombie-Darwin sends the tornadoes/ hurricanes/ tsunamis/ Jack-in-the-Box beef pathogens, but it is almighty god who saves a tiny handful of the affected population.
Odd how even in the scenario which posits a benevolent deity, Magic-Zombie-Darwin still pwns the bitch.
Posted by: Autumn | March 29, 2008 1:39 AM
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6803/darwinraisesroofss5.gif
Well. This is going to make really nice visual punctuation in some future forum thread...
Posted by: Nentuaby | March 29, 2008 2:01 AM
Colugo wrote:
That's not Darwin's theory of evolution. That's much older.
The term "Natural Selection" is older than Darwin, the creationist Edward Blyth had already in the 1830s written about natural selection as a mechanism that weeded out the defective individuals, those who deviated from the species.
And Hitler's Mein Kampf talks about racial purity and "race-mixing." He chooses not the words of evolutionary biology or eugenics, but of religion without even a light touch of eugenic pseudo-science. Aryan blood, lower peoples, racial mixture, racial poisoning, those are the concepts you find in Mein Kampf:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/04/if-hitler-was-darwinist.html
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 29, 2008 2:07 AM
The Expelled! movie and IDers are confusing evolution with social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is a bastardized attempt at making artificial selection amongst people seem allowed. Evolution involves natural selection and mutations. Using Nazis to argue against "Darwinism" is fine (I'm not saying they're right) as long as they recognize they're arguing against Social Darwinism and not evolution. In summary
Artificial Selection might have made Nazis feel better and thats Bad.
Natural Selection is an awesome scientific theory and has nothing to do with Nazis.
Also, there's no such thing as a "Darwinist." It's a stupid word. No one worships Darwin or considers his book a bible. If any IDers are reading this, please never use "Darwinist" again.
Posted by: Cameron | March 29, 2008 2:44 AM
You just know Uncommon Descent or the DI will have a story along the lines of:
Atheist PZ Myer claims farmers are idiots.
Posted by: Thomas Howard | March 29, 2008 2:48 AM
Scratch that. It'll be more like this:
Atheist PZ Myer claims farmers are idiots; Jews, homsexuals
inferior.
Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 29, 2008 2:52 AM
PZ speaks for us. Me and many of my pals.
One of which is a woman from Egypt. The rest of us rebels, whom speak locally against the falsehood of the supposed word of god, as former mendicants to the Christian dogma.
I'm glad to know PZ has attained a prominent position, and is using it to the benefit of Atheists everywhere.
Thanks PZ, you are our brother in learning and in the continuous human quest for asymptotic truth.
You have support more than you, or any one of us, know.
Posted by: Andy James | March 29, 2008 3:20 AM
Godwin's Law, Creationists lose. Are they even trying to look intelligent anymore?
Posted by: Void | March 29, 2008 3:34 AM
PZ, you don't get it. It's not because of Evolution that that one should accuse Darwin for the worst dictators, when there is one much more obvious reason :
- six letter surnames -
Yes DARWIN had a 6 letter surname, so did
HITLER
STALIN
MUGABE
POLPOT
I'm sure this must be coded in the Bible somewhere. Beware of men with 6 letter surnames...
Posted by: negentropyeater | March 29, 2008 4:29 AM
Cameron wrote:
No. Social Darwinism is more like unrestrained capitalism. What the Nazis were doing was pseudo-eugenics and genocide.
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 29, 2008 5:03 AM
Wikipedia says: On the Jews and Their Lies is a 65,000-word treatise written by German Reformation leader Martin Luther in 1543. In it, Luther writes that the Jews are a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth." They are full of the "devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine," and the synagogue is an "incorrigible whore and an evil slut ..." He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "we are at fault in not slaying them."
And yet the holocaust is being blamed on Darwin?
Posted by: MH | March 29, 2008 5:11 AM
Franta Devecka wrote:
No. The term "natural selection" was in use before Darwin. It was used by Edward Blyth (google him). However, Blyth was a creationist and he thought natural selection just filtered out the weak and less "perfect." What Darwin pointed out was that there was no perfect design, life adapted to environmental niches.
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 29, 2008 5:16 AM
You make an obvious point. If one spends time considering the issue they should, given the necessary mental capacity, come to your exact conclusion. But I must ask myself why people waste so much time and energy trying to prove that a belief in God or religion is wrong? Anyone who likes to argue should know that you cannot argue someone out of their beliefs or lack there of. Let them believe what they want. Darwin is dead. He made his contribution. Let people believe what they want; if people stop attacking their beliefs they wont feel the need to defend them with exagerated claims.
Posted by: Nick | March 29, 2008 5:18 AM
I'm afraid you're confused about their motivations for forwarding the Hitler argument, and other similar arguments. They don't really care about the logic or soundness about their arguments. They don't really expect to convince anyone who's educated or smart. It's not debate they're engaging in. It's rhetoric. More specifically, it's sophistry. The idea is to galvanize (or at least maintain) the ranks of believers. It only has to sound good, and appeal to emotion. It doesn't have to be logical, or sound. Arguing against this propaganda represents lost energy, because your rebuttals will not be heeded -- neither by the producers, nor by the audience.
So how does one combat ignorance? How does one reach these ranks of believers, and shake some sense into them? I'm afraid it will take hard work, over a number of generations. Proper education at public schools is a big part of this, as well as the mainstreaming of atheist thought. Most fundamentalists raised as such from birth are a lost cause, because their neural pathways have calcified into thinking patterns that are beyond hope, but perhaps the offspring of such people can be educated to think properly.
Posted by: Julius | March 29, 2008 5:23 AM
Shit, I have a six-letter last name...
@Nick: The problem is that we can't stop attacking their beliefs. Any research into the origins of life or the universe - that is, most science - is perceived by them as attacking their beliefs, because they have tied themselves to a literal interpretation of Genesis. So long as we hold and promote a different view, they will attack us, and so long as they use simpler and more emotive language - which they always will, because science is complicated and less emotional than religion - they will convince everyone without a full understanding of science. So we have to keep fighting, just to hold our ground and keep these ideas alive for the few in each generation who can carry them forward.
Posted by: Wazza | March 29, 2008 5:26 AM
"PZ, you don't get it. It's not because of Evolution that that one should accuse Darwin for the worst dictators, when there is one much more obvious reason :
- six letter surnames -
Yes DARWIN had a 6 letter surname, so did
HITLER
STALIN
MUGABE
POLPOT
I'm sure this must be coded in the Bible somewhere. Beware of men with 6 letter surnames..."
Jesus CHRIST!
Posted by: craig | March 29, 2008 5:27 AM
@Julius: Personal jinx!
by the way, the word is "myelated", not calcified :P
also, I think there is some hope for fundamentalists, so long as they have a basic level of intelligence which leads them to question their world. That is, if they happen to think like a natural scientist, which does happen occasionally, sooner or later they are going to ask where the proof is. And then maybe they'll come over. But most fundamentalists have been taught to think about proof in such a different way from us that that won't happen. Still, it does sometimes happen, I've seen it happen, and though they won't necessarily become atheists after they start asking questions, they will accept and push science, and that's the real goal for us.
Posted by: wazza | March 29, 2008 5:31 AM
@craig: That even works if you use his mortal and immortal patronymics:
Jesus bar Joseph
Jesus bar Yahweh
:D
Posted by: Wazza | March 29, 2008 5:33 AM
Nick,
"Let people believe what they want;"
What about if their beliefs include amongst other things, denying rights to homosexuals, women who want to abort, people who like to have non reproductive sex ...etc
Think about it, who is more eager in telling others what they ought to do or believe, religious fundamentalists or non believers ?
Posted by: negentropyeater | March 29, 2008 5:34 AM
negentropyeater wrote:
And what about our economy and our health care?
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/02/religion-as-force-for-ignorance-and.html
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 29, 2008 5:56 AM
Julius,
I understand what your saying but isnt arguing with them also just rhetoric. You dont honestly believe that you will convince them of your point.
Wazza,
Come on now have some faith :) "They will convince everyone without a full understanding of science." Do you really want people involved in science that just except its claims based on faith rather than understanding of the scientific method? Then you would essentially become what you think a religion is.
Negentropyeater,
Then dont vote for them. People believe in all kinds of crazy things. Ultimately the media and government are the most eager to tell people what to think and do.
I must say to all of you that I really enjoyed reading your responses. You are all interesting people
Posted by: Nick | March 29, 2008 6:13 AM
Shorter version. This is just the Goebbel's Propaganda strategy. Lie big and lie often.
Posted by: raven | March 29, 2008 6:16 AM
While Hitler uses the word "evolution" in Mein Kampf, it is clear that he is not referring to Darwin's theory. Indeed, he never mentions Darwin at all. In fact, a look at his writings reveals his sentiments on the subject to be those of an orthodox creationist.
Like a creationist, Hitler asserts fixity of kinds:
"The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. xi
Like a creationist, Hitler claims that God made man:
"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. x
Like a creationist, Hitler affirms that humans existed "from the very beginning", and could not have evolved from apes:
"From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us, that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump , as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today." - Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Tabletalk (Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier)
Like a creationist, Hitler believes that man was made in God's image, and in the expulsion from Eden:
"Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol ii, ch. i
Like a creationist, Hitler believes that:
"God ... sent [us] into this world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol ii, ch. xiv
Like a creationist, Hitler claims Jesus as his inspiration:
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them." - Adolf Hitler, speech, April 12 1922, published in My New Order
Like a creationist, Hitler despises secular schooling:
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." - Adolf Hitler, Speech, April 26, 1933
Like a creationist, Hitler wished to make prayer compulsory in public schools. Unlike American creationists, he succeeded.
Hitler even goes so far as to claim that Creationism is what sets humans apart from the animals:
"The most marvelous proof of the superiority of Man, which puts man ahead of the animals, is the fact that he understands that there must be a Creator." - Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Tabletalk (Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier)
Hitler does not mention evolution explicitly anywhere in Mein Kampf. However, after declaring the fixity of the fox, goose, and tiger, as quoted above, he goes on to talk of differences within species:
"[T]he various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed." Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. xi)
So, like a creationist, there is some evolution he is prepared to concede -- evolution within species, or "microevolution", to which people like Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe have no objection. It is on the basis of the one part of evolutionary theory which creationists accept that Hitler tried to find a scientific basis for his racism and his program of eugenics.
Ergo, Hitler did not base his eugenic and genocidal policies on evolutionary theory, but rather on views that are very similar to those held by most creationists and many ID supporters.
Posted by: Allen_MacNeill | March 29, 2008 6:21 AM
BTW Norman, liked your post. You ask this question, "is Atheism economically important ?", to which I would reply, "education is economically important, and higher education is linked to lesser religiosity".
Posted by: negentropyeater | March 29, 2008 6:25 AM
Hahaha, I posted the same list of citations (above) at Uncommon Descent, and have now joined the illustrious ranks of those banned by DaveScot.
Apparently he doesn't like refutations of his arguments, especially when they are supported by published references.
Posted by: Allen_MacNeill | March 29, 2008 6:29 AM
I think the best example of Hitler's understanding of "Darwinism" was the SS, which was full of tall, blond, blue-eyed Aryans - until they started to run out of them!
Posted by: Kevin Anthoney | March 29, 2008 6:37 AM
accept not except.
Oh well. Argue all night with the religions. Why is Htler always involved in a science vs religion debate anyway?
Posted by: Nick | March 29, 2008 6:45 AM
@Nick: No, I don't want people involved in science who accept its claims on faith. Hopefully, by the end of graduate education in science, you know enough about the evidence to assess science for yourself. But a lot of people get their ideas about science from b-movies and six o'clock news simplifications. These are the people creationists are trying to convert, and if they get enough of them they can vote in sympathetic politicians who choose sympathetic judges who let creationism into the classroom, and what then? People who learn about science without being taught in the classroom, who love it for itself, are very much in the minority. We need to stay active and push these ideas, so that people don't think that that minority, who have actually seen and assessed the data, are wrong. We're the experts, we assess this (often, dare I say it, boring) data so that they don't have to, then we tell them what we've figured out and everyone benefits. But if you try to run science by democracy it doesn't work, because unlike with government and such, most people haven't seen how science works and what the different positions are, and so they can't make an informed decision. Creationists know that, which is why they want to take science out of the hands of the elite. Scientists, on the other hand, know that if it was left to the average people to decide scientific questions, we'd never get anywhere, because most of them haven't seen the data and don't know how to assess it.
OK, I'm rambling a bit. It's late here. But you get what I mean, right? The creationists say elitism in science is bad; we say it's necessary.
And for your second comment: it's a corollary of Godwin's law. Basically, if we start discussing both, sooner or later someone will get hurt, so we chuck that in early to cut off all discussion.
Posted by: wazza | March 29, 2008 6:55 AM
I don't know if anyone has said this already, but, blaming the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazi's on Darwin is like blaming the Sept 11 attacks on the Wright Brothers! Just another in a long line of absurd arguments presented by the Creationists!
Posted by: Turdus | March 29, 2008 6:56 AM
Allen_MacNeill:
How in hell did you last so long over there? I've had four accounts just silently stop working and I was nowhere near as argumentative. I never even got the chance, really. My record-holder-for-longevity account only made it to four posts.
As to DaveScot, I'm pretty sure he only really likes DaveScot. Everyone else is merely tolerated.
Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 29, 2008 7:08 AM
What about the Spartans? Didn't they figure that out too?
And I'd like to highlight out the great thing that the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis pointed out: even with eugenics, recessive genes still persist in the population. So not only is eugenics morally wrong, but it's empirically wrong too.
Posted by: Katie | March 29, 2008 7:30 AM
Katie: well, some of them are a bit confused about history due to having to compress 4.5 billion odd years into 6-10 thousand or so. Some biblical exegesis somewhere probably "proves" that Darwin actually wrote the Spartan constitution.
Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 29, 2008 8:02 AM
The reason Allen has lasted so long is that he's a Significant Figure in the ID debates (or at least Not Totally Insignificant, like me), so he gets treated with some respect. He's also been courteous and polite, in the face of the usual provocation that passes for criticism over there.
He seems to like me too. I'm not sure why, but he even threatened other UD regulars with bannination for being nasty to me. I'm not sure whether to be proud or not.Posted by: Bob O'H | March 29, 2008 8:34 AM
Great and concise rebuttal. Thanks.
Posted by: Josh S. | March 29, 2008 8:45 AM
Re: Uberman's nonsense -- looks like O'Leary flogging that quote every chance she gets is starting to pay off.
Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 29, 2008 8:46 AM
Raven said: It is even simpler than that. If you kill people you don't like, then they are gone forever.
...and you get their stuff!
This is the flaw in the preventative health care argument. Yes, it is far cheaper to prevent diseases like diabetes, cancer, COPD and heart disease than to treat