Expelled: Exposing the Darwinian Paradox
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Michael Craven Michael Craven's weblog
- Updated May 11, 2008
Many
of you have probably seen or at least heard of Ben Stein’s documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The film tackles allegations of suppressed
academic freedom within American universities and attempts to demonstrate that
any scientist who dares to question the Darwinian explanation of life on earth is
sure to end his or her academic career.
The
film doesn’t really argue for intelligent design, as its critics claim, it
merely points out that scientific discoveries since the release of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 reveal
a growing number of “holes” in the theory. Nonetheless, the Darwinian presupposition
remains so firmly entrenched within academia that it is the only accepted
starting point in science and so the film exposes how universities have
institutionalized its opposition to any alternative theories and true
scientific inquiry.
The
critics never address the central thesis of the film; they never offer any
factual rebuttals, instead they ridicule the premise and any persons who point
out that Darwinism is akin to religious dogma whose basis in actual science is
diminishing.
The
thing which most offended critics and reviewers of Stein’s film was his attempt
to link Darwinism to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s. In an MSNBC.com review,
Arthur Caplan calls the connection Stein draws between Darwin’s theory and
the Holocaust “despicable.” Another critic writes, “Claiming that the Holocaust
was motivated by ‘social Darwinism’ erases a long, sordid history of European
anti-Semitism…. It was this anti-Semitism, inspired by the religious
idea that the Jews killed Christ, that informed Hitler's willing executioners…”
Michael
Giardinello, writing in the Stony Brook
Independent writes, “The film points the finger at evolution as
the cause for the holocaust…. There is
also not a single mention of Darwin, or his theory, in Hitler's Mein Kampf.”
It
is here, in the area of moral philosophy, that the Darwinian paradox is
revealed. A paradox is a statement or proposition that contradicts itself. When
it comes to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, this contradiction manifests in the
area of morality and ethics. On the one hand, modern Darwinians posit that the
universe is the result of impersonal, amoral, natural forces while on the other
denying this undermines objective moral standards.
Darwin
himself rejected the idea of any objective moral basis. He wrote in his
autobiography that one “can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see,
only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which
seem to him the best ones.” Challenging the intrinsic value of human beings because
they are made in the image of God, Darwin wrote “man in his arrogance thinks
himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble and,
I believe, true to consider him created from animals.” Darwin argued the
difference between man and animal was quantitative, not qualitative thus
blurring the distinction between man and beast.
Nineteenth
century Darwinian scientists such as influential ethnologist Friedrich Hellwald
insisted that ‘The right of the stronger is a natural law.” Ernst Haeckel (famed
for his concocted drawings depicting the human embryonic stages) was the first
German scholar to argue that disabled infants should be killed at birth. Haeckel
and other Darwinians criticized the Judeo-Christian conceptions of humanity as
“anthropocentric” and counter to evolutionary progress.
Cal
State professor of history, Richard Weikart points outs in his exhaustive study
on evolutionary ethics, “Many leading Darwinists in the late nineteenth century
… claimed that in order to foster evolutionary progress, the less-valuable
elements of humanity … had to be eliminated.” This sentiment was particularly popular
among German academics. Weikart goes on to point out that these Darwinians were
not content to wait on “natural selection” because “they feared that
Judeo-Christian and humanitarian ethics … would produce biological
degeneration, since the weak and sick would be allowed to reproduce.”
Fomented
by decades of Darwinian social and ethical theories, the idea of genocide as a
means of purifying the races and furthering the evolutionary development of
mankind became less and less objectionable, especially among the German elite.
Darwin believed this was inevitable if not necessary and T. H. Huxley, the
foremost Darwinian biologist in late-nineteenth century Britain, nicknamed “Darwin’s
bulldog,” argued, “only from death on a genocidal scale could the few progress.”
The German scholar, Hellwald wrote that evolutionary progress would occur as
“fitter” humans “stride across the corpses of the vanquished; that is natural
law.”
Acknowledging
this influence, Hitler wrote in Mein
Kampf (p. 420-421) that his philosophy
by no means believes in the equality of races, but
recognizes … their higher or lower value, and through this knowledge feels
obliged … to promote the victory of the better, the stronger, and to demand the
submission of the worse and weaker. It embraces thereby in principle the
aristocratic law of nature (a term coined by Ernst Haeckel) and believes in the
validity of this law down to the last individual being. It recognizes not only
the different value of races, but also the different value of individuals. . .
. But by no means can it approve of the right of an ethical idea existing, if
this idea is a danger for the racial life of the bearer of a higher ethic.
And
yet Darwinists refuse to acknowledge the connection to Hitler’s “Final Solution?”
Richard
Kirk writing for the California Republic
states it well when he writes, “If atheistic, materialistic, Darwinistic
explanations permeate society, aren’t actions like those at Hadamar and Dachau
made more philosophically plausible? Indeed, aren’t such actions what one
should expect in a world where ‘will to power’ and the ‘struggle for existence’
are seen as ‘real’ scientific explanations and ‘intelligence’ is dismissed as a
quaint epiphenomenon?”
Darwinism
did not cause the Holocaust but without it, the Nazi’s would not have had the
necessary scientific basis that convinced them that their program to eradicate
the Jew, the disabled, and the intellectually weak was morally good. The Nazi’s
were not moral anomalies, they were not ignorant or primitive; they were arguably
the most sophisticated society on earth. They simply understood and embraced
the moral realities of Darwinism. If it were true then everything they
understood about morality and ethics must necessarily change. Under the
Darwinian worldview, the highest moral good became the progress of the human
race and anything which hindered this progress was immoral.
The Nazi’s understood what modern Darwinists do not; if you reject the Creator you cannot hope to live within the safety of the Creator’s rules. It is either God’s loving law or the law of the jungle.
© 2008 by S. Michael CravenComment on this article here
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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. The Center for Christ & Culture is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to recapture and demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.battlefortruth.org
Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.
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