Re: Adolph Hitler-Nazi's were staunch Darwinists: the evidence.

On Apr 2, 9:51 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 2, 8:03 am, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
snip


No. I am not interested in what Hitler *claimed* he was basing his
actions on. Any more than I think that Hitler's *claims* to be in
favor of a Christian Germany should be taken as necessarily evidence
that he thought deeply about what it meant to be a Christian. What I
am saying is, that *whatever* he claimed to be basing his actions on,
it was not, in actuality, based on either Christianity or an actual
understanding of Darwin's major contribution. His *actions* and the
justifications for those actions are based on the ante-Darwinian idea
that natural selection is only able to preserve a breed of animals by
removing 'race polluters' and 'race contaminants' and is not even able
to do that without help from an 'intelligent designer'.

You were making sense right until the very end or the last phrase.

Actually, he was making sense all along. You simply lack the ability
to determine what is "sense".

But
scholarship makes none of your distinctions, Howard. Professor Evans
of Cambridge said Hitler based his actions on Darwinian science.

If Professor Evans was actually saying that, he's wrong. Hitler did
not base his actions on "Darwinian science" but rather a travesty of
popular misconceptions about evolution. It's not likely that Hitler
read Darwin, or understood the mechanism of evolution.

I
have always said that what this Darwinian Group believes and what
scholars publish is always in conflict.

And you've always been wrong about that. Cherry picking quotes from
"scholars" without bothering to understand what they were actually
saying will do that to you.


That is NOT
based on the idea that is the main contribution of Darwin. It is
based on "animal breeding" and the conception of selection that is pre-
Darwinian.

Now all you need to do is support your assertion with a source.

What does he need a "source" for this statement? What about it do
you dispute? A statement is either true, or it is not. A "source"
doesn't make it more true, or more false. Eugenics is the idea that
the human population can be "improved" by selective breeding. It's
known that selective breeding existed before Darwin, and Darwin did
not suggest in his work that populations are "improved" by breeding
for one, or more particular traits.

It is based on the typical racist (although the Nazi idea
of what constitutes a 'race' seems rather odd and self-serving -- I
would not ordinarily automatically come up with the communist 'race'
or the Jehovah Witnesses 'race' or the anyone-who-disagrees-with-der-
fuhrer 'race') fears about the inferior 'races' overwhelming the
'superior' races. That simple idea, that in the absence of
intervention by wise men (aka *real* rather than *hypothetical*
'intelligent designers'), that races become mongrel and degraded, is
*inherently* a refutation of Darwin's central idea that *natural*
selection is what led to the human species. It is *inherently* based
on the idea that a superior species exists now and was even better in
the past because it was not being degraded by those 'inferior'
groups. The whole idea of a past "golden age" when men were men and
women were prone whereas now we have a degraded race because of (sin,
some other race) is a *creationist* fantasy that has no relationship
to how Darwin proposed evolution to work.

Something one might see on a sign held by some derelict standing on a
street corner.

What, exactly do you dispute about this? Why do you imagine that
Howard's statements are like what is held on a sign by a
"derelict"?



That said, Hitler *was* a eugenicist (a believer in "intelligent
design animal breeding for humans") and eugenics is based on the above
ideas about degradation of the species in the absence of "intelligent"
intervention.

Another bare assertion that needs support.

What about this do you feel needs support? Do you dispute that
Hitler believed in eugenics? Do you dispute that eugenics is based
on ideas of 'improvement' of a population, ultimately derived from
stock breeding? Do you dispute that eugenics is based on the idea
that human intervention works better than natural selection?


And people from the upper crusts of a number of
societies (including the U.S. and Britain) were often attracted to
*social* darwinism and eugenics, since they could use it to justify
their felt 'superiority' and as a validation of their failure to deal
with societal ills.

Agreed.

Then you should recognize that this "Social Darwinism" owes nothing to
Darwin, except the use of the name.


Eugenics was also based on hyper-hereditarian
ideas that attributed all sorts of nonsense to genetic dispositions
rather than cultural subcultures.

Geneticists-Materialists today attribute everything from criminal
behavior to belief in God to genes or lack of genes.

Some do, some don't, if by "Geneticists-Materialists" you mean
"scientists". The point that Howard was making was that the idea
that poverty and crime are genetic is not a Darwinian idea. It
doesn't follow from Darwin's work, and owes more to class snobbery.



This was rather common in the time
immediately after Mendelian ideas were re-discovered. It was also
common, at this time, to think that *species* also had a life cycle, a
time of expansion and growth and a time of decay and eventual
extinction. This was NOT Darwinian.

Then what was it?

As Howard stated before, it's "ante-Darwinian" idea of "chain of
being". The idea that there is a higher to lower order to life.
Not every idea of species owes it's existence to Darwin.

snip


No. Eugenics, at the very core of its ideas, is the idea that
"intelligent design" by *real* as opposed to *hypothetical*
intelligent designers should be used to "breed the right sort of
humans" and not "breed the wrong sort of humans". Are you claiming
that that is NOT what eugenics does?

I am saying that Darwin's cousin, Galton, invented eugenics based on
his theory,

Which, as already shown, is not true. It really doesn't matter if
Galton was Darwin's cousin, his uncle, or a total stranger.
Galton's ideas are a mis-use of some of the ideas of heredity, and
owes more to ideas of stock breeding than to Darwin's actual work.

and that Charles fully endorsed this doctrine (evidence
already provided).

You haven't provided any evidence that Charles "fully endorsed"
Galton's ideas.

I am saying that eugenicism held racial superiority
beliefs including advocacy of inferiors sterilization.

Which, as Howard has shown, is a non-Darwinian idea. Nothing in the
theory of evolution supports the idea of "superiority" of any
particular human race. Nothing in evolution advocates, or supports
the idea of sterilizing "inferiors".


I am saying
that Darwin and all eugenicists believed that they were preserved by
natural selection and that their beliefs (just mentioned) were a
selected advantageous variation.

Which just goes to show you don't understand Darwin's work at all.
What is "preserved" by natural selection are those genotypes that
leave the most offspring. An advantageous variation is one that
allows the individual to breed more successfully. It does not
necessarily translate into higher social standing, or economic success
in human societies.

Surely you of all persons know what
an 'advantageous variation' is?

Yes, Howard does. Apparently you don't.

These persons and their racial
superiority beliefs are right and correct in their eyes because they
have the "scientific evidence" to back it up.

Except that the "scientific evidence" did not back their beliefs.
Actual biology does not support the ideas of racial superiority, or
that "might makes right". That is why Hitler and other eugenicists
did not actually base their beliefs on real science.

snip



Malthus and Paley accepted "natural selection" as preventing
evolutionary change.

And it is *exactly* that sort of 'selection' (selection preventing the
degradation of the 'superior' race) that Hitler used.

Another bare assertion in need of a source or reference.

What about this assertion do you dispute? Do you deny that Hitler
claimed that interbreeding in populations was a "degradation" of the
race? Do you deny that Hitler was trying to prevent a population
from changing from a predetermined "Ayrian type"?


I suspect that you cannot support any of your assertions that I have
challenged.

I suspect that you can't offer any actual reason to "challenge" those
assertions. What do you feel is wrong about them?

You are, of course, explaining facts - explanations or
interpretations containing a bias not supported by the facts.

What do you feel that is not supported by the facts?




Of course, this
was not *natural* selection; it was *artificial* or "intelligently
designed" selection.

False.

In what way?




It was recognition of an advantageous variation preserved by natural
selection, or they thought it was

Ray, the whole reason for the Nazis actions was supposedly to
"preserve" the Ayrian type, which apparently they didn't think that
natural selection would preserve on it's own. There's no reason why
blonde hair, blue eyes, or a square chin should be "advantageous" in a
population of interbreeding humans. There's no reason why that type
would automatically be passed on to the next generation.



Artificial selection was always just a metaphor for natural selection
in Darwin's writings.

No, Ray, that's wrong. Artificial selection was a demonstration of
what selection could do in a population. A gene doesn't care whether
the selection is artificial, or natural. Darwin was showing, but
artificial selection, that morphological change in a population was
possible. Natural selection acted in the same way, but normally
slower, and more general.

snip what Ray has ignored

DJT

.

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