Moral Darwinism, Richard Weikert, & Larry Arnhart, pt 2

Friends,

This is a follow up to my comments concerning ‘moral Darwinism’ in which I linked to an essay by Steven Wiker. Larry Arnhart, of whom I have very little information except that which I was able to glean from his blog, has been replying to my original post. Well, a little research turned up the following letter that I found very interesting. (Sadly, I have no dates for when the letter was published.) Here’s a piece of it:

Then you claim that “he argues that there was a clear and direct path from Darwin to Hitler.” Once again, this is your own invention. I discuss this issue of a direct vs. a crooked path in the introduction of the book (pp. 3-6), and I never make the claim that the path is “clear and direct.” In my discussion of that issue, I even produce good reasons not to accept that view. I recommend that you reread the introduction of my book without the (false) preconceived idea that my book argues for a direct line from Darwin to Hitler. Why do you think I spend so little time discussing Darwin and so much time discussing other German Darwinists?

You then err by continuing: “His reasoning is that Darwinian materialism denied the Judeo-Christian belief in the sanctity of human life as based on the biblical teaching that all human beings were created in God’s image, because Darwinism taught that human beings were nothing more than animals created by the blind, material causes of evolution.” No, this is not my reasoning. I do not make a philosophical argument in my book at all. My argument is historical. What I argue is that Darwinists themselves denied the sanctity-of-life ethic. If you disagree with this viewpoint, take it up with the Darwinists I discuss (or with James Rachels or Peter Singer, who also argue for this position).

You then make a slight misstatement: “Consequently, Hitler’s claim that some human beings were “unfit for life” and should be exterminated could be grounded in the scientific materialism of Darwin.” Not “could be,” but was. Hitler was directly and indirectly influenced by social Darwinist thought, as I show in my book.

You then make a factual error about Discovery Institute, stating, “The Discovery Institute is a conservative think-tank that promotes attacks on Darwinian science as morally corrupting, which is part of their rhetorical strategy for introducing “intelligent design theory” in public school biology classes as an alternative to Darwinian biology.” Discovery has never advocated replacing Darwinism with ID in the public schools, nor does DI favor legislation mandating the teaching of ID. Of course, since ID is true and Darwinism is false, they hope that scientists will eventually recognize their error, and obviously this will impact what is taught in schools. However, your statement implies that they are currently pushing for the substitution of Darwinism with ID, and this is a lie.

Well, this is all fun. I encourage you to read the remainder of the letter that Prof Weikart wrote. I’m beginning to discover, to borrow a phrase from a pathetically Darwinian movie, The Matrix, just ‘how deep the rabbit hole’ goes.

jerry

PS–If you are interested in Prof Weikart’s book From Darwin to Hitler, click there. It just goes to show that there are plenty of people in the world who understand exactly what Darwinism leads to. I haven’t even read these books and I get it. Prof Arnhart has posted a short review of the book at the amazon.com link. Prof Arnhart’s book is titled Darwinian Conservatism. I post them here as courtesy, and so that I do not appear to be too biased in my denunciations of Darwinism.