ADL Slams Christian Anti-Evolution Film for Linking Darwin and Hitler

[BurtWorm]

According to PZ Myers:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/d_james_kennedy_busted.php



D. James Kennedy: BUSTED!

Category: Creationism
Posted on: August 22, 2006 7:15 PM, by PZ Myers

The Anti-Defamation League has condemned Kennedy and Darwin's Deadly Legacy, and Francis Collins has announced that he is "appalled," calling the program "misguided and inflammatory." Whew. It looks like this bit of propaganda has blown up in their faces.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."

After being contacted by the ADL about his name being used to promote Kennedy's project, Dr. Collins said he is "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory," he told ADL.

ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement:"This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

"It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to "reclaim America for Christ" and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law."

Nice slam against the Christian Supremacists.

[ComerPerro]

1. nice to see someone standing up to Christofascists

[RoyGBiv]

2. It is a good slam ...

But for the record, a lot of people make this link and not for any nefarious reasons or even to criticize Darwin, rather to show how theories, when not properly understood, or sound scientific principles, when abandoned for political purposes, can lead to horrific consequences. Darwin's writings have been misused, and Hitler did in fact misuse them, generally through his readings of other racist philosophers of the time who themselves misinterpreted Darwin.

And there's a lesson to be learned in that was well, an ironic one in the context of this ... garbage being spewed out by Kennedy.

[EST]

3. Eugenics has something to do with Darwin?

[RoyGBiv]

4. Loaded question ...

Sorta like asking, "Does racism have something to do with Christian philosophy?" It doesn, and it doesn't, partly depending on the point of view of the person you're asking. Even then, an answer of "yes" or "no" doesn't give a complete answer. Whose interpretation of Christian philosophy do we mean? Is the association with racism and Christian philosophy a positive or negative one, i.e. does it promote racism, or does it not? These are rhetorical questions, of course.

Note how I focus on the "misuse" of Darwin's writings.

A good examination of this sort of thing is _Race: The History of an Idea in the West_ by Ivan Hannaford.

[regnaD kciN]

5. Why does the ADL have to get involved with this...?

Kennedy's documentary, however ludicrous, is an attack on Darwin, not on a Jewish group. This is as crazy as the NAACP starting a boycott of a laundry detergent for claiming that "it makes your sheets whiter than white" -- because that could be thought of as a pro-KKK message. :crazy:

While Darwin's thought may not have been the basis for Nazi racial beliefs, the fact is that there was a school of thought in the nineteenth century (known as "scientific anti-Semitism" :eyes: ) that maintained that Jews were inferior to other Europeans. How many of these idiots also appealed to Darwin and "natural selection" to buttress their claims is unknown.

The one thing that makes this extra-stupid is that there are enough loonies at the far end of the Religious Reich who consider "modern secular culture" to be a liberal and predominantly Jewish conspiracy to destroy the Christian faith, with the force-feeding of Darwin to schoolchildren as a part of the "plot." If anything, having an attempt to debunk Darwin result in an attack by the leading Jewish anti-defamation group, when Darwin himself wasn't even Jewish, will only make that conspiracy theory easier to swallow.

[BurtWorm]

6. Because the film trivializes the Holocaust. according to the ADL

and exploits it to make an utterly irrelevant and erroneous point about Darwin and evolution, which is what the film wants to attack.

The ADL didn't have to get involved, but I'm glad they did. The alternative is for them to remain silent, which will only make the Kennedy lunacy easier for some to swallow.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. Why?

The ADL Charter:

"The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens."
ADL Charter October 1913

I have to ask for clarification. What was the purpose of the :eyes: in your statement, "...known as "scientific anti-Semitism"...?"

[BurtWorm]

8. kick