PZ Myers’ Review of Darwin’s Deadly Legacy

I think the Bible has been used to justify all manner of evil, including slavery. Indeed, Jews have been persecuted in various ways by Christians over the centuries with the crucifixtion as justification. Don’t get me wrong – I agree with your comments regarding the insufferable Panda Boob, but the rhetoric of the last sentence is in poor form. Google ‘genocide’ and ‘Old Testament’ (or ‘Torah’) and you’ll find portions of scripture which certainly lend themselves (precedent-wise) to God-ordained slaughter of entire races of people, down to the last goat.

The alleged inferiority of races has been with us much longer than Darwinism, which lent scientific credibility to state enforced eugenics. It was purportedly God who ordained the White man his place as master over African ‘savage’ races well before Darwin came along. In fact, if one looks at other contemporary writings of his day, they are full of similiar verbage. Even the Great Emancipator, old ‘honest’ Abe Lincoln, viewed negros as inferior to whites.

When reaching back to an age where racism (the real kind) was virtually ubiquitous among Western societies, one must tread with due caution, in my opinion.

Hey moderator! I posted something last night – could you check the junk filter and see if I got trapped? Thanks…

Hi Todd,

Thanks for posting and welcome, first time commenter gets moderated.

It was purportedly God who ordained the White man his place as master over African ‘savage’ races well before Darwin came along.

I might not be as well-versed in the history of racism as you are. Could you show me how people in history justify the White supremacy was ordained by God of the Bible? Again my point was that people can attribute all sorts of claim to the God of the Bible but I like to see Biblical references for their claim.

The alleged inferiority of races has been with us much longer than Darwinism, which lent scientific credibility to state enforced eugenics.

I don’t doubt that racism is as old as races. But as you’ve pointed out it wasn’t until Darwin, that an intellectual justification was given to racism and eugenics. It was not my intention to make Darwin the origin of racism. The point of the program, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, was that people like Hitler and Marx justified their actions with Darwin’s theory of evolution and selection.

Death is the punishment for beating to death any of your slaves. However, if the slave lives a few days after the beating, you are not to be punished. After all, you have already lost the services of that slave who was your property. (Exod. 21:20-21)

Disciples are not better than their teacher, and slaves are not better than their master.(Matt. 10:24)

Then there’s A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery and A Southern Christian View of Slavery

My point went to your rhetorical question at the end of this blog: “Did the Jewish writers of the Bible or Charles Darwin the founder of evolutionary theology gave justification to the views that Hitler espoused?” While it may be true Hitler never used the bible to justify his doctrine of ‘inferior races’ (though I find it unlikely), the bible has passages that at best allow for slavery and none which condemn it outright and has been used by fellow travellers of the fascist/racist variety. So I find no problem with the point of DDL and agree a materialist/athiest world view was the basis of several of the most destructive modern states, I just advise caution where genetic fallacy is concerned – because it is a sword that cuts both ways. (note: Marx had no actions to justify – Darwinism gave sense to his manifesto, but it was Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler who took action)

An related aside: Years ago I was working the seafood counter at Winn Dixie and one of the meat cutters heard me going on about Ross Perot’s 1992 run for president. He came to me one day with a small stack of newspapers called The Spotlight or The Advocate (I don’t recall) and told me they would fit with my populist ideals. Well, it was full of anti-semitic and racist bilge and was as amusing to read as The Weekly World Workers paper (a commie rag) – I recall none of the actual content, but for an ad in the back for a tape series explaining how Jesus himself went into the Caucus mountains and founded the Caucasion race! While I did not succumb to the mighty temptation to git some learnin’ ’bout my her-ee-tage, it made me realized some people will believe ANYTHING!

Todd,

Welcome. I presume you were the Tood I saw at the Cornell Website and Telic Thoughts.

Salvador

Hi Todd, thanks for your reply.

I understand your desire to equate the Bible with Darwinian ilk. I am trying to cut back from the debate on Biblical theology. The purpose of this blog is to discuss subjects related to intelligent design. Part of that discussion naturally involves the failure of the theory of evolution to explain certain aspects of biotic reality. Granted this current topic is more on social Darwinism than biology, the purpose of this post is in response to atheistic Darwinists like Myers.

However, I don’t want to just leave you hanging with some of your questions on the Bible. Although I am not interested in dealing with it right now, there are numerous resources that critics of the Bible can seek out, in books and on the internet, for the answers to your questions. Some suggested book readings are “How Should We Then Live” by Francis Schaeffer, “Church History in Plain Language” by Shelley, “Hard Sayings of the Bible” by Kaiser, “Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible” by Packer. Some online links to your questions, Why does the Bible seem to tolerate the institution of slavery?, Objections Answered, The Christian Think Tank, and St. Augustine (354 – 430) saw slavery as the product of sin and as contrary to God’s Divine plan.

Now back to the question at hand, you said you were responding to my question, Did the Jewish writers of the Bible or Charles Darwin the founder of evolutionary theology gave justification to the views that Hitler espoused? Maybe I was not clear, but my question was in response to Myers’s implied assertion that Hitler used Christianity to justify his actions. My question was to point out that it would be impossible for Hitler to make such a claim because all the Biblical writers are Jews (except maybe Luke).

The second problem with your response is that you are confusing the human justification for evil with the tenets of a particular school of philosophy. As I said before there is no shortage of evil and ignorant men who justify their actions by appealing to the Bible. However, a careful study of the actual text would reveal that those justifications are unfounded. An honest critic would refer to the core philosophical tenet and base his critique on that, and that alone, and not on the rhetoric of some putative adherents. Based on this I categorically reject any merits from the Bible, that can be attributed to justify Hitler’s actions.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that Hitler’s murderous rampage can be directly linked to the core tenets of Darwin’s theory of evolution. From the Coral Ridge program,

the purity of the racial blood should be guarded, so that the best types of human beings may be preserved and that thus we should render possible a more noble evolution of humanity itself. — Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, apply the principle of selection to eugenics. A result of the eugenics movement spawn groups like Planned Parenthood.

“Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying” a dead weight of human waste” an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”
Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood

In Dr. Weikart’s book From Darwin to Hitler he detailed how Hitler’s society drawn its justification directly from Darwinian concepts. Hitler referred many times to evolution/development in Mein Kampf. Hitler used the concept of selection to eliminate what he thought was evil, the Jews.

The Jews formed a sub-human counter race, predestined by their biological heritage to evil, just as the Nordic race was destined for nobility. — Adolf Hitler, quoted in LH. Cann, “Adolf Hitler, The Complete Totalitarian” . The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1985, p24

Columbine shooter Eric Harris wrote,

You know what I love??? Natural Selection! It’s the best thing that ever happened to the earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.

Let me repeat. It is true; racism is as old as there are races. Saint Augustine wrote racism is a sin as the result of a fallen nature. Darwin didn’t invent racism nor was he necessarily anti-Semitic. However, his theology did give the intellectual, so-called scientific basis for racism, eugenics and genocide. You must know the high value we place on science today, right? Who would dare to argue against science and be branded as some ignorant, mentally ill Creationist, right? The difference between your misguided attempts to link certain group’s actions to the Bible is inane. On the other hand, if Darwin’s theology of evolution and selection is true. These evil individual certainly does have justification to perpetrate the evil that they do. You and I might find their actions heinous and abhorrent, but from a godless Darwinian point of view, they are only doing what comes naturally from evolution. The fit survive and the rest are eliminated from the gene pool and thereby enhancing the species adaptation to its environment. It is a normal and natural core tenet of differential survival. Do you even understand this? Regardless what you might think of the Bible, can we at least agree that there are ample evidence to support the link between Hitler and Darwin?

Sal,

yes, one and the same. Thanks for the welcome.

teleologist,

I certainly don’t want to be off topic and didn’t really intend to get your dander up! I had thought I made clear that I totally agree darwinian naturalism justifies eugenics rationally and scientificly. Indeed, the Peter Singer’s of this world are examples of rigidly honest materialists!

Second, I’m making no misguided attempt to link anyone’s actions to the bible, I’m only making a point on your rhetorical comparison of darwin’s theory and the bible, that such a question can cut both ways. The references you gave explaining slavery in the bible are fine ones, though I’ve reasoned the answers well enough in my own meditations on scripture.

Also, I’ve encountered a number of non-prominent atheists/materialists in forum debates over the years and most find some way to reason moral values of human life and would reject Hitlerian justifications of genocide based on darwinism.

I was also unaware Darwin was a theologian or that Origins was a theological tract. Before Darwinism, what was the intellectual basis for racism, eugenics and genocide? What you describe is merely a new morality, based upon so-called enlightenment values of reason and science. CS Lewis exposed it brilliantly in That Hideous Strength.

Anyway, one more kick of this dead horse – I don’t think I can agree there is ample evidence to support the link between Darwin and Hitler – I think the link is broader and goes to materialist philosophy, which Darwin’s theory lent ‘credible’ scientific weight. As we both know, philosophy informs and precedes observation and materialism as a philosophy logically leads one to a non-telic creation myth, for a reality with telic origins throws materialism on its head.

From Mein Kampf:

The Jewish religious doctrine consists primarily in prescriptions for keeping the blood of Jewry pure and for regulating the relation of Jews among themselves, but even more with the rest of the world; in other words, with non-Jews. But even here it is by no means ethical problems that are involved, but extremely modest economic ones. Concerning the moral value of Jewish religious instruction, there are today and have been at all times rather exhaustive studies (not by Jews; the drivel of the Jews themselves on the subject is, of course, adapted to its purpose) which make this kind of religion seem positively monstrous according to Aryan conceptions. The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took to the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-and this against their own nation.

Here’s something else regarding Hitler’s (ab)use of the bible: http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerBible.htm

It occurs to me this whole topic violates Godwin’s Law!

I guess I might be off-topic here, but I wanted to add a line that I have been unable to find on the ‘net.
It is from Harvard historian, Steven Ozment’s A Mighty Fortress: A New History Of The German People.

In the New Age envisioned by National Socialism, biblical Christianity was politically subversive, even a “rebellion … against nature”91 . It’s perceived absurdity had been impressed on Hitler during his Austrian schooldays, when, as he mockingly recalled, students attended a catechism class at ten A.M. to hear the biblical story of Creation, only then to listen, at eleven A.M., to Darwin’s version of it in a natural science class – the latter winning hands down. 92
During the war years Hitler recommended a slow “natural death” for Christianity by exposing its dogmas to the light of science. 93

(all notes Adolf Hitler, Table Talk)

Hi Todd,

It is unfortunate that you chose to ignore the evidence linking Darwin to Hitler. I guess the readers will have to judge for themselves. I would just add these quotes for others to connect the dots.

To be sure, there were many other streams of thought that played into Nazi racism and the holocaust, but to say that Darwinism played no role, or even an insignificant role, is absurd. Read Richard Weikart’s FROM DARWIN TO HITLER: EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS, EUGENICS, AND RACISM IN GERMANY

The Nazi emphasis on proper breeding, racial purity, and weeding out defectives come from taking Darwin’s theory seriously and applying it at the level of society. Yes, Darwin himself did not take these such steps, but Galton and Haeckel, his contemporaries, saw where this was going and did.

The Caucasian, or Mediterranean man (Homo Mediterraneus), has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all races of men, as the most highly developed and perfect . . . In bodily as well as in mental qualities, no other human species can equal the Mediterranean. This species alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilization which seems to raise man above the rest of nature.

Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation: Or The Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes. A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in General, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in Particular, translated by E. Ray Lankester, 6th English ed., First German Publication 1868, (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1914), 2:321 (emphasis added); available on the web at: The Mediterranese

A stronger race will supplant the weaker, since the drive for life in its final form will decimate every ridiculous fetter of the so-called humaneness of individuals, in order to make place for the humaneness of nature, which destroys the weak to make place for the strong.
Adolf Hitler

You certainly have the right to disagree and refuse the evidence that links Darwin’s theology to Hitler, but at least make an attempt to dissect Hitler’s statements and demonstrate how it is incompatible with Darwin’s theology of evolution. Your attempt to obfuscate the debate by claiming that the sword can cut both ways doesn’t help your argument to deny the link between Darwin and Hitler. Especially, in light of the fact that no orthodox scholars present or in the past even to the time of the early Church Fathers could have the exegesis that Hitler did.

Darwin was a theolgian?

I’m not refusing the evidence linking Darwin, I just think the link is more broadly joined to materialism, which Darwinism lent scientific credibility. My whole point in saying anything was to merely caution your rhetoric at the end of your post.

Yes, Darwin’s theory (not theology) helped Hitler justify his hatred of inferior races, but then he used whatever what handy, including Christianity and a bastardized version of the bible, stripped of all Jewish references.

Golly, you are a bit quick to assume I disagree and want to justify PZM’s view of Hitler and Christianity! I’m not, really. What I’m trying to say (apparently poorly) is that the evil here is materialism, to which Darwin lent scientific credibility (intellectually satisified atheists, etc).

As has been noted by many others much smarter than me, Darwinism allows for anything and anything fits into darwinian narratives because ‘just so’ explanations are accepted. So altruism, morals and other real aspects of humanity which post problems to the survival of the fittest meme, must fit because darwinism is True (for the True Believers). There were Darwinists running things in America who didn’t have such a deadly legacy during the same time has Hitler, where are their deadly horrors?

Anyway, I do think this is an unfruitful path to attempt to discredit Darwin, reserving the right to largely agree with the main point. See Godwin’s Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law Darwin can be discredited without invoking Hitler. There was much, much more to his madness than Darwinism.

Hi Todd,

Was Darwin a theologian? Yes, I think so, a bad one but a theologian nonetheless. But don’t just take my word for it. Osprey, a Darwinist, from ARN posted this on the thread “The Essence of Macroevolution” (sorry the links don’t work anymore on ARN)

After all, Darwin was formost a theologian, with many of his premises having a basis in scripture. His view of nature was that of a constant struggle…as if it were in itself an “evil” to be overcome, muchlike in the gnostic tradition of Creation. He wrote,’What a book a Devils Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature’. Darwin also had a leaning towards the supremacy of man in nature as given by some to be in Genesis…that man is in the image of God, and that he should have dominion over everything else.

The above sure doesn’t sound like the environmentalist,ecologist/biologist/naturalist of today, does it?

Also this from Wikipedia: In 1827, his father, unhappy that his younger son had no interest in becoming a physician, shrewdly enrolled him in a Bachelor of Arts course at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge to qualify as a clergyman. This was a sensible career move at a time when many Anglican parsons were provided with a comfortable income, and when most naturalists in England were clergymen who saw it as part of their duties to explore the wonders of God’s creation.

I think I understand your call for caution, but I just don’t think it is warranted. Over the years Hitler is an incendiary name, and any attempt to draw equivalence to him will incite fierce anger. However, that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be exposed if the evidence is there.

I agree with your point of Darwinism’s ubiquity to explain anything and it is certainly materialistically based. I also agree with you that Hitler appeals to many ideas to support his sick evil rampage. The point in Weikart’s book was that Hitler tapped into a philosophical thought that the whole of Germany has bought into, and it gave them the intellectual rationalism (your point of modernism), and scientific justification to murder without remorse. Frankly it doesn’t even matter, IMO, if Hitler believed in Darwinian evolution or not. His action and rhetoric is perfectly compatible with the theory of evolution.

Finally, I didn’t go that far to claim that you are siding with Myers. However, your comment that the sword cuts both ways, was certainly incorrectly equating Christianity as a possible source for Hitler as Darwin was a source for Hitler. What I tried to do was to point out that your caution was unjustified because of your conflation of the idea and the rhetoric/person. Hitler’s rhetoric matches Darwin’s theology, but it is opposite of the teachings of the Bible.

I thank you for your comments.

I am having trouble with the login here, so I am reposting this comment presuming something went wrong last times(s)
If it is just the case that you do not want it here and omitted it please forgive my repeated posting.
I’m also going to remove some links (available if desired) in case I have just submitted too many.

Hi Todd,
I think you are absolutely correct that discrediting Darwin as a man has nothing to do with discrediting his, or subsequent theories. Likewise, showing the obvious link from Darwin to Social Darwinism, to eugenics does not falsify evolution by common descent and natural selection.
Nobody says it does.

What about America, you say, where Darwinism was also accepted?
First, America did have a eugenics movement which was an influence and inspiration for Hitler’s.
The Nazi’s were looking for an example where the ideas had been put into effect already and cited American eugenics as that example.
(Link removed)

The American eugenics movement

came into being primarily through the efforts of Charles Benedict Davenport, a biologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. While at Harvard as an instructor in the 1890s, Davenport became familiar with the early eugenicist writings of two Englishmen, the independently wealthy Francis Galton and his protege Karl Pearson.

You know, of course, who Francis Galton was and who influenced him.

A little more on Galton:

In proposing the term eugenics, Galton had written, “We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving the stock to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had.”

Galton believed that black people were entirely inferior to the white races and that Jews were capable only of “parasitism” upon the civilized nations.

Karl Pearson, Galton’s chief disciple, shared his racial and anti-Semitic beliefs. For example, in 1925, Pearson wrote “The Problem of Alien Immigration into Great Britain, Illustrated by an Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children,” which argued against the admission of Jewish immigrants into England.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:quhD9IK_EisJ:www.publiceye.org/magazine/v09n1/eugenics.html+american+eugenics+based+evolution+social+darwinism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=safari

What were the American horrors?

To give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation [concentration camps] or sterilization”, advocated the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger in April 1932 (“A Plan For Peace”, Birth Control Review; see ‘appendix’ for this full unabridged seminal article). Which country pioneered forced sterilization in the 20th century, Germany or the United States of America? The German program began in January 1934, but the U.S. state of Indiana passed a forced sterilization law (for mental defectives) in 1907 (when Adolf Hitler was 18 years old). Before the German program began, at least seventeen U.S. states (including California) had ‘forced sterilization’ laws. Before 1930 there were 200-600 forced sterilizations per year (in the U.S.A.) but in the 1930s the rate jumped to 2,000-4,000 per year. (1)

(link removed)

From Publishers Weekly

In the first half of the 20th century, more than 60,000 Americans-poor, uneducated, members of minorities-were forcibly sterilized to prevent them from passing on supposedly defective genes. This policy, called eugenics, was the brainchild of such influential people as Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and Margaret Sanger. Black, author of the bestselling IBM and the Holocaust, set out to show “the sad truth of how the scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island” at the Carnegie Institution’s Cold Spring Harbor complex. Along the way, he offers a detailed and heavily footnoted history that traces eugenics from its inception to America’s eventual, post-WWII retreat from it, complete with stories of the people behind it, their legal battles, their detractors and the tragic stories of their victims.

(link removed)

Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in colonies, and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
…
One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune.

Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.

Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first 25 years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as bad girls, diagnosed as passionate, oversexed or sexually wayward. At the Sonoma State Home, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:7sf-cbmO7JkJ:www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/299.html+atrocities+america+eugenics+experiments&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&client=safari

 

Sorry for the problem with your comments. I’ve increased the link limit to 12. We don’t get rss feed on the comments that are in moderation holding.

Daron, I can repost the comments you have in holding if you want.

Thanks teleologist, but I doubt anyone cares for those links, and I have them if they are wanted.
Otherwise the comments are the same as what I’ve posted.

Cheers

Damon,

Your posts have brought me greater clarity on the subject at hand. I believe it was the writings of John Jay Ray available on his many websites, which first referred me to fascism’s roots in the US and Great Britain, but I didn’t recall examples of their programme being put into action, thanks for opening my eyes on that score.

Teleologist,

“Sword cuts both ways” was a poor choice of words. I truly was trying to caution when using comparative rhetoric. I think you make a fine point regarding conflation of the idea and the person, we have not been in disagreement there. Let me mirror what you seem to be saying – Hitler may have justified his policies appealing to any number of sources, but where Christianity and Darwinism are concerned, he had to distort scripture to make it fit his ideas, while darwinism needed no distortion to make the fit. Does that sum it up?

teleologist – looks like my comment from earlier today hasn’t been freed from the queue yet…

Rather, it appears to have been junked..

Sorry about that Todd. We seem to be having an inordinate amount of confusion with the comments. I’ve rescued your early posting from the spam pile.

I think I can agree with the summary of your rescued comment.

Denyse O’Leary posted a comment from a blogger at UD, who claims Hitler was a creationist. She has some interesting quotes.

In response to the post on the Coral Ridge TV special on social Darwinism, blogger Steven Carr commented that Hitler was a creationist:

Hitler, of course, believed that mankind was specially created Hitler explicity rejected Darwinism and the evolution of man.
‘From where do we get the right to believe that man was not from the very beginning what he is today.

A glance in Nature shows us , that changes and developments happen in the realm of plants and animals. But nowhere do we see inside a kind, a development of the size of the leap that Man must have made, if he supposedly has advanced from an ape-like condition to what he is’ (now)

And in the entry for 27 February 1942 , Hitler says ‘Das, was der Mensch von dem Tier voraushat, der veilleicht wunderbarste Beweis fuer die Ueberlegenheit des Menschen ist, dass er begriffen hat, dass es eine Schoepferkraft geben muss.’

However, Cal State prof Richard Weikart, who specializes in Hitler and the Nazis’ view of Darwinism, responded to Carr, saying:
Stephen Carr has perceptively located a passage from Hitler’s table talks (which were off-the-cuff conversations he held with his colleagues), which seems to deny that humans evolved from apes. If this were all we knew about Hitler’s views on the subject, Mr. Carr would have a strong case; we could conclude that Hitler did not even believe in human evolution (though this same passage implies that he does believe in the evolution of animals and plants).

However, Mr. Carr ignores a multitude of passages in Hitler’s writings (which should carry more weight than off-the-cuff comments) and speeches. In _Mein Kampf_, especially in the chapter, “Nation and Race,” Hitler expostulates on his evolutionary views and their application to humanity. Hitler’s _Second Book_, especially the first two chapters, spend even more time discussing human evolution and the human struggle for existence. And, Mr. Carr also overlooked some passages in the table talks (see Oct. 24, 1941, for example), where Hitler explicitly rejected creationism in favor of evolution.

Prof Richard Weikart,
A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the worst mass murderers in history wasn’t evil? How could they believe this? How could they justify such a view?
They did it by appealing to Darwinism.

BTW, anecdotally, this is a common view from Darwinists, such as Prof. Steven Weinberg.

H.L. Mencken as Hitler fan:
H.L. Mencken, who popularized the view that only the booboisie would oppose Darwinism, supported eugenics. While I am here, I have noticed a tendency in American literati to refuse to face up to the fact the Mencken was a Hitler fan and an anti-democrat, as Terry Teachout shows. I am always hearing excuses, excuses, excuses for Mencken from the lar-di-dah quarters. Why?

Steve Gould on Darwinism as promoting racism by orders of magnitude:
“Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850 but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.”

Just to add to your discussion, about Nazi ideology, one small thing. When quoting Hitler or anyone else from that period of German history one should not forget their flair for propaganda. If Nazi official was addressing group of Catholic Bishops (for example) you will find surprisingly amiable and very “Christian” tone of the speach. It is misleading to draw a conclusion from the speaches without finding out who the recipients of the message were.