Dawkins: I find it quite ironic — amusing — the thought that if you did build a politics or an ethical system on Darwinism, people like you and me would hate it. It really would be a very unpleasant world in which to live.

the evolutionist: What would it look like?

Dawkins: Oh, it would look like Hitler’s Germany …

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

And the point of ADL being a liberal front group is that liberals hate Christianity, and even biblical Judaism. So their rants against documentaries that demonstrate the role of Darwinism in the Holocaust have more to do with defending liberalism than defending Jews.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

What would Foxman know? He is no historian, unlike Weikart who specializes in modern European history, but a secular misochristic Jew who is more interest in pushing liberal causes than Judaism. Indeed, he is an embarrassment to many of his fellow Jews; see Rabbi Daniel Lapin’s defence of James Kennedy and his film, Which Jews does the ADL really represent?. The group Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation has also attacked Foxman and the ADL for other intemperant anti-Christian bigotry, calling the ADL “another liberal front group”.

Evidently Peritone is clueless about the huge amount of evolutionary thought in Mein Kampf, including justifications for euthanasia and racial superiority. The Nazis often showed films to illustrate survival of the fittest. And note that Germany was also the country that invented liberal theology, so according to the Ernst Mayr, there was hardly any biblical Christianity in Germany when he was growing up.

Yes, we all know about Luther’s disgraceful attacks on Jews late in his life. They should not be condoned, but Luther’s antisemitism was totally different to Hitler’s. Luther trashed anyone he saw as an opponent of the Gospel, and his choicest barbs were for the papacy. Hitler cared nothing for the Gospel, and killed Jews just because they were Jews, including quarter of a million Jewish Christians. He also intended to wipe out Christianity, as Nuremberg prosecutor William Donovan thoroughly documented.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

“It would be foolish to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, as though Darwinism leads logically to the Holocaust. No, Darwinism by itself did not produce Hitler’s worldview, and many Darwinists drew quite different conclusions from Darwinism for ethics and social thought than did Hitler.”

At best, Sarfati, you’re quoting someone else talking about Weikart’s work in the third person! My quote was from himself, in the first person! Which would you say holds more weight?

The ADL disagrees with “your” historian…(I say “yours” because I found out that Weikart is a member of the ID group’s Center for Science and Culture, a christian group that wants to replace science with ID. Hardly an unbiased source, wouldn’t you say?
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2157

Now, on to the ADL:
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/4877_52.htm

“ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement:”This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.”

Historian Dagobert Runes said:
“…the wearing of the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish books, and finally the burning of the people…” was learned and practiced well before Hitler. Prior to Nazism, he claimed, Jews were burned alive. At least, he said, Hitler gassed his victims before he burned them.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21111

Have you read Mein Kampf? In it, Hitler wrote that he had no particular feelings about the jews until he heard a christian, Karl Leuger, speak about them. Throughout his book, Hitler professes admiration for people like Martin Luther (you know, the guy who wrote On the Jews and Their Lies)!

To summarize: Hitler just took over the scapegoat that christians had been using for centuries in Europe. Evolution got tagged onto the end (if at all)…it was not the main force for anti-semitism in Nazi Germany.

Roger Peritone, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

In this compelling and painstakingly researched work of intellectual history, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially those pertaining to the sacredness of human life. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary “fitness” (especially in terms of intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Weikart concludes that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis. He convincingly makes the disturbing argument that Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles rather than nihilistic ones. From Darwin to Hitler is a provocative yet balanced work that should encourage a rethinking of the historical impact that Darwinism had on the course of events in the twentieth century.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Hey, Sarfati, you might want to have a look at some more of what your source said:
“It would be foolish to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, as though Darwinism leads logically to the Holocaust. No, Darwinism by itself did not produce Hitler’s worldview, and many Darwinists drew quite different conclusions from Darwinism for ethics and social thought than did Hitler….The reason I only discussed the role of social Darwinism and evolutionary ethics in the shaping of Nazi ideology should be obvious. My book is not primarily about Nazism. It is about evolutionary ethics. I never claimed that Darwinism or evolutionary ethics is the only cause of Nazi ideology, and I specifically denied that interpretation.”

Though I disagree entirely with his statment about “…role of social Darwinism and evolutionary ethics in the shaping of Nazi ideology should be obvious” it seems that Sarfati’s own source is more honest than he is when it comes to examining the many causes of Nazism, as opposed to Sarfati, who claims that is was “darwinism” specifically that led to it!

Roger Peritone, Edmonton, AB, Canada