Tom Short on Hitler and evolution

Tom Short has been at the UF campus preaching for the last three days. It appears that Gator Christian Life and Cru brought him down. I have been out all three days, making a point to try to spend at least an hour or two out there. I have a lot to report about our exchanges, but first I wanted to briefly highlight something that happened yesterday.

He said that evolutionary theory was basically to blame for Hitler's genocide of the Jews. Immediately, I'm thinking of Luther's anti-Semitic theology, the influence of Christianity in general on Hitler, and the is-ought problem regarding science and morality.

I also am thinking of the fact that Hitler did not believe that all humans shared a common ancestor, or descended from apes. He believed that God made the Aryan race specially, and that Jews were "corrupting" the bloodline. I told Tom this, and told him I could show it to him from Mein Kampf and in some other quotes. He said, "okay, do it." I said, "You will really let me read them?" He said, "Yes, go get the book and I'll let you..." I turned to go to Library West and realized three things: 1) I played racquetball Wed night and left my student ID in my racquetball bag, all the way out in my car; 2) Caesar (my dog) had a vet appt at 5PM and it was already 4PM; 3) I could spend 45 minutes, easily, finding the books (multiple volumes) in Library West (if it wasn't checked out) standing in line, and then trying to flip through and find the passages of interest.

Therefore, since I had reviewed this subject some time back, and knew where some source quotes were with citations, I came to my office (near Turlington), got the quotes (four pages of them) and came back with a printout.

In front of a crowd of about 50-60 people, he completely wussed out.

He refused to read them. He said that this printout wasn't the book, and that I might have taken them out of context. He then skipped the first four quotes (see bottom of post) and refused to read those, opting for some rambling speech Hitler gave on how he was following the Creed of the Catholic Church. I said, "Fine, if you won't read them, I will," and reached for the printouts. He literally pulled back and would not let me have them. A lot of people in the crowd booed. I don't think many people there were fooled by his refusal to read what I told him Hitler had said.

He wussed out because I showed him he was wrong. He was more interested in maintaining his commitment to the belief that evolution = Hitler than commitment to what is true. He did promise, though, to respond to my information on his website. We'll keep him accountable and honest.**(as of 7/17/07, he still hasn't posted anything about it)

The whole issue for me is to curtail the equivocation of evolution with political, religious or any other unscientific ideology, because these falsehoods generate a great deal of heat, and no light whatsoever. Association of any thing X with Hitler is a wonderful way to get people angry towards X, but it still doesn't answer the question of whether X is, in fact, true.

In light of all this, sent the following email to Tom:

Tom,

Daniel here, the guy who you had lots of "discussion" with ;-)

Do you really think that Darwin personally, or evolutionary theory generally, is somehow to blame for Nazism? Hardly so. Drawing moral extrapolations from natural observations is itself moving away from science. Science is only the statement of how things are, not how things ought to be, or how human beings should relate to one another. (I point this out, despite the fact that even if the Nazis [or anyone] tried to use a scientific theory to justify themselves, they would be committing Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy in so doing, and most people recognize this.)

David Hume was a philosopher who developed this argument (before Darwin's day) in some detail. He called it the "is-ought problem". He pointed out that statements of fact do not lead to moral conclusions, without a moral premise somewhere involved in the mix. Science never offers a moral premise, of any kind. People do find them, within religion especially.

Did you know that it has been very well argued and evidenced that Hitler adopted much of his Anti-Semitic views directly from Luther?

Now, to be fair to Luther, nearly all contemporary Catholics hated Jews too. (also see wiki Anti-Semitism). What, did you really think that the Nazis were atheists? Oh, you could only wish so.

I only wanted to clarify my thoughts on Hitler and creationism. I am not interested in extended general debates about all sorts of topics, or e-preaching, or anything like that. You don't have to feel obligated to reply, obviously.

The reason I had all of those quotes handy, with citations already in place for 95% of them, is because this issue (about Hitler and creationism) is one with which I am rather familiar. A few months ago, when D. James Kennedy aired his propaganda piece on the subject, I read up on it, and posted a few items to my blog.

The quotes that I had were mostly from this source:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/list_of_hitler_quotes_he_was_q.php

And also from this source:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/hitler_the_creationist.php

Now, the first four quotes I wanted you to read were from this last source. I did not have the time, nor interest, to explain all of this to you out there in the plaza at Turlington. I couldn't explain to you how I knew, beforehand, so much about this topic, nor how I had so many quotes from Hitler's works on his beliefs and their founding within the Christian religion and God's purpose for the Aryan race.

Ed did not source these last four quotes, but I took the time to do it myself tonight. They are all, indeed, from Hitler, and 3/4 are from Mein Kampf, as I said. The easiest way for you to verify their authenticity is to pull up the electronic version of the text and do a CTRL-F "find" of some key words to jump to the passages in question. One e-version of Mein Kampf is here.

I must admit, though, that the last one below is not from his book, but from a speech he gave. I did not want to get bogged down in the details, and I am sorry if you feel I misled you about that. They are still his words, and they still evidence what I was arguing:

The point I felt was most important was to show you that Hitler did not believe that the Jews and Aryans were of the same lineage. The crux of evolution is common ancestry, and so Hitler rejected evolution for humans. I will admit that Hitler did agree that some other animals and plants do evolve, but he flatly rejected a natural explanation for human beings. He believed God made man, in God's own image, specially creating human beings.

If you didn't know this, Hitler hired a crack team of anthropologists, archaeologists, etc., to try to find any evidence of the Aryan race that he wrote about (see the fifth quote below). The fifth quote gives one of the most clear indications of his views -- a weird mishmash of Biblical creationism (belief that the races were not of one ancestry, but specially created, and that these races were separated from each other until recent times, and of "unmixed" blood) and his own lunatic views.

Tom, I do not blame Christianity any more than I blame anyone else for Hitler. I hold people responsible for what they do, because this is a cause-effect relationship upon which our sense of justice is derived. You think that Hitler twisted Christianity, fine. I don't just think that Hitler "twisted" evolution/eugenics -- there is nothing within a description of how life changes and evolves that is prescriptive about humans should act! This is no ought within evolutionary theory, or any scientific theory. He believed he ought to purify an imaginary race. He believed the Bible supported this lunacy. He twisted both science and religion.

Consider also that natural selection is not the same thing as artificial selection. Evolution simply describes the process of natural selection, saying, "This is how Nature is..." without saying, "This is how Nature ought to be..." Hitler decided to take steps to genocide, which is artificial selection, and has nothing to do with evolutionary theory. That is, unless you think there are moral claims you can make about whether I should breed Saint Bernards or a new type of dog breed, and whether one is more morally correct than the other...(an absurd idea, yes?).

In much the same way, you argued that atheism was responsible for the massive killings of the 20th C at the hands of people like Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, etc. Fascist communist dictators used communism as a sort of para-religion. Evolution had little to nothing to do with their philosophy. The State is like The Church. People were controlled through propaganda to believe that free markets do not work, and that communism was best for them. These fascists murdered anyone who challenged their power. They were indeed evil men, just as some men have been throughout history. The fact that they lived in a time period when technology allowed mass murder doesn't mean that other historical figures wouldn't have done the same thing if they could've to retain control...from Babylon to Nero. These men were delusional, just as Hitler was. Communism and genocide do not follow from science, Tom. Those are moral and political judgments that are completely independent from anything resembling science.

Do you really not see that?

Please don't continue to misrepresent scientific theories as though they come attached with moral claims. I look forward to your delving into this issue and posting something about it on your website. I will keep checking up on it. I hope you do not continue to preach that evolution provides some sort of rationale for Hitler's actions in the meantime.

Likewise, I would not be intellectually honest in claiming that Christianity is to blame for Hitler either.

Human beings always find justification for their actions, whether within religious doctrines or in validation via scientific accuracy. I think (hope) you are an honest man, and so you will consider all of this with careful thought before bringing up this subject again.

Preaching your God need not be debased by appealing to such confusion and obfuscation of science and morality.

With warm regards,
Daniel

Now, here are those quotations, with sourcing:

____

1) Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and does not allow God's handiwork to be debased. For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will.

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 2, Chapter 10, The Mask of Federalism]
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2) And, further, they ought to be brought to realize that it is their bounden duty to give to the Almighty Creator beings such as He himself made to His own image.

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 2, Chapter 2, The State]
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3) Walking about in the garden of Nature, most men have the self-conceit to think that they know everything; yet almost all are blind to one of the outstanding principles that Nature employs in her work. This principle may be called the inner isolation which characterizes each and every living species on this earth.

Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law--one may call it an iron law of Nature--which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter XI, Race and People]
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4) 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.

==
*** [Daniel's edit:The above English translation is from Hitler's /Tischgespraeche/ for the night of the 25th to 26th 1942:

'Woher nehmen wir das Recht zu glauben, der Mensch sei nicht von Uranfaengen das gewesen , was er heute ist? Der Blick in die Natur zeigt uns, dass im Bereich der Pflanzen und Tiere Veraenderungen und Weiterbildungen vorkommen. Aber nirgends zeigt sich innherhalb einer Gattung eine Entwicklung von der Weite des Sprungs, den der Mensch gemacht haben muesste, sollte er sich aus einem affenartigen Zustand zu dem, was er ist, fortgebildet haben.'

A translation Hitler's words, as recorded by Stephen Carr:

'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)

http://stevencarrwork.blogspot.com/2006/08/hitler-creationist.html

'Die zehn Gebote sind Ordnungsgesetze, die absolut lobenswert sind.'] ***

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5) It was not by mere chance that the first forms of civilization arose
there where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races, subjugated
them and forced them to obey his command. The members of the inferior
race became the first mechanical tools in the service of a growing
civilization.

Thereby the way was clearly indicated which the Aryan had to follow. As
a conqueror, he subjugated inferior races and turned their physical
powers into organized channels under his own leadership, forcing them to
follow his will and purpose. By imposing on them a useful, though hard,
manner of employing their powers he not only spared the lives of those
whom he had conquered but probably made their lives easier than these
had been in the former state of so-called 'freedom'. While he ruthlessly
maintained his position as their master, he not only remained master but
he also maintained and advanced civilization. For this depended
exclusively on his inborn abilities and, therefore, on the preservation
of the Aryan race as such. As soon, however, as his subject began to
rise and approach the level of their conqueror, a phase of which
ascension was probably the use of his language, the barriers that had
distinguished master from servant broke down. The Aryan neglected to
maintain his own racial stock unmixed and therewith lost the right to
live in the paradise which he himself had created. He became submerged
in the racial mixture and gradually lost his cultural creativeness,
until he finally grew, not only mentally but also physically, more like
the aborigines whom he had subjected rather than his own ancestors. For
some time he could continue to live on the capital of that culture which
still remained; but a condition of fossilization soon set in and he sank
into oblivion.

That is how cultures and empires decline and yield their places to new
formations.

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter XI, Race and People]

__________________

6) Steven Carr has another piece of interest that he translated:
==
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.'

Man braucht nur durch ein Teleskop oder durch ein Mikroskop zu sehen: Da erkennt man, dass der Mensch die Faehigkeit hat, diese Gesetze zu begreifen.

Da muss man aber doch demuetig werden. Wird diese Schoepferkraft mt einem Fetisch identifiziert, dann bricht die Gottesvorstellung zusammen, wenn der Fetsich versagt.
==

If this creative power is identified with an idol, then the picture of God will collapse, once the idol fails.

Man has only to look through a telescope or a microscope: Man then recognises, that mankind has the capability to comprehend these laws.

But man must be humble.

[http://stevencarrwork.blogspot.com/2006/08/sill-more-on-hitler-creationist.html]
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Tom had promised that he would have a response to this on his website within a week. It is now July 17th, 2007, and as yet, nothing.

**PS: See this TO article on Hitler and Darwin**
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