Single Page
E-mail
Print
RSS
G-bookmarks
Live
TechnoratiMany 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.” Continue »
