Background and Summary
The Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, "provided crucial funding" for the book's research. The Institute operates DarwinToHitler.com, which promotes the book and intelligent design. Prominent historian and critic of the intelligent design movement, Barbara Forest, states that the book is tied to the DI's 'wedge strategy' of attacking Darwinian science as morally corrupting. This strategy aims to "defeat materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."
Weikart has appeared in creationist films promoting the book. In 2006, Weikart appeared in Coral Ridge Ministries' creationist film "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" in which Weikart claims "Darwinian ideology is the core" of Nazism and D. James Kennedy concludes: "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler." In 2008, Weikart, a supporter of intelligent design, also appeared in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a pro-intelligent design movie, which among other claims, strongly implies that Charles Darwin's ideas led to Adolf Hitler's atrocities. Bret Carroll, Weikart's colleague in the Stanislaus history department, wrote: "That 'intelligent design' is not a scientific theory" and the Expelled movie "misuses Weikart's research by mistakenly implying that Darwin led inevitably to Hitler. In fact, scientific theories, even those like Darwin's that address organic life, are morally neutral." Other creationist organizations, like Creation Ministries International cite Weikart's work claiming it shows "extensive documentation of the Darwin–Hitler link."
In the conclusion of From Darwin to Hitler, Weikart writes:
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. Darwinism - or at least some naturalistic interpretation of Darwinism - succeeded in turning morality on its head.
Read more about this topic: From Darwin To Hitler
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background and/or summary:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)