David Berlinski, a member of the anti-science flagship called the Discovery Insitute, plants a seed:
Human Events -- One man -- Charles Darwin -- says: "In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals. ..." Another man -- Adolf Hitler -- says: Let us kill all the Jews of Europe. Is there a connection? Yes obviously is the answer of the historical record and common sense.
Berlinski then launches into a convoluted history lesson tying long standing religious animosity between Jews and other ethnic/religious groups to the holocaust. Probably to give himself cover for the clear thrust of his article, which boils down to saying evolutionary biology and biologists who study it are cozy as bed bugs with the Nazi Final Solution and, hey, maybe even partially responsible for it. He finished by allegedly asking Richard Dawkins if he would like to 'live in a society governed by Darwinian principles,' to which Dawkins reportedly responds 'No, it would be fascism.'
To illustrate the speciousness of that tactic, I wonder how Stephen Hawking would respond to a similar question, like "Would you like to live in a society governed by the strong nuclear force?" To which Hawking could accurately answer in his synthesized voice, do doubt in a somewhat baffled manner, "Ummm no, it might mean instant annihilation of that society as it would immediately collapse into a microscopic black hole." No one wants that, therefore, using Berlinski's logic -- for lack of a better word -- let us all quickly rewrite the Laws of Particle Physics and ban teaching the real thing, lest these genocidal physicist get us all crunched into a quantum-sized event horizon ...
If you can stomach watching it, you'll see Stein explain, with Hannity and Colmes' help, that "Darwinism" wasn't really responsible for the death camps, and biologists aren't really Nazis, it's just that evolution logically led to ... the Nazi death camps. Stein's two-faced con is on display everywhere you look, here using a quote from the Expelled website itself:
Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.
Gosh Ben, how could anyone possibly get the mysterious idea that evolution is pro Holocaust?
::
The Reductio ad Hitlerum shtick might sicken you, but it's nothing new for creationists. Darwinism, fascism, atheism, communism, materialism, evolution; they're all equitable, exchangable currencies in the sordid market place of Intelligent Design. It's been particularly popular among creationist apologists to to lay the blame for Hitler and Nazism at the feet Darwin, along with about anything else you can think of, for decades. Stalin is a commonly used exemplar, Pol Pot another. Tom DeLay blamed the teaching of evolution for the Columbine massacre.
One of the funnier efforts came from "Dr" Kent Hovind, a Young Earth Creationist currently doing time for massive tax evasion and obstruction of federal agents. Back in his wild and felony free days, Hovind liked to blame the Cherokee Trail of Tears on evolution and then go on to ask how any native American could believe in it. There's just one problem with that: the Trail of Tears happened in 1831, Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859. I could provide pages upon pages of similar vignettes, some comical, others sinister, all of them duplicitous. Ben Stein is only the latest ultraconservative shill to lob the Nazi bomb at biology, and he happily does so in a G-rated film now showing in a theater near you.
As far as Hitler's self proclaimed religious beliefs and how they may have motivated his murderous actions, if the creationists really want to open that deep, dark can of worms, here's just a few choice quotes from das Fuhrer himself:
We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement ...we have stamped it out. -- Berlin, October 24, 1933
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! -- 12 April 1922
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." –- Mien Kampf
I don't pretend know what all went through Hitler's pathological brain -- up to that final slug from a Luger in an underground bunker in 1945 anyway. My guess is the simplest one: he was (mis)using religious rhetoric as a social lever to lift his perverse ideology out of the gutter.
Regardless if Hitler was or was not sincere, to blame Christians in America today, or religious faith in general, for his actions would be an inexcusably brutal, cheap shot of stellar magnitude. The same goes for biology. To blame it on atheism -- which creationists routinely conflate with evolutionary biology specifically and science in general -- a meta-philosophical view Hitler did not even profess, would be if anything even worse.
Religion, like so many human endeavors, is a double-edged sword. It played a critical role in the Abolitionist and later Civil Rights movements. Here on the Space Coast, in Florida, a good chunk of the wonderful people who man Hospice, providing care and fellowship to terminally ill and often indigent patients up to and beyond their last breath, are evangelical Christians. They spend their free time cleaning vomit and crap off of bedsheets and bodies, empty bedpans, hold the hand of the dying, the otherwise forgotten, the disposable, the old; those who too tragically and too often have no living friends or family left on earth to comfort them through senility and despair. That work demands a special kind of heroism, an inspiring strength of character, and to the great benefit of their fellow man and woman, these unpaid volunteers find it in their faith.
Now picture Ben Stein, David Berlinski, and the whole stinking crew abusing those Hospice volunteers, cloaking a pack of creationist lies in the genuine faith that sustains them, whispering surreptitious associations into their ears that biologists are in league with neo-Nazis. That's the other side of the religious blade, the ugly, sharp side wielded by the Discovery Institute. Zealotry most foul, in the hands of a skilled sociopath, has and continues to be misused by megalomaniacs and other deviants with an insatiable thirst for power, wealth, control, and sexual perversion, to justify the worst behavior known to mankind. It continues today:
WaPo -- Texas officials told legislators Wednesday that they are investigating the possible sexual abuse of some of the young boys taken from a polygamist sect's ranch, as well as broken bones among other children. It is the first suggestion that anyone other than teenage girls may have been sexually or physically abused ...
Religion and science are different species of course. But one thing they share in common is both can be used for great good or nightmarish evil. Particle physicists developed the theories underpinning everything from PET/CAT scans to the device you are reading this post on. They also brought us the hydrogen bomb. Biochemists developed antibiotics, saving the lives and limbs of countless millions of suffering people. The same science produced Zyklon B, a substance used by the Third Reich to economically exterminate families by the trainload.
Only an exceptionally stupid asshole, or an intentionally dishonest creep, would blame chemistry for Auschwitz, and that asshole would be roundly laughed off the world stage -- assuming they somehow finagled a spot on it in the first place. Unfortunately, when it comes to biology, modern day Intelligent Design Creationists and their old fashioned fire and brimstone Young Earth Creationist ancestors are precisely those kinds of assholes. And they're not shameless in the least, quite the contrary: they're proud of it. Then again, why shouldn't they be? Creationists get a free pass from the media when they tie biology to the most horrific events in human history and, too often, a pat on the shoulder straight from the conservative pulpit.
If you think your profession or private life is immune from these puckering right-wing meat puppets, you better think again. Evolution was chosen as the "Wedge" with which to split "the materialist log of science open." But it's just the tip of a long spear:
Wiki -- The Wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which describes a broad social, political, and academic agenda whose ultimate goal is to "defeat [scientific] materialism" represented by evolution, "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" and to "affirm the reality of God." Its goal is to "renew" American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian, namely evangelical Protestant, values.
One of the largest, private financial backers of the Discovery Institute is Howard F. Ahmanson. Mr. Ahmanson is the reclusive heir to a savings and loan fortune, a leading advocate for Dominionism, closely related to far right Christian Reconstructionism, and has purportedly stated his "goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives."
Another Discovery benefactor is Sun-myung Moon, who has long proclaimed himself the Savior of Humanity, the True Parent or "Father" of mankind, and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Moon's Unification Church paid for the education of Discovery Institute fellow Jonathon Wells. Dr. Wells has stated "Father's [Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism ... When Father chose me to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle."
There are a wide range of possible motives for why individual creationists do what they do. A handful may actually believe some parts of Intelligent Design. But given the pervasive stench of deception running rampant through it, that's getting more and more difficult to swallow. As far as why something as flaky as creationism might appeal to the more practical funding wing of the conservative party: there may have been a time when creationism was a more or less independent operation. But it has long since been co-opted by the broader conservative movement for at least two equally odious, potential goals. The first is to hold science and scientists hostage to the ideology of far right extremism. And if you believe neo-science by Right-wing Fatwah won't conveniently benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the middle class and poor, then I have a cold fusion generator to sell you.
A second, intertwined and likewise nasty goal is to destroy the public school system, in this case by whipping up anger and outrage at K-12 schools among grassroots voters. For no better reason than mega-wealthy landowners who send their kids to expensive private schools don't like paying property taxes on their winter mansions or summer homes. Think of it from their privileged viewpoint: Why should they support the same schools that produce educated middle class citizens who, in the end, compete with and might even dare to challenge their own pampered trust fund brats?
We can all agree that abusing another person's faith or misrepresenting science to secure another stack of cash for multi-generational billionaire clans is not in the same league with using it to justify genocide. But wrapping up a scheme with the spectre of the Holocaust and padding it with pages ripped from the Bible designed to spare zillionaires a few shekels and give their political minions total control over all aspects of government, deprive middle class families of life saving science, and deny our children a public education, is not exactly a noble project is it?
Blaming evolutionary biology for Hitler is just a single means to an evil end for these scam artists. As long as Berlinski, Stein, and their anti-science, authoritarian ilk have eagerly suspended Godwin's Law for a few pieces of silver and a fleeting moment of PR gold, let me end by noting for those of you who value science, history, education, medicine, or the simple core democratic principles upon which the United States was founded: First, they came for the biologists ...
