Hitler, Evolution, and Christianity

The third Abrahamic religion seems to generate anti-semitism.ABE: Changed so this makes sense.ChrisThis message has been edited by cmanteuf, 06-07-2005 04:41 PM

Kempka was Hitler's Chauffeur. He split time with someone else between 1930 and 1936, from then to Hitler's death he was the sole driver. The last service he gave the Fuehrer was supplying the gasoline used to burn Adolf and Eva's corpses and watching over the fire.So he certainly knew Hitler well. How reliable he is... I have no idea.Chris

Note that the Marxists-Leninists themselves preferred Lamarckian to Darwinian principles.The idea was that Lamarckian inheritance showed a way to create the New Soviet Man. Trofim Lysenko provided a biological explanation for the creation of the New Soviet Man- if they simply worked hard enough at the creation of the New Soviet State, then the New Soviet Man to live in the New Soviet State would come into being. All that was necessary was personal will-power to live your life in the proper Marxist-Leninist way[1]. You see, the unguided nature of Darwinian principles bothered the Communist theoriticians; they much preferred the directed, guided Lamarckian inheritance to the random mutation-natural selection that Darwin offered. They could control Lamarckian principles, they couldn't RMNS.Why did the theoreticians and not the scientists make the decision? In 1929 Stalin gave a speech announcing that in the future the apparatchiks would control science- it would not be left to the scientists but vetted for its political and philosophical agreement with Marxist-Leninist theory. By 1935 Lysenko had gained control of the Soviet agricultural and biological apparatuses. During the life of Stalin he crushed all opposition to his politically proper but scientifically invalid ideas. At least one of his scientific opponents was killed by the NKVD during the Great Purges of the late 1930's and early 1940's. In 1948 he gave a famous speech denouncing Mendel's theories as reactionary. Lysenko maintained his grip on Soviet biology until ~1965, when the tide finally turned and the scientific reputation of Lysenko was destroyed. But Soviet biology and genetics never recovered from the disastrous 30 year interlude in the land of politically-controlled science.Just a point to make on this topic,Chris[1]: This was one of the many justifications that the Soviet State offered when they shipped undesireables (the Parasites, in the jargon of the day) to Siberia- it was a quarentine to keep them from reproducing their degenerate ways in the next generation. Obviously many other justifications existed, and the biological one was not the reason for the Purges, but it is a reminder of the way that people twist science to support their ideological goals.

I think he's saying that nature is about competition for resources, with the "fit" profitting at the expense of the "weak" - just as Marx saw Victorian society. Thus the struggle of class against class is reflected in the struggle of the "weak" against the "strong" within a species in nature as well.At least, that's what I think he's trying to say. I base this mostly on the Social Darwinists, who thought that Darwin was saying just that as well. I've not looked into Marx' views on evolution while I have done so with the Social Darwinists, so that is my bias on this issue. This is no surprise: Marx and the Marxist-Leninists disagreed on an awful lot of issues. It is just an amusing point of the historical record that Marx thought Darwin supported his theories and the orthodox Marxist-Leninists were Lamarckians.Also I wanted to make a point about the immense dangers that political resolution of scientific "disputes" can bring.ChrisThis message has been edited by cmanteuf, 06-23-2005 10:43 AM