Darwin and Hitler

In Charles Darwin's book "The Descent of Man", he claimed that "there were great differences in moral disposition and intellect between the 'highest races' and the 'lowest savages'" (writes Professor Richard Weikart). He prophesied that at a future point in history, not far from where he was writing in the mid-19th century, the "civilised races [would] almost certainly exterminate from the world the savage races."

Adolf Hitler's writings abundantly reveal the extent to which he had absorbed Darwinian ideas, and there is overwhelming evidence that many key figures who engineered or were influential in forming Nazi ideology were self-conscious and enthusiastic Darwinists. It doesn't take a genius to spot the similarities between the one set of ideas about survival of the fittest, improving the species through the weeding out of inferior genes, etc., and the other.

Despite this overwhelming evidence, in recent years many atheist/anti-theist writers, embarrassed by this historical reality, have risen up with precious little evidence to support them in an to attempt to deny the roots of Nazi ideology in Darwinism. Some of these attempts have been quite creative, even in the case of the fraudulent group the "British Centre for Atheistic Propaganda Science Education" attempting to ascribe Hitler's ideology to (Roman Catholic) Christianity! Even Professor Richard Dawkins didn't go that far, accurately noting that Hitler's rejection of Christianity was total, (in the words of Dr. David Aikman), "since Christianity, he thought, would mean the cultivation of human weakness and failure."

Here's a link to a piece posted today on the excellent website Evolution News, in which Professor Weikart, author of "From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany" debunks another atheist attempt to deny the links:

"Re-examining the Darwin-Hitler link" - http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/02/reexamining_the_darwinhitler_l.html