Anti-evolutionists proclaiming Darwin “evil”
RawStory is reporting: “New Christian broadcasting TV special featuring Ann Coulter links Darwin to Hitler.”
“Author and Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy connects the dots between Charles Darwin and Adolf Hitler in Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, a groundbreaking inquiry into Darwin’s chilling social impact,” announces a press release issued by Florida’s Coral Ridge Ministries.
According to the promotional materials for this “documentary”:
“In this groundbreaking documentary D. James Kennedy looks into Darwin’s chilling social impact — and the mounting evidence that Darwin had it wrong on the origin of life”.
Well “here they go again”. Since the anti-evolutionists have been unsuccessful in either disproving the theory of evolution or using pseudo-scientific ideas to bump it out of public school textbooks, they are now trying to find a way to make Evolution to be “Evil.”
Think about it. Since Einstein discovered the relationship between energy and matter, does that make him responsible for the deaths of the people in Hiroshima? That would be the logic used by the anti-evolutionists in their new screed “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy”.
As a professor of natural sciences, I often give a lecture on Eugenics to my college classes, subtitled: “How common misconceptions regarding evolution, genetics, and heredity led scientists astray”.
It is true that two American scientists, Charles Davenport, Ph.D. Biology, Harvard and Harry Laughlin, D.Sc. Cytology, Princeton created the American Eugenics Movement in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s which, did indeed, influence the Nazi movement.
But Davenport and Laughlin completely misinterpreted Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. These scientists gone wrong did huge damage. However, their eugenics ideas were not based upon science but upon their their pre-conceived biases and prejudices. These guys twisted Darwin’s findings to rationalize their pre-existing racist and xenophobic beliefs. (Sound familiar as to how today’s conservatives twist science to match their policies and beliefs?)
For more on the Eugenics movement in America see: http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/
For more on conservatives >30 year effort to replace the scientific-method with policy based on ideology read Chris Mooney’s book: The Republican War on Science.
The “talking-heads” on TV and radio are sure to be agog about this latest proclamation from the anti-evolutions. Since most Americans have little understanding of the real mechanisms of evolution, this latest stunt will likely get much traction.