Indeed...
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Hitler used Evolutionary Theory to Justify the Holocaust[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Darwin's idea that evolution means "the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life" eventually led to Nazism and the Jewish holocaust - even though Darwin himself would have been appalled at the thought."<sup>19</sup>[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Sir Arthur Keith wrote: "The leader of Germany is an evolutionist, not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him, the 'national front' of Europe is also the 'evolutionary front;' he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people."<sup>59</sup> and "Christianity makes no distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In this respect the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long ages to produce?"<sup>19</sup>[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In Mein Kampf, Hitler used the German word for evolution (Entwicklung) many times, citing "lower human types." He criticized the Jews for bringing "Negroes into the Rhineland" with the aim of "ruining the white race by the necessarily resulting ization." He spoke of "Monstrosities halfway between man and ape" and lamented the fact of Christians going to "Central Africa" to set up "Negro missions," resulting in the turning of "healthy . . . human beings into a rotten brood of s." In his chapter entitled "Nation and Race," he said, "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable." A few pages later, he said, "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."<sup>59</sup>[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The success in breeding cattle, dogs and other animals with certain desired characteristics gave empirical support to the concept of racial breeding as advocated by eugenicists and later Hitler and others.<sup>19</sup>[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Hitler exterminated over 273,000 people even before the Holocaust! "The first to be killed were the aged [those who are an economic burden, who detract from the happiness of society as a whole], the infirm, the senile, the mentally retarded, and defective children [that included epileptics]. Then there were WW I veterans - amputees - still in hospitals. Their reward for giving an arm or leg for Germany was extermination as 'undesirable.' Even bed wetters and children with badly modeled ears were put to death - all part of the euthanasia project of Germany."<sup>33</sup>
Instead of letting chance factors dominate reproduction decisions, Hitler proposed that the scientists use the power of the state to influence these decisions so that the gene pool would shift to what "informed conclusions" concluded was the desired direction. Consequently, Hitler encouraged those individuals that he perceived as having Aryan traits to mate, and discouraged "interbreeding," supposing that this policy would gradually cause the Aryan race to evolve "upward". He believed that the Nazi race programs would further evolution by intelligently deciding which traits were not beneficial, and preventing those with them from reproducing.<sup>19</sup>
An important argument that Hitler used to support his programs of racial genocide of the Jews, Blacks and other groups was that they were genetically "inferior" and that their interbreeding with the superior Aryan race would adversely affect the latter's gene pool, polluting it, and lowering the overall quality of the "pure race."<sup>19</sup>[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"From the ‘Preservation of favored races in the struggle for life' [that is, Darwin 's subtitle to Origin of Species] it was a short step to the preservation of favored individuals, classes or nations - and from their preservation to their glorification . . . Thus, it has become a portmunteau of nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and dictatorship, of the cults of the hero, the superman, and the master race . . . recent expressions of this philosophy, such as Mein Kampf are, unhappily, too familiar to require exposition here." - Gertrude Himmelfarb, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1962<sup>19</sup>[/FONT]
festeringZit said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams#Religious_views
He believed in the essential goodness of the creation, but did not believe in the divinity of Christ or that God intervened in the affairs of individuals.
