It’s equally bad scholarship to cherry-pick one statement of his that makes him sound reasonable and balanced, and omit other statements of his that make him sound bad.
That’s exactly what you did.
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No, it’s not. If Weikart believes Darwinism was necessary for Nazi ideology, then the holocaust (as an implementation of Nazi ideology) could not have happened anyway, without Darwinism.
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You didn’t read carefully what I said about the distinction between “Nazi ideology” and “Holocaust”. My statement was based on that distinction, found in Weikart’s works; your objection blurred the two terms together. The Holocaust might have occurred due to Nazi ideology, but not due to the part of Nazi ideology that came from Darwinism. Weikart specifically points out that not all of Nazi ideology was grounded in Darwinism; some of it came from Romantic German notions about the German people which predated Darwin’s writings. So he might have meant that not all of Nazi ideology came from Darwinism, that some of it came from other sources, and that those other sources (coupled with already existing European anti-Semitism, which he fully acknowledges) could have been sufficient to generate the Holocaust; this would all be compatible with saying that the complete Nazi ideology (which included notions of survival of the fittest) could not have existed without Darwinism.
Am I claiming that this is what Weikart meant, or even that it is a satisfactory reconciliation of his statements? No, I am not. I think it’s a bit shaky. But it’s a possible way of harmonizing statements of his that are at least on the surface in tension with one another. A scholarly criticism of a book should at least consider all such possible harmonizations before judging that the author’s views are incoherent. And of course, a scholarly criticism of a book should be based on having read the book (not reviews of the book, or information about the author’s religious views, etc.). Hands up, everyone here who has read any of the Weikart books that they are passing judgment on…
It’s so amusing to watch “Eddie” squirm like a beetle impaled on a pin as he tries to avoid acknowledging when he has been proven wrong.
It’s simple:
If the Holocaust was due to Nazi ideology (i.e. Nazi ideology was necessary for the Holocaust to occur), and Darwinism was necessary for Nazi ideology to exist, then Darwinism was necessary for the Holocaust to occur.
I know how battering it must be to your pride to be schooled on basic logic by someone with a mere science-based education. You have my sympathy.
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How do you know that distinction is found in Weikart’s works if you haven’t read any of them?
What a tangled web.
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I’m not sure that works at all, but even if it did it would be foreclosed by the other quote I already posted on this from Weikart:
“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism, especially in its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations, neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world’s greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.”
Once again, note the word “necessary.” The Nazis, he is saying, simply weren’t unpleasant enough to have carried out the Holocaust without Darwin. Without Darwin, the world might instead have witnessed Liebkind’s Hitler, “the Hitler with a song in his heart.” But, alas, the poison of evolutionary biology did its magic, and death reigned instead.
Now, I know you’re going to say again that you’re not defending Weikart. I’d suggest to you that this is a description of what you’re doing here that was never easy, and is becoming increasingly difficult, to accept.
As for the “read the whole book before you say anything” bit: as I have said, I cannot remember whether I did finish the book as it was a number of years ago. But one doesn’t always really have to do that. There are many times, in pseudoscience for example, when a few lines from a book are all it actually takes to judge whether it’s worthwhile. We could do the same with works of a similar character: von Daniken, or Velikovsky, for example. I have books of Mormon new-world archaeology, and a lovely volume about how Stonehenge was built by the followers of Hyperborean Apollo. In such cases, there are invariably quotes from which one can understand well enough that the material is not really worth reading for its own value; it can only be worth reading, like most ID literature, for the cultural meta-value: understanding what sort of nonsense these clowns are up to now.
It is of course true that the outrageous intellectual dishonesty, and moral depravity, of a few particular sentences in Weikart doesn’t establish that everything Weikart says is false. It may be that there are gems buried deep in that pile, and that the student of the multiple causes of, say, German nationalism of the 1890s might find something in Weikart which turns out to be somehow worthwhile. Or, of course, it may not.
But, of course, the existence of some small nugget of useful material deep in Weikart is not what the DI is publishing his newest book for. We know the DI’s culture-war program and we know why this argument is being made. Context, as it so often does, supplies a good deal of the meaning.
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The Discovery Institute certainly makes that connection:
The book itself was published by the Discovery Institute.
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Indeed. I wonder how long we will have to wait before we hear Weikart’s outraged rejection of this characterization of his work. If there’s going to be a betting pool on this, put me down for “forever.”
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I already reviewed that, thank you, and nowhere do I see an acknowledgement of the deep roots of racism. If you’re going to give weight to what Weikart says, without yourself having read the book on which you are commenting, then aren’t you doing the very same thing? At least Gliboff has the expertise to express a relevant opinion.
[… snip …]
In philosophical terms, Darwinism was a necessary, but not a sufficient, cause for Nazi ideology.”
Right there. Weikart is saying that Nazi ideology could not have occurred without Darwinism. Why not? Europe was primed for this sort of hatred, and Nationalism took Germany (and Italy) over the edge. Darwin is not responsible for Nationalism.
Simply indefensible. If the DI is so very focused on evolution then why do they so prominently feature a historian and all the other topics that have no bearing on the theory of evolution? By its actions the Discovery Institute is very clearly a political organization.
When it comes to recounting history, especially those most terrible events which we should never forget, I believe Weikart has an obligation to tell the whole story. Perhaps it is not Weikart himself but the DI who put this spin on his work, but then why does he allow (and promote) this abuse? We should not tolerate intolerance, either by intent or omission, and that is my position.
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Sometimes that fails too.
After all, you read Meyer’s false claim about peptidyl transferase being a protein, concealing the Nobel Prize-winning, strongest evidence supporting the RNA World hypothesis, in a chapter allegedly addressing that hypothesis.
You swallowed Meyer’s falsehood uncritically and whole, never looked at any of the evidence provided to you (even denying that Pubmed is free), and argued for that falsehood for literally months.
Did YOU act with academic integrity? Do you on any matter relating to scholarship in biology?
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Also known as the First Rule of Holes.
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I will point out here that I DID try to warn Eddie off. Knowing how he gets so dug-in to these absurd positions, as he did in the case of that horrid Wells/Dembski book he ALSO hadn’t read, and knowing how there seems to be something about my views that particularly tweaks him up to 11, I thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Surely he could not be at all familiar with Weikart. His often-expressed views about the “woke” meant that the slightest approval of Weikart’s methods could be made possible only by the grossest and most contemptible hypocrisy. And Weikart is hardly the hill that any respectable person would want to die on.
And so I pointed out to him that he should look into it himself, and I expressed my strong belief that if he did, he would immediately and strongly disapprove. I thought this would actually work. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt, disclaimed any interest in getting into it with him, and pointed out to him that Weikart was someone of whom I did not think he could possibly hold a favorable view.
Now, those who are more familiar with him may curse my naivety in this. I certainly saw that this was going in a bad direction when this strange comment was made:
Having extended the courtesy of the benefit of the doubt, naturally I am immediately accused – without a shred of basis – of having some sort of unjustified prejudice against ID and the DI. Mind you, never has he pointed out anything that’s actually wrong in any of my reviews, and his forays into speaking in favor of such things as the Dembski/Wells book haven’t exactly been happy journeys. But, having given the benefit of the doubt as I do routinely in these matters, I am accused of having just the attitude which does not extend anyone the benefit of the doubt.
So as the hole digs deeper, I will simply say: that was none of my doing. I suggested letting the shovel lie where it was.
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Google Books doesn’t have access to the specific book under discussion, but you can see quite a bit of one of his previous books:
Reading through some of the introduction, Weikart doesn’t seem to care that people throughout history have misconstrued scientific theories as moral commands. He even mentioned the Naturalistic Fallacy in passing, but brushes it off by saying [paraphrasing], “Well, people still used Darwin’s theory to incorrectly shape ethics, so I’m going to talk about it anyway”.
So, take from it what you will. Perhaps his next book will speak on how Hitler used social Newtonism as a justification for dropping bombs.
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Yes, I thought that was funny, too (I don’t have the book, having borrowed it when I read it some years ago, but I did refresh my recollection with the Google Books excerpt). He really couldn’t afford to do without the Naturalistic Fallacy, as he employs it in both directions. If he didn’t use it himself to make it seem as though evolutionary theory is a moral system, he’d have almost nothing to write about; but, having written, he’d have no audience for his books if his audience didn’t use it in reverse, to assume that if they disagree sufficiently with the moral system, evolutionary theory must be false.
It does seem to me that while this may not be a patentable invention, it is a remarkable innovation nonetheless: a kind of reciprocating double-action fallacy. If fallacies could perform mechanical work, this might operate as a kind of perpetual motion machine. Of course, the constant noise of it working back and forth: “Is-Ought, Is-Ought,” might be vexing.
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That’s a pretty common strategy among creationists: evolutionary theory has this bad effect, so it can’t be true. And it’s the whole impetus behind Weikart’s books, at least for their popularity among IDers/creationists.
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One could almost say it’s irreducibly complex.
If Weikart was actually interested in something illuminating instead of illusionary, I think it could be interesting to see how science, ethics, morality, and philosophy interacted from the beginning of the modern scientific movement to our current technological age. In the 18th and 19th century, nature was still very much a mystery, and pre-modern ideas of theology and philosophy were being contradicted as new things were discovered about nature. Today, there’s not much mystery left, at least relative to our peers from the 18th century. Now, we don’t have much issue seeing science and ethics as separate concepts (for the most part), but that wasn’t the case many years ago.
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Some people may argue in this way, but I don’t.
Whether or not a scientific theory is “true” (I use your term) must be settled by the empirical study of nature, not on the basis of the application of that theory to human affairs.
That said, however, it’s a perfectly good question whether or not ideas or phrases associated with a scientific theory, when applied to human affairs, have had negative effects.
So, for example, it might be scientifically true that something we can call “survival of the fittest” happens in nature; it doesn’t follow that all the applications of that notion are sound ones, and it doesn’t follow that they can’t have evil effects in human life.
I don’t know that Weikart ever himself argues that evolution must be false as a biological theory because the application of some vocabulary derived from it has caused evil in human affairs; I suspect he has made only a more limited claim; i.e., that such evil has in fact arisen.
You seem to allow for this yourself, in your caveat: “at least for their popularity among…”, as if you are aware that the motive of Weikart’s readers might not be the motive of Weikart himself. That is, Weikart himself may be trying to show that “social Darwinism” has been a great evil, rather than that evolution as a biological theory is false.
And even if he also personally believes that evolution as a biological theory is false, as long as his books and articles don’t argue for that conclusion, but limit themselves to demonstrating the evil results of “social Darwinism,” I don’t see why biologists, qua biologists, should have any objection to the argument, since it’s not a biological conclusion that he is drawing, but a social, political, and historical one. Even if a particular biologist disagrees with the social, political, or historical conclusions, the biologist isn’t disagreeing on the basis of biology, but on other grounds.
Richard Dawkins has said that, while survival of the fittest operates in nature, he does not think that human affairs should be conducted on that principle. I agree with Dawkins. And I think Weikart does, too. I think Weikart, even if he personally has doubts about evolution on the scientific side, would say something like: "Even if biological evolution is entirely true, it does not follow that human beings have to run their societies on the basis of “survival of the fittest.” That is, I think Weikart’s moral intention, in pointing out the evils of social Darwinism, is the same as the moral intention of Dawkins.
This or that historical claim of Weikart could be disputed, on the grounds of historical or sociological evidence, but I don’t think that Weikart’s general concern makes him a moral monster, any more than Dawkins’s concern makes him a moral monster.
All of us should be concerned about the use of scientific theories to justify particular ideological stances and particular destructive policies. If evolutionary “lingo” was used by the American eugenics movement, the public should be made aware of that. If it was used by some Nazis, or by some Communists, or by some Christians (e.g., if any Christian ever argued that black people should be slaves of white people because evolutionary theory shows they are less “fit”), to further odious social policies, that is something that all good citizens should want to know, so they can guard against such misuses of scientific theory in the future.
Whatever might be the flaws of Weikart’s books in execution, his overall aim strikes me as a moral one, and a socially useful one. If some Bible literalists use his historical studies as a “proof that evolution is not true,” they’re making a logical error, but it doesn’t follow that his historical studies are of no value.
I’m not concerned here to refute the various historical statements made by people here. In some cases, they might be correct, and Weikart might be wrong. But overall, Weikart has read far, far more of the relevant intellectual history, and far, far more of the primary source documents, than anyone posting here, and so the appropriate attitude toward his books by non-historians and non-political scientists and non-sociologists is that they should be read carefully, to see how strong a case they make, not the attitude of immediate rejection, primarily because he is associated with the Discovery Institute.
Weikart agrees with this. But “nationalism” was only part of Nazi ideology, not the whole. To the extent that Nazi ideology based itself on alleged discoveries of social Darwinism, Nazi ideology was shaped by those alleged discoveries.
I was taught by a number of Jewish professors, some of whom had lost relatives in the Holocaust. Even my non-Jewish professors stressed the evil of the Holocaust. The very first religion course I ever took had a major section on the Holocaust, and featured writings by Elie Wiesel. I know of very few Christians (beyond a handful of ultra-right-wing nuts) who do not think the Holocaust was evil, and are not ashamed of the centuries of anti-Semitism that set the stage for it. From my e-mail conversations in which Weikart and others have been participants, it’s pretty clear to me that he deplores anti-Semitism and its consequences. It would never occur to me to think that, because his scholarly work is focused on spelling out the connection between “social Darwinism” and various social evils (including but not limited to the Holocaust), he would deny the central role of centuries of anti-Semitism in producing the Holocaust. It would never occur to me to think that anyone at Discovery would deny that role. And it would never occur to me that any intelligent reader of Weikart’s books would suppose that he is arguing that Darwinian theory alone, without any background condition of vicious anti-Semitism, produced the Holocaust.
In fact, in quotations that have been reproduced or linked to here, he says explicitly that it would be foolish to blame the Holocaust on Darwin. It appears that you want him to fill his Discovery articles with lengthy denunciations of the history of European anti-Semitism before you will admit that he is not making any such extreme claim about Darwin and the Holocaust. I don’t see the need for that. Such statements as I have seen from his books and articles indicate that he thinks that the application of some social-Darwinian ideas did exacerbate the problem, and thus played a contributory role. And historians are always proposing that this or that cause had a contributory role to this or that social or political outcome. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s only narrow, monocausal historical accounts that are objectionable. And from everything I’ve seen, Weikart does not offer a narrow, monocausal account of why the Holocaust happened. He seems to be fully aware that in addition to influences of Darwinian language, other things were operating, including centuries of anti-Semitism, romantic German nationalism which preceded any of Darwin’s writings, etc. At times he even stops to point such things out, lest he be interpreted as offering a narrow monocausal account. I have been able to see this by looking only at a very small part of his output, so I have every reason to suspect that if I read his books in their entirety I would find more such careful qualifications on his part.
Again, I am not arguing that the conclusions he comes to in his books are correct. I haven’t read enough of his evidence and argument to render a judgment. But I see nothing wrong, in principle, with a scholarly attempt to show the influence of a major intellectual current, social Darwinism (with its emphasis on survival of the fittest and the improvement of the human race by that means), upon developments in Nazi Germany, in the eugenics movement in America, etc. It seems to me that you are greatly over-reacting. I suspect that if you actually read an entire book by Weikart, you would decide that his thought is more moderate and balanced than you think at the moment.
Sure. But this discussion has produced little evidence that that is what Weikart has produced, and considerable evidence to the contrary. So it is unclear exactly how you think your comment pertains to the present discussion.
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