Are Creationists Liars?

Update: this post is now also featured at Skepticblogs.

Over the weekend, I was chatting with a good friend of mine, and he brought up the very interesting biographical story of Mary Schweitzer who started as a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) as a child, but because of interest in science became an influential paleontologist, showing how dinosaurs were likely warm-blooded and the ancestors to modern birds (which means when you eat chicken, you are eating a dinosaur!). I also added the interesting tangent that YECs have tried to use Schweitzer's work on blood cells found in dino bones as proof of a young earth (or at least that fossils are not millions of years old), my friends had heard of as well. But this then got into the conversation of misinformation and if creationists are liars or simply misinformed.

Now, I definitely think that the vast majority of average folks that believe in YEC are not dishonest, nor do they think what facts they have are lies. They are two things: suffering confirmation bias (only hearing that which reinforces their beliefs) and misinformation (perhaps even propaganda). That will cause many people to truly and honestly think the science is on their side. It just has the irony factor that science can explain to a large degree why they don't believe the science (something articulated in Chris Mooney's The Republican Brain).

However, I think it better to focus on the people that make the claims to support creationism, from the creation scientists of old to the modern Intelligent Design proponents. Are they all liars? Some? Just a few bad apples?

In the opinion of one person that has dealt with creationists a lot, YouTube user (and now blogger) Aronra in his Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism along with subsequent videos tries to make the case that creationist proponents actively try to pull the wool over people's eyes either for ideological or monetary reasons (or both). He even argues that biochemist Michael Behe, best known for defending irreducible complexity as evidence against evolution, was at least intellectually dishonest in his testimony at the Dover, Pennsylvania trial on Intelligent Design.

However, I won't simply post the opinions of others, no matter how well-founded. Let's consider this from two points: the prior probability that creationism is advanced by dishonesty, and examples of it in action.

First, how likely is it that good, Christian leaders could promote things that are positively false yet peddled as absolute truth? Isn't there a significant disconnect between defending a system of morality and violating the 9th commandment?  Well, that is something that can be overcome with a bit of rationalization, and not much really. In the minds of YEC leaders, evolution is not simply a scientific theory, it is a force trying to undermine the whole of society. As is seen in this illustration from creationist literature, evolution supports Nazism, abortion, sexual perversion, racism, radical feminists, and more things seen as terrible. And Creation "Science" is the remedy, or so it seems. So whatever tool it takes to take down evolution is given great moral weight. Such a precedent can be seen in the Church historian Eusebius, who advocated (from the idea in Plato) it is sometimes necessary to use a lie for medicinal purposes, sort of speak. In another context, there is pseudo-historian David Barton who is now too widely considered a liar to be publishable by anyone with a reputation (which is why he has gone to Glen Beck). He really was a liar for Jesus, making up quotes and making claims such as the Founding Fathers had settled the evolution vs. creationism issue back in the day... even though they were most all dead before Charles Darwin could even read, let alone publish his Origin of Species.

Moreover, there is the point to consider of how a position such as YEC can survive when it was been falsified since the early 19th century. How can a position be supported by educated people, given the information resources of modern times, when each and every claim said to be indicative of a young earth and against common decent are not only proved false, but even nicely sorted against the claims? There are no facts one can point to that actually indicate the earth is less than 10,000 years old, while there are a significant number in favor of an earth million and billions of years old. Can someone, let alone numerous people research a topic and get their facts wrong time and again without intellectual dishonesty?

The problem becomes all the worse considering that many YEC organizations proudly put up their statements of faith. For example, Answers in Genesis (AiG) has a Statement of Faith that includes the following:

By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.

(And no, this is not the only example.) Such a statement indicates that from the start, no evidence can go against what is already believed. If you already "know" the "answer", then the research becomes farcical. And while scientists can indeed fall into cognitive traps and fail to see evidence that undoes their own pet theories, they don't make statements in advance of what the evidence must be.

So, initially we can see that there are potential motivators for being dishonest for the sake of taking down evolution. But what about actual cases where this happens? Let's start early in history.

If we look to the beginning of the fight against Darwin's theory, we ought to consider Sir Richard Owen, a brilliant anatomist and founder of the British Museum and the coiner of the word "dinosaur." However, he was a staunch opponent of Darwin and a supporter of a theological interpretation of life's past rather than the mechanistic account of Darwin and his bulldog Huxley. And so it seems that Owen invented the claim that a brain structure (the hippocampus minor) was only possessed by humans and not other primates, thus undercutting common ancestry. But investigations by others showed Owen to be wrong, and considering Owen's prowess in anatomy, it becomes hard to believe he could make such a mistake. There was Huxley's book written for those unexposed to advanced anatomy that these structures were indeed in both humans as well as monkeys, so the feature was rather obvious to all observers (including scientists such as Charles Lyell). That Owen evaded this, along with creating inaccurate drawings to hide other features of primate brains, had to further claim that the hippocampus minor was not only missing in lower primates and "idiot" further indicates his stubbornness to the obvious, and having been caught he finally admitted that the structure was in other primate brains (though with caveats), all indicates he was protecting other interests. This is detailed in the book Owen's Ape and Darwin's Bulldog and this rather good Wikipedia page on the subject. Also, this video:

In addition, Owen tried to discredit the usefulness of Archaeopteryx (discovered in 1861) as a transition between reptiles and bird by comparing the fossil to pterosaurs rather than dinosaurs. Again, hardly an innocent mistake since Owen had been the definer of dinosaurs, so this made it easy for Huxley to expose him again. (Obviously there wasn't much love between these men.) Owen also was not a terribly moral man who squished those that got in his way, wrote letters in the third person to papers attacking his enemies and praising himself, and was also accused of plagiarism.

So, it seems in the case of Owen, he was willing to present falsehoods in order to advance his career and attack evolution, and he was widely considered towards the end of his life to have been a dishonest man. But he is hardly the only case to present. If we move on to the Scope Monkey Trial of 1925, we can see another case there it was seen as useful to take a position believed to be false in order to attack evolution. Here we had a titan of American politics, William Jennings Bryan, fighting for Christ and society against the great agnostic Clarence Darrow (though they were in fact friends and Darrow helped Bryan in his bids for the presidency). Now, an interesting fact that the movie and stage performance of the trial, Inherit the Wind, doesn't properly represent is that Bryan was not a YEC, but instead he did not disagree with the geologists. However, when on the stand, he did try to argue for a young earth, citing the "research" of George McReady Price, the effective founder of Young Earth Creationism. Price was not a geologist or trained scientist, and also on the stand Bryan admitted the antiquity of the earth (see The Creationists, pp. 58, 89, 116-7). So again, we have a person willing to use research that was not only outside of the scientific mainstream but even at odds with his own beliefs, all for the sake of fighting Darwinism because of its perceived moral issues. Not unlike that seen in the illustration above: using "science" that supports creationism to stop some other evil.

However, these figures are long dead and do not promote things today, obviously. What about living proponents of creationism? As another case example, consider Duane Gish, a founding figure in creation "science" and a trained biochemist. So he ought to know basic biology and chemistry. As one of his famous cases against natural selection and the piecemeal origins of biological systems, he pointed to the bombardier beetle, a bug that can squirt a boiling liquid at predators for protection. Gish claimed that the chemicals in the liquid used by the beetle, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, explode without an inhibitor; thus, the beetle could not have existed without the inhibitor, giving nothing for nature to select, thus meaning the creature had to be formed the way it was, otherwise Kaboom! But what happens if you do mix these chemicals together? Actually, no boom. At all. You can test this yourself with store-bought supplies.

Now, Gish made this claim in a book from 1977. In 1978, he was informed of this, and though he still thought it impossible for the beetle to have evolved, he agreed that the chemical combo was not explosive. And yet, in 1980, he still made the same argument. He should have known better before making the argument (he was a chemist), and he admitted to knowing better two years before making the same claim again. And to this day, it is still made by creationists without fixing the errors (though elsewhere they do agree the description is wrong). So we have here another example of dishonesty and knowingly so.

But we still haven't gotten to perhaps the grand-daddy of the disingenuous, "Dr." Kent Hovind. As you may have noticed, I don't think him a doctor because his degree is fake, a printing from a diploma mill called Patriot Bible University (which is just this trailer house in Colorado), so his title is fake. Hovind is also currently in prison for tax fraud, so he is indeed a convicted liar. Other acts of being disingenuous include his $250,000 prize for any evidence of evolution which, upon inspection, can only be won by showing it is impossible in any way that God could have caused the evidence to be the way it appears. He also uses his own made-up definitions of evolution to further evade ever getting the evidence for the theory that biologists actually talk about.

But as an example of creating a falsehood to advance creationism over evolution, perhaps the best example is his case of a supposed conversation with a Berkeley professor while on an airplane. He never gives a name or department for this professor, and the professor's description of the Big Bang is amazingly wrong. In fact, it appears to have been manufactures by Hovind using elementary/middle school science text books (start viewing from 3:30).

If you watched, you would notice that even Hovind's slides show that he was mixing nebula collapse for star formation and the Big Bang, which he then uses for his angular momentum argument against the Big Bang. He is clearly off his rocker and is using an encounter that could not have happened unless such a person knew nothing of cosmology yet talked exactly like a children's textbook. A collection of Hovind's lies can be found using the wayback machine here. I should also include that Hovind's ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, filed many false DMCA take-down notices of videos critical of his seminars, claiming copyright infringement even though on his lectures and on his website he states none of his stuff of copyrighted to help spread it around. Perhaps then it is no wonder that he is in jail for tax fraud and trying to disguise transactions that would have tipped off the feds. However, it is unfortunate that his son, Eric, has continued in his father's line of work, selling the same bunk, just with better graphics.

And now for one last example: taken from the Dover trial about Intelligent Design (ID). In particular, consider two of the figures on the Dover school board, William (Bill) Buckingham and Alan Bonsell. These guys, and others, wanted to get straight-out creationism taught in the schools, even though it had been clearly found to be illegal by the Supreme Court in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard. So they searched for an alternative to avoid the legal issue using ID. Part of that process was the inclusion of a textbook called Of Pandas and People. After the school board had agreed to including ID, the books appeared out of nowhere, apparently, at the school for use in the library. Sixty copies, in fact. Buckingham and Bonsell both claimed in their sworn deposition that they had no idea where the books came from.

But that was a bald-faced lie. In fact, Buckingham had gotten up in front of his church to ask for donations to buy these textbooks. He then gave a check for the books to Bonsell, who gave it to his father, who then bought the books. That is a pretty amazing lie, and told under oath no less. When the judge got wind of this, he took over the interrogation of the witness and put Bonsell up for perjury charges; Judge Jones said that the two men repeatedly lied.

Here then we have a super-clear case of lying, under oath even, in order to get creationism into the classrooms.

Now, this post has already gotten long, but it is hardly complete. I haven't considered the ever-present use of quote-mining in creationist literature, especially against Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, or the dishonest editing of Dawkins or the propaganda film Expelled which tries to say evolutionary scientists are really Nazis. I haven't touched the geologists like Andrew Snelling who gets a PhD in the subject and writes papers, but thinks all his work is false and promotes YEC to whomever he can. And I haven't talked about ID which tries to hide what it is as subterfuge, avoiding legal barriers to teaching creationism while not providing anything that can get into peer-review (and they don't even try). Heck, documentation shows that they really have the goal of doing all that they can to destroy "Darwinism" to make way for Christian scientific approaches (see the Wedge document). The blog site The Panda's Thumb has also been tracking the falsehoods and dishonest for many years now. There is a massive industry of pseudo-science, and it truly looks like it cannot be advanced honestly.

Creationism is certainly advanced by ignorance of the facts. However, there does appear to be a significant factor of dis-ingenuousness on the part of proponents. And those that were actively listening to these false prophets do feel they were lied to after they realize how wrong they were. But still, nearly half the US buys into YEC teachings.

How best to combat this? You tell me!

The F Word

Well, the movie Expelled comes out today in about 1000 theaters, and I haven't the foggiest idea how well it will do at the box office. They are doing some posturing, setting up a David vs. Goliath metaphor and saying they may do better than expected. But even if they do well, they have a significant legal battle with XVIVO and now Yoko Ono because of the unlicensed use of John Lennon's song Imagine. I wonder if Expelled Exposed will put up something on that subject in the near future; the blog Panda's Thumb has had numerous posts on the subject.

Speaking of that site, Dave Thomas recently put up a post with a scan from the of the "Leader's DVD" (whatever that means), and it has this to say:

"Whoa" indeed. The purpose of the movie is made clear by that key word: Faith.

Then again, which faith? Not Ken Miller's, or Francis Collins', and many others' faith in their respective religion. No, this is a very narrow take on what is "real" Christianity and "real" Christian faith. Obviously the issue of what is the "correct" way of reading Genesis is not black and white, and the people that have produced Expelled purposefully avoided interviewing scientists that had no problem reconciling Genesis and evolution. Claiming that such people would have "confused the film unnecessarily" as producer Mark Mathis stated himself only shows that these people are not really about debate and open discussion but in trying to sell their particular brand of their particular religion.

Now, I am a critic of religion in general, but I also know that there is a massive continuum of positions in any religion. Buddhists can be pacifists, activists, or Kamikazes; Muslims can be advocates for freedom of speech and humans rights or terrorists; Christians can be generous or tyrannical. There is no one-size-fits-all to these sorts of things. Religion does not necessarily mean you have exactly the same view as your priest, pastor, rabbi, imam, guru, etc.

So, what we really have here is just on take on one major religion and pretending that there can be no debate on what is a "real" Christian. It seems ironic to me that many people criticize the "new" atheists like Dawkins and Harris for not seeing these nuances and not realizing there are many different ways to be Christian, Muslim, etc., but then some Christians shout that they are the true believers and all others are wrong. Hmm, imagine that. Someone thinks that their dogma is unassailable.

This movie is a disservice to any sort of dialog on what it means to have any faith, even if I think all religious faiths are extraneous. There are no fine lines, no simply black-and-white stances, and I think enough people realize that. Heck, even the "fundamentalist" atheists realize this from what I can tell. (Their point is that unreason and dogma can and will cause more harm than good and this must be dealt with head-on with philosophy, science, and debate--note that no guns or swords are supposed to be used to convert, which is what fundies may do if they could like they did in the Dark Ages.)

If you are religious and wonder about the intersection of science and religion, you won't be getting any straight or good or useful answers or discussions in this movie. There are much smarter people that Ben Stein that have been and are arguing on these subjects, such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

More on Expelled Exposed

The movie will be coming out soon, and may be infringing on the copyright of a cell biology video used before by William Dembski without permission.

But more importantly, the Website Expelled Exposed needs as many links to it as possible.
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I know this is a link bomb, but I have two good reasons for doing it.
1. The movie is terrible in its scholarship and needs to be dealt with unless it should have its misinformation be unchallenged and do major damage to science and culture in this country.
2. I had emailed the people of that website to make use of my previous blog entry on the connection between Darwinism and Nazism. I was emailed back and told that it could be of use. So, all the more reason to link: I am linking to myself, sort of.

And from the reviews I have seen, they agree that the movie has a terrible premise and is poorly executed.

Note: At the time of this blog post, Expelled Exposed comes up on the sixth page when searching for the word "expelled". However, I have also noticed that Expelled Exposed is the only thing found in the Sponsored Link section on Google, just to the right of the searched links. So, Expelled Exposed could use a boost up, but it will be on every page Google turns up on Expelled now.

The Third Reich and the Holocaust--By Darwin or by God's Will?

Since the primary claim of the movie Expelled, hosted by Ben Stein to the point of teary-eyed boredom, is to make the connection between Darwin's theory of natural selection and the events of the Holocaust, I have decided to look critically at what were the major motivations of the Third Reich's will to kill off millions of Jews and other "undesirables" during Word War II.

Before I get into this, let me first start with Hitler's nemesis, Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR during the Second World War. Stalin's tyranny in Russia was comparable to that of Hitler in Germany, killing off many opponents, both real and imagined. From what I can tell, when it comes to saying who was more evil--Stalin or Hitler--the jury is still out. Stalin's only saving grace would be winning the war and stopping Hitler. This hardly gets him off the hook for being cruel, but let's leave this aside. When it comes to Stalin, did evolutionary thinking come to mind? Did he accept Darwinian evolution and apply it to his populace? The answer is an emphatic no. Stalin did not accept Darwinian evolution--instead, he took on the debunked Lamarkian evolutionary scheme of nature, a theory which had been disproved and disbanded mostly before Darwin wrote his Origin of Species. So, before Stein makes a sequel to Expelled trying to link Stalin to Darwin, this bud should be properly nipped.

So, on to the meat and potatoes of this post. The thesis of the movie is this (the quoted material is at the bottom of the page and needs to be highlighted to be seen):

Many scenes are centered around the Berlin Wall, and Ben Stein being Jewish actually visits many death camps and death showers. In fact, Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

What elements played in the minds of Hitler and other high-up officials in the Third Reich that caused one of the worst abominations to humanity? Firstly, how much of the element is based on divine thinking?

A lot. Let us look at what Hitler had to say about his motivations:

Firstly, was Hitler an atheist? Let's see what are some of the things he said and did. When Hitler came to power as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, his actions after that spoke loudly. One of his earliest actions came less than one month after Hitler became Chancellor when he began a campaign against the "godless movement".

A campaign against the "godless movement" was announced by Bernard Rust, Nazi commissioner for education and culture in Prussia, in an address Tuesday night before students at the technical university here. He said the details would be revealed in the next few days. In his speech opening the campaign for the Reichstag and Prussian diet elections, Hitler attacked communists for the spread of atheism. (Hitler Aims Blow at 'Godless' Move, Lansing State Journal, February 23, 1933)

The same report from the AP says that Hitler is [was] a Catholic. Thus, according to the papers, Hitler fought against the godless and wanted Catholic support for this. So, if the Stein thesis is to be taken seriously, it has already reached a major hurdle: if evolution leads to atheism and Hitler believed in evolution and it did not lead to atheism in the Nazi movement, then the first premise is falsified.

Hitler's words in Mein Kampf are also illuminating.

His life is really only of this world, and his spirit is as alien to true Christianity, for instance, as his nature was two thousand years ago to the Sublime Founder of the new doctrine...But for this [opposing the Jews], of course, Christ was crucified, while our present party Christianity disgraces itself begging for Jewish votes in the elections and later tries to conduct political wirepulling with atheistic Jewish parties, and this against their own nation (pp. 422-3).

Note especially the link between atheism and Jews; that is, Hitler links his racial hatred and the people he considered to be the cause of Germany's problems to be in the same boat as atheists. We can also see that this element comes about from Hitler's Christian faith that is quite antisemitic. Hitler also says that a Jewish state be less spiritual and "religion is ridiculed" (p. 450). Further on April 26, 1933, Hitler signed the Nazi-Vatican Concordat, and stated:

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith... (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, Oxford University Press, 1942).

A concordat is an agreement between a religious organization and at political body of another nation. So, not only was the Nazi party siding against atheist and atheism, but it was working with the Vatican. So, where is Hitler's atheism?

There is only one source in all the literature that gives us any hint that Hitler lacked a theistic belief. This would be Hitler's Table Talk, a collection of accounts of what the Furer said. The notes taken come primary from the years 1941-2. However, these very few statements which seem to run contrary to Hitler's other deeds and statements, appear to be forgeries by a French-speaking Swiss man, Francois Genoud, how was one of the primary translators of one of the manuscript traditions of Table Talk (Richard Carrier, "Hitler's Table Talk, Troubling Finds" German Studies Review 26:3 October 2003). In the other manuscript tradition(s), these key anti-Christian statements are either absent or they are the exact opposite of what Hitler was made out to say. For example, in the version that comes from Genoud reads as such: "Our epoch will see the end of the disease of Christianity." However, the better version does not include this statement at all. There is one point that is more-or-less anti-Catholic in which Hitler disagrees with the idea of the one true church (die alleinseligmachende Kirche). And that is about it when it comes to Hitler being an atheist. The only last thing that can possibly make him so would be Hitler's use of Nietzsche, but Nietzsche was an anti-antisemite and anti-nationalist. Just read Nietzsche's The Gay Science (I prefer the Kaufmann translation) and you can see how this criticism of nationalism in Germany (and other nations for that matter) as well as antisemitism. Further, Nietzsche broke off his friendship with Richard Wagner, the great composer known best for his Ride of the Valkyries, because Wagner had strong antisemitic tendencies. This is all well known and need not be taken apart in detail.

So, it seems that atheism was not in the mindset of the Fuhrer, and I know of nothing that says any other high-ranking official was an atheist in the Nazi party. In fact, the details given above would suggest that allegiance to the party required a theistic stance, since it was communists that were atheists. But was there at least Darwinism in there?

To answer this question, a bit of digging into the Nazi archives is needed. Die Bücherei, the official Nazi journal, in 1935 produced a list of things not to be taught:

Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (279).

Apparently, the science was not allowed and was rejected between the times of Hitler's rise to power and the Final Solution.

What about Hitler's magnum opus? In Mein Kampf, the word "Darwin" in any form does not appear at all. In only six cases do I find anything in relation to biological evolution (though the word "revolution" is used ad nauseum by Hitler). Let us see if Hitler actually understood biology all that well. In the first case, Hitler talks about the strong not breeding with the weak. However, Hitler is mistaken when he says "[e]very crossing between two breeds which are not quite equal results in a product which holds an intermediate place between the levels of the two parents." The point of sexual reproduction is that genetic information can get swapped around into new combinations that can bring about offspring with characteristics that are superior to the previous genome from either parent. Otherwise, why not just still with asexual reproduction and just "clone" oneself? Also, this notion of a place "between" parents in quality is a human construct here, for the sense of "better" does not exist in nature--only better adapted. Besides, if this was how nature worked, species could never get "better" but only reach some sort of medium amongst all the breeding members of a population; there is no "goo, to the zoo, and then to you" as creationists say in this paradigm. This sort of thinking from Hitler is not to be found in Darwin's Origin; rather, it comes from Hitler's (poor) understanding of nature, and I can bet the farm that he did not examine nature as carefully as Charles Darwin. Hitler also errs in the same paragraph when he says "for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all."

Moving on, we find this next statement:

If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

Here Hitler makes the common mistake that most Creationists make, that evolution has a hierarchy of what speices are "better" or "worse" than another. It is simply false; species (or races) are only better or worse adapted to their environment. What is "better" to humans is completely subjective. For example, which is better: greater strength or greater intelligence? Both have advantages and one without the other can be poorly adaptive. Another example: better food-gatherer or a better lover in bed? The later has the obvious advantage of producing more children, though the former is good in making sure those offspring are fed. Again, it is a matter of balancing what is better for a given situation. As for morally better, that first requires knowing what things are and are not moral, to which arguments are without end. In any case, it has nothing to do with biological evolution.

The next point where Hitler mentions evolution in a biological setting has little to do with racism; it is more in relation to evolutionary psychology, and Hitler is no Steven Pinker. Hitler speaks of the formation of instincts in higher forms of animals, of things going from the conscious to the subconscious. Firstly, to have something be done consciously in order to change the phenotypes of a race is not Darwinian but Lamarkian evolution. Further, Hitler's argument would have us believe than lower animals were self-aware, when it seems to be the case that instincts have formed in all creatures, even though that are no self-aware, such as dolphins and primates. Again, Hitler demonstrates his lack of understanding of nature.

Hitler's next statement is of little consequence: "Organization is a thing that derives its existence from organic life, organic evolution."

Every other times Hitler uses "evolution" it is a context of social or political evolution. Thus, biology is only a subtext to further his argument for what the State should do or has done. But there is one question that remains: how much of this understanding is Darwinian or necessarily based on Darwinian theory? From what I can tell, not in the least. His proposals on life's evolution is more Lamarkian than Darwinian and his understanding of genetics is not worth talking about. Further, his understanding of breeding is in the category of what humans had been doing for centuries with dogs, cows, horses, plants, etc. Artificial selection was something well understood before Darwin was born; even our most primitive ancestors that farmed had a sense of this form of breeding. Because of this already existing knowledge, not to mention that Darwin is never mentioned in Mein Kampf, nor the phrase "survival of the fittest", the connection between Darwin and the Nazi movement is not apparent; worse, Hitler's notions are contrary to Darwin's work at times.

In a survey of other materials on the web from those that argue Hitler's ideology is based on Darwinian thinking, no other examples seem to exist. Rather, the arguments presented appear to be more in tune with the line of thought that because Darwin showed humans are animals then their moral worth is minimized. This is simply then a con-job, taking the wool over the eyes of the reader so that they do not ask for direct evidence of Darwinian thinking in the Holocaust. The argument is not that Hitler was a Darwinist, but that he saw no value in certain humans. And since very few examples where Darwin is shown to be the primary influence, it seems worthy to investigate a different source for Hitler's policies.

Let us now look at what Hitler believed when it came to religion. I have already pointed out that he was not an atheist and there is no evidence he ever was. The papers reported he was a Catholic and nothing seems to contradict this--he may not have been an ideal Catholic since he did not accept the church to be the only way to heaven, but he still qualifies as a Christian. In Hitler's statements he seems to actually use religion as the reason for his actions against Jews:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord (Mein Kampf, p. 65)

Also in the same books:

A folk-State should in the first place raise matrimony from the level of being a constant scandal to the race. The State should consecrate it as an institution which is called upon to produce creatures made in the likeness of the Lord and not create monsters that are a mixture of man and ape.

The mixing of races then is not simply a matter of biology; it is a matter of keeping humans in the likeness of God. Hitler repeats this thought later on:

Their very existence [of Jews] is an incarnate denial of the beauty of God's image in His creation.

Hitler also prays in his book:

Almighty God, bless our arms when the hour comes. Be just, as Thou hast always been just. Judge now if we deserve our freedom. Lord, bless our struggle.

There are no prayers to Darwin, or to science, or to reason for that matter. When it comes to science, Hitler is actually more likely a Creationist. As seen above, he invoked The Creation into his argument. In other parts, it is even clearer his thoughts on science.

In the first edition of Mein Kampf Hitler said "this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men" (p. 65). In the second edition, "thousands" is changed to millions. The world was not devoid of humans thousands of years ago. The first Homo sapiens sapiens existed over 100,000 years ago. However, if Hitler lacked clarity there in other places it is more clear:

The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent Creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise (p. 383).

Also:

Thus they put an end to their own separate existence; for the original sin committed in Paradise has always been followed by the expulsion of the guilty parties.

Apparently, Hitler believed in the creation of humans in God's image and the expulsion from Paradise as recounted in Genesis. And another point helps as well in showing that Hitler believed God was the Creator:

What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, . . . so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe (p. 214).

How about some more?

The act which brings about such a development [of the superiority of races being lowered] is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged.

It seems pretty obvious that Hitler believed in a creator god and had a notion of sin. He believed in the Garden of Eden, in a young earth, and argued that the lessening in quality of the Aryan race was against, not Nature, but God. Natural selection is not part of the equation at all in Mein Kampf. This line of thought was repeated by Hitler even after he came to power. On August 26, 1934:

National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity....For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life... These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles! (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, Oxford University Press, 1942.)

Also notice that Hitler was against any "atheist movement[s]" and that we stated what he did was based completely on Christian principles. Hector Avalos, an excellent biblical scholar, has put together a collection of points that show were such evil principles can come from in the Bible. One thing that he notes is that some of the defenders of genocide are in fact Christians! For example, Jonathan Sarfati, an Australian Young-Earth creationist with a Ph.D. in chemistry and mentioned on Answers in Genesis, defends the genocides of the Old Testament. There is also Reuben A. Torrey, the famed fundamentalist apologist. However, what really scared me was that William Lang Craig, probably one of the smartest Christian apologists today, defends the genocides done by the Jews in the Old Testament because God said it was the thing to do. So, if God says it is okay to kill any number of people, then it is morally okay. This to me is sickening and frightening. This means that if Craig has a bad sandwich last night, had a dream that had Jesus telling him to kill anyone that is critical of him, and Craig reads this blog, then Craig would fell justified in killing me in cold blood without a second thought. And this is perhaps the smartest of the Christians. Well, no wonder Hitler could justify the Holocaust based on God-think!

Now, I could add more quotes from Hitler and other Nazis to make the point, but it would be of little value. What is obvious is that Darwinian evolution had little or nothing to do with Hitler's policies, while his Christian faith was a much more prominent element in his determination for killing Jews. And with the antisemitism of the New Testament, that is not hard to do. Matthew 27:25 has the Jews accepting the blame for the death of Jesus. Acts 3:14-5 repeats the charge, which is repeated many more times in Acts. Paul seems to say this too in 1 Thessalonians 2:15-6. The Catholic Church did not remove the charge of deicide from the heads of all Jews until Vatican II under Pope John XXIII. And according to Christopher Hitches in god is Not Great, the only high-ranking Nazi to be excommunicated was Joseph Guebbels. Why? Because of his crimes against humanity? He married a Protestant. Pope Pius XII never excommunicated any Nazi (R.L. Simpson, "Vatican charges it is target of a 'slanderous campaign' in connection with Pope Pius XII." Associated Press, 2001-AUG-07) though he did excommunicate a few German Catholics for choosing cremation.

So, to say that Hitler's actions were pro-Darwin and anti-Christian is unfounded and the reverse is more likely. However, one should also consider the historical circumstances. After all, Britain did not have a campaign to wide out Jews like Nazi Germany did, nor did France or the USA. Firstly, it must be remembered that Hitler had an abusive father, as did Stalin, so the psychology of such an evil person is more likely due to his upbringing than his denomination. Further, Germany had gone through a terrible war, a humiliating defeat, and a devastated economy. Hitler's message of national hope and promise, coupled with the citing of the agent that destroyed Germany (the Jews in Hitler's mind, and many others as well), combined with the prejudices ingrained into the people that Hitler commanded--these agencies seem to be much more likely candidates for what caused the Holocaust. It would be sloppy to say any one agent brought about the evils of the Third Reich. Simply blaming it on Darwin or Christian dogma would be foolish. Of the two, Christianity was by far the more potent in causing the Holocaust, but not all Christians are mass murders, so more elements are required than just indoctrination. However, it must also be pointed out that Christian morals did not cease the growth of the Nazi party and many followed Hitler because of religious reasons. The evidence of this can be seen on the belt buckles of Nazi soldiers.
And even to the end of the war, there were those that saw Nazism consistent with Christian dogma (Richard Steigmann–Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) p. 5). After all, Martin Luther's tract On the Jews and Their Lies is antisemitic through and through. So, any argument that Christian morality could have kept the Fuhrer in check seems to be lacking (that includes your work, Denish D'Souza).

So, does evolution lead to atheism? Probably not, at least not without another agency, since there are millions of people that are religious and accept Darwinian evolution, including the Vatican and biologists Ken Miller and Francis Collins. Does atheist lead to Nazism (with or without eugenics)? Apparently it could not since atheistic groups were antithetical to the Nazis. Does Darwinism lead to Nazism? No, since Darwin was not used by Hitler in his book, his understanding of evolution is primitive at worst, Lamarkian at best, and not educated by the work of Charles Darwin. (The same goes for Stalin.) Hence, the premise is completely false which Ben Stein bases his entire movie on. It is demonstrably false and the accusation he and other creationists give could be considered libel and/or slander.

One final note: it does not matter even if Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Saddam, etc. based their thinking on Darwinian evolution. It does nothing to demonstrate it is a false concept. Further, the use of evolution to make moral judgments goes against what all moral theorists must grapple with: Hume's is-ought problem. What Creationists keep doing is making the naturalistic fallacy. So, when the entire basis for the arguments about Hitler et. al. are based on a logical fallacy, then the historical analysis after it fails to convince no matter the case. But by being logically fallacious and historically inept, the production of this material by Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, Ben Stein, any many others for that matter, it shows that Creationists only have propaganda, not substance, and have been nothing but deceitful.

I doubt that this one blog post will convince such persons to end their use of this argument, since they depend on it for its emotional baggage, but hopefully this can make at least some people more immune to the powerfully ignorant and deceptive statements that will be in a theater near you.

Why isn't Disco Dead? (not the dance)

A while ago, an organization known as Creation Science Evangelism, founded by the convicted and dishonest (intellectually and not-so-intellectually) Kent Hovind, now apparently run by his son, attempted to have certain videos taken down from YouTube which were critical of the Hovind materials on the web, especially when some of the videos produced by Hovind were included in the YouTube videos. Legally, it was perfectly okay to use CSE material on multiple accounts: the use was for education and not for profit; the material was (on purpose, mind you) NOT copyrighted. So, when CSE tried to take down these videos (some even not using Hovind's lecture videos), there was a big backlash on the web; hopefully some sort of legal action will keep CSE out of the hair of the Internet.

Now, apparently, the almighty Discovery Institute (called the Disco Institute for short) has tried to do much the same thing. One of my favorite video subscriptions is to Extant Dodo. They had done a critique of the video version of Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution; like all their videos, it was very well done, educational, and what I love the most--references. Imagine that, showing your sources in order to make a convincing scholarly case. Well, the Disco people apparently don't like this sort of thing, so they told YouTube to take it down because of copyright infringement. Unlike the CSE case, I am pretty sure their material is copyrighted (though I dare not call it "intellectual property"). However, since Extant Dodo used the material for educational purposes, critical response, and satire as they have done with particularly poor claims on the part of creationists (Thunderf00t does this even more so and very well), such things allow its use on the Internet by the Fair Use policy of US copyright law. Without the ability to use videos for satire or parody, The Daily Show and the Scary Movie movies could not exist.

Now, one would think that the Disco Institute, with all of their lawyers and assets, would be aware of this. Hence, this is obviously a deliberate attempt to silence dissent, even if it requires going to court. Of course Disco will have more money than some PhD candidate that makes YouTube videos, so the move is obviously strategic, not based on proper legal precedent, let alone free inquiry or basic human honor and decency. Of course, that is what the Disco people do.

Honestly though, I have to think: what if this goes to trial in the case court room as the Dover case and under Judge Jones III, which the Disco people have demonized and ridiculed as an activist judge (though he followed Supreme Court precedent on creationism in science and the proper application of the Lemon test) and failed to understand the material (isn't that the fault of Behe and ID witnesses to not be able to give a case that makes logical sense and so they blame the student for "not getting it"?)? I can imagine things would get very interesting. But that is only a dream and would require a lot of circumstances to happen that are probably unlikely, especially since Jones would likely be asked to recuse himself because of his previous work with the Disco people indirectly. Oh well.

For more info on this situation, see Thunderf00t's video on the matter which prompted me to write this at 2 in the morning. Obviously I need to learn how to use a bed.

And how about an ironic quote from John West of the Disco Institute about Judge Jone's decision:

The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work.
Link

So, I guess it is okay to shut down open debate when the criticism comes back your way? Perhaps then Ken Miller should also be able to get rid of VenomfangX's videos and Kent Hovind's utter garbage? Oh wait, what is that I hear: special treatment you say? Sorry, but like Harry Truman said, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." At this point, the Disco Institute has been no were near the biological kitchen, especially apparent in Behe's newest book, so perhaps I should remind them that Disco is dead, in dance and especially in science, and it isn't coming back (in the latter, it just didn't exist).

Good to be in Michigan--WTF in Texas

Apparently, there is a concerted effort amongst member(s) of the Texas State Board of Education to remove a certain Chris Comer because he dared to want to listen to Barbara Forest talk about her work on the Dover trial which dealt with Intelligent Design. PZ Myers has been repeating these reports with his classic wit here and here and here. (See also Texas Citizens for Science on this subject.) It is obviously nuts.

What is supposed to be stressed by this effort is that members of the board of education are supposed to be neutral on the subject of evolution vs. intelligent design and the schools should "teach the controversy." All so rational on the surface, no? Of course, school boards are not neutral on the subject of chemistry vs. alchemy, at least I would hope the push for "teach the controversy" is not being pressed in Texas on this point, nor in mathematics vs. numerology, astronomy vs. astrology, etc. I also doubt that members of a school board can seriously be neutral on having good or mediocre standards compared to other states. If neutrality is apathy to the facts, then forget about education. If one wanted to avoid every possible argument, nothing would even be said. After all, there are still people arguing for a geocentric model of the earth and even a flat earth! (From what I can tell, people take this positions very seriously--I mean Art Bell seriously.)

Of course, I imagine that the members of this or any educational board/organization are not neutral on so many things. It is obvious that political pressures and member's own desires for creationist standards in schools that is driving this issue the way it is.

Now, I don't have the same level of pessimism as Phil Plait is showing right now (Texas being doomed and all), but it is certainly understandable and worth using the JPG he has up. The reason for this is because so many people are already blogging about it; hopefully this story will get a fair amount of main-stream media attention and cause this to get too hot for the creationists down yonder. Such actions would certainly cause another Dover trial, at best for the creationists. More likely, I would think, the judge, whoever that would be, will follow precedent set by the Supreme Court and Judge Jones in Pennsylvania and cause the forced standards to be unconstitutional.

But perhaps this is what the folks at the Discovery Institute want, another trial, one that could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. With a majority Catholic block in the seats, maybe they desire for the Roberts court to overturn previous decisions, such as Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 587 (1987), which struck down hard on any attempts to get "creation science" into public school classrooms. I wouldn't think this court would be so willing to do such a thing, especially considering the stance the Catholic church has take on evolution (even the current pope isn't willing to undo the decree John Paul II, at least not yet), but then again I'm not Scalia.

Oh, and as for the very concept of teaching the controversy, a good idea if it wasn't for one detail:

WHAT CONTROVERSY?!?!

When it comes to taking down creationist claims, check out TalkOrigins.org (which apparently was recently hacked). On YouTube, there is a great debunking of the more popular anti-evolution videos produced by Extant Dodos. Great stuff out there, and you don't need to have a Ph.D. to understand that creationists are full of crap, in or out of jail.