• 0 Posts
  • 76 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: October 5th, 2023

help-circle








  • Probably because of Hitler. He was very inspired by eugenics and Darwin’s recently published seminal work on evolution. In his writings and speeches he frequently referred to Darwinism and human engineering via eugenics. Here’s a quote from Hitler’s Mein Kampf:

    “In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher evolution.”

    Not just Hitler, the whole of the Nazi party and their public propaganda was based on extreme Darwinism.

    An important official Nazi Party publication, “Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte”, edited by Alfred Rosenberg, occasionally featured articles promoting evolution. In a 1935 article Heinz Brücher praised German biologist Ernst Haeckel for paving the way for the Nazi regime. In addition to mentioning Haeckel’s advocacy of eugenics and euthanasia, Brücher highlighted Haeckel’s role in promoting human evolution. Brücher reminded his readers that Haeckel’s view of human evolution led him to reject human equality and socialism. In 1941 Brücher published another article in “Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte” on evolution through natural selection. Several times he stressed that the principles of evolution were just as valid for humans as for other organisms. He closed the essay by explaining the practical application of evolutionary theory:

    “The hereditary health of the German Volk and of the Nordic-Germanic race that unites it must under all circumstances remain intact. Through an appropriate compliance with the laws of nature, through selection and planned racial care it can even be increased. The racial superiority achieved thereby secures for our Volk in the harsh struggle for existence an advantage, which will make us unconquerable.”

    In Brücher’s view human evolution is an essential ingredient of racial ideology, not a hindrance to it. In 1936 another author named Heberer launched an attack on antievolutionists in Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte. He praised Haeckel and stressed the affinities of Darwinism and human evolution with Nazi ideology.

    The history is really quite fascinating and it’s rarely taught in your state-mandated evolutionary biology classes!




  • You know what I mean, brother. There’s a huge scope of difference between applied sciences and natural philosophy. Our technological advancements fail to resolve fundamental questions about the human condition. Scientists rarely study epistemology or philosophy in order to attain our degrees and I think it shows in the public trend toward scientism.




  • I don’t think that Venter is suggesting intelligent design. He’s claiming, as a result of his research, that it’s not effective to assume simple explanations for genomics and especially for cellular biology.

    Every technological improvement in the methods of research has revealed more complexity in organisms and so it behooves us to suspend dogmatic approaches to the genome. That’s the subject of the book discussed in the article.

    Craig Venter is very controversial and his statements are provocative. I’m not qualified to critique the science in this field. But I’d recommend you to take a look at the work his team is doing with synthetic chromosomes and engineered cells.



  • Craig Venter, the infamous head of the Human Genome Project and who created the first “synthetic” cell, has been saying this stuff for years. It’s remarkable how ahead of the times he is, perhaps because he’s not beholden to an academic institution.

    He claims that a “tree of life” is fallacious, that there is no junk DNA, and that the bare minimum genes necessary for a living cell still can’t be determined even after decades of research.

    I hope that the authors of the new Extended Evolutionary Synthesis will admit the deficiency of outdated assumptions and reject dogmatic approaches to the theory, as implied by the author of the book reviewed in this article.