In Darwin's Defence
I felt the need to respond to an article dealing with a new book seeking to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust.
First piblished on talk2action.org by AUB on Wed Feb 28, 2007 at 04:45:35 AM EST
Just to clear this Darwin - Hitler thing up...
The religious right are attacking Darwin as both his message and the findings of science in general both threaten their ideology by showing a better path, and contradict their claims regarding history, and the way the universe works. He is a threat to them, as he was to Nazism, and their reaction to his work is the same, propagating pseudo-science to drown out real science, and it doesn't get any more real than Darwin. It is pure self-defence as far as they are concerned, and none of the accusations they have ever levelled at Darwin or science are anything other than black propaganda. The truth is that Darwin came to the complete opposite conclusion of what the Nazis believed and practised. The problem is that extremist Christianity is built on similar ideas. So now it suites the likes of Coulter, Hovind, and the ID brigade to suggest a connection between Nazism and Darwin ignoring the very real connection between their ideology and Nazism.
Lets examine the facts.
Darwin's Tree of Life, and its underlying mechanism of Natural Selection shows that all contemporary life-forms are cousins, and as what is "Fittest" about a species is both transitory and relative to environmental context, there cannot be any such thing as a intrinsically superior or inferior life-form. Not only does Darwinism not permit the idea that one "type" (or race) of person can be superior to another, but even the long held belief, cherished by religion (and even science) that humanity is superior to other animals. Reality takes away the pretensions that Nazi style ideology and religion gives us.
This is not Larmarckism (which is what the Nazi used and Darwin disproved), there is no ladder, but a tree, a concept the religious right either cannot grasp or are afraid of, as their sense of superiority is shattered but it. They try to turn the public away from it by claiming it leads to Nazism, but in reality is threatens them just as it did Nazi ideas. Descendants of a common ancestor spread out into different environments and adapt to each area, becoming reproductively isolated, i.e. new species. Can you make a inhumane ideology out of that? No, as any attempt to "improve" or "accelerate" the process is by definition Artificial Selection, i.e. Breeding, Evolution is powered by Natural Selection, and is completely out of our hands. The moment humans get involved we impose arbitrary (and often purely cosmetic) changes.
Darwin deserves the credit for proving Evolution and hypothesising Natural (and Sexual) Selection. But breeding, something always done according to cultural, personal or ideological preferences was not invented by him. We'd been doing it for over 10,000 years. (Darwin himself worried that people would interpret the term "Selection" in an anthropomorphic manner, switching to "Fittest" not realising that people would think he meant "strongest" however he was using the term in the old fashioned "apt" sense).
What the Nazis did was simply a breeding programme, similar to what slave owners did to their "stock", only arbitrarily favouring their Aryan (i.e. "German") ideal in the name of "Racial Purity". The idea of the Jews as the least desirable trait derives not from Darwin, who's findings render distinctions such as "Jew" or "German" meaningless in any case, but from historical prejudices. But the main point is that both "Race" and biological "Purity" are not scientific concepts, but derived from Nazis ideology. On the contrary imperfection fuels Evolution, if gene copying was perfect mutation would not occur, and are DNA coding is so imperfect as to be mostly gibberish.
The Nazi ideologues would have created their paradigm anyway, but like creationists today, assertion (and blind faith) are not enough anymore, they feel the need to pretend science agrees with their delusions, as a more sophisticated public now often takes science more seriously than the claims of authority. Science does not deserve the blame for pseudo-science, especially not when it is other pseudo-scientists blaming it.
The Nazis just stole Darwin name, the same way they did Nietzsche's, as he was THE scientist in this field, as to Germans Nietzsche was THE philosopher, ignoring what they actually said. Or in Darwin's case having to BAN, let be repeat, BAN his work, as he was not only declared that race is a meaningless distinction (chapter 12, Decent of Man) but was also clear that species are not "perfected" outside the preferences of Sexual Selection, but merely become more apt. That at any time the environment can change and the tables can turn. For example the earthworm outliving the T-Rex, can you imagine a Nazi 65 million years ago declared the worm to be "fitter" than a T-Rex?.
What you have is the combination of random mutation (imperfection) and the unpredictable fate that the environment has in store. There is no intrinsic improvement, nor is any species "meant" or "destined" to replace another, its pot luck. All nature is doing is trying to preserve life, whatever the conditions, through adaptation.
There us also a contraction in creationist's claims here, if Darwinism is bad as it allegedly denies god's hand in the formation of species, then as the Nazis believed in a higher power guided their racial "destiny" then how does Darwin's "Random" process get the blame for that? You can't have it both ways, "guided" Nazi Evolution or "random" Darwinian Evolution, the first false parallel refuting the second straw man.
Yes there is "cruelty", (by our anthropomorphic judgements) and competition in nature, but that is a secondary and not essential factor in Evolution (appearing after environmental pressure started the process), and only in certain species. Nature is neither gentle or cruel, good or bad, but simply indifferent to everything but survival. And if it was not, we would not be here, and neither would any meaning or beauty in life.
Altruism and co-operation, perhaps even love exists in nature, the choice of what kind of society we want to build is still ours, nothing Darwin discovered changed that. But he did show that competition, and/or cruelty increases with the scarcity of recourses. Chimps have a brutal patriarchal society of murder and rape, but Benoboes, who live in abundant areas, have a culture of equality and peace, something to ponder. What Darwin does is show that nature is the root of many of our problems, but also has possible solutions, as Nature has been working on them far longer than we have. We have just been in denial of the natural source or such issues.
Science is secular, not atheistic, and descriptive, not prescriptive. When ideologues attempt to justify their agenda by claiming science or Darwin in-particular agrees with them, they are rationalising. And when religious zealots claim that not mentioning god is that same as denying him they are being reactionary and scared of any worldview that may develop from science that is free of their control mechanisms. Darwin was not part of any political ideology, he was a mildly conservative ivory tower scientist, he wanted no part in the atheist's attempt o use is discoveries to undermine religion, nor of Marx's or any other's ideologies plots, he just wanted to find the truth, and he did, and it was stranger than anyone had imagined.
The “struggle” for existence occurs in a broad metaphorical sense not necessarily a literal, physical one. Wallace’s version of Evolution was based on environmental [pressure not competition, and as it turns out both he and Darwin were right. Add to that symbiosis (or co-operation) and sexual selection and you have the Nazis focusing on only a crude narrow interpretation of only one fourth of the mechanisms for Evolution and misapplying it to race, and in an arbitrary way. Darwin saw Nature as the only true force behind Evolution, viewing breeding and even domestication as wrong, Artificial Selection only capable of superficial change, nothing either deep or long lasting, and not a source for new species. All through The Decent of Man, Darwin praises compassion, altruism and morality as a product of Evolutionary traits, enhanced and broadened through the mind and sociality, he was for the western culture of the Humane, the Nazis sought to abolish it. They defied the science and Darwin’s personal beliefs. The immutable fatalism of their view of “inferior races” was the very type of ignorant nonsense Darwin contradicted when he described “races” or tribes as being only culturally inferior, and never beyond progress.
This is not about Evolution or Darwinism really, but about whether you belief in a humane culture. The Nazis just used Evolution as the excuse for their inhumane ideology, Darwin in so much as his work can be compared to a ideology promoted a humane society, and that is that.
Only buy warping, ignoring or lying about Darwinsm can you justify evil. Darwin showed that we are all one, all equal. That the invisible mutations that will, in millions of years result in new species is a process that is beyond us, and yet binds us all, not just every human being, but every form of life on this planet. From trees, to antelope to bacteria. We have no right to arrogantly lord over this planet, as certain Christians believe. Or to oppress each other as the far right believe. Or to demonise other classes as the far left believe. Gender, race, nationality, religion, sexuality, these are all arbitrary and meaningless divisions. The fact is that everyone before Darwin was wrong, and everyone after him who ignores his findings are just as wrong, whether they claim to be inspired by him or are on "holy quest" to destroy him. By embracing the truth, we will be free of the lot of them.
The religous and political right in America have become to extreme that they have to have their own news, there own facts, there own science, and now their own history. What the Nazis did to the Jews was not derived from Darwin, but from 1700 years of institutional, and sporadic anti Semitism. Derived from, surprise surprise, the Bible. In this "good book" we find racial ideology, a "chosen" people, divinely mandated genocide, and the idea of manifest deity that lead not just to the extermination of Native Americans and many other indigenous people, but the Jews at the hands of Crusaders, church lead pogroms, Inquisitions and greedy Kings. It is unfortunate that the Jews who created the idea of racial (or at least tribal) superiority where to fall victim to it when the New Testament was written. All of a sudden they where to blame for the death of their own Messiah, the recipient of a blood curse, "let his blood be upon us and our children" and even abandoned by god, who now favours Gentiles, (or Aryans as the Nazis interpreted it).
The Ghettos, yellow stars, marriage and job restriction, forced expulsions, scape-goating, all had been practiced for centries in every country in Europe. What the Nazis did was no different to any ideology, opportunistically exploit old divisions, to foster a "them and us" mentality common to all Abrahamic monotheims, (saved, unsaved, clean, unclean, hellbound, infidel, heritic, etc) "He who is not with me is against me" - Jesus. Christianity laid the ground work, the Nazis just took it to the next level, why do you think Latvians, or Checks, were so willing to partisipate in killing Jews, even before the Germans had even crossed their borders? All of Western culture's zeitgeist was to blame for what happened to the Jews, not just the Nazis. After all even America at the time had an antisemitic clergyman on every radio, and turned back jews seaking refuge, sending them to their deaths.
About the only person not the blame is Darwin, his message is one of ultimate unity, whereas all ideology and extremist religions does is feed on division and inequality. I find it ironic that the religious right, who's ideology can be traced back 1800 years, and have in a sense been persecuting the Jews longer than any group in human history, but now after the Shoah it is unfashionable so they claim to be their defenders. Any Jew with a eye to history and the poorly covered anti-Semitic theology of these cretins should be appalled.
There are three layers to anti-Darwinism. First the layer they show the public, an objection on "scientific" grounds, that can be debunked by any educated person. There is what they tell each other, (and in this rare instance the public), that Darwinism leads to pornography, abortion, Nazism. Which can be debunked my any study of history and sociology. And then there is the real reason. When your means of control other others derives from lies about humanity's past, and true nature, you will do anything to smear the first person who didn't disagree on philosophical or moral grounds, as so many had done before, but simply, and quietly showed the world irrefutable scientific proof that you are wrong.
by AUB