Adolf Hates Chuck

[peristaltor]

From this article:

Ann Coulter is stunned. How is it, she asks, that she could go through 12 years of public school, then college and law school, and still not know that it was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution that fueled Hitler’s ovens.

(Yes, I just referenced Ann Coulter. I'll give everyone a moment to recover. And to check out the link.)

After reading the first article, those with no familiarity with Darwin's actual theory might hesitate. Was Hitler so motivated? How about the Columbine Killers? Did they also follow Darwin's words? The quick answer (as espoused by the article): Maybe. The real answer: No fucking way.

I caught a link to this article a few days ago. As luck would have it, that very night I read an essay by Stephen Jay Gould proving the fallacy all the dupes in the article swallowed. In "The Most Unkindest Cut of All", Gould reviews the Wannsee Protocols:

If the first (and oft-quoted) half of the Wannsee Protocol is a cursory and euphemistic account of genocide at worksites and death camps, the highly specific (and usually neglected) second half is a detailed and specific disquisition on genetics and race-mixing -- and for an obvious reason, given Hitler's eugenical ideas. From the Führer's standpoint, killing 11 million people will not solve the Jewish problem if many German citizens still carry tainted blood as a result of partial Jewish ancestry through mixed marriages. A truly final solution demands a set of rules and policies for these Mischlinge (literally, mixtures). (Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Random House, 1995, p. 312.)

Gould then follows with two full pages of examples from the Protocols involving what is to be done with people half-Jewish, quarter-Jewish, with mixed parents, with children from other marriages, where these people are to be located or re-located or worse, et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseum. He finishes by quoting Eichmann's bureaucratic conclusion:

"The possible final remnant will, as it must undoubtedly consist of the toughest, have to be treated accordingly . . . " Let me now switch to the original German: ". . . da dieser, eine natürliche Auslese darstellend, bei Freilassung als Keimzelle eines neuen jüdischen Aufaues anzusprechen ist." Or: ". . . as it is the product of natural selection, and would, if liberated, act as a bud cell of Jewish reconstruction." (Ibid, p. 315)

Yes, ferreting out Jews as drastically as the Nazis did might very well reduce the Jewish population to some very tough fighters. That, though, is hardly a natural selection. Hitler followed just about every sucker down the fallacious path that conflates social distinctions and contrivances with abilities that prove efficacious to survival. Being or not being Jewish has no bearing on one's chances of making sure your children prosper in the natural world.

In both Hitler's racial mania and the Coulter-Kennedy's convenient misinterpretation of Darwin we find the Fallacy of the Evolutionary Acme, something I've noted before. Essentially, those that hold the Fallacy see the entire history of the planet as a series of appearances and extinctions that gradually but cumulatively increased the functional sophistication of the inhabitants and led to the best creatures this planet could produce, Homo sapiens sapiens, us. Some maintain the motive force behind the sequence toward perfection to be none other than God. Others see the process itself, "evolution" -- a term both misapplied and misinterpreted by Herbert Spencer -- as able to create human goodness and smarts without divine guidance.

Darwin didn't think so. He noted change in the fossil record, not improvement, and crafted his theory to explain this change. Those that assign a necessary increase in "perfection" (whatever that is) to these changes, be the source of change sacred or profane, are according to the theory of natural selection wrong. We are not the most "evolved" creatures on this planet.

Darwin fought this philosophical appropriation, when his health allowed, politely debating and sparring with friends and foes alike to prevent the prevalent Victorian zeitgeist from tainting the random, direction-free nature of his natural selection theory. His position didn't gain a lot of traction. Personal bias toward seeing oneself as somehow special simply overwhelms most brains that try to contemplate one's life as the culmination of prehistoric ruttings. Many today continue to mix cultural messages and fail to realize the random purity of natural selection, just as they fail to accept their own humble place in the universe and the likely absence of champion deities whom over them watchfully stand at guard.

Returning to the Nazis, since human beings themselves are not the apex of creation/evolution, those of Nordic/Germanic descent -- "Aryans" if you must -- hardly sit taxonomically at the acme of the apex. There is no apex, therefore no acme.

Back to the original article. It ends:

“The time has come,” Dr. Kennedy said, “to recognize that evolution is a bad idea and should be, frankly, discarded into the dustbin of history.”

I agree. Once again, Herbert Spencer adopted the term "evolution" from astronomy, twisted it through his lens of Victorian conquest and reward, and horribly mis-applied it to his friend's far more robust theory of natural selection. Darwin resisted this change in terms (though he did like and later use Spencer's "survival of the fittest"), for he recognized the Fallacy it entailed.



PS. Thanks everyone for the umlaut help.

X-posted to antitheism