Jeremy Bruno is a tech writer who blogs about ecology, evolution, conservation and culture at The Voltage Gate. Visit the 
I was going to write a bit about Antisemitism and evolution, but I see that Expelled Exposed, sponsored by the NCSE has already covered the bases.
I'd like to underline, however, the importance of evolution as a biological concept. Darwin didn't propose natural selection as a social condition, that was later inferred or used as a justification by politicians, conquerors and murderers. They equate scientists with atheists, claim that Darwinism is their religion and that the foundation of this religion, the description of a biological process called natural selection, is responsible for the holocaust, eugenics and other horrors of the late 19th early 20th centuries. Atheists and scientists--which are synonymous--are Faustian fools, playing in God's laboratory.
What they conveniently omit is the past two millennia of persecution of Jews by Christians. It started in Rome as Christianity began to shoulder its way in as a sanctioned religion. Constantine forced Christianity on all of his citizens when he had his divine vision, and Jews that refused to convert were persecuted. The Justinian Code? Check. The Crusades? Check. The Inquisition? Check. The Dreyfus affair? Double check. The Catholic Church was responsible for that mess.
The "new" justifications for oppressing the Jewish people in the 19th century were not new; they had their roots in the long term hatred established by Christians in the first few centuries of the Common Era. So German "thinkers" like Wilhelm Marr and Otto Böckel, who blamed the Jews for corrupting the German economy, were really just looking for a modern justification for their prejudice, which was baseless in the first place, but founded by the Christian Church.
It must be nice to be able to distance oneself from a bloody history of persecution, totalitarianism, intolerance, war and genocide for the sake of a spreading the Good News of a peaceable God.
Brian pointed his readers to an interview with Stein (of which I could only take about 10 minutes) and as evidence against evolution, the interview immediately moved to the origins question, where did life come from, where did the universe come from, etc. It's incredibly frustrating to hear these two men, who overstate how educated they are, use irrelevant "evidence" to prove that evolution is in question. Evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of life, the initial spark. It only describes the process by which life has changed.
John also wrote a bit about one of the poor, suppressed interviewees in the movie a few days ago whom Ben Stein conveniently forgot to ask about his personal feelings about Jews.
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If you're defining antisemitism as persecuting the Jews, then the Egyptians, Amalek, Philestines, Greeks, and pagan Romans just to name a few all have better claims to being the founding fathers of antisemitism than Christians. I'm not trying to dimish the vile and violent anti-semitism that has existed with Christianity from some of its earliest days, but perspective is relevant.
Posted by: bsci | April 18, 2008 2:56 PM
Those researching evolution may focus on life changing (most likely because evidence is more abundant for the process) but the "spark of life" is not excluded. Scientific American had an article last year titled "Primordial Soup's On: Scientists Repeat Evolution's Most Famous Experiment", an article that looked at Bada's revisiting of Stanley Miller's experiment. See http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=primordial-soup-urey-miller-evolution-experiment-repeated
Posted by: Charles | April 18, 2008 3:46 PM
What they conveniently omit is the past two millennia of persecution of Jews by Christians. It started in Rome as Christianity began to shoulder its way in as a sanctioned religion. Constantine forced Christianity on all of his citizens when he had his divine vision, and Jews that refused to convert were persecuted. The Justinian Code? Check. The Crusades? Check. The Inquisition? Check. The Dreyfus affair? Double check. The Catholic Church was responsible for that mess.
two factual points
1) constantine did not force the conversion of citizens. he favored the church, those who converted to christianity and withdrew from activities such as blood sacrifice. that being said, constantine had to compromise with the fact that during his lifetime most of the powerful aristocrats within the empire remained pagan, and he and his sons did not remove themselves from their symbolic roles as heads of the pagan priesthoods (if they had done so they would have offended too many people). in fact, though constantine began pouring money into the christian church he could not enforce a cessation of the customary subsidies to the pagan cults.
the short of it is that though christianity was progressively favored as the religion of the roman state from 320 to 390, it was only in the last decade of the century (two generations after constantine's death) that christianity was established as the only legitimate public religion of the state. and for several generations into the 5th century there were still pagans in imperial office.
2) anti-semitism did not begin with the christians. there's a strong argument to be made that xtian anti-semitism was imported from pagans. not that pagans didn't have some reason to be prejudiced against jews. read josephus.
Posted by: razib | April 19, 2008 2:09 AM
Razib, bsci, thanks for the perspective and the history. Rereading my post this morning I realized that I fell into the controversial title trap. I should have toned it down to describe wtf I was really talking about.
Posted by: Jeremy Bruno | April 21, 2008 8:47 AM
razib,
Indeed, when I was a child my religious education taught me that the defenders of Masada were great heroes, a myth that is still alive and kicking, esp as part of Israel's national mythology.
When I learned a bit more about the Zealots, I came to understand that they were a bunch of murderous nutters and if I were a Jew in that place and time, I would not love them at all, since I'm the sort who'd doubtlessly have been far too Hellenized for them. Seriously, those boys were the al Qaeda of Judea.
Posted by: AntiquatedTory | April 21, 2008 6:01 PM