Mr. Richard Weikart

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  www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13061 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/16/2008    Last Visited: 4/16/2008  

  By Richard Weikart
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  Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (Palgrave Macmillan).

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  www.arn.org/_idarts/ - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/8/2007    Last Visited: 8/8/2007  

  I first determined to make a point of reading historian Richard Weikart's meticulously researched book, From Darwin to Hitler because Darwinists were very clearly upset by the implications of his work.Some seemed obsessed with proving Weikart, who teaches at California State University (Stanislaus) not only wrong but dishonest and irresponsible - which he certainly isn't.
  
  I am glad I read this magisterial work, because I now understand much better the relationship between 19th century Darwinism and the rise of Hitler.Weikart unearths so many old, almost buried 19th and early 20th century German sources.Indeed, one can only wonder at his patience, systematically reading through the many, many articles and books of long-dead eugenicists, imperialists, pacifists, socialists, and such.
  
  Weikart unearths several lines of evidence that are critical for understanding what happened.Darwin himself was a wealthy, upper crust, peaceful British racist, regretting the inevitable demise of the lesser forms of human life.No one, least of all Darwin, thought that he should do anything to make it happen.
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  Hitler himself was not a man who read deeply, but, as Weikart shows, he gained a lot of social Darwinism from the popular literature he read.The genocidal policies he enacted had become popular over a period of about seventy years.
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  I asked Richard Weikart to comment on the reviews:
  
  The reviews by historians have been a mixed bag.
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  Apparently, Dr. Weikart will be speaking at the Darwinism after Darwin conference at the University of Leeds, England in September.His talk is open to the public.

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  www.worldministries.org/prophecynewsarticles/evolution/ - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/24/2006    Last Visited: 12/13/2007  

  Hitler "clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas," says Richard Weikart, a professor of modern European history at California State University, Stanislaus.

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  www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13072 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/17/2008    Last Visited: 4/17/2008  

  Re: Richard Weikart's Darwin and the Nazis:
  
  It's perfectly appropriate for Richard Weikart (whose bio in TAS Online omits the fact that he is a fellow of the Discovery Institute) to describe plausible historical links between Darwinism and Nazism.
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  Mr. Weikart might have titled this "Democrats and Darwinism."

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  www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/jeffrey-schl - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/7/2008    Last Visited: 9/1/2008  

  In any case, Richard Weikart has now responded to Schloss's review on the most controversial aspect of EXPELLED, namely, the Nazi connection.
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  And it seems to me that "the idea that ID will gain wider acceptance by arguing that Darwinian theory was a necessary factor in the holocaust" is not Ben Stein's and not Richard Weikart's idea.
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  However, I doubt that two biologists (Schloss and you) win by default over a historian (Weikart) citing current historical study.
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  That's probably reason #1 that Schloss criticism of Weikart and Expelled is invalid.
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  8 -> Weikart's first point: In this context, we can see that there is a clear HISTORICAL chain of influence and ideas from Darwin to Hitler, as Weikart has massively and correctly substantiated. [If you doubt me on this, just read Ch XI of Mein Kampf in light of Chs 5 - 6 in Darwin's Descent of Man.] So, if Christendom needs to account for its historic sins, which are many, so does Darwinism and associated evolutionary materialist science.
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  However, I doubt that two biologists (Schloss and you) win by default over a historian (Weikart) citing current historical study.
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  I've never met Weikart (I would like to), but I like to quote one of his articles in a certain course I teach, and I regard him as a very competent (or better) historian.MORE coming.
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  Once again, local circumstances made this difficult, but that person forwarded to us Richard Weikart's response.I would have preferred to have a second review by one of our own members (Weikart is not a member), since we wanted to feature our own people, but given the situation (in which neither me nor two other members were able to do this in a timely manner), I recommended that Weikart's reply be added to our site since his work had received such extensive discussion in Jeff's review.
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  I get your larger point and am gratified by your remarks on Weikart, Gonzalez and Sternberg.
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  As for Expelled, the point was made several times ( definitely by Berlinksi and Weikart) that the Darwin to Hitler connection is not one of logical necessity, nor does a two-dot line segment join them.

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  www.gazette.com/articles/design_35421___article.html/in - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/18/2008    Last Visited: 4/21/2008  

  Among the pro-intelligent design scholars appearing in the film is Richard Weikart, professor of history at California State University at Stanislaus who grew up in Colorado Springs and graduated from Mitchell High School.
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  "There are social and ethical implications of viewing the world as a product of a mindless process," said Weikart, author of "From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany."
  
  Adolf Hitler's goal, Weikart said, was to advance human evolution by purging Germany and Eastern Europe of what he perceived as inferior genetic stock.
  
  Darwinism gave a "scientific legitimization" to the Nazis' atrocities, he said, by arguing that the strong survive in nature.
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  Weikart, who was not involved in the film's development, said nothing deceptive occurred."They just weren't told what angle the film was going to take on intelligent design," said Weikart, who lives in Snelling, Calif.
  
  Though excited about the film's release, Weikart worries it might cause division.
  
  "I hope the film doesn't polarize and alienate," he said.

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  www.creationtalk.com/message-board-forum/about1437-0-as - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/22/2007    Last Visited: 2/14/2008  

  Interesting that you bring that topic up because University of California history professor Richard Weikart wrote a book on the decades of cultural numbing that took place after Darwin released Origin of The Species in 1859.I recommend the book highly, even though it can be dry and academic at times, because his fluency in German and trips to Austria and Germany allowed him to research long-forgotten documents by the early proponents of evolution.
  
  Weikart does not blame the Holocaust on Darwin or evolution and neither should anyone.What he does show in his book titled From Darwin to Hitler is how the acceptance of evolutionary theory and promotion by its advocates in the first 80 years was marked by academics labeling non-white, non northwest Europeans as evolutionary throwbacks.
  
  In fairness to Darwin, I don't think he ever imagined his theory being taken as far as it has been taken.
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  Weikart does not blame the Holocaust on Darwin or evolution and neither should anyone.What he does show in his book titled From Darwin to Hitler is how the acceptance of evolutionary theory and promotion by its advocates in the first 80 years was marked by academics labeling non-white, non northwest Europeans as evolutionary throwbacks.
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  Interesting that you bring that topic up because University of California history professor Richard Weikart wrote a book on the decades of cultural numbing that took place after Darwin released Origin of The Species in 1859.I recommend the book highly, even though it can be dry and academic at times, because his fluency in German and trips to Austria and Germany allowed him to research long-forgotten documents by the early proponents of evolution.
  
  Weikart does not blame the Holocaust on Darwin or evolution and neither should anyone.What he does show in his book titled From Darwin to Hitler is how the acceptance of evolutionary theory and promotion by its advocates in the first 80 years was marked by academics labeling non-white, non northwest Europeans as evolutionary throwbacks.
  
  In fairness to Darwin, I don't think he ever imagined his theory being taken as far as it has been taken.

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  therightside.squarespace.com/right-side-articles/2008/7 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/1/2008    Last Visited: 9/3/2008  

  Richard Weikart, a professor of history at California State University at Stanislaus, in his book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, writes that Darwinism gave Hitler and the Nazis the "necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world's greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy."

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  www.ntskeptics.org/news/news2008-04-20.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/20/2008    Last Visited: 7/28/2008  

  I see no need to respond to Shermer directly on this because Shermer's arguments made little sense, and besides I'm no expert on Nazis or the Holocaust. (Erudite treatments of this question, with all the important caveats and expected quotations from Darwin and other experts, have been provided by Richard Weikart, a professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, at "Re-examining the Darwin-Hitler Link " and "Darwin and the Nazis".)

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  ww.talkreason.org/articles/Genocide.cfm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/7/2008    Last Visited: 7/23/2008  

  A prime example of this accusation today is found in Richard Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004).[1] Weikart is a member of the Discovery Institute who has devoted his career to elucidating the supposed immoral consequences of evolution.
  
  For Weikart, the materialistic basis of evolutionary theory is responsible for the devaluation of human life in general.In particular, the idea of the survival of the fittest leads to the devaluation or extermination of those considered "unfit" in society.Death becomes a good thing insofar as it helps the species rid itself of unfit organisms.The principal goal of all such anti-evolutionary moral arguments is to show that creationism, especially in its Judeo-Christian form, is a superior moral system.
  
  Aside from exposing the historical flaws found in the work of Weikart, this essay demonstrates that the defense of genocide, infanticide and "eugenics" by creationists actually has a very venerable and lengthy tradition that precedes Darwin.
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  For example, Weikart tells us that "Christian theology taught the universal brotherhood of all races, who descended from common ancestors -- Adam and Eve."[3] He adds:
  
  Before the advent of Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, there was no significant debate in Europe over the sanctity of human life, which was entrenched in European thought and law (though, as with all ethical principles, not always followed in practice).Judeo-Christian ethics proscribed the killing of innocent human life, and the Christian churches explicitly forbade murder, infanticide, abortion, and even suicide.[4]
  
  Overall, Weikart has what we might term an "essentialist" view of Judeo-Christian tradition, which attributes to this tradition certain unchanging characteristics that makes it what it is.In terms of ethics, Weikart tells us the difference between Darwinism and Christianity:
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  For Weikart, some of the features of this "fixed system of ethics" in Christianity included opposition to these practices:
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  As even Weikart admits, racism also predated Darwinism.[8] Indeed, Benjamin Isaac, an historian at the University of Tel Aviv, has made a powerful case that racism existed in classical antiquity.
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  These problems with Weikart's version of history prompt us to see that unclear definitions are devices by which Weikart touts the ethical superiority of the Christian tradition.For example, being against "killing innocent human life" is meaningless unless one knows how Weikart defines "innocent."
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  In particular, Weikart never mentions that Martin Luther (1483-1546), the father of Protestantism, espoused a seven-point plan for the Jews in 1543, hundreds of years before Darwin came on the scene.
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  In this respect, Sarfati is not much different from Ernest Haeckel, who is described by Weikart as follows:
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  Weikart obliquely mentions the fact that German Darwinist geneticists championed the Nuremberg laws, which prohibited marriage between Germans and Jews in order to preserve Germanic blood purity. [24] John P. Koster, a Christian apologist, is even more accusatory of Darwinism:
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  Weikart tells us that Hitler "continually accused the Jews of greed, deceit, sexual deviance, and other immoral deeds, thereby justifying his view of them as an inferior race."[31] Not only are these charges parallel to charges made by Sarfati against the Canaanites, but Weikart has apparently forgotten that at least one of these accusations against the Jews can be traced back to Jesus in John 8:44:
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  Recall that Weikart believes that Christianity taught the universal love of all humanity.
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  Weikart could have better titled his book, From John and Luther to Hitler.
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  [1] Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave McMillan 2004).Edward Babinski also provides an excellent review of related historical oversights by Weikart at: http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/darwin hitler.html (last accessed August 6, 2007).
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  For another work that influenced Weikart, see James Rachel, Created From Animals: the Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford, 1990).
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  [7] Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, 103.

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