Re: Nazis and evolution

Mitchell Coffey <m.coffey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Apr 24, 3:29 pm, Greg Guarino <g...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]
3. Acceptance of evolution and supremacist ideas would have to be
shown to correlate well with each other in general.

I doubt very much that we would find this to be the case. Rather the
opposite, I suspect. Do biologists tend to favor supremacist ideas? Is
the theory of evolution popular among the KKK? It's that Common
Descent thing that gets in the way, I think.
[snip]

The Klan was at its largest and most influential from 1915 to about
1927. It sprang up along with the modern Fundamentalist/Evangelical
Protestant movement, which it was an influential part of. One of its
big issues during this period was banning the teaching of evolution in
public schools. William Jennings Bryan, a ferocious racist, was
perhaps its most powerful political ally.

While we're at it, I'll mention that the Nazis greatest base of
support was among Protestants and among the more religious of those.
Conservative Catholics were less likely to support the Nazis than
conservative Protestants, liberal Catholics even less. The strongest
opposition to the Nazis came from Social Democrats, Socialists,
unionist, Communists and what we would call secular liberals in
America; religious people, of course, were included among those
groups, but such people were, with exceptions, liberal and left in
their theological outlook. In other words, the more secular or
theologically liberal one was, and the less religious Protestant, the
more likely one would oppose the Nazis. While the Social Democrats,
Socialists, unionist and Communists were wiped-out early on by the
Nazis because of their opposition, there was little opposition from
Catholic and Protestant institutions, so long as the Nazis didn't
interfere with their internal affairs -- as the Nazis, being
totalitarians, intermittently tried to do. It is important to
understand that even those institutional Protestants, like Bonhoeffer,
who get a lot of play for their active opposition, were for the most
part themselves antisemites and rather marginal figures even among
what was left of the opposition by the 1940s.

None of the major Nazi leaders, to my knowledge, came from a secular
background. Once in power, they reversed whatever church-state
independence had arisen in the Wiemar period.

Mitchell Coffey

Do you have the sligtest documentary reason for thinking Bonhoeffer was
an antisemite? I read his biography by Bethge, met one of his students
(Helmut Thielicke), and I have never heard the merest reason to think he
was an antisemite in any way.

Perhaps in his youth he was influenced by his environs and past
traditions. He was not to my knowledge antisemite in his adulthood. By
all measn target those who were or are. Niemöller, for example, before
and during the war. But don't accuse those who weren't.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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