Darwin and the Culture of Death

For some time now I have been planning to write a lengthy piece (for publication) on the connection between Darwinism, Eugenics, and Nazism. Unfortunately, Richard Weikart beat me to it. (Snooze you lose!) Here is a decent review of the arguments made by Weikart, in a piece at the New Oxford Review.

Let me offer you a small sample of the review by Anne Barbeau Gardiner:

From Darwin to Hitler is a fine work about how Darwin's notion of morality virtually supplanted Christian morality in Germany between the 1870s and the 1930s. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin suggested that morality was the result of biological evolution and that it differed only in degree, not in kind, from the social instincts of animals. While admitting that man, due to his cognitive abilities, had evolved further than animals, Darwin insisted that his social instincts, too, had developed by natural selection in the struggle for existence. Richard Weikart shows that Darwin's materialist account of morality hugely influenced German intellectuals of that era, causing many of them to reject the sanctity of life.

Darwinists such as Bartholomäus von Carneri, Ernst Haeckel, and Georg von Gizycki concluded that evolutionary science had proven free will and man's soul to be illusions. Gizycki rejoiced that evolution had introduced "a this-worldly moral philosophy to replace the prevalent otherworldly conception," while Friedrich Jodl argued that, given its origin, morality had to be "in evolutionary flux." Wilhelm Schallmayer said it plainly: "evolution leads undeniably to the demand for the continued development of ethics in the sense of evolutionary ethics."

Friedrich Hellwald and Alexander Tille saw evolution as doing away with inherent human rights. Once Darwin made the "biological inequality" of humans a matter of science, some individuals began to be labeled as "less valuable" than others. Rudolph Penzig, an advocate of secularization, declared that "biological evolution undermines any religious foundations for morality." In other words, Darwinism was already besieging the walls of the City of God. The feminist Helene Stöcker, who synthesized Nietzsche and Darwin, urged the "overthrow" of Christian morality for the sake of a "Darwinian-inspired eugenics program."


For those of you who are unaware, Darwin turned against Christianity after the death of his non-believing father and brother, calling it ``a damnable doctrine`` because Christian dogma consigned them to hell. He then went on to create a purely mechanistic theory of evolution which could be used as a weapon against the Church. His cousin Francis Galton was one of the founders of the Eugenics movement, a movement which sought to apply Darwinian Evolutionary principles to improve the human breeding stock. Eugenics was the core principle of Nazismsm, and Christian Fundamentalism was born in part as a response to the rise of Eugenics.

Science aside, Darwinism has been at the heart of virtually every evil movement since it`s creation. Nazismsm, Communism (Karl Marx admitted that he applied Darwinian theory to economics, and he wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, who wisely refused permission), abortion, euthanasia, racism, etc. are all ``gifts`` from the philosophy of Darwin.

One must wonder about something which bears such bad fruit.