Commentary
by Michael Baggot
May 5, 2008
(LifeSiteNews.com) - Ben Stein has suffered extensive media criticism for
drawing the connection between Darwin, Hitler, and the modern eugenics
movements in a powerful 10-minute section of his film "Expelled: No
Intelligence Allowed".
In an
MSNBC.com review, Arthur Caplan calls the connection Stein draws between
Darwin's theory and the Holocaust "despicable". Neo-Darwinians
on the whole have unleashed a barrage of insults at Stein and his work. They
have also, however, completely failed to address the intimidating
body of evidence Stein presents to support his claims.
While Stein
has explicitly asserted that not every neo-Darwinist is a eugenicist, an
examination of the historic record reveals that neo-Darwinism can and has
provided the philosophic justification for numerous horrific eugenic
projects.
According
to Darwin, the survival of the fittest is the engine for progress for men
as well as the rest of the animal kingdom. In his "Descent of
Man," Darwin laments that the misguided care of the weaker members of
society has come as a detriment to the whole. He warns that measures must
be taken to "prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior
members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of
men," which is essentially nothing less than the mission statement of
eugenicists the world over.
Less than a
century after Darwin's death, in his chapter on "Nation and Race" in
"Mein Kampf," Adolf Hitler described the struggle for existence in
Darwinian terms: "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the
weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can
view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if
this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher evolution of organic living
beings would be unthinkable."
The Nazi
party framed its mission in terms of a Darwinian struggle to achieve a more
evolved life form. According to the Hitler-approved pamphlet
"Why are We Fighting?", "Our racial idea is only the 'expression
of a worldview' that recognizes in the higher evolution of humans a divine
command."
Another
Hitler-approved booklet, "Racial Policy", outlined the Nazi vision of
man as follows: "The preservation and propagation, the evolution and
elevating of life occurs through the struggle for existence, to which every
plant, every animal, every species and every genus is subjected. Even
humans and the human races are subject to this struggle; it decides their value
and their right to exist."
There is a
ruthless consistency to the Darwinian-phrased Nazi propaganda. After all,
if Darwin has rendered the "God hypothesis" superfluous and hence any
notion of man as the intrinsically valuable creature made in God's image and
likeness, what better criteria is there for human worth than power?
According
to Darwin, man is different from the rest of the animals only by a matter of
degrees. There is nothing that essentially distinguishes man from the
other beasts. At best, man is a more complex machine than the rest of the
animals. It should not be surprising then that the prominent bioethicist
Peter Singer appeals to Darwinian evolution when attacking the sanctity-of-life
ethic and defending abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. According to
Singer, Darwin "undermined the foundations of the entire Western way of
thinking on the place of our species in the universe."
Likewise,
Darwinian philosopher Daniel Dennett calls Darwin's views the "universal
acid" that erodes traditional moral convictions rooted in the dignity of
the human person. His strictly biological assessment of human worth lets
Dennett speaks of the "gradations of value in the ending of human
lives," as he offers a case for euthanasia.
In a
particularly powerful portion of "Expelled," Stein lets Cornell
historian of science William Provine detail the implications of
neo-Darwinism. Without qualification, Provine adamantly affirms that
neo-Darwinism demonstrates that there is no meaning to life. Not
surprisingly, he claims that he would put a bullet through his own head if his
brain tumor reemerged. Provine chides his brother for clinging to this
life for so long.
One is then
led to wonder if Provine has a more sympathetic view of the large quantity of
apparent drains on our society that fill our nations hospitals and nursing
homes. The materialistic nihilism Provine honestly insists is entailed in
neo-Darwinism seems to be completely incompatible with traditional humanitarian
aspirations to defend the weak and vulnerable of society. Instead the weak and
vulnerable are to be considered as obstacles to the progress of the human
species in its evolutionary journey. They are to be eradicated. And, if not
actively eradicated, then, at the very least, they should not be allowed
to reproduce.
If man is
the accidental byproduct of blind natural forces and not the planned creation
of an Intelligent Creator, then his worth is something to be earned rather than
gratefully received. The denial of man's intrinsic human dignity is at
the heart of every eugenics movement from Hitler's Germany to early 20th
century America to Planned Parenthood's continued mission to eliminate the
"unwanted" children of the world.
Is every
neo-Darwinian a racist bent on genocide? No. But as Darwinian thinkers
themselves admit, the neo-Darwinian outlook provides a handy foundation for the
Culture of Death's rejection of human dignity and thus opens the way for the
host of attacks on human life that continue to infect nations across the
globe. Thank you, Mr. Stein, for reminding us that ideas have major
consequences.
(author's
note: I am indebted to the Discovery Institute's Richard Weikart for
compiling important passages from Hitler and Nazi propaganda in his recent
article "Was It Immoral for 'Expelled' to Connect Darwinism and Nazi
Racism?")
Learn more
about Expelled:
http://www.expelledthemovie.com
Learn more
about the Darwin-Hitler connection:
http://www.darwintohitler.com
Read more
about Darwin's devaluation of the human person:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=vi...