Sunday, April 20, 2008

Ben Stein movie "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed": Is it RADICAL to claim causation between Darwinism and Hitler? How about Dawkins the deluder?

Greetings all.

Yesterday I watched Ben Stein's movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. I was overall very pleased. Stein does a good job to expose the nauseating hypocrisy of evolution's high priests and lackey practitioners as they mouth "academic freedom" while frantically strangling opposing free speech with a desperate crazed white-knuckled on-the-throat grip.

I encourage you to watch the movie. It the meantime, I offer comment on only two aspects of the movie.

(A) Richard Dawkins is still a stinker.

Dr. Richard Dawkins, who got a lot of time in the movie, continues as a pompous pontificating venom-spewing hypocritical illogical crooked-thinking religious zealot in his campaign against God. (Did I leave anything out?) I fear for his eternal soul. And yet more I marvel at the array of shining light minds who line up to kiss his big toe and give him homage, all the while knowing in their carpetbagging fellow-traveler hearts that he uses clearly flawed arguments in his rants against God.

In particular:

(1) Ben Stein brings delight to the discerning persons among the EXPELLED audiences as he coaxes out of Dawkins that Dawkins, the world-famous anti-creationist, finally has to resort to life being created and transported to earth from who-knows-where by who-knows-what (except surely not God with a capital G). "Science" indeed! How that warmed my heart to see the the reigning high priest of CHANCE with egg on his face in front of millions of moviegoers. Slither away into your slimy pit, Richard. Congratulations, Ben Stein!
BTW, have you heard that Dawkins is now livid and threatening a lawsuit because he claims Ben Stein did not fully reveal to him the nature of the movie before the interview(s)? Boooo, hoooo. Hooo, hawww.

(2) If you have not heard it before, Dawkins, in his uncritically acclaimed book The Blind Watchmaker, proposes to show how mutations plus natural selection really could produce some shred of living material in less than the bazillions of gadzillions of milenia which fundamental principles of probability clearly demand. How does he pull off this sleight-of-hand trick? He produces a computer algorithm which simulates mutations in a string of characters attempting to recreate Shakespeare's phrase, "METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL." But the critical point is that Dawkins, in his shameless sham, uses the phrase as a TARGET which his cute little algorithm will finally arrive at in some reasonable number of mutations, hence implying some reasonable period of time instead of bazillions of gadzillions of years. Well, duhhhh, if you press him or any other ardent evolutionist, they will have to admit (or, perish the thought, defend) that the chance evolution process they worship as their "creator" can not have any foreknowledge. Their mindless god of chance cannot have a target, much less choose toward a target ! ! !

So, you think I am wacky on this? Thanks to Wikipedia we can find Dawkins' own damning words with ease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_program
Here they are:

"We again use our computer monkey, but with a crucial difference in its program. It again begins by choosing a random sequence of 28 letters, just as before ... it duplicates it repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error – 'mutation' – in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the 'progeny' of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL."

So, dear Darwin-is-Dead reader, do you see how this duplicitous deceiver Dawkins desperately deigns to make dupes of the non-discerning? I hope you picked up on it. If you did not find the intelligence-demanding words "chooses" and "target" (which I have conveniently displayed in bold for you) in his explanation, there is no hope for you and you may as well stop reading here.

(B) Is it "radical" to relate Hitler and Darwinism?

One person who attended with us commented that it seemed "radical" to claim a causal relationship between Darwinism and the dreadful carnage wrought by Hitler and Nazi Germany. Let me recommend to you (and to her) a little book called "The Case for Creationism: Fallacies of Evolution", written by Dr. Arlie J. Hoover (Baker Book House, 1977, 85pp). It was my privilege to study world history under Dr. Hoover a few decades ago. The first time I read this book three decades ago, I laughed and cried all the way through, reading cover to cover like a child that won't let go of a cookie. Hoover, a scholar of philosophy and European history, engaged in the origins debate when he found numerous of the "arguments" put forth in support of evolution were egregious violations of simple sophomore-level logic. A "fallacy" is a violation of formal logic, hence the title of the book.
In a chapter entitled "SOCIAL DARWINISM and the GENETIC FALLACY", Hoover describes "THE ANATOMY OF SOCIAL DARWINISM":
"Social Darwinism comes into play when thinkers uncritically apply the principle of natural selection to the problems of human society. Darwinism in sociology leads to a vulgar justification of ruthless competition, struggle, brutality, and violence among men. Let's look at some historical incarnations of Darwinism.
(1) Lassez-faire capitalists used Darwinism to defend their system of unrestrained competition in the business world of the late nineteenth century. In England, disciples of Adam Smith such as Herbert Spencer argued against poor relief and all forms of social welfare by appeal to the doctrine of survival. ... George Nasmyth spoke accurately when he charged that, 'The new Social Darwinism was seized upon with enthusiasm by all men of violence because it permitted them to raise the basest instincts of greed and vandalism to the height of a universal law of nature.' [ Reference: George Nasmyth, Social Progress and the Darwinism Theory: A Study of Force as a Factor in Human Relations (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1916), Chapter 2]."
(2) Imperialists used Darwinism to justify the conquest and exploitation of non-western peoples in the last century. They exhorted their compatriots to 'take up the white man's burden' and carry the blessings of western civilization to the 'inferior' dark-skinned peoples of the globe. Many ruling classess of the western countries denied rights to their less-educated subjects simply on the grounds that they weren't sufficiently evolved. ... All of this imperialism, justified by Darwinian evolution, was a potent factor in bringing on the Great War of 1914. [Reference: cited in B. Farrington, What Darwin Really Said (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 104].
(3) Exponents of war used Darwinism to justify military struggle among nations. Only the stern test of combat, militarists insisted, could reveal which nation was stronger than another. Nature shows us, they said, that war is the great winnowing process, the terrible final examination between nations. ...
(4) Champions of eugenics used Darwinism to push for eugenics legislation. ... Eugenics champions tended to be very critical of all forms of altruistic morality, toleration, humanitarianism, liberalism, democracy, or internationalism, because these sentiments, with their concerns for the unfit, were 'counterselective.' Nature wipes out the weak specimen; shouldn't sound legislation do the same? [ Reference: for a look at this strain in Hitler's background, see Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 54.]
(5) Racists found Darwinism especially useful in preaching their gospel of ethnic superiority. Racism asserts that the human family is hopelessly fractionalized and that the 'fractions' - the distinct races - have varying values. Racism asserts that struggle, not cooperation, is the normal, yea even the desirable, state of race relations and the competition proves some races superior to others in intelligence, creativity, and cultural capacity. ...

The ideology of Nazi Germany combined many of these Social Darwinian features just discussed- notably racism, imperialism, militarism, and eugenics. As Hitler's biographer, Alan Bullock, said, the core of Nazi ideology was 'a crude Social Darwinism.' Hitler stated,
'Man has become great through struggle.... Whatever goal man has reached is due to his originality plus his brutality... All life is bound up in these three theses: Struggle is the father of all things, virtue lies in blood, leadership is primary and decisive.'
Hitler took his cue from Nietzsche, who had insisted that since God is dead altruism is also dead, because altruism is based on theism. Hitler agreed that altruism or love is 'counterselective.' 'The whole work of nature,' he insisted, 'is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness - and eternal victory of the strong over the weak.' Any person or state that offends this elementary law will fail. 'Only force rules. Force is the first law.' But what about morality? 'History proves,' concluded Hitler, 'he who has not the strength - him the right in itself profits not a whit.' [Reference: Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Bantam Books, 1964), pp. 345-46.]
When the Nazis finally got down to putting this racism into actual legislation, they spelled out what they considered the logical implications of evolution. In the infamous Nuremburg Laws (1935), directed principally against the Jews, they asserted that 'there is a greater difference between the lowest forms still called human and our superior races (Aryan) than between the lowest man and monkeys of the highest order.' In other words, the Jews and Slavs, because they were vastly inferior to Aryans, were closer to apes than to their fellow humans!"

I hope this will help you understand better the clear causation link between Darwinism and some of the greatest social evils that have arisen (or have been encouraged) since his writing, and in particular those fomented by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party.

Is this a "radical" idea? Perhaps radical, but undoubtedly factual and historical.


Enough for now. Go see the movie.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

1 Comments:

At April 23, 2008 9:40 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

just saw Expelled; the fact that Ben Stein isn't trying to win any popularity contests helps to validate his message... i gather that his goal is to promote free thought, especially more thinking about the worldviews that drive American academia

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home