Feedback archive → Feedback 2005

Reinforcing the Darwin–Hitler connection and correcting misinformation about slavery and racism

From E.Y., attending a private girls’ school in the Channel Islands (or possibly someone maliciously using her name), taking exception to Dr Sarfati’s review of Dr Richard Weikart’s book From Darwin to Hitler. She has a number of misconceptions about the way beliefs have consequences, church history and biblical exegesis. Dr Sarfati responds below, pointing out the real reason for the Crusades and the real nature of the anti-slavery abolitionists.

[Update 2007: this year is the bicentennial of the abolition of slavery in the UK (see the later article Anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce: Christian hero), so we are visiting this feedback that touched on this issue. We also plan to write more on the issue, the biblical teaching, and the strong Christian background of the abolitionists. Similarly, many American Christians bitterly denounced slavery (see this collection of Christian anti-slavery articles from history).

This past year has also provided further support for the very claims that E.Y. objected to: that evolutionary ideas have baneful consequences. One evolutionist, Eric Pianka, would be happy if most of humanity perished (see Doomsday Glee: An astonishing lecture makes sense if you understand the evolutionary framework), and the famous misotheist Richard Dawkins claimed that we should maybe reconsider Hitler’s ideas about eugenics (see Dawkins and Eugenics: A leading high priest of evolution reveals its ugly side).]

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Dear sir,

I am horrified that you should continue to beat the same dead horse. In each of your past three issues of Creation magazine, there has been an article linking Darwinism with the Holocaust …

From Wikipedia. Released into the public domain.

And there are other articles on the subject preceding these three issues, e.g. my editorial The Holocaust and evolution and the subsequent article Nazis planned to exterminate Christianity.

… a link which I find nothing short of disgusting.

It would be a lot more helpful if, instead of complaining about being offended, you answered the arguments. The Jewish commentator Dennis Prager put it very well in Blue America: The land of the easily offended. It would have been better to attempt to disprove Prof. Weikart’s extensive documentation of the Darwin–Hitler link.

As you yourself would doubtless admit, it is the nature of powerful men bent on doing evil to warp that which has most control over the masses to their own intent. At the time of Hitler, this popular idea may well have been evolution, but it is no more difficult to argue that evolution duly interpreted would lead to the Holocaust than it is to argue that Christianity, the religion that seems to incite Gods chosen to dash the heads of their enemies children against the rocks (cf. Psalm 137.9) duly interpreted …

It should be properly interpreted as ancient ‘trash talk’ against an enemy who had done just that to Israelite babies—see Ancient Mores and Modern Moral Imposition and Outrageous Reasoning. Even today, in the Middle East, people utter curses such as, ‘May your children be orphaned and your wife widowed’, but in most cases that is the limit of the violence, and the enemies cool off after such vicious insults. Conversely, these middle easterners would be shocked at the readiness of many Anglo-Saxons in history to fight or even duel to the death.

… would lead to the Crusades.

Actually, many historians are recognizing that the Crusades were a justified response to centuries of Islamic aggression, e.g. Robert Spencer: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

The Muslims quickly conquered the Iberian Peninsula well before the Crusades. They probably would have almost certainly conquered Europe if the Frankish king Charles Martel’s infantry had not defeated the Muslim cavalry at the Battle of Tours/Poitiers in a brilliant defensive strategy.

Also, just think about the historic centres of Christianity such as Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and the rest of north Africa—they are now Muslim lands, converted at the point of the sword. And after the crusades, the Muslim Turks conquered the ancient land of Asia Minor, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, the site of many of his missionary journeys and home of the Seven Churches of the book of Revelation. Furthermore, when they conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453, they turned Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), the world’s biggest church of its day and centre of Eastern Orthodoxy, into a mosque.

Note that a just war can still have atrocities without affecting the justness of the war itself. In the case of the Crusades, problems arose because many of the soldiers were biblically illiterate, and had justification-by-works mentality, thinking that they could earn salvation by going on the Crusade. However, biblical Christianity is not the cause but would have been a corrective if followed—salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, not by works, as shown by Paul’s citation of Genesis 15:6, ‘Abraham believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness’ (Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6, cf. Eph. 2:8–9).

Your case against Darwinism, particularly in Dr Sarfatis latest article, fails in two distinct ways. Firstly, although on the one hand Darwinism may encourage the strong to dominate the weak, and lead to active racism, on the other hand, since blind chance rather than divine justice is seen to be the force in charge, man must determine his own justice, and is obliged to live altruistically, expecting to be treated likewise.

Obliged? How does this follow? This is the is-ought fallacy—one cannot derive what one ought to do from the way things are. And how is this really altruism, since under this reasoning one is serving others only to obtain some favour in return. Under this ‘moral law’, how could you judge the actions of a masochist as wrong (enjoying pain, the masochist injures others to be injured in return)?

And if man determines his own justice, which man? Why not Hitler?