Freethought & Rationalism Archive

unregistered_user_1 · 07-20-2003, 09:54 PM

Something I've seen on AIG and on TW, one by Sarfati and the second by "Socrates".

It's a quote from some guy saying that Hitler was a "consistent evolutionist"!

I've read "Mein Kampf". From what I remember, he speaks very little, if any about "evolution"! He does mention "fixity of kinds" and in an earlier edition, he said that the earth was only thousands of years old.

Where in hell did the guy that those 2 creationists quoted get that "consistent evolutionist" idea in the first damned place?!
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home...tler_keith.asp
and
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4162.asp#f14

(I belive that generally, the "main gist" of that second BS-ing article is refuted in this post but I'm looking for stuff about
the guy quoted in both places:

Keith, A., Evolution and Ethics, G.P. Putnam?s Sons, New York, p. 230, 1946. Return to text.

On a brighter note, this quote from the second AIG article is easily refuted by history:

Quote:

If the Nazi party had fully embraced and consistently acted on the belief that all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve and equal before the creator God, as taught in both the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures, the holocaust would never have occurred.

This stuff has been happening while people still believed in "creation". Being "created equal" didn't stop xians from thinking that people have "degenerated"!

OK, this is from "Holy Horrors" by James A. Haught, page 158-160:

Quote:

Theologian Clark Williamson of Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, said centuries of Christian hostility to Jews "prepared the way for the Holocaust." He said the Nazis "are inconceivable apart from this Christian tradition. Hitler's pogrom, for all its distinctiveness, is the zenith of a long Christian heritage of teaching and practice against Jews."
For Christians, he said, the Holocaust demonstrated "the demonic results and malevolent possibilities that reside in our tradition of anti-Jewish preaching and teaching.
"Christian anti-semitism promoted the Nazi cause in several ways. It led the Nazis to focus initially on Jews and created attitudes which permitted them to carry out their extermination program with little resistance. It made it possible for Christians to justify either assisting or not opposing the Nazi efforts. Christian anti-semitism is profoundly incriminated in the Final Solution".

Quote:

Theologian Richard Rubenstein wrote that the Nazis "did not invent a new willain...They took over the 2.000-year-old Christian tradition of the Jew as villain...The roots of the death camps must be sought in the mythic structure of Christianity...Myths converning the demonological role of the Jews have been operative in Christianity for centuries..."

True. Never do I hear Darwin, Huxley, Neitzche, etc. ever say anything against the jews. All the Nazi rantings against them were taken from old xian sayings!

What I wonder, is the AIG writer lying or just really ignorant of history (or hoping his readers are?)

Sorry to get off track, but when I see THAT much bull... anyway, some info on the "Keith" guy who was used as a reference in the AIG article above would be apprectiated.

Doubting Didymus · 07-20-2003, 10:06 PM

Quote:

He does mention "fixity of kinds"

Oh? That sounds like a promising start towards evolutionary thinking.

unregistered_user_1 · 07-20-2003, 10:13 PM

I'm not sure I remember that "fixity of kinds" thing, though. I thought I read that in there, but I'm not so sure, I'd have to find an online version of dig up my old notes again.

If he DID say it, it was something like he believed that animals didn't change or something like that.

BTW, how can "fixity of kinds" be a step towards "evolutionary thinking"? Isn't that a creationist view?

Lobstrosity · 07-20-2003, 10:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by unregistered_user_1
BTW, how can "fixity of kinds" be a step towards "evolutionary thinking"? Isn't that a creationist view?

unless I'm missing something: unregistered_user, meet Mr. Sarcasm. Mr. Sarcasm, may I introduce you to unregistered_user?

Albion · 07-20-2003, 11:10 PM

This site claims to be the full text of "Evolution and Ethics," by Arthur Keith, which is the basis for those AiG articles.

Doubting Didymus · 07-20-2003, 11:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by unregistered_user_1
I'm not sure I remember that "fixity of kinds" thing, though. I thought I read that in there, but I'm not so sure, I'd have to find an online version of dig up my old notes again.

BTW, how can "fixity of kinds" be a step towards "evolutionary thinking"? Isn't that a creationist view?

If you do find time to dig up a referenced copy of the quote, that'd be triffic.

Regarding my earlier statement. I wasn't really being sarcastic as such. I'd call it facetiousness, or tongue-in-cheek(ness). Sarcasm implies the intention to mock or ridicule the target.

Lobstrosity · 07-21-2003, 12:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus
If you do find time to dig up a referenced copy of the quote, that'd be triffic.

Regarding my earlier statement. I wasn't really being sarcastic as such. I'd call it facetiousness, or tongue-in-cheek(ness). Sarcasm implies the intention to mock or ridicule the target.

Well, I perceived your statement as a mockery of those who would assert a person who claims "fixity of kinds" is a supporter of evolution--a pre-emptive mockery, if you will, should the fixity quote prove accurate. Creationists love to use Hitler as a posterchild for the real-world evils of evolution. They aren't about to let anything as inconsequential as his actual beliefs/knowledge cloud the issue and weaken a perfectly good straw man. As such, they damn well deserve ridicule.

Oh, and "meet Mr. Facetiousness" just doesn't have the right ring to it, you know? Same goes for "meet Mr. Tongue-In-Cheekness (or is it tongueness-in-cheek?)."

unregistered_user_1 · 07-21-2003, 01:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus
If you do find time to dig up a referenced copy of the quote, that'd be triffic.

Regarding my earlier statement. I wasn't really being sarcastic as such. I'd call it facetiousness, or tongue-in-cheek(ness). Sarcasm implies the intention to mock or ridicule the target.

Ok, it's not exactly what he said (as in a quote: "I believe in the fixity of kinds", as bob barker would say, but here is what I found):
from http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html

Quote:

Volume One - A Reckoning
Chapter XI: Nation and Race

THERE are some truths which are so obvious that for this very reason they are not seen or at least not recognized by ordinary people. They sometimes pass by such truisms as though blind and are most astonished when someone suddenly discovers what everyone really ought to know. Columbus's eggs lie around by the hundreds of thousands, but Columbuses are met with less frequently.
Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature's rule: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on this earth.
Even the most superficial observation shows that Nature's restricted form of propagation and increase is an almost rigid basic law of all the innumerable forms of expression of her vital urge. Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc.

a little later

Quote:

Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. 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 development of organic living beings would be unthinkable.
The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice.

Hell, I don't know. It sounds like he's mangling a few principles here, I'm tired and I can't think about this crap right now.

I think this is the closest we can get though.

pariah · 07-21-2003, 01:05 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by unregistered_user_1

True. Never do I hear Darwin, Huxley, Neitzche, etc. ever say anything against the jews. All the Nazi rantings against them were taken from old xian sayings!

What I wonder, is the AIG writer lying or just really ignorant of history (or hoping his readers are?)

In fact, nietzsche was against the anti-sematism movement...darwin, huxley, and etc may very well have been too.

unregistered_user_1 · 07-21-2003, 01:35 AM

Quote:

In fact, nietzsche was against the anti-sematism movement...darwin, huxley, and etc may very well have been too.

Oh yeah, Nietzsche most definately was against anti-semitism:
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode.../colossal.html

Quote:

Further, it is obvious that Zacharias has not done his homework with regard to Nietzsche, so even the attacks on his influence and character misfire. Zacharias asserts a direct, logical relationship between the views of Nietzsche and the carnage caused by Hitler. He states that Hitler used Nietzsche's philosophy as a "blueprint" for his war, and that he "took Nietzsche's logic and drove the atheistic world view to its legitimate conclusion" (59). This assertion is easily disproven. Zacharias is obviously unaware that Nietzsche had contempt for Germans. Nietzsche preferred to consider himself a European. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche accused the Germans of playing a major role in inhibiting the spread of the beneficial effects of the Renaissance. Nietzsche wrote:

They are my enemies, I confess it, these Germans: I despise in them every kind of conceptual and valuational uncleanliness, of cowardice before every honest Yes and No. For almost a thousand years they have messed up and confused everything they touched with their fingers...[2]

Nietzsche was also quite clear about the fact that he detested anti-Semites. In a letter to a friend he stated jokingly that he was "having all anti-Semites shot" [3]. In The Antichrist Nietzsche states that "an anti-Semite certainly is not any more decent because he lies as a matter of principle" [4]. These and many other vitriolic attacks on Germans, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and other concepts central to the Nazi worldview, as well as occasional praise for Jewish culture and courage, show quite clearly that Nietzsche's true philosophy could not have been responsible for the worldview of Hitler, as Zacharias asserts. These are aspects of Nietzsche's writing that Zacharias would just as soon not mention, or else he is unaware of them.

Hitler was unaware of them, incidentally, since Nietzsche's sister, an anti-Semite herself, purged his work of anything which she believed the Nazis might find objectionable before allowing its publication. By that time Nietzsche was gone and unable to protest. Thus, Hitler and the Nazis were completely unaware of Nietzsche's real views on important matters, and so the supposed link between them, of which Zacharias makes so much, is illusory.

Quote:

[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, Walter A. Kaufmann, ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), pg. 654. Called "TPN" hereafter.

[3] TPN, pg. 687.

[4] TPN, pg. 641.

As for Darwin's feelings on stuff like racism and slavery, check out the link I had posted in the first post on this thread!

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07-20-2003, 10:13 PM	#3
unregistered_user_1 Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Just north of here. Posts: 544	I'm not sure I remember that "fixity of kinds" thing, though. I thought I read that in there, but I'm not so sure, I'd have to find an online version of dig up my old notes again. If he DID say it, it was something like he believed that animals didn't change or something like that. BTW, how can "fixity of kinds" be a step towards "evolutionary thinking"? Isn't that a creationist view?

07-20-2003, 11:10 PM	#5
Albion Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: US east coast. And www.theroyalforums.com Posts: 2,829	This site claims to be the full text of "Evolution and Ethics," by Arthur Keith, which is the basis for those AiG articles.

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