Philosophu Talk

PG · Guest

One of the misconceptions about atheism that has been encouraged by this
film, accidentally or deliberately provoking letters from Jews, is that
Darwinism is at the root of Hitler's antisemitism and a direct cause of the
Holocaust. Stein has got a lot to answer for.

Richard Dawkin's has written the following response in reply to one such
letter:
_________________

Dear Mr J

Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have
unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein's mendacious and/or ignorant
suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not
mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.

1. I deeply sympathize with you for the loss of your relatives in the
Holocaust. Nevertheless, I don't think that could really be said to justify
the tone of your letter to Michael Shermer, who is a kind and decent man, as
even you seemed to concede in your second letter to him, and the very
antithesis of a Nazi sympathizer.

<<Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You
people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the
Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just
window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the
United States! >>

Just look at those words of yours. Probably you regret them by now. I
certainly hope so, but I'll continue to write my letter to you, on the
assumption that you still feel at least a part of what you wrote.

2. Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not
just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain,
by the way. What singled Hitler out was the fact that he somehow managed to
come to power in one of Europe's leading nations, which was also one of the
world's most technologically advanced nations. Hitler had a lot of support
in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German
footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were
Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were
atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist.
It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to
win the Church's support for his regime. In this he was very largely
successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he
often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened.
And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example,
here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf.

<<""Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of
the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for
the work of the Lord.
Hitler's obscene anti-Semitism was able to hold sway in Germany because
there was a deeply embedded history of anti-Semitism in Germany, and indeed
in Europe generally."" >>

3. Going further back in history, where do we think the toxic anti-Semitism
of Hitler, and of the many Germans whose support gave him power, came from?
You can't seriously think it came from Darwin. Anti-Semitism has been rife
in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian
churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman
Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as "Christ-killers". While,
as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews
and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that "All
Jews should be driven from Germany." By the way, do you hear an echo of
those words in your own letter to Michael Shermer, "We Jews will fight to
keep people like you out of the United States." Don't you feel just a twinge
of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don't you feel that, as a
Jew, you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?

4. Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural
selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It
is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or
morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we
should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter
of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the
science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian
when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several
times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very
unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at
the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn
to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply
it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various
different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.

5. Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind. Quite the contrary. It
is emphatically NOT about natural selection between races. It is about
natural selection between individuals. It is true that the subtitle of The
Origin of Species is "Or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle
for life" but Darwin was using the word "race" in a very different sense
from ours. It is totaly clear, if you read past the title to the book
itself, that a "favoured race" meant something like 'that set of individuals
who possess a certain favoured genetic mutation" (although Darwin would not
have used that language because he did not have our modern concept of a
genetic mutation).

6. There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf. Not one single, solitary
mention, not one mention in any of the 27 chapters of this long and tedious
book. Don't you think that, if Hitler was truly influenced by Darwin, he
would have given him at least one teeny weeny mention in his book? Was he,
perhaps, INDIRECTLY influenced by some of Darwin's ideas, without knowing
it? Only if you completely misunderstand Darwin's ideas, as some have
definitely done: the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and
John D Rockefeller. Hitler could fairly be described as a Social Darwinist,
but all modern evolutionists, almost literally without exception, have been
vocal in their condemnation of Social Darwinism. This of course includes
Michael Shermer and me and PZ Myers and all the other evolutionary
scientists whom Ben Stein and his team tricked into taking part in his film
by lying to us about their true intentions.

7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes
misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But
this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed
out. Darwin's great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of
domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realise that the
same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of
the whole of life: "natural selection", the "survival of the fittest".
Hitler didn't apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more
ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidiently is. Hitler tried to
apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically
Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers,
gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for
centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and
Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of
NATURAL selection; and Hitler's eugenic policies had nothing to do with
natural selection.

8. Mr J, you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous
colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and
potentially to many others. I do not know whether they knowingly and
wantonly perpetrated the falsehood that fooled you. Perhaps they genuinely
and sincerely believed it, although other actions by them, which you can
read about all over the Internet, persuade me that they are fully capable of
deliberate and calculated deception. You are perhaps not to be blamed for
swallowing the film's falsehoods, because you probably assumed that nobody
would have the gall to make a whole film like that without checking their
facts first. Perhaps even you will need a little more convincing that they
were wrong, in which case I urge you to read it up and study the matter in
detail -- something that Ben Stein and his crew manifestly and lamentably
failed to do.

With my good wishes, and sympathy for the losses your family suffered in the
Holocaust.

Yours sincerely

Richard Dawkins
_______________________________

Mark Lewis · Guest

Ken · Guest

On Apr 24, 10:29 am, "Dr.Hal0nf1r£$"
<fem...@nospam.kustomkomputa.co.uk.invalid> wrote:

Dave in Lake Villa · Guest

Darwinnian Evolution is the basis for racism with allegedly some races
evolving better and further than others. In fact, Hitler, Stalin, and
Musilini were all advocates of this philosophy which was the catalyst
for the 20th Century being the bloodiest Century in all of history --- a
direct tenet of the Atheism Faith.

Ken · Guest

On Apr 24, 12:04 pm, Ian Smith <news0807REMOVEC...@orrery.e4ward.com>
wrote:

Dr.Hal0nf1r£$ · Guest

Dave in Lake Villa wrote:

Ian Smith · Guest

Dr.Hal0nf1r£$ wrote:

mark · Guest

X-No-Archive: yes

"Mark Lewis" <newsREMOVE@hbar.co.uk> wrote in message
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Ian Smith · Guest

mark wrote:

Steve Marshall · Guest

"Dr.Hal0nf1r£$" <femail@nospam.kustomkomputa.co.uk.invalid> wrote

Andrew McGee · Guest

"Ian Smith" <news0807REMOVECAPS@orrery.e4ward.com> wrote in message
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Matt D. · Guest

"PG" <pgk9@alpesprovence.net> wrote in message news:4810237e$

Dave in Lake Villa · Guest

What about the horror that is going to come upon all good atheists
because they sacrificed the truth that God is real, for personal
lifestyle freedom lasting a few earthly years ?

Dr.Hal0nf1r£$ · Guest

Dave in Lake Villa wrote: