Crackpot Christianity: Part Two During the weekend of August 26-27, 2006, Americans were given another opportunity to see "Crackpot Christianity" in action. All they had to do was tune in to The Coral Ridge Hour and watch its presentation of Darwin's Deadly Legacy. I watched it Saturday evening and was respectively amused and appalled by the show's infantilism and dishonesty. Although it would not persuade any educated American, the show's dishonesty implies a staggering contempt for its intended audience -- the untaught.
Knowing the audience, I expected such buffoonery and mendacity. As I demonstrated in an earlier article (Crackpot Christianity and America's Current Moral Degeneration, at http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/reviews/crackpot.html), the overwhelming majority of America's Christians know next to nothing about the origins and actual composition -- let alone the myriad contradictions -- of the holy book they ostensibly revere. Why would they know anything more about the evolutionary biology so many of them despise?
In addition, I already had read the asinine assertion made by the program's foremost crackpot Christian, Dr. D. James Kennedy: "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler." It prompted an immediate response from Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League: "This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust...Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and other who died at the hands of the Nazis."
Moreover, Mr. Foxman noted: "It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among a distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to "reclaim America for Christ" and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law." In other words, a crackpot Christian.
But, when Mr. Foxman observed, "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people," he didn't know he was making a point that already had been conceded by one of the show's few serious scholars, Richard Weikart. Mr. Foxman didn't know, because Professor Weikart's concession doesn't appear in Kennedy's sixty-minute propaganda piece, but in Weikart's own book From Darwin to Hitler.
Granted, Professor Weikart "became convinced that there were significant historical connections between Darwinism and Hitler's ideology" [From Darwin to Hitler, p. x]. But he refused to make "the absurd claim that Darwinism of logical necessity leads (directly or indirectly) to Nazism." [Ibid. p. 9]
Moreover, in the concluding chapter of his book, Weikart notes: "It would be foolish to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, as though Darwinism leads logically to the Holocaust. No, Darwinism by itself did not produce Hitler's worldview, and many Darwinists drew quite different conclusions from Darwinism for ethics and social thought than did Hitler." [Ibid, p. 232]
Unfortunately, the dishonesty of Darwin's Deadly Legacy extends far beyond that fact that the show's one serious historian, unbeknownst to the audience, actually disputes Kennedy's crackpot assertion: "No Darwin, No Hitler." The show also quotes Darwin out of context, takes cheap shots at Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, misrepresents the court's ruling in "Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al." and turns to one of its "historians" to inform us that the "Nazis loved science."
Worse, after showing pictures of the Nazi death camps, viewers hear that Darwin's ideas made the whole thing possible. Moreover, the show informs its viewers that the wicked theory of evolution played a major role in the shootings a Columbine High School. Worse still, it then notes -- presumably with the intention of insinuating a connection -- that there have been dozens of school shootings since Columbine. Even if such innuendo had substance, such crimes would pale in significance when compared with the murderous history of Christianity.
The show also trots out two legitimate scientists who claim to have found holes in the theory of evolution. One supports microevolution, but discounts macroevolution. The other supports Intelligent Design, notwithstanding the fact that his "own department's website disowns his bizarre ideas." [Jerry Coyne, "Coultergeist,"The New Republic, see link below].
Unfortunately, the show fails to acknowledge that these two scientists are members of a small minority. It also fails to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of America's scientists find the theory of evolution convincing, because it works.
Works? Yes, as Jared Diamond has observed: "Without evolution, one has no chance of understanding the living world around us, human uniqueness, genetic diseases and their possible cures, and genetically engineered crops and their possible dangers." [Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, pp. ix-x] Or, as the highly esteemed Ernst Mayr observed: "Evolution is the most important concept in biology. There is not a single Why? question in biology that can be answered adequately without a consideration of evolution." [Ibid, xiii]
Dr. Kennedy's failure to disclose the minority position of the show's two scientists was hardly an accident. He needed to deceive viewers in order to assure them that that the theory of evolution is "crumbling."
Unfortunately, none of these distortions in Darwin's Deadly Legacy so clearly demonstrate the contempt with which these crackpot Christians view their audience as does the very appearance of Ann Coulter. Having Ann Coulter appear in a show devoted to evolution is like going to the Governor's Ball and finding a turd in the punch bowl. It's simply outrageous.
Because I've already done my time in purgatory by reviewing one of Ms. Coulter's books for the San Francisco Chronicle (see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/07/20/rv153961.dtl ), suffice it to say that, except for the 2 million or so pathetic and witless kool-aid drinkers who mindlessly adore her, Darwin's Deadly Legacy would have gained greater mass credibility, had its producers decided to ask Bozo the Clown to pontificate on evolution.
(Note: For an exquisite critique of Coulter's profound ignorance of biology, I strongly urge the reader to turn to Professor Jerry Coyne's precious essay "Coultergeist" http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w060731&s=coyne073106 .)
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
In the US there is a general disease of supremacy, the idea that ' the US people are better than anyone else'. The cancerous guys, the ones described above speculate on that. If the US people had a different mentality they would rightfully say that Nazis were people and people have a tendency to use anything in their disposal to get to their little goals. Moreover, we here are also people and we here are not immune from that. Having said that to connect Darwin to Hitler is the same as to connect the inventor of the wheel to the perpetrators of the ' wheeling'- the horrible Middle Ages form of execution. It is just pure demagoguery. In fact, demagoguery in all forms is much more close to Nazis than any evolutionary school of thought. The situation above described is a cancane of ignorance, the witch coven shabash, but due to the simple bacteria of US supremacy it works like a charm.
The problem is with us.
by
Mark Sashine (42 articles, 19 quicklinks, 226 diaries, 3204 comments)
on Monday, August 28, 2006 at 12:23:57 PM
Dear Mr. Uhler,
I am no fan of Dr. D. James Kennedy; however, I have studied the Holocaust well over forty years. Kennedy is probably coming up with this idea from the turn of the century philosopher, Chamberlain, who rated the races from one to ten. Jews and Blacks were the last in the link from animal to man. Chamberlain believed that as mankind evolved, the top of the evolutionary chain was the Aryan race which included Great Britain. Chamberlain was no great philosopher or sociologist, but Hitler depended on his writings to defend his belief that Jews were physiologically inferior. Hitler was very upset at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. If you will remember, the black American, Jesse Owens, set record after Olympic record while trouncing the Aryan blonde headed Germans. Owens took the theory of physical superiority of the Nazis and buried it in the garbage pile where it belonged.
Kennedy has made the grave, even gross error of trying to combine Church (religion) and State. He with such men as Dr. James Dobson (Focus on the Family), Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and many of the mega church ministers have turned modern Christianity into a caucus for the Republican Party. They have used the excesses of the sixties with the emphasis on lawlessness, broken marriages, pornography, drugs, anti-patriotism and sexual immorality to paint the left as nothing less than demonic. By and large most of America believes in traditional family, hates pornography, broken marriages, lawlessness and drugs. Those who go to church believe their ministers will honestly deliver God's message. They are being fooled big-time.
The great problem is that the American people find themselves in the same place England found herself at the turn of the eighteenth century. The church was preaching one thing and doing something entirely different by becoming the handmaid for the rich. William Blake (1803) began the hundred year change as the father of Romanticism. His Proverbs of Heaven and Hell opens the door for men like Dickens to follow with stories like Oliver Twist. When you read Blake's Poems of Innocence and his Poems of Experience you are reading the strongest indictment of English government and church ever written.
It took writers and Singers like Woodiy Guthrie and Pete Seeger to bring about the changes in the 1930's in the United States. Guthrie and Seeger wrote such songs as "Washington Breakdown," "Dear Mr. President," "C for Conscription," "Which Side Are You On?" "Young Man Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn," "Talking Dust Bowl Blues," "If I Had a Hammer," "Turn, Turn, Turn," "We Shall Overcome (not written by Seeger but words updated by him),"Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "Talking Union." "This Land Is Your Land."
Seeger and Guthrie were staunch anti-fascists and so strongly pro-Union that Guthrie was black listed as a Communist by the House of Un-American Activities. The charge was true. Seeger was a Communist until 1950. Seeger made a wonderful statement before Congress for which he was indicted for contempt of Congress in 1957, "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this." You think this is the first time the American public has been hoodwinked and boons waggled? Not by any means. Seeger was found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail in 1961. It makes me sick to hear the Bush crowd and the near- Nazi Country and Western clowns claim Guthrie and Seeger as their heroes. If Guthrie and Seeger went to Hell when they died, Hell has a problem because they would be turning over in their graves so fast the place would be air-conditioned; however, as much as the Falwells and Kennedys hate Guthrie and Seeger, both men were likely Christians, and especially Woody Guthrie who wrote "Gimme That Old Time Region."
My problem with many writers today on rob@opednews.com is that they paint with too broad a brush. I read article after article condemning any and all Christians. What a shame. I am over sixty-five years old. I have never voted for anyone but a Democrat since I voted for JFK in my first election. I cannot trust the lies I hear from all politicians but I know what the Party to which they belong believes.
I am a traditional Democrat. I am pro-union, against the death penalty, for such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and think it is criminal that we do not have a single-pay health policy in this country. I am one of the few Southern Baptist ministers who demonstrated in the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. Much to the chagrin of many of my fellow Southern Baptist ministers, I have been for forty-four years and am still active as a Southern Baptist minister. My life is based on a single supposition that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and the Bible is my sole standard of all my faith and practice. My political liberalism seems to disqualify me from being a "good" Southern Baptist with many of my Baptist friends, and my religious conservatism seems to disqualify me from being a "good" liberal with my liberal friends. My answer is simple, "Go to any good electronic Bible such as Blue Letter Bible, Google it in, under search you can type "poor," "helpless," "needy," "widow," and "fatherless;" then you may type in such words as "wealthy" and "rich." Note how many pages you get under the former words and notice that you will have trouble filling out one page under the latter words and most of the verse will be negative. To hear Falwell and the mega church ministers, it is the poor man who will find it easier to go through the eye of a needle than to enter Heaven. It is getting to the place it is easier for a poor man to go through the eye of a needle than to get inside one of their churches-not all churches, but the mega-churches. Try typing in such words as "kill," "murder," and "execute." You will find no where in all the New Testament from Matthew the first book through Revelation the last book, that there is one verse where a Christian is ever permitted to kill another human being for any reason whatsoever. Conclusion: It would seem that I am more Biblical than my Bible thumping brothers I call the "fighting fundies" or the "FunDAMmentalist." No brag, just fact. They have hijacked my denomination as Bush has hijacked my government and I am more than just a little upset.
Phil.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 940 comments)
on Monday, August 28, 2006 at 11:12:36 PM
