Re: Social Darwinism; was: So Long Judge Moore, We'll Miss You

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (ambrose searle) wrote:

> > > I've never argued that Darwin and Hitler said the same exact thing.
> > > They didn't. There are transitional links that must be acknowledged.
> > > Darwin promoted charity. Nietzsche, building on Darwin in almost all
> > > aspects except this, promoted jungle law, in which the Lion has NO
> > > REMORSE for preying on the weaker organism in his ecosphere.
> > 
> > Well, lions don't have any remorse. They shouldn't, as remorse might 
> > make them less efficient predators. 
> 
> Which was entirely the reasoning of Nietzsche and Hitler.

But which, as I have noted, is a fallacy, as humans are not lions, nor 
are weak humans the prey of strong humans, except in isolated, extremely 
rare situations.

> "Christianity should not be beautified and embellished: it has waged
> deadly war against this higher type of man, it has placed under a ban
> all the basic instincts of this type [the will to power], and out of
> these instincts it has distilled evil and the Evil One,—the strong man
> as the typically reprehensible man, the "reprobate." Christianity has
> sided with all that is weak and base, with all failures; it has made
> an ideal of whatever contradicts the instinct of the strong life to
> preserve itself."
> 
> "Christianity is a rebellion of everything that crawls on the ground
> against that which has height. The 'equality of souls before God,'
> this falsehood, this pretext for the rancor of all the base-minded,
> this explosive of a concept which eventually became revolution, modern
> idea, and the principle of decline of the whole order of society—is
> Christian dynamite."
> 
> -Nietzsche, THE ANTICHRIST (1888)
> 
> "Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic
> cultivation of the human failure.
> 
> I dream of a state of affairs in which every man would know that he
> lives and dies for the preservation of the species. It's our duty to
> encourage that idea: let the man who distinguishes himself in the
> service of the Species be thought worthy of the highest honours."
> 
> -Hitler, TABLE TALK
> 
> Neither Nietzsche nor Hitler would make these statements without
> presuming the fundamental principle of natural selection of Darwin at
> the root.

Nonsense, as natural selection does not involve individuals dying for 
the preservation of the species.

I see no mention of Darwin in either of those statements. You'll have to 
prove a more concrete connection to even begin to demonstrate that they 
made use of Darwin's ideas, much less to achieve your aim of tarnishing 
Darwin's legacy.

> > Darwin is not responsible for what those who came after him did with his 
> > work.
> 
> Darwin is responsible for his own dangerous mistakes.

And those are?

> >  Nietzsche and Hitler, to the extent that they drew on his 
> > writings and discoveries (and in the case of Hitler, at least, I would 
> > argue that very little came directly from Darwin other than via 
> > Nietzsche), seem to have advocated or actually performed actions that 
> > Darwin would have abhorred.
> 
> Perhaps. But Darwin was an important building block in the Nazi
> project.

I doubt that. Mein Kampf makes no mention of Darwin.  And, again, Darwin 
is not responsible for people perverting his work.

-- 
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