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\n\tGary Hill<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t
NOTE: This is an ongoing, unfinished book-length work, subject to additional and altered content over time. It may be a little unpolished in parts. One day, perhaps, I’ll finish it.<\/p>\n
In response to claims that he was a theist Albert Einstein wrote, in a letter shortly before his death,\u00a0“It was, of course, a lie…..a lie which is being systematically repeated”.<\/em>\u00a0This is a sentiment that could just as easily have been written by either Charles Darwin or Adolf Hitler in response to the myth that Hitler had derived the core of his ideological beliefs from the earlier scientific findings of Darwin. So widespread is the claim that in some people’s minds it has been lifted to the status of historical fact. For example, the influential conservative American political commentator Ann Coulter in her book ‘Godless: The Church\u00a0Of Liberalism’ (2006) wrote:<\/p>\n “From Marx to Hitler, the men responsible for the greatest mass murders of the twentieth century were avid Darwinists……….So it should not be surprising that eugenicists, racists, and assorted psychopaths always gravitate to Darwinism. From the most evil dictators to today’s antismoking crusaders, sexual profligates, and animal rights nuts, Darwinism has infect the whole culture.”<\/em><\/p>\n Surely, one might think, Coulter’s allegation is hyperbole; she cannot possibly believe what she writes. On the other hand, repeatedly claiming the ludicrous has effect. This is the key to how lies are spread, myths easily generated and characters maligned from as little as an ambiguous sentence or two and how relatively recent historical events (with readily available archival evidence) can be both ignored and deliberately distorted for nefarious reasons. But Coulter goes much further than mere historical ineptness and indiscretion. She wilfully denigrates all biologists by claiming that Darwin’s findings are responsible\u00a0“for the greatest mass murders of the twentieth century”.<\/em>\u00a0Another writer, Richard Weikart, author of ‘From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany’, published in 2004, spices up the polemic:<\/p>\n “No matter how crooked the road was from Darwin to Hitler, clearly Darwinism and eugenics smoothed the path for Nazi ideology, especially for the Nazi stress on expansion, war, racial struggle, and racial extermination”.<\/em><\/p>\n While the born-again (for the second-time) Christian author A.N. Wilson, in his extraordinarily inaccurate hatchet-job biography of Darwin (Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker, 2017; ironically published by the same company as the original ‘On the Origin of Species’), claims an absurd level of exactitude for Darwin’s influence on Nazi Germany:<\/p>\n “Darwin was a direct and disastrous influence…………Germany\u00a0<\/em>[enacted]\u00a0the Reich Citizenship Law, the Blood Protection Law, the Marital Health Law and the Nuremberg Laws for racial segregation………..much of which had started life in the gentle setting of Darwin’s study at Down House<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Henry Morris, the grandfather of modern creationism (founder of the Institute for Creation Research)\u00a0expands the hyperbole well beyond Nazi Germany. From ‘The Twilight of Evolution’, published in 1963:<\/p>\n “Evolution is at the foundation of communism, fascism, Freudianism, social Darwinism, Kinseyism, materialism, atheism and, in the religious world, modernism and neo-orthodoxy.”<\/em><\/p>\n Are any of these views actually true? Can we really observe any firm ideological link between Charles Darwin the man and his scientific findings, and Adolf Hitler the man and his subsequent political policies? Surely one man and his books cannot be held ultimately responsible for the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities? Well, of course not. Such a claim is ludicrously simplistic. Yet it is commonly made. Perhaps, though, not quite as ludicrous as the\u00a0accusation made by Christian fundamentalists Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams who, in their self-published 1996 book ‘The Pink Swastika’ claimed, apparently quite seriously,\u00a0that homosexuality\u00a0was largely responsible for the\u00a0Nazi regime on the grounds that Hitler and all high ranking Nazis were gay and it is a well-known fact that gay men are more violent than straight men. Yes, that really is their argument. Would it be considered a realistic analysis if any other major historical event were to be explained with reference to a single cause? The political rise of Nazism in Germany had multiple complex causes dating to the aftermath of the First World War and the political and social policies of Hitler and his henchmen have their origins many centuries before Darwin was born. Darwin and his scientific findings were in no way complicit in either the spawning or implementation of Hitler’s lunatic ideology. When presented honestly and cogently the case for Darwin’s defence is compelling.<\/p>\n It is obvious from Hitler’s own writing and speeches, and those of his fellow Nazi ideologues, that they either did not really understand or accept Darwinian ideas on evolution. Hitler’s rambling and often incoherent ideology had its origin in multiple sources, most of which were broadly theological and philosophical, and all existed many years prior to Darwin’s findings. Making the Darwin-Hitler link, then, is a prime example of the rhetorical fallacy of ‘post hoc, ergo propter hoc’<\/em>, i.e., simplistically assuming that an event that follows some other designated event must have been caused by it. Hitler discussed the influences on his worldview in great detail in his two-volume book ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My Struggle’), published 1924-25. Despite what plenty of people are being told and may believe, Darwin rates no mention at all. Furthermore, as we shall see, all of the authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries who Hitler explicitly acknowledges as influences either ignored, only partially accepted or explicitly rejected Darwin’s findings, and were not afraid to say so. This seems obvious from any objective reading of their work and arguing otherwise is only possible from a basis of either profound ignorance or dishonesty. Those who proclaim an ideological link between Darwin and Hitler, therefore, appear to fall into three distinct camps:<\/p>\n First, there are those who simply do not possess any reasonable grasp of the machinery of Darwinian evolution, or may think that they do despite having serious misunderstandings. They usually have a limited formal education in biology (and European history) and hold little interest anyway. They are prey to the opinions of others who also don’t understand evolutionary theory and especially to those people who are in the business of systematically lying to their audience. They probably attend fundamentalist Christian churches commonly located behind woefully ignorant signs that ask questions like\u00a0“If evolution is real, how come there are still monkeys?”<\/em>\u00a0This, despite the wide availability of popular science books explaining the mechanisms of evolution.<\/p>\n The second group are really a more obstinate and enthusiastic version of the first. They also have little understanding of evolutionary theory (and European history) but, unlike the first group, nevertheless see it as their duty to warn the world of the dangers of ‘Darwinism’ and ‘evolutionism’. They can often be found trolling the internet making erroneous statements\u00a0ad nauseam<\/em>. To their minds, evolution is “only a theory<\/em>” and they are happy to continue using this phrase in a perjorative fashion without bothering to understand what scientists actually mean when they bestow the title of ‘theory’ on an explanatory model. So enthralled of the worldview to which they subscribe (or more usually were subscribed to by their parents) that they are in pathological denial that any differing perceptions hold any legitimacy. Although they are a long way from winning their war (at least in developed places outside of the USA), they undoubtedly win some battles. For example, as long ago as 1926 the American creationist and ardent anti-evolution Baptist pastor William Bell Riley made the claim that the phrase “we may suppose<\/em>” occurs over 800 times in Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’, claiming that the work was far more speculative than it actually is (another version of this myth commonly found in creationist literature uses the term “we may assume<\/em>“). The phrase “we may suppose<\/em>“, actually occurs a mere three times, once each in chapters 10, 11 and 13. Like Coulter, Riley was of course lying, banking on his audience not having read the book.<\/p>\n The third group are those that probably do possess a reasonable, or even good understanding of the mechanisms underlying evolutionary theory (and even European history) but their religious convictions oblige them to find the science disagreeable. Such people make a habit (and sometimes a living) seeking to discredit any aspect of modern biology based on Darwin’s findings which, in effect, means they are trying to discredit just about the entire basis of modern biology. Attempting to ideologically link Darwin and Hitler is a mere byproduct, then, of a generally anti-science, pro-faith attitude. Conservative Christian authors representing the intelligent design touting Discovery Institute such as Weikart, and Jerry Bergman, author of a number of anti-evolution articles such as ‘Darwinism and the Nazi Race Holocaust’, published in 1999 in the ‘Journal of Creation’ (submission guidelines: “Do not use too many big or extra words<\/em>“) are probably the most commonly cited in recent years.<\/p>\n Bergman, especially, paints such a dishonest picture of Darwin’s life, scientific work and personal opinions that much would surely be considered libelous where he alive today. He wrote a particularly scurrilous paper in 2004 entitled ‘Was Charles Darwin Psychotic?: A Study Of His Mental Health’ in which it is\u00a0clear that\u00a0Bergman has no proper understanding of current psychological diagnoses.\u00a0\u00a0He details\u00a0a\u00a0constellation of physical and psychological ailments (most of which are gleaned from works\u00a0written post-1974, only two are from Darwin’s own pen)\u00a0such as anxiety, agoraphobia, digestive problems and depression, all of which point to a general diagnosis of neurosis rather than\u00a0psychosis. Indeed, Darwin is known to have been both physically and psychologically healthy from 17- to 28-years of age, at the time that psychotic symptoms would be expected to first present. His deterioration appears to have commenced between\u00a01838 and 1842 (i.e., 29- to 33 years of age) which would be unusual for a first presentation of a psychotic episode and more reasonably points toward an undiagnosed tropical disease or, perhaps, multiple allergies. Indeed, the only ‘symptom’ Bergman can find which comes anywhere near to the psychotic end of\u00a0a psychological personality continuum is his love of shooting as a young man (with which Bergman makes great play; I somehow doubt, though, that he considers any of the many Christian hunting organisations in the USA to be similarly psychotic). In any case, Darwin’s flirtation with hunting lasted for a few years only. Despite repeated requests from his social set he refused to attend hunts as an adult precisely because he came to view hunting as cruel.\u00a0Bergman’s paper is throughly reprehensible; he is deliberately and cynically employing the word ‘psychotic’ as a lay person’s notion of ‘madness with evil intent’ in order to\u00a0taint Darwin’s scientific findings. Wilson (2017) diagnoses differently, however, considering Darwin not as psychotic but as a mere malingerer, his\u00a0“psychosomatic whims<\/em>” deliberately engineered by him to provide an excuse to get out of doing things he didn’t want to do. Like hunting, perhaps?<\/p>\n The extent of\u00a0Bergman’s basic historical and scientific errors and misunderstandings (as well as personal attacks of scientists) have become legend. For example, in his 2001 paper in the ‘Journal of Creation’, ‘The Darwinian Foundation of Communism’, in which Bergman propagates the same lie as Coulter, he claims that Marx first\u00a0“encountered Darwin’s writings and ideas at the University of Berlin<\/em>“. This is highly unlikely and even if true is no more than a trivial fact.\u00a0Marx attended the University of Berlin between 1836 and 1840 and during those\u00a0years\u00a0Darwin had published only brief descriptive work (usually one or two paragraphs in society transactions)\u00a0concerning geological structures, birds, plants and moulds and several travelogues; certainly nothing that could have led to the genesis of a political philosophy.\u00a0An error of a similar magnitude\u00a0can be\u00a0found in the opening statement of his paper entitled “The Ape-to-Human Progression: The Most Common Evolution Icon is a Fraud”, also published in the ‘Journal of Creation’, this time in 2009:<\/p>\n “Darwin suggested an unbroken evolutionary chain of life from simple molecules, such as ammonia, water, and phosphoric salts, to humans”.<\/em><\/p>\n This is sheer nonsense. Darwin famously did not speculate as to how the first life forms emerged, other than one offhand remark in a private letter about the possibility it may have occurred in a “warm pond<\/em>“. He did not feel there would ever be enough information available in his lifetime to be able to generate any meaningful hypotheses. From the letter written in 1863 to the English botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker:<\/p>\n “It is mere rubbish to talk about the origin of life; one might as well talk about the origin of matter.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n And in ‘Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex’ (1871) he reiterated that thought:<\/p>\n “It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life<\/em>.”<\/p>\n If Darwin had indeed suggested some mechanism for abiogenesis Bergman would no doubt have used a direct quote. He doesn’t because none exist. Instead he misleadingly cites Stephen Meyer’s 2009 book ‘Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design’. Meyer isn’t a biologist, he’s not even a working scientist though he does have a joint first degree in physics and earth sciences. He has yet to conduct any experiments in an attempt to falsify evolution. He’s a philosopher and intelligent design advocate from the Discovery Institute where he enjoys the company of Weikart and Bergman.<\/p>\n This pseudoacademic affiliation is important. Linking Darwin with Hitler is no more than a fringe view promulgated most notably by American fundamentalist Christians, especially from the Discovery Institute, and by Islamic authors such as Harun Yahya (pen-name of the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar). So, publications that postulate a link between Darwin’s findings and Hitler’s ideology originate from very few sources and they are invariably not legitimate university history departments, with the possible exception of Daniel Gasman’s 1971 book ‘The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League’. It is telling that, until Wilson’s 2017 offering, not a single serious biographer of Darwin had ever noticed a Darwin-Hitler connection, with a single (and rather vague) exception. The following lone, bland quote can be found in Alan Bullock’s acclaimed book ‘Hitler: A Study In Tyranny’ (1952):<\/p>\n “His secretary, who had to endure many such outbursts, records that\u00a0after his return to Berlin in January his conversations became entirely\u00a0self-centred and was marked by the monotonous repetition of the same\u00a0stories told over and over again. His intellectual appetite for the\u00a0discussion of such large subjects as the evolution of man, the course\u00a0of world history, religion, and the future of science had gone; even his\u00a0memory began to fail him. His talk was confined to anecdotes about his\u00a0dog or his diet, interspersed with complaints about the stupidity and\u00a0wickedness of the world.<\/em>“<\/p>\nThe citation Bullock gives is Albert Zoller’s, book ‘Hitler Privat: Erlebnisbericht seiner Geheimsekret\u00e4rin’ Darwin’s notion of evolution by natural selection simply describes a natural phenomenon. It can, in itself, be no more disturbing or distasteful than any other natural phenomenon such as the theory of gravity, or the germ theory of infectious disease. What these authors ultimately object to is this: before Darwin there was a consensus of perceived apparent design in nature, which required the actions of a top-down agent. Darwin discovered that this apparent design was able to be produced automatically, via bottom-up mechanisms. Darwin’s findings don’t necessarily dismiss the possibility of a deity entirely; it is, after all a scientific, not a metaphysical view. However, they do demonstrate that although the actions of a deity might well be sufficient, they are certainly not a necessary condition to explain the diversity of life we observe on Earth today. As supporting data rapidly accumulated in the following years this view of the non-necessity of a deity in order to explain other natural phenomena naturally spilled over into all other branches of science and by the turn of the century no field of science recognised any specific artifact of nature that necessarily required a supernatural explanation.<\/p>\n One of the strengths of Darwinian evolution is that it offers a comprehensive historical narrative for the abundance of life forms on this planet. Young earth creationism does not and intelligent design does not. Perhaps this is why, as we shall see,\u00a0authors such as Weikart and Bergman have such difficulty presenting an honest and balanced account of history. Intelligent design and creationist proponents not only offer no timeline they detail no design mechanism at all other than God or an intelligent designer must have done it, somehow. For example, one of the primary claims of proponents of intelligent design is that any increase in genetic information (the term ‘information’ invariably used in a manner not recognised by mathematicians or bioinformaticians) can only result from an intelligent agent (i.e., God, though they tend not to use the word if they can help it) inserting the information for a purpose. However, they offer no precise, testable hypotheses that might explore how or when this divine insertion occurs. Yet surely to claim that Darwinian evolution is wrong and the ‘design hypothesis’ is right requires more than conjecture; it requires the same standard of scientifically precise knowledge (re<\/em>\u00a0God’s mechanisms and timing) that biological evolution already enjoys in abundance.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, then, the Discovery Institute have little to show in the way of of peer reviewed publications to support their views. Their own in-house, supposedly peer-reviewed, flagship journal ‘Bio-Complexity’ is an abject failure. For example, by September, their 2017 volume had published a single paper,\u00a0‘Conservation of Information in Coevolutionary Searches’. It’s merely an opinion piece. No new data or experimentation is presented. Neither is it reported that the author, Robert J Marks,\u00a0is the journal’s Editor-in-Chief. One wonders how their peer process (from author to editor, back to author, back to editor) actually works. This state of affairs is not an anomaly. In 2016 ‘Bio-complexity’ published five papers, none of which reported novel data. Four were co-authored by members of the editorial board. 2015 saw two papers published, both by editorial board members. The previous year, four papers were published, three of which were ‘critical reviews’; all were authored by editorial board members. You’re getting the drift, I’m sure.<\/p>\n The accepted\u00a0method of\u00a0engaging in science is to generate and test hypotheses, present\u00a0research findings\u00a0at\u00a0open scientific conferences and meetings, then to publish these data and\u00a0findings\u00a0in peer-reviewed journals and finally, perhaps, to write textbooks.\u00a0The Discovery Institute\u00a0blatantly bypass the first three stages; if Marks’ 2017 paper had any scientific merit whatsoever, for example, why did he not submit to a reputable scientific journal? They present opinions, not novel scientific findings, and spend large amounts of money lobbying politicians to include intelligent design in the science curriculum of state schools all the while recommending\u00a0‘textbooks’ published by their own ‘fellows’.\u00a0Despite holding an annual\u00a0budget of several million dollars they do little actual research into intelligent design (though they keep promising to; meanwhile they have their ‘research fellows’ in white coats interviewed in front of a green screen which is later replaced by stock images of laboratories) though they continue to claim tax exemption status partly on the grounds they fund scientific research. They prefer to report and comment,\u00a0usually in a highly distorted fashion,\u00a0on the hard work done by others, most often in closed meetings. This, for example, is the wording found on their publicity material announcing their ‘Join the ID Debate!’ Conference (Oct, 2017):<\/p>\n “The debate about intelligent design in nature is for everybody. ID presents an ultimate question, far from being limited in the scope of its relevance to just scientists or philosophers<\/em>.”<\/p>\n If the subject sounds interesting to you, you might be tempted to attend to either learn more or to contribute. Think again. It goes on:<\/p>\n “To join us, you must apply beforehand and explain your purpose and interests. The meeting is private and open to guests only at the discretion of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, then, they prefer to write books aimed only at\u00a0the general public, never the scientific community. And they are not averse to ‘planting’ ludicrously favourable reviews of their publications in the media. This is an extract from a book review in the New York Times, written by economist George Gilder\u00a0about Discovery Institute fellow Stephen Meyer’s 2013 book ‘Darwin’s Doubt:\u00a0The Explosive Origin Of Animal Life And The Case For Intelligent Design’:<\/p>\n “I spend my life reading science books. I’ve read many hundreds of them over the years, and in my judgment\u00a0Darwin’s Doubt\u00a0is the\u00a0best science book ever written. It is a magnificent work, a true masterpiece that\u00a0will be read for hundreds of years.”<\/em><\/p>\n More hyperbole? But then again, what would we expect from\u00a0an economist, not biologist, newspaper reviewer who conveniently forgets to mention to his readers that he’s a co-founder of the Discovery Institute. Gilder’s praise of Meyer’s book pales in comparison, however, with biochemist Michael Behe’s opinion of his own ‘discoveries’ in the biochemistry of intelligent design. In his 1996 book ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ he actually claimed that they:<\/p>\n “……….must be\u00a0<\/em>ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science<\/em>” rivalling “those of Newton and Einstein , Lavoisier and Schr\u00f6dinger, Pasteur and Darwin<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Behe actually wrote this before even a single peer-reviewed paper supporting intelligent design had been published in any scientific journal, in any discipline! Academically, their approach has been a failure; as far as the academic community is concerned they lack any scientific credibility whatsoever.<\/p>\n We can see that Robert Park’s\u00a0seven warning signs\u00a0for bogus claims (‘The Seven Warning Signs Of A Bogus Science, ‘Chronicles Of Higher Education’, January 2003)\u00a0show a\u00a0particularly tight fit in the case of the opinions\u00a0offered by\u00a0Discovery Institute authors and their ilk; (i) their claims are pitched directly to the media and general public, thus bypassing peer review; (ii) next, they play the victim\u00a0by claiming that a powerful orthodox establishment\u00a0is suppressing their ‘evidence’; (iii) a substantial number of their claims are at the limits of the data available to them; (iv) they\u00a0make abundant claims utilising the argument by popularity; (v) their\u00a0‘research’ is done in isolation from mainstream scientific communities and (vi) their claims would require new laws of nature to be formalised. Further evidence for the pseudoscientific credentials of Discovery Institute fellows is exemplified by their track record of supporting potentially dangerous medical causes. William Dembski, for example, has claimed that childhood autism is caused by vaccines while both Rev. Jonathan Wells and Phillip Johnson are signatories to the ‘Aids Appraisal Letter’, first published in June 1991 and ongoing, which denies any link between the HIV virus and AIDS. Rev. Wells (a devotee for over 40 years of the self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung\u00a0Moon, founder of the Unification Church, aka the ‘Moonies’) also claimed in 2004 that cancer was not caused by genetic mutations.<\/p>\n Discovery Institute fellow Paul Nelson has actually confirmed their arid research terrain. Quoted in\u00a0an article entitled ‘Interview: The Measure of Design, A Conversation About the Past, Present & Future of Darwinism & Design’\u00a0which appeared\u00a0in ‘Touchstone’ magazine in 2004, he admitted:<\/p>\n “Easily the biggest challenge facing the intelligent design community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now……….we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions and a handful of notions.”<\/em><\/p>\n But intuitions and notions do not a science make. Their failure as scientific researchers has therefore\u00a0forced\u00a0the Discovery Institute ‘fellows’\u00a0to take another, more sociologically based\u00a0approach to push their agenda; by claiming that evolution by natural selection (or random drift, or any other discovered or yet discovered mechanism) is simply rotten. The approach is disarmingly simple;\u00a0identify your favoured starting points (in this case Darwin or evolutionary theory) then select your goals (e.g., Hitler, the Nazi Party and the Holocaust). Next,\u00a0try to amass as much data as you can that can be manipulated and construed in such a way as to connect them. Throw in some untruths if you think you can get away with it. Don’t shy away from the\u00a0ad hominem<\/em>\u00a0attack. If the approach is successful enough Darwin’s findings will be brought into question without having to actually address the science itself. Then, repeatedly chant the mantra that ‘evolution is just not possible’ because, obviously, repetition improves an unsound argument. Hitler would have had no difficulty understanding their approach. From ‘Mein Kampf’:<\/p>\n “But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.<\/em>“<\/p>\n \u200bHowever, as University of Chicago historian Robert Richards rightly notes in his 2013 book ‘Was Hitler A Darwinian? the logic is inherently flawed:<\/p>\n “………even if Hitler had the Origin of Species as his bedtime reading and clearly derived inspiration from it, this would have no bearing on the truth of Darwin’s theory or directly on the moral character of Darwin and other Darwinians”.<\/em><\/p>\n Indeed, even if Hitler had been a scientist and had himself discovered evolution by natural selection, and had Nazi stormtroopers shouted ‘Heil Darwin’ as they went about their work, and even if Darwin had written of his hope that a future fascist dictator would be able to use his scientific discoveries to the detriment of humankind, the science itself would in no way be invalidated. To claim otherwise would be absurd, an\u00a0argumentum ad consequentiam<\/em>. The tactics employed by members of the Discovery Institute, then, are simply a diversion to hide their real intentions of attempting to discredit any scientific endeavour that might lead to doubts as to whether a deity exists. Again, this strategy\u00a0has been\u00a0admitted to by their own ‘Research Director’ Bruce Gordon, in his article entitled ‘Intelligent Design Movement Struggles With Identity Crisis’, published in ‘Research News And Opportunities in Science And Philosophy’ in January 2001:<\/p>\n “…………design theoretic research has been hijacked as part of a larger cultural and political movement……….it must be worth pursuing on the basis of its own merits, not as an exercise in Christian ‘cultural renewal'”.<\/em><\/p>\n The prominent Islamic creationist Harun Yahya was, philosophically, an ex-stablemate of the Discovery institute. He also routinely offers the Darwin to Hitler canard. Here’s a couple of quotes concerning ‘Darwinists’ from Yahya, from his own website:<\/p>\n“Since Darwinists are fearful of science, they employ propaganda tactics instead. Darwinists employ a hypnotic technique that prevents people from thinking independently or examining the true scientific evidence”.<\/em> “Muslims who commit acts of terrorism are really atheistic Darwinists trying to discredit Islam”.<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, those quotes are real.\u00a0And again, this time\u00a0from an interview with the Discovery Institute’s Denyse O’Leary in 2009 published on the ‘Uncommon Descent’ website:<\/p>\n “Darwinism is a Pagan religion whose roots go back to the Sumerians and Ancient Egypt……..<\/em>.the Darwinist materialist mindset lies behind all wars, revolutions and anarchy.<\/em>“<\/p>\n And to give a flavour of how even the most irrational anti-Darwin outpourings are acceptable to members of the Discovery Institute, O’Leary goes on to describe Harun Yahya’s writings as:<\/p>\n “…….the most succinct and comprehensive of the critiques of overblown claims for Darwinian evolution that I have ever read<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Attitudes have changed somewhat, however. While the Discovery Institute used to consider\u00a0Harun Yahya to be\u00a0an important ally they have more recently been forced to publicly dissociate themselves from him. The reason? Well it’s obviously not because of his penchant for lunacy and the comedic phrase, or (maybe) even because he’s a Muslim. It’s because Yahya is now critical of the Discovery Institute, describing it on his website as:<\/p>\n “a deceitful endeavour<\/em>……….a<\/em>nother of Satan’s distractions………<\/em>a Masonic conspiracy for promoting atheism and Deism.<\/em>“<\/p>\n Not because the Discovery Institute and intelligent design is intended to counter evolution, obviously, but because it does so without, for the most part, overtly mentioning God, by (usually) playing down claims as to the identity of the ‘designer’. As Pennock (2004) wrily observes:<\/p>\n “It is ironic that their political strategy leads them to deny God in the public square more often than Peter did<\/em>.”<\/p>\n If you still have any doubts as to Weikart and Bergman’s and Yahya’s motives, ask yourself why they don’t level similar absurd arguments at any other field of science.\u00a0Did anyone ideologically link Isaac Newton (or even the Wright brothers) with Hitler because the Luftwaffe targeted a wholly civilian population when they bombed the Basque town of Guernica in 1937? Has anyone ideologically linked Antoine Lavoisier with Hitler because he decided to use the chemical agent Zyklon-B in the Nazi death camps rather than some non-chemical means of mass murder? Mendelian genetics directly informed the scientific basis for eugenics policies worldwide, yet we witness none of the vindictiveness aimed at Darwin targeted also at Gregor Mendel. Indeed, who outside of the fundamentalist Christian community would even consider it reasonable for a scientist to be deemed responsible when, after their death, another individual uses their research findings and exploits them to serve their own political agenda? And how come we never hear Christian fundamentalists denigrate classical music? After all, the Nazis\u00a0employed it enthusiastically, to great effect, in their propaganda films and mass rallies.<\/p>\n So what is it about Darwin that they hate so much? He simply discovered the existence of a mechanism that explains the diversity of the species currently observed on our planet (not, as Bergman and Meyer would like their audience to think, a mechanism for abiogenesis). He was a naturalist. He had no initial underlying philosophical interest in finding such a mechanism, other than a curiosity to explain phenomena as diverse as such as corals, orchids, birds and barnacles\u00a0and it is a long and winding philosophical road from barnacles to concentration camps,\u00a0despite\u00a0Bergman’s pathetic assertion that\u00a0“he wanted to murder God.”<\/em>\u00a0To the contrary, this is what Darwin wrote in his autobiography:<\/p>\n “I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species<\/em>.”<\/p>\n In light of the fact that he had even bothered to refer to God in ‘Origin of Species’ another fundamentalist Christian, Cornelius Hunter (2001), takes a different stab at Darwin’s character by asserting that he (and others following him) were motivated toward evolutionary theory, not because of the scientific evidence, but for primarily religious reasons, i.e., because evolutionary theory effectively acts as an atheistic version of a theodicy, in that it purports to explain the apparent cruelty of nature. Perhaps not murdering, then, but certainly wilfully discounting God. But this approach is simplistic; it cannot apply to all of theism, and certainly not to deism. It is only possible for someone who presupposes that God is, or expected to be, benevolent toward all of creation.<\/p>\n As noted, Bergman has quite a history of making erroneous and asinine statements. In a 2009 debate with developmental biologist PZ Myers on whether creationism should be taught alongside evolution in schools he stated, incredibly,\u00a0that:<\/p>\n “…….no scientists opposed Hitler<\/em>“.<\/p>\n If Bergman was anything like a diligent researcher he would have found the November 26th 1938 edition of the influential British magazine ‘Picture Post’ entitled ‘Back to the Middle Ages’ which displayed a collage cover featuring Hitler, Goebbels and\u00a0G\u00f6ering contrasted with the faces of a number of German scientists opposed to Nazism as well as detailed articles inside dealing with the many German artists and scientists forced to flee Germany. He would know the story of Franz Boas (1858-1942), the German-born pro-Darwinian, anti-racist ‘father of American Anthropology’ who was responsible for getting many anti-Nazi German scientists out of their homeland and arranging academic positions for them in the United States.\u00a0Obviously Bergman hasn’t bothered to\u00a0read Jean Medawar and David Pyke’s 2000 book ‘Hitler’s Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime’. In the same debate Bergman also claimed that a schoolteacher had been fired for posting the periodic table on his classroom wall, on the grounds that the periodic table was irreducibly complex and therefore constituted a religious statement. The story was, of course, completely fabricated. A further example of his willingness to bullshit: Bergman has published work under the pseudonym ‘Hagor Montague’. He has actually cited work under that name without indicating that it is the same author.<\/p>\n Darwin initially trained to be a clergyman and\u00a0\u00a0at the time of writing ‘Origin of Species’\u00a0he was a committed theist married to a devout Christian. Although\u00a0in his later life he described himself as ‘agnostic’ – and never as atheist –\u00a0he nevertheless had openly atheist friends and, when they were\u00a0invited to dinner at his home his wife would arrange\u00a0the table\u00a0so she did not have to sit next to them.\u00a0Indeed, Darwin wrote on several occasions that he perceived no general incompatibility between his findings on evolution and religion. More specifically the theory of evolution by natural selection explains how the individual species that are observed today have descended, via means of often deceptively simple biological algorithms, from common ancestor species, a process referred to as ‘speciation’ (though, of course, evolution occurs in the absence of speciation).\u00a0Thus Darwinian evolution is descriptive. Unlike the Bible, it is in no sense prescriptive. Many fundamentalist Christians appear to be philosophically blind to this most basic fact.<\/p>\n Unlike Darwin, Hitler had no scientific training at all and left a respected Catholic school at sixteen with an undistinguished academic record in every subject, having been removed from an earlier respected school for his poor performance and was later turned down by art college. Not surprisingly, it is obvious from his own pen that he possessed no real understanding or appreciation of evolutionary theory. Bergman (1999), however, tells us differently:<\/p>\n “As early as 1925, Hitler outlined his conclusion in Chapter 4 of Mein Kampf that Darwinism was the only basis for a successful Germany.”<\/em><\/p>\n Did he really? Actually no, he didn’t. Not in any way. Please go ahead and read Chapter 4, Vol 1 of ‘Mein Kampf’ and you will find that Bergman is blatantly lying (although Bergman does not specify a volume the date given can only refer to Vol 1; Vol 2 was not published until the following year). Indeed, we have available to us a complete record of everything Hitler wrote and said in public, and\u00a0quite a bit\u00a0of what he said and wrote in private. In addition to the lack of mention of Darwin or ‘Darwinism’ in any chapter at all of ‘Mein Kampf’, the transcripts of every recorded speech made by Hitler are freely available. Nowhere did he use the words ‘Darwin’, ‘Darwinist’, ‘Darwinian’ or ‘Darwinism’ or the terms ‘theory of evolution’ or ‘theory of descent’. Similarly, in his private correspondence and personal notes,\u00a0(‘Hitler’s Letters and Notes’\u00a0published in 1974 by the German historian Werner Macer) not a single mention is\u00a0found of Darwin or ‘Darwinism’. This is indeed a surprising omission, considering the intellectual debt Bergman and Weikart claim Hitler owes Darwin. The same goes for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. The volumes of his meticulously kept diary dated 1923-1945 (published in full, 2008) similarly makes no mention of ‘Darwin’, ‘Darwinism’ or ‘theory of evolution’.\u00a0Indeed neither Weikart, Bergman or Gasman or anyone else have ever been able to uncover a single direct quote from any leading Nazi ideologue linking Nazi political policy with the ‘theory of evolution’, ‘Darwin’ or ‘Darwinism’.<\/p>\n It appears that Hitler was an avid book collector and reader. In\u00a0October 1934 he disclosed to the Gladbacher Fire Insurance Company that his personal book collection comprised 6,000 volumes. Eight years later, the writer Frederick Oeschner,\u00a0who\u00a0was given\u00a0frequent access to both Hitler’s city and rural private residences and his office estimated, in his 1942 book ‘This Is The Enemy’, that his personal library held nearly three times as many; 16,300 books. Of these, he noted that\u00a0approximately 7,000 dealt with military matters, 1,500 with architecture and the arts\u00a0and 800-1000 books\u00a0could be classed as\u00a0popular fiction. The\u00a0remaining\u00a0volumes dealt with\u00a0diverse themes such as history and geography. Not a single work by Darwin was found. The portions of Hitler’s library currently housed in the United States Library of Congress and at Brown University in the United States confirm this.\u00a0As Robert Richards (2013) reminds us:<\/p>\n “There’s not the slightest shred of evidence that Hitler read Darwin.”<\/em><\/p>\n Hitler did possess six books written by Hans G\u00fcnther (an anti-Darwinian known disparagingly as ‘Rasseng\u00fcnther’ because of his preoccupation with ‘race’) including four copies of his classic work ‘Rassenkunde des Deutschen Volkes‘\u00a0<\/em>(‘Racial Science of the German People’). According to Timothy Ryback (‘Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life’; 2008) one of these copies showed signs of sustained use.\u00a0Unperturbed by\u00a0such evidence however, Weikart,\u00a0responding in the comments section to a ‘Philadelphia Inquirer’ article ‘Severing the Link between Darwin and Nazism’, (October 27th, 2011) written by Fay Flam,\u00a0actually countered with:<\/p>\n “W<\/em>hether Hitler ever read Darwin is, of course, irrelevant.<\/em>“<\/p>\n Is this really a sound argument: the bedrock of Hitler’s worldview was based on Darwinian science and it is entirely feasible that this came to be even though Hitler never actually read anything published by Darwin? Weikart would appear to think so. He then goes on:<\/p>\n “<\/em>I have examined the official Nazi biology curriculum. Lo and behold, it contains extensive teaching on evolution, including human evolution (and it is by natural selection, so it is overtly Darwinian)<\/em>.”<\/p>\n I’m sure the curriculum included teaching about gravity and chemistry and classical music too. All of which were accepted subjects within the sciences and humanities and, as mentioned, were all used by the Nazis with evil intent. So why isn’t Weikart questioning their value too?<\/p>\n Hitler’s favourite author though, from childhood and into adulthood, was undoubtedly Karl May. He rates a particularly admirable mention in ‘Mein Kampf’ for the influence on his childhood and according to Albert Speer (quoted by Ryback, 2008):<\/p>\n “..………when faced by seemingly hopeless situations, he would still reach for these stories……..they gave him courage like works of philosophy for others or the Bible for elderly people<\/em>.”<\/p>\n May was, despite his surname, German and despite having never travelled to the United States wrote novels set in the ‘Wild West’ all of which had a common theme of the sharp-shooting white hero defeating the racially inferior ‘Redskins’. The underlying\u00a0prevalent theme was that of ‘Manifest Destiny’, i.e., the moral right of Europeans to inhabit every corner of North America. Hitler referred to the value of this concept \u00a0in a number of speeches.\u00a0It is not difficult, therefore, to draw parallels\u00a0between ‘Manifest Destiny’ and Hitler’s concept of \u00a0‘Lebensraum’, or the advocation of German expansion into areas of Europe populated by ‘inferior peoples’, particularly toward the east. On October 17th 1941, Hitler is recorded as saying about Russia:<\/p>\n “There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins<\/em>.”<\/p>\n And this was not a one-off sentiment; Hitler is frequently recorded as referring to Russians as ‘Redskins’.\u00a0By 1943 Germany had 217 divisions facing Russia and only 70 facing the Atlantic and Hitler had special editions of Karl May’s books distributed to troops the Russian front. Nor is is it a stretch to identify the similarity of Native American forced migrations into reservations with the forced displacement of the Jewish population into concentration camps. Of course, the phrase ‘Manifest Destiny’ was first used in 1845, though the concept predates that year, and the forced migration of Native Americans commenced with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, some 29 years before Darwin wrote ‘On the Origin of Species’.<\/p>\n Weikart repeatedly makes the claim that there are a large number of instances where Hitler uses the term ‘evolution’ in his writings and speeches. On closer examination, however, we can see he is attempting to deliberately mislead (this charge is made all the worse by the fact that Weikart actually lived in Germany for a time).\u00a0The phrase ‘theory of evolution’ in modern German is ‘evolutionstheorie’ or, more specifically, ‘Darwin’sche evolutionstheorie’ or die ‘Darwinsche evolutionstheorie’. All these terms are found to be more commonly used since about 1950 and none of these words appear in any of Hitler’s writings nor in any of his speeches. In Hitler’s day\u00a0a number of words and phrases could be applied to convey\u00a0the general\u00a0notion of biological evolution, for example, the terms ‘abstammungslehre’, ‘deszendenztheorie’ and ‘abstammungstheorie’.\u00a0Again, there is no record of him having used any of these words. The word ‘entwicklung’\u00a0was, however, very commonly used by Hitler in both his writings and his speeches. Entwicklung can translate as either ‘evolution’ or ‘development’, dependent on the context, similar to English usages as in, for example, ‘the evolution of German culture’ or ‘economic development’ and Hitler\u00a0often employed the word with this type of meaning.\u00a0Similarly so for the word\u00a0‘h\u00f6herentwicklung’, which is most often applied in a more philosophical or abstract sense, as in the ‘higher development’ of thought.<\/p>\n Inclusion of any instance of ‘entwicklung’ or ‘h\u00f6herentwicklung’ has been claimed by Weikart to demonstrate that the Nazis where familiar with and used Darwinian ideas. It does no such thing. Weikart is simply counting instances of the use of these words while completely ignoring the context and intended meaning. His claim that Hitler’s repeated use of certain words, translating more usually as ‘development’, signifies his approval of Darwinian evolution is disingenuous as well as dishonest; indeed there is not a single instance of Hitler ever using the root-word ‘entwicklung’ to explicitly convey the sense of biological evolution. This is easy enough to verify, even for those not fluent in written German. Irishman James Murphy’s 1939 English translation of ‘Mein Kampf’ is readily available online and the two volumes total to about 250,000 words. This is widely considered to be the seminal translation because Murphy lived in Berlin, working as a political reporter, for several years in the 1930s, being on daily speaking terms with several people within the Nazi Party’s upper echelons. He was a fluent German speaker and had been commissioned to make the English translation by the the Nazi Party. Murphy translates the exact English word ‘evolution’ from the original German a mere 12 times. Here is each example along with some surrounding context. In Vol. 1 the word doesn’t even appear until Chapter 10 (contra Bergman’s claim discussed earlier) where it appears once in a discussion as to why the Second Reich had collapsed:<\/p>\n “..………clear insight into the laws of political\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0which is a necessary quality in political leadership<\/em>.”<\/p>\n It then appears in four sentences in Chapter 11, entitled ‘Race and Nature’. While Bergman claims Chapter 4 of Vol. 1 to be the smoking gun, Weikart (2004) contradicts, arguing that Chapter 11 is where the evidence lies:<\/p>\n “The Darwinian underpinnings of Nazi racial ideology are patently obvious. Hitler’s chapter on “Nation and Race” in Mein Kampf discusses the racial struggle for existence in clear Darwinian terms.<\/em>“<\/p>\n But does it? The first instance is the only example that could be construed as referring to biological evolution and even then it is certainly more applicable to artificial selection than any Darwinian idea of natural selection:<\/p>\n “The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker……..if such a law did not direct the process of\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The second instance refers to the importance of the domestication of animals for farming in the growth of civilisation:<\/p>\n “..……….fail to recognize that this\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0had to take place in order that man might reach that degree of civilization<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The third instance is found in an argument against pacifism during wartime:<\/p>\n “……….he will protest against the fantasies of pacifist ranters, who in reality are nothing better than cowardly egoists…………it is a necessity of human\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0that the individual should be imbued with the spirit of sacrifice in favour of the common weal<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The fourth occurrence also has no biological connotation whatsoever:<\/p>\n “The intellectual faculties of the Jew have been trained through thousands of years………..His intellectual powers, however, are not the result of an inner\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0but rather have been shaped by the object-lessons which the Jew has received from others.<\/em>“<\/p>\n I leave it to the reader to decide for themselves whether Weikart’s charge is warranted. In Vol. 2, there are two instances of the word ‘evolution’ in Chapter 4. The first is non-biological in context and the second distinctly un-Darwinian and vaguely religious in character:<\/p>\n “………….it may be worth while to glance once again at the real origins and causes of the cultural\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong>\u00a0of mankind………….”<\/em><\/p>\n “Because everyone who believes in the higher\u00a0evolution<\/strong>\u00a0of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as ‘instinct<\/em>.'”<\/p>\n In Chapter 7 the word is used in a discussion about\u00a0the Soviet armed forces:<\/p>\n “The general\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0of things, even though it took a century of struggle, placed the best in the position that it had merited<\/em>.”<\/p>\n There are two instances in Chapter 11. They both occur in a\u00a0discussion about how to best organise a political party:<\/p>\n “Organization is a thing that derives its existence from organic life, organic\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0When the same set of ideas have found a lodgement in the minds of a certain number of people they tend of themselves to form a certain degree of order among those people<\/em>.”<\/p>\n “……...the leadership principle may be imposed on an organized political community in a dictatorial way. But this principle can become a living reality only by passing through the stages that are necessary for its own\u00a0<\/em>evolution<\/strong><\/em>. These stages lead from the smallest cell of the State organism upward<\/em>s.”<\/p>\n Finally, only once in Chapter 13, which is concerned with Germany’s political alliances following the First World War:<\/p>\n “This\u00a0evolution<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0has not yet taken the shape of a conscious intention and movement to restore the political power and independence of our nation<\/em>.”<\/p>\n So where, one might ask,\u00a0per<\/em>\u00a0Bergman’s claim, has “Hitler outlined his conclusion in Chapter 4 of Mein Kampf that Darwinism was the only basis for a successful Germany”<\/em>?\u00a0<\/em>And is it true\u00a0per\u00a0<\/em>Weikart’s claim that the\u00a0“Darwinian underpinnings of Nazi racial ideology are patently obvious<\/em>.”\u00a0If Hitler has achieved this he appears to have managed the feat without once mentioning ‘Darwin’, ‘Darwinism’, ‘Darwininian, ‘natural selection’ or even ‘evolution’ in any Darwinian sense whatsoever.\u00a0<\/em>That’s quite a conceptual and linguistic trick.<\/em>\u00a0When faced with this (lack of) evidence, it\u00a0is sometimes argued that Hitler\u00a0simply conveyed Darwinian notions without\u00a0ever mentioning them. Given the examples above, this is obviously not so. However, given the gravity of the charges made against Darwin, that\u00a0his scientific findings\u00a0weren’t simply a minor add-on to\u00a0Hitler’s worldview but the core philosophy that drove all his political and social aims, does this seem at all plausible?\u00a0Hitler had no qualms about\u00a0showing his gratitude to others he acknowledged had influenced him so why does he never do the same for Darwin?<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Weikart (2004) ploughs on and offers further contrived evidence. This example claims that Hitler accepted (despite what he had expressly written in Mein Kampf) that humans had evolved over millions of years, in line with evolutionary biology. This one is ludicrously tenuous; the implication is that since he believed that humans had evolved over millions of years this provides sufficient evidence that his political theories were directly underwritten by Darwin! According to Weikart (who offers no citation) this quote is from Hitler’s Speech at the opening ceremony for the ‘House of German Art’ in Munich in July, 1937. Speaking of “degenerate art<\/em>” Hitler is purported to state:<\/p>\n “When we know today that the evolution of millions of years, compressed into a few decades, repeats itself in every individual, then this art, we realize, is not “modern.” It is on the contrary to the highest degree “archaic,” far older probably than the Stone Age<\/em>.”<\/p>\n This is both a glaring quote mine and a deliberate mistranslation. The original speech can be found on the website of the organisation ‘German History in Documents and Images’. What Hitler actually said was:<\/p>\n “Since\u00a0we know today that the\u00a0<\/strong>development of\u00a0millions of years<\/strong>\u00a0repeats itself in every individual but is\u00a0compressed into a few decades<\/strong>, we have the proof that an artistic creation that does not surpass the achievement of eight-year-old children\u00a0is not “modern<\/strong>” or even “futuristic” but is,\u00a0on the contrary<\/strong>, highly\u00a0archaic<\/strong>. It probably is not as developed as the art of\u00a0the Stone Age<\/strong>\u00a0period, when people scratched pictures of their environment on the walls of caves<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The words in bold are the only ones present in Weikart’s version of the quote. Weikart has cobbled together less than a third of the original paragraph and quoted it as if it were verbatim – without even the use ellipses. Worse, contrary to Weikart, the word ‘evolution’ in a biological sense does not occur, ‘development’, of course, being the correct translation.\u00a0A further example of such deliberate mistranslation from German to English is this example from Geisler and Turek’s book ‘I Don’t have Enough Faith to be an Atheist’ (2004), but it is commonly found elsewhere. The following ‘quote’ is from Chapter 6 of ‘Mein Kampf’. It is used to directly support Geisler and Turek’s assertion that:<\/p>\n “Adolf Hitler used Darwin’s theory as philosophical justification for the Holocaust.<\/em>“<\/p>\n Never mind that Hitler does not mention his intentions re the Holocaust in Mein Kampf at all. The alleged quote is:<\/p>\n “If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case, all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher state of being, may thus be rendered futile<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Ignoring also for now the obvious teleological and profoundly un-Darwinian notions that nature “wishes<\/em>” and makes “efforts<\/em>” toward a “evolutionary higher state<\/em>“, it might well appear to someone unfamiliar with the mechanics of evolutionary biology that Hitler is appealing to evolutionary mechanisms to at least support his political views. After all, he appears to actually mention the word, and in a biological context. This is not the case, however. Here is the same passage in the original German:<\/p>\n “So wenig sie aber schon eine Paarung von schw\u00e4cheren Einzelwesen mit st\u00e4rkeren w\u00fcnscht, soviel weniger noch die Verschmelzung von h\u00f6herer Rasse mit niederer, da ja andernfalls ihre ganze sonstige, vielleicht jahhunderttausendelange Arbeit der\u00a0H\u00f6herz\u00fcchtung<\/strong>\u00a0mit einem Schlage wieder hinf\u00e4llig w\u00e4re<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The word that Christian fundamentalists deliberately and commonly mistranslate as ‘evolutionary’ is in bold. Yet in no way does this word translate as ‘evolutionary’. ‘H\u00f6herz\u00fcchtung’\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>has never been used by native German speakers to refer to evolutionary biology.\u00a0‘H\u00f6her’ translates directly as ‘higher’ while ‘z\u00fcchtung’ translates directly as ‘breeding’. An accurate rendering, therefore, is ‘higher breeding’ or ‘cultivation’, obviously referring to ‘artificial selection’, which is hardly an original Darwinian concept or even a Darwinian concept at all; Darwin went to great pains to contrast natural selection with artificial selection. Geisler and Turek then compound their dishonesty by adding a touch of scientific illiteracy. They go on:<\/p>\n Hitler, like other Darwinists, illegitimately personifies nature by attributing will to it.<\/em>“<\/p>\n This profoundly ignorant statement is typical of the level of argumentation emanating from these quarters. Like other Darwinists? Really? What other Darwinists, pray? Of course, they cite not a single one. With good reason. For if they had, they would be forced to bring their readers’ attention to the ideas of theistic evolution (i.e., the notion that biological evolution is guided by God, e.g., Miller, 1999). But this too is not even the orthodox view in biology. The anti-Darwin lobby appear terribly confused on this issue. On the one hand the literal, young-Earth creationists deny that any evolution occurs beyond the level of individual species, while some old-Earth creationists and intelligent-design proponents sometimes argue against theistic evolution (e.g., Dembski, 1995 “an “ill-conceived accommodation<\/em>“; Meyer, 1999), yet others fully embrace common descent (e.g., Behe, 1996). When faced with the genetic evidence for common descent, however, the latter group are not averse to postulating that all the genetic information necessary to account for the diversity of extant species was purposely ‘front-loaded’ by the designer (i.e., God) which would, of course, be a variant of theistic evolution. Nevertheless, you can’t realistically argue on the one hand that ‘Darwinism’ is an inherently evil ‘philosophy’ or ‘religion’ because it rests on a blind mechanical process, having no inherent teleological design, purpose, intent or destiny (as fundamentalist Christians, including Geisler and Turek continually do) and in the next breath claim that Darwinists illegitimately reassign purpose and teleology from supernatural to natural means. For their arguments to have their intended effect, Geisler and Turek are surely playing on the ignorance of their intended readership.<\/p>\n There are two instances where Hitler appears to have alluded to Darwinian evolution. Both come from the ‘Table Talks’, a series of conversations and monologues recorded by stenographers between 1941 and 1944. Hitler would not allow any recording devices to be used during these talks and the subsequent\u00a0accuracy of the two extant transcripts of these talks and the quality of the translations has been repeatedly questioned and criticised. Nevertheless, in October 1941 Hitler discusses the absurdity of schools teaching the story of the creation in one class and notions of evolution in another and how the two conflicting stories had confused him as a child. He then goes on to say that:<\/p>\n “……………….it would be more profoundly pious to find God in everything”.<\/em><\/p>\n He gives no judgement on the theory of evolution. In July 1942, Hitler likens himself to a scientist:<\/p>\n “I feel I am like Robert Koch\u00a0<\/em>[the German doctor who isolated the responsible agents for tuberculosis, anthrax and cholera]\u00a0in politics. He discovered the bacillus and thereby ushered medical science onto new paths. I discovered the Jew as the bacillus and the fermenting agent of all social decomposition.”<\/em><\/p>\n This was the second occasion in which\u00a0Hitler had likened himself to Robert Koch. The first was in a speech in Salzburg 22 years earlier when he also likened himself to Pasteur (an ardent creationist of course). Yet we are being led to believe that it was Darwin who was his scientific hero. So why did he never say that? He repeatedly praises men like Martin Luther, Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Chamberlain, Koch and Pasteur among others, but never, ever, Darwin.\u00a0The\u00a0previous January he was recorded as saying:<\/p>\n “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.”<\/em><\/p>\n By any reading this is surely a straightforward and unambiguous denial of not only speciation but of the scientifically accepted evolutionary origins of human beings. This passage could have been written by any modern-day creationist trying to convince his audience that evolution\u00a0sans<\/em>\u00a0speciation (‘microevolution’) is as far as the evidence goes. It surely beggars belief that after writing two large volumes, giving dozens of public speeches, in person and on the radio, and then having regular recorded conversations on a wide range of subjects over a period of three years, the man who had supposedly based his entire political ideology on Darwinism had no more to say on the matter than\u00a0these trivial few lines. Weikart can surely see that Hitler negated Darwinian evolution completely, yet he chooses to consider this statement as an “abberation<\/em>” (as if he had any others to compare it with) and so finds himself forced to partially quote from a little-known book of essays (first published by the ‘Literary Guide’ in 1943-44, later reprinted by Watts & Co.) by Arthur Keith (1866-1955), a Scottish anatomist and anthropologist:<\/p>\n “The German F\u00fchrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist. He has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In addition to Weikart’s book this carefully selected quote can be found on a number of fundamentalist Christian websites. What you never find in these places, however, is Keith’s following sentence:<\/p>\n “He has failed, not because evolution is false, but because he has made three fatal errors in its application.”<\/em><\/p>\n So, completely contrary to what Weikart and others would like us to believe, the point Keith was actually making is that Hitler didn’t understand evolution well enough to apply it. And neither, it appears,\u00a0did Arthur Keith.\u00a0He was responsible in 1914\u00a0for giving a scientific name,\u00a0Homo piltdownensis<\/em>,\u00a0to the fraudulent fossil skull (part human, part orang-utan, part chimpanzee)\u00a0known as the Piltdown Man, despite a paper having appeared a year earlier in ‘Nature’ (Irving, 1913) suggesting the skull was fake, on the basis that “…….the\u00a0stratum\u00a0of Piltdown gravel………is of far later date than anything belonging to the Pleiocene<\/em>.” However,\u00a0Keith was not only convinced that Hitler was an “evolutionist<\/em>” he also denied the validity of all proto-human fossils found in Africa, believing instead that all humans originated in Europe and that\u00a0“racial characters are more strongly developed in the Jews than in any other race”.<\/em>\u00a0He further argued that nation states were quasi-biological entities and, in a 1931 lecture in London’s Conway Hall, ‘Race as a Political Factor’ argued that the races should be kept apart:<\/p>\n “The three primary racial groups within the human species are the Caucasian, mongoloid and negroid. From analogy with cross-breeding in animals and plants, and from experience of human cross-breeding, it can be asserted that inter-marriage between members of the three groups produces inferior progeny. Hence racial segregation is to be recommended.”<\/em><\/p>\n These ideas sound like something pulled directly from ‘Mein Kampf’. Yet Keith is consistently selectively quoted by Christian fundamentalists, not to criticise Keith for his views that aligned with Hitler, but to discredit Darwin, for having allegedly influenced those views!<\/p>\n \u200bThe closest to a direct reference to Darwinian ‘natural selection’ in the entire Nazi political archive is found in the minutes of the Wansee Conference of 1942. Even this is highly questionable. Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Holocaust (the name of the project to build three of the death camps was Operation Reinhard) reported on his plans for Jewish work camps:<\/p>\n “Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival”.<\/em><\/p>\n In this commonly encountered English translation Heydrich is stating, correctly, that Jews who are able to survive the rigours of the camp will be the hardiest and if allowed to reproduce will pass these traits onto their offspring. This would certainly be an example of natural selection. As Darwin explained in ‘The Descent of Man’:<\/p>\n “……….the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health”.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Note that Heydrich is simply reporting the possible natural consequences of his plans. He has not fallen for an\u00a0argumentum ad consequentiam<\/em>. Contrary to assertions from Christian fundamentalists, he is not even remotely attempting to use natural selection as a justification for the Jews being placed in the camp. Indeed, Heydrich is bringing natural selection to the attention of his colleagues only because of its potentially negative effects on Nazi aspirations.\u00a0However, once again, translation of the quote is highly suspect. The original German text does not refer to natural selection in the Darwinian sense. The second sentence of the above quote reads:<\/p>\n “Der allf\u00e4llig endlich verbleibende Restbestand wird, da es sich bei diesem zweifellos um den widerstandsf\u00e4higsten Teil handelt entsprechend behandelt werden m\u00fcssen, da dieser,\u00a0eine nat\u00fcrliche Auslese darstellend<\/strong>, bei Freilassung als Keimzelle eines neuen j\u00fcdischen Aufbaues anzusprechen ist<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The relevant term here is the bold “eine nat\u00fcrliche Auslese darstellend”.\u00a0<\/em>This was not the phrase commonly used by German-speaking biologists to describe Darwinian natural selection. This was ‘nat\u00fcrliche selektion’. Thus, rather than “the product of natural selection<\/em>” the passage most accurately translates as “representing a natural selection<\/em>“.\u00a0It is possible, of course, that Heydrich was unaware of the correct scientific term and substituted a more generic phrase but this would not explain why he prefaced the term with an indefinite article; this would surely not be a mistake.<\/p>\n Because of the disturbing lack of direct quotations from Nazi sources, authors claiming a Darwin-Hitler link are forced to copiously scaffold their assertions by quote-mining from carefully selected third parties. Weikart and Bergman’s books and papers are replete with examples of this practice. Further, they often deliberately convey these opinions in such a way that they masquerade as a primary source. Bergman (1999) again:<\/p>\n “His race views were not from fringe science as often claimed but rather Hitler’s views were “..… straightforward German social Darwinism of a type widely known and accepted””<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Bergman has constructed this quote cleverly. A cursory glance makes it appear that the nested quote emanates from Hitler. It doesn’t. If it did, Bergman would quote and cite Hitler himself stating that his views were “straightforward German social Darwinism.<\/em>” It’s not as if Hitler boxed shy of letting the world know his opinions. Well, apart from Hitler never having used the word ‘Darwinism’, the phrase ‘social Darwinism’ wasn’t in common usage until the final year of Hitler’s life. Why else would Bergman feel the need to nest-quote an opinion from political scientist George Stein’s 1988 paper in ‘American Scientist’, ‘Biological Science and the Roots of Nazism’?<\/p>\n Another sly yet commonly employed trick by anti-Darwin commentators is to use selective quotes derived directly from Darwin, but in a rebuilt form, in a blatant attempt to distort the original meaning. The following, for example, is an excerpt from the transcript of the voice-over from the documentary ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’. This\u00a0film attempted, among other aims, to argue that evolutionary theory has led to all manner of atrocities, including eugenics and the Nazi Holocaust.\u00a0This passage\u00a0purports to be a direct quotation from Darwin that demonstrates his support of eugenics and callous lack of concern for his fellow humans:<\/p>\n “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed”.<\/em><\/p>\n It certainly appears that Darwin is suggesting that weaker members of society not be allowed to have children. Now here is the original quotation in full, taken from ‘The Descent of Man’. The\u00a0words deliberately omitted are in bold:<\/p>\n “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick;\u00a0we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox.\u00a0<\/strong>Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.\u00a0It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself,<\/strong>\u00a0hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed”.<\/em><\/p>\n So we have a purported direct quote from Darwin which ignores half of the words from his original paragraph. This exact doctored quote has a long history and appears to have been first used by the\u00a0anti-evolution prosecuting\u00a0lawyer\u00a0William Jennings Bryan in the 1925 Louisiana ‘Scopes’ trial which challenged the\u00a0legality of the Butler Act prohibiting the teaching in state schools of:<\/p>\n “……………any theory that denies the Story of Divine Creation of Man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animal<\/em>.”<\/p>\n It is difficult to imagine that the producers of the documentary were not aware of their falsehood. Even worse, the documentary simply ignores the paragraph immediately following in which Darwin makes crystal clear his contempt for eugenics\u00a0:<\/p>\n “The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil”.<\/em><\/p>\n So, contrary to what ‘Expelled’ is claiming, Darwin actually told us that the practice of eugenics would result in\u00a0“deterioration in the noblest part of our nature”<\/em>\u00a0and be\u00a0“an overwhelmingly present evil”.\u00a0<\/em>Comparing the two versions, I think anyone would agree that the view painted of Darwin in ‘Expelled’ falls far short of honesty. In fact, rather than being\u00a0a cold-hearted\u00a0eugenicist Darwin reveals himself to be considerably more tolerant and less bigoted than are many present-day fundamentalist Christians. Another example of the dishonesty of ‘Expelled’: there are scenes at the opening and closing of the film in which the narrator, Ben Stein, is purported to be lecturing to a packed auditorium of university biology students who appear to be enthusiastically\u00a0applauding his diatribe against ‘Darwinism’. No such event occurred. The scenes were filmed at Pepperdine University, a Christian University in California which doesn’t even have a biology department. It is now common knowledge that the enthused ‘students’ were extras\u00a0bused\u00a0in especially for the filming.<\/p>\n Another example purporting to be Darwin’s exact words from ‘Descent of Man’ has been oft-quoted by creationist sources for almost twenty years. It goes like this:<\/p>\n “<\/em>At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous [i.e., most human-looking] apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla”.<\/em><\/p>\n This excerpt apparently demonstrates Darwin’s acceptance of a racial hierarchy within human beings and\u00a0his recommendation that the ‘civilized races’ will replace the ‘savage races’. This version of the passage originated sometime in the mid-1990s and its origin has been traced back to the Discovery Institute. In fact, Darwin\u00a0meant no such thing. Here is the original passage, from chapter 6 of ‘The Descent of Man’. Again, the critical omitted words are in bold:<\/p>\n “<\/em>The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies — between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae — between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes,\u00a0
\n(Private Hitler: An Account of His Private Secretary; 1949). Zoller was a French army officer who, in turn, reported having received the quote from his official interviews with Christa Schroeder, one of Hitler’s private secretaries. As discussed in some detail later, even if the quote is accurate its translation most probably is not; the commonly translated German word for ‘evolution’ at that time actually translates most accurately as ‘development’ and Hitler spoke often of the ‘development of mankind’.\n
\n\u00a0<\/em>
\nAnd another quote, from a 2008 interview with Daniel Steinvorth in the magazine ‘Der Spiegel’:\n