Sunday, February 01, 2009

Darwin and Godwin's Law

Little Green Footballs features a discussion of the notion that Darwin led to Hitler.

Up pops another long-debunked creationist talking point that refuses to die: that Darwin’s theory of evolution led directly to Hitler and the Third Reich. Creationists have been violating Godwin’s Law with this canard for decades, and the Discovery Institute reveals their creationist heritage by continuing in this tradition.

The problem with this idea is simple—it’s not true. Klinghoffer claims that Mein Kampf uses “the language of Darwinian biology,” but in fact, Charles Darwin and the theory of natural selection are not mentioned even once in Mein Kampf. Klinghoffer’s claim is just short of an outright lie.
...Klinghoffer’s false equivalence is even more thoroughly destroyed by the fact that the Nazis banned Darwin’s books: When Books Burn: Lists of Banned Books, 1933-1939.

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