Comments

  1. craig says

    What scumbags. They’re saying “evolutionism” is responsible for the Columbine murders.

  2. Siamang says

    You’ve read the various creationist strategy papers. They’ve moved into the new phase. They’ve layed the groundwork and done everything they can on the old phases. This is phase three: Confrontation.

    “Evolution, Darwin, Atheism = Hitler. Before Darwin, man was the image of God. After Darwin, he was just a monkey… Evolution is racist!”

    PZ, you’re on their enemies list. How dare you defend that known Nazi, Charles Darwin?

    Here comes the big moral smear. Phase three. Get ready for it. No more flagella and irreducable complexity. They lost that in Dover. They’re going to drop it… it can’t get any better for them with that curve, and in fact it’s getting worse.

    Nope. They’re on Phase III now. Confrontation. That World Net Daily article was the starter’s pistol.

  3. Eric Paulsen says

    With a blog name like Pharyngula they probably think that you are some kind of mythic vampire. Of course YOU are an atheist you blood drinking spawn of Satan!

  4. jpf says

    Off topic, but I just stumbled on this article about AiG’s Creation Museum that states:

    Charter members have signed up from around the country, with the majority living more than two hours from the museum and a surprising number from Washington state and Alaska, Mr. Looy said

    Washington, the (second|first?) least churched state, huh? Think maybe the Discovery Institute could be funneling them donations?

  5. jpf says

    Ah, WorldNutDaily… Where else can you get your news accompanied by banner ads for a key fob that warns you of any immanent nuclear attacks?

    With a readership in such a constant state of paranoia as that its a wonder none of them has caught on yet that WorldNut is actually run as a deep-cover agitprop site by the Global Atheist Hegemon… Whoops! Said too much!

  6. Silmarillion says

    I’m torn. I want to read the story, but I don’t want to go to the website. Argh.

  7. Peter Z. says

    I wonder when those who think that evolution leads to abortion leads to the notion that not all “human life” has equal rights to protection will find out about what goes on in cell culture labs… Millions of million of potential people in those somatic nuclei…

    Peter “can’t wait for acknowledgement of the HEK Holocaust” Z.

  8. Hank Fox says

    Okay, I read the article, and it’s … filthy. I mean, bugfuck crazy disgusting lies.

    This stuff worries me, but it also gives me a great deal of hope. Watching the things these people do is starting to make me think of a mechanism that is slightly off-balance initially, but which comes to oscillate more and more wildly, before finally flying apart. The oscillation in this particular system is becoming more and more evident.

    I’m picturing the few little mentally-ill weenies at the core of this, starting off with small exaggerations, and then as they gain a trusting audience, gradually upping the size of the lies. As the audience becomes more trusting, more approving, they become more confident, ever bolder, until they’re eventually telling outrageous lies with a progressively more mean-spirited element to them. Finally they reach a level of breathtakingly vicious bullshit which is unacceptable even to the audience of victims they’ve sucked in.

    Think of this: How often have you read about a petty crook who succeeds at robbing a bank or teller machine, and who does it again and again until he gets caught? Remember how you’ve thought, “Boy, if they’d only quit at 3, or 5, they’d be sitting somewhere safe, spending the money.”

    But they can’t quit, because SUCCESS IS ADDICTIVE.

    The situation in this religious movement is even worse for the people involved. The robber illustration is just one guy – though he is at least nominally in control of his actions, he STILL lets it take control of him. But this fundamentalist movement has thousands, millions, of people involved. There might be prominent people at the head of it, but my guess is that it’s impossible for anybody to really be in control. The thing feeds on the smallness, the meanness, of all the people marching in it, and they accelerate the pace as they go – a mob moving forward faster and faster until they’re running so fast that nobody has time to react.

    Ooh, I’m starting to like the funny pictures this is making in my head:

    There was a time when hooded KKK members were a terrifying and unstoppable fixture of the Deep South. But today they’re just about the most reviled pack of shitheads imaginable, even in their state homelands. There was a time when the Nazis OWNED Europe. Today, they’re the lunatic fringe, not just crazies but scary crazies.

    They both lost ground not just back to their starting point, but well beyond it. Klan members today are laughably pathetic. In some parts of Europe today you can get arrested for just saying certain pro-Nazi stuff (I’m thinking of Holocaust deniers).

    Because they accelerated past any acceptable stopping point … and nobody was able to put on the brakes.

    (Ooh, I can think of a third example, one which I have little historical knowledge of, but which I’d bet happened exactly the same way: witch trials and burnings in New England. And again, today they’re a joke, practically THE elementary illustration of murderous social excess.)

    This pack of vicious godders in the U.S. is playing out exactly the same pattern.

    They can’t stop it.

    They can’t turn it off.

    They can’t change course.

    And they’re accelerating.

    Oh, man, I’m sitting here smiling. I’ve been worried about this fundie movement for several years – I could see it was getting worse, but I couldn’t imagine where it was leading. Now I can finally SEE a possible end to it.

    I like to think that end will come soon. And it could be fucking spectacular.

  9. Hank Fox says

    I’ll make an off-the-cuff prediction: I give it six years, max, before the fundamentalist movement suffers a blinding meltdown. Could be four, or even two.

  10. says

    Funny how the article completely neglects to mention that our experience with evolution refutes eugenics.

    Funny how the article completely ignores the fact that Hitler’s scientists rejected evolution, just like the Communists did.

    Funny how the article completely ignores the fact that the Bible endorsed genocide.

    Funny how the article completely ignores all our actual arguments and picks out only quotes of ours that don’t contribute.

  11. Lya Kahlo says

    Funny how that pack of uneducated bigots believes every single word of that article, rather than attempting to think on their own.

    WND is quoted quite often on FSTDT. I find them hilarious and sad at the same time. It must suck living in such fear of everything.

  12. Thinker says

    I agree with Hank about the accelerating shrillness, and would add another analogy: the tabloid press (think National Enquirer headlines like “World War II bomber found on Moon – NASA declines to comment”), who need to make up ever more outrageous “news items” in order to even be noticed. The effect is the same as with the creationists: as the lies accelerate, more and more people realize that this is what they are and simply turn off.

    Let’s hope for this implosion, and help it on its way, so that we can get back to discussing and learning about reality as it is, like grown ups, without the fairy tales…

  13. Ryogam says

    My condolences on your Email sewage problem. Wading through that filth must be like a trip through the New York sewers.

    Two points, racism and genocide were rampant prior to Darwin as well. The pre-Darwin racism was based on the biblical idea that all human “races” were made as distict by god, with whites being better than everyone else, because, of course, Adam, Moses, and Jesus were all white. Blacks were biblically inferior because Ham had the curse of god on him and his decendants. This idea of seperate creations was smashed by Darwin, making as all part of a related human family, a thought that makes many racists sick even today.

    Second, to echo a post from above, The Big Lie technique being employed here is already starting to back-fire. I know some republicans who support evolution and they are getting tired of being lumped in with these backward bible thumpers. Not enough to turn them to the side of light, but it is a start.

  14. T_U_T says

    I give it six years, max, before the fundamentalist movement suffers a blinding meltdown.

    Unfortunately, there is a fair chance that the ‘blinding meltdown’ will include USA turning into totalitarian nightmare and nuclear holocaust as an attempt to bring about the apocalypse.

  15. Anne Nonymous says

    Oh, man, I’m sitting here smiling. I’ve been worried about this fundie movement for several years – I could see it was getting worse, but I couldn’t imagine where it was leading. Now I can finally SEE a possible end to it.

    The only problem I see with your optimistic predictions of a creationist/IDist meltdown, Hank, is that in each of your examples, an awful lot of people were brutally murdered before the meltdown came. I can’t quite convince myself that ID is really gonna get that bad, but those examples sure don’t make me cheerful. I’d really rather see the movement righteously stomped by sensible people than melt down internally.

  16. Anne Nonymous says

    Oh, look, while I was slowly composing my comment everybody already said what I wanted to say, which means I just helped turn this thread into “Beat on Hank Day”. Which I didn’t mean to do. Sorry, Hank.

  17. Kim says

    OK, so this was my first visit to WND,and after the initial shock and outrage, I actually laughed my ass off while reading the article “School children appear in homosexual parade”.
    So they have this gay-guy-turned-christian who denounced his previous evil ways (James Hartline), who says (in a very worried and serious tone of voice, I’m sure):”We’re going to be investigating what they teach these kids in school”.
    I honestly don’t know if I should shit myself because I’m laughing so hard, or because this is downright scary. Probably both.
    Well, thanks for the link to a new source of “amusement”, I guess.
    Kim

  18. Ed says

    My favorite part:

    “The program, according to producer Jerry Newcomb, is about the social effects of Darwinism, and the bloodshed that can be attributed to those beliefs. He said before Darwin, the basic concept was that man was made in the image of God, and was therefore valuable. But Darwin changed all that.”

    Before Darwin, everything was perfect! Cause you konw nobody ever spilled blood in the name of religion.

    For the love of Jeebus, do these folks not understand just how ironic their statements are?

  19. oldhippie says

    “you should see the sewage in my mailbox now.”
    Want to offere us some samples?

  20. Hank Fox says

    No sweat, Anne.

    Yeah, I thought of those terrible side effects, but chose not to mention them. The sequence is already in motion; I’m not sure we can do a lot about those possible deaths.

    I can still rejoice that … if there IS a future history, these vicious bozos will be on its trash-heap.

    I’m hoping that as things get crazier, and more of the bindings come off, a lot of the leaders will commit actual crimes, and go to prison.

    Kent Hovind is ahead of the pack on this aspect, of course. Golly, if I don’t just bust a gut laughing on the day he goes to federal prison, I might even write the guy a letter thanking him for all the years of entertainment, and his exhilarating final chapter.

    (“Dear Dr. Dino, I hope you are settling in at your new address. Are you happy with your roommate? I hear he’s really taken a liking to you. I’m sorry that it didn’t work out when you cried at your sentencing, and said God had forgiven you, and asked the court for mercy. Probably the judge was having an off day. I’m sure there are brighter days ahead. Really, I just wanted to thank you for all your sterling work in showing everybody what creationism is really all about over these many years, and for the happy ending to your exciting personal story. I hope to check back every few years to see how things are going. Yours in FSM. Hank.”

  21. Jeb says

    The number of times they use “Darwin-Hitler” is amazing. Almost as if they want their readers to beleive they were the same person. Their readers wouldn’t be that naive though.

  22. speedwell says

    Some decent libertarians of the sensible, rational, laissez-faire type, people who stand behind your right to do as you see fit with your own life and property, used to write articles for Wing Nut Daily back in the day when they weren’t (as) crazy. They and their readers watched in horror as the worthless rag took a hard right and drove off a cliff. Nobody over there would support your right to do anything anymore but get down on your knees and pray to God and Government.

  23. Dianne says

    Wading through that filth must be like a trip through the New York sewers.

    HEY! Stop saying such mean things about our sewers.

  24. speedwell says

    Their readers wouldn’t be that naive though.

    What makes you think their readers are new to all this? The readership they have now is composed of their fellow cabalists who nod knowingly when WND mentions a sekrit code word like “Darwin/Hitler”. They don’t think of themselves as naive… they think of themselves as clever, enligtened men who are “in the world but not of it.”

  25. False Prophet says

    I have an idea for a documentary: tell me what you all think.

    I want to trace the history of a two thousand year old Near Eastern cult that eventually insinuated itself into the halls of power of most of the Western world. In the process, its philosophy of pacifism and charity was twisted into one of political expediency, tyranny, irrationality and genocide that persists to this day.

    The working title is “Jesus’s Deadly Legacy”.

  26. Mataha says

    Gravity, Newton’s Laws, Evolution and Germ Theory….how many more innocent people have to die because of these awful scientific theories!

  27. Russell says

    I know there is a large range of political issues, but my own view is that any scientist or atheist or civil libertarian who votes GOP is pretty much like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. There are some issues in which my own political views are more aligned with the GOP than with the Democratic Party, from gun control to the use of market mechanisms for pollution regulation. That said, I believe both that the cultural issues are important and that the the GOP has been taken over by the religious right.

    To put it another way, the GOP is the single organization today that is most dangerous to American freedoms. The Muslim jihadists might kill a few of us in terrorist attacks. But they have no hope of affecting our laws, except through what we do to ourselves in response. If the US experiences a turn to more authoritarian government, one that outlaws abortion, in vitro fertilization, gay sex and fornication, that limits what is taught in science classes to views that are religiously correct, where the executive branch electronically spies on all citizens without oversight, and that controls expression for puritanical and political purpose, it won’t be because we have been taken over by the Islamic religious right, but because our own religious right has taken the reins of power.

  28. Ick of the East says

    Has everybody missed the funniest bit about this?

    Substitute Muslims for Jews, and the WND readership, to the last squishhead, would sing the praises of any man who repeated Hitler’s atrocities.

    They all use Hitler as a scary word, but fail to see that if they were living in Germany at that time, they would be seig heiling till their little arms fell off.

  29. idlemind says

    Hank,

    They may be getting noisier at the moment, but they’ve pretty much always been this bad. It’s just that through the magic of the innertubes, I mean internet, we can see their despotic fever dreams up close.

  30. says

    You hit the nail squarely on the head, Ick.

    These hypocrites don’t give a crap about these supposed victims of evolution, since they’re all going to be “left behind” anyway!

    These are the same people who raise a rat stink every time some artist portrays Adam and Eve as anything but white-skinned people. They toe the conventional line always, and cannot see themselves in context or recognize historical patterns repeating themselves.

    Hitler, without using the same words, drummed up anti-eugenics fear in persecuting the Jewish people, by portraying them as decadent elitists without scruples who were out to destroy the German people!

  31. jeffk says

    While I’m glad I’m enlightened enough to understand that evolution isn’t at fault in the case of Hitler, I think it’s important that everyone agree that it doesn’t even matter. Evolution, and atheism, could be the sources of every atrocity in the history of the world (ironically, of course, that honor actually goes to religion, but I digress), and it wouldn’t make them any less true.

  32. says

    I couldn’t even read the whole thing. In explaining the process of natural selection, Darwin did not advocate eugenics.

    Sometimes the lengths these people will go to in order to condemn evolution so they can get a figurative foot in the door for ID (which is the real motivation regardless of their primary argument when they attack science) still shocks even me. And I come from a family of them so I’ve pretty much seen it all.

  33. Brian Spence says

    I love how he quotes Ann Coulter then tries to sell her book in a link at the end. He uses her quotes like she’s a noted historian or something. Could you imagine if you defended yourself in an argument by bringing up Michael Moore???

  34. HP says

    I wish there was some tidy way to encapsulate Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, the German-American Bund, Republican isolationism, Republican opposition to the Lend-Lease Program, and conservative hatred of Winston Churchill every time some conservative brings up the corpse of Adolph Hitler. The historical fact is that in the late 1930s — even after the war began — American conservatives admired Fascism and opposed every effort to stop it.

    I mentioned all this once to a conservative who was kicking Zombie Hitler in the shins, and you know what he said? “Henry Ford was basically a Socialist.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

  35. says

    Their readers wouldn’t be that naive though.

    Careful. I think that might be like my experience with “No one could possibly stupid enough to believe that!”: Every time you say it, some new record-breaking idiot pops into existence. And begins spamming.

  36. hoxjock says

    You should post some of the sewage with full disclosure of names and email addresses. Give us the opportunity to offer them our data. I have a 200 page thesis that would make for a hefty batch of emails.

  37. BruceH says

    Hey, P.Z., if in that flood of sewage you find a particularly noxious turd, would you mind posting it up with commentary? That sort of thing is always good for a laugh. It is also illustrative of the sort of thing we are up against and could be instructive.

    Your blog, of course, but please consider the suggestion.

  38. Lago says

    I think the simplest thing to do is go to racist and ask them what they think of Darwin. Most every racist I know, is a strict young earth creationnist.

  39. Lago says

    Woops, I forgot to add another idea.

    How about we all work together to gather quotes from known racists on the web, and show their views on Darwin and evolution? I think the weight of the evidence would be rather telling.

  40. Torbjörn Larsson says

    They are still using Collins:
    “He calls evolution a “compelling” theory that never can be proven.”

    This seems to come from quotemining this:
    “COLLINS: Well, evolution is a theory. It’s a very compelling one. As somebody who studies DNA, the fact that we are 98.4 percent identical at the DNA level to a chimpanzee, it’s pretty hard to ignore the fact that when I am studying a particular gene, I can go to the mouse and find it’s the similar gene, and it’s 90 percent the same. It’s certainly compatible with the theory of evolution, although it will always be a theory that we cannot actually prove.” ( http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/transcripts/collins.html )

    But Collins also say:
    “Evolution is about as solid a theory as one will ever see.” ( http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/07/collins/index1.html )

    “What are the arguments in favor of evolution? Let me
    quickly describe two arguments. (1) The fossil record.
    Macroevolution has growing and compelling evidence to
    support it. Elephants, turtles, whales, birds often have
    been cited as species where transitional species have not
    been identified. That is no longer true. We have gained
    more in the fossil record in the last ten years than in almost
    the entire previous history of science. (2) The DNA evidence
    for evolution. I mentioned the ancient repeats we
    share with mice in the same location showing no conceivable
    evidence of function, diverging at a constant rate just
    as predicted by neutral evolution. One could only conclude
    that this is compelling evidence of a common ancestor
    or else that God has placed these functionless DNA
    fossils in the genome of all living organisms in order to test
    our faith. I do not find that second alternative very credible.
    After all God is the greatest scientist. Would he play
    this kind of game?

    Arguments against macroevolution, based on so-called
    gaps in the fossil records, are also profoundly weakened
    by the much more detailed and digital information revealed
    from the study of genomes. Outside of a time machine,
    Darwin could hardly have imagined a more powerful data
    set than comparative genomics to confirm his theory.”
    (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF9-03Collins.pdf#search=%22francis%20collins%20compelling%22 )

    It seems Collins picture is that there are compelling evidence, in fact “as solid a theory as one will ever see”, but there is no conclusive proof of any theories. It would be good if he explains himself for WorldNetDaily.

  41. commissarjs says

    Sometimes the lengths these people will go to in order to condemn evolution so they can get a figurative foot in the door for ID (which is the real motivation regardless of their primary argument when they attack science) still shocks even me.

    A wedge for a wedge issue?

    I can’t decide if the laughable dolts on this Hitler-Darwin farce are trying to perpetuate a “noble lie” in order to unite the people, if they’re lying hucksters out to steal the hard earned dollars from people looking for something to believe in, or if they are just batshit crazy.

    I also find it interesting that the same group of people who decry Hitler for his crimes against humanity hate the same groups of people that he did. First and foremost Adolf Hitler didn’t act alone. Millions of Lutherans and Catholics comprised the wermacht, the gestapo, and the SS. On this bloody rampage these “good” people of the lord helped fill many mass graves with the bodies of jews, homosexuals, communists, gypsies, and political opponents.

    The Indian River school district fiasco was just the latest example of US christian tolerance toward jews. Futhermore christian apocalypse mythology requires the destruction of almost the entire jewish race and Israel as a whole. It hasn’t even been a month since these same clowns were actively cheering for this destruction to begin.

    I couldn’t even begin to count the number of homosexuals assaulted and killed by those espousing the same propaganda spewed forth by the coral ridge ministries. Of course the reason I can’t count bodies is that the murder and assault of homosexuals only makes the news when it’s exceedingly horrific. Ann Coulter is associated with this program and just recently called Bill Clintion gay and Al Gore “a total fag”.

    The religious right is rife with murder fantasies involving both communists and their political opponents. It wasn’t long ago that Pat Robertson called for the murder of Hugo Chavez. Just look at Little Green Footballs, The Free Republic, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, Protein Wisdom, Ann Coulter, Stop the ACLU, or any other members of the racist freak show.

    But somehow Darwin = Hitler and Evolution = Evil. These people place no value in the truth.

  42. Mena says

    Hoo-weee, you should see the sewage in my mailbox now.
    Eh, give it a few days and they will be venting their complete and utter outrage over something else. The people who are so compelled to harass other people about their views seem to be addicted to the rush (more than they are committed to the issue) and react just as violently everything they are told is wrong.
    By the way, can the GOP be called the Neo-Know Nothing Party yet? Granted “know nothing” had other meanings then but it still fits

  43. quork says

    “Evolution, Darwin, Atheism = Hitler.

    But it says in Romans, 13:

    [1] Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
    [2] Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
    [3] For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
    [4] For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
    [5] Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

  44. says

    False Prophet: Problem is that the violence and intolerance is there from the begining. Just look at Paul’s letters or the Gospels. Yes, there’s some pacifism, etc. too, but the other stuff is not an abberation.

    Ick of the East: Based on the views about the rapture and other inanities that some of these folks spout, I suspect the antisemitism is simply buried slightly below the surface. Moreover, there are now prominent organizations that fight public displays of antisemitism and so I suspect that many simply want to avoid the confrontation and bad publicity.

    commissarjs: “I can’t decide if the laughable dolts on this Hitler-Darwin farce are trying to perpetuate a “noble lie” in order to unite the people, if they’re lying hucksters out to steal the hard earned dollars from people looking for something to believe in, or if they are just batshit crazy.”

    Yes. Slightly longer answer: all of them. There are some in each camp, no doubt, and certainly in some cases the last item goes along with one of the otehr two.

  45. naturalist says

    I am always incredulous that people living in this highly technological age(which most of fundies gladly participate in to spread their “gospel”) could be so incredibly delusional and ludicrous. I guess that it is their insistence on being certain and “right” that hinders any chance of critical thinking. G.W. Bush is a perfect example of this in his dogmatic obstinancy that the rest of the world must come around to his way of thinking!
    This will sound elitist, but fundamentalism obviously lowers or retards your emotional and intellectual maturity.

  46. T_U_T says

    This will sound elitist, but fundamentalism obviously lowers or retards your emotional and intellectual maturity.

    Replace fundamentalism with alcoholism. Does it sound elitist ? Obviously not. Why should the same statement about one addiction be elitist, and about the other not ?

  47. Millimeter Wave says

    It gets worse. It will continue to get worse.

    The trouble is, these cretins think, based on the alternative reality that they’ve created in which creationism is science, that they know what science is.

    This is where antiscience necessarily leads; you can’t just redefine science for one purpose (creationism) and stop there. This is also why one cannot ignore attacks on evolution just because one is not a biologist. Climate change, relativity and quantum mechanics are all on the list of things this crowd are arguing against today.

    Behold this piece of batshit from Renew America.

    Also Common Sense Science. I first stumbled on this after reading PZ’s commentary on the “Twin Cities Creation Science Association”‘s “Science Fair” which featured this stuff.

    Be afraid.

  48. Rey Fox says

    “you should see the sewage in my mailbox now.”
    Want to offere us some samples?

    I’d pass on that. By now, I find those screeds to be depressingly predictable. Maybe if one contains a real and/or somewhat novel whopper.

  49. George Cauldron says

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this kind of what happened to the Islamic world centuries ago? Once upon a time, the Islamic world were the leaders in science and they put Europe to shame. Then basically, the clergy started interfering in learning in a big way, and religious clerics started deciding what was permissible science and scholarship, and declaring that whatever wasn’t was heresy or blasphemy. Now the Islamic world is so far out of the international mainstream on science and learning it’s doubtful it’ll ever come back. It’s painfully easy to see that American Christianists want this country to go down precisely the same path. If that happens expect Europe, Canada and Asia to be the only places in the world where real science and learning survive.

  50. BlueIndependent says

    “Their readers wouldn’t be that naive though.”

    This has historically been a lethal assumption. Are you really willing to trust these people with such an allowance? These are the same people who argue for a completely unfettered and unregulated economic system, where the are no rules and only the fittest survive at all costs. Why should anyone assume they wouldn’t do the same in the marketplace of ideas? It’s obvious they’ve already taken this route, and they need to be confronted NOW and HARD.

    Conservatism has been beating their drum about socialism for 150 years. In fact any disagreeing viewpoint is now some form of socialism/communism, no matter what it is. It crescendoed during McCarthy’s time, but anyone with a shred of social instincts can feel it building up again. Whether yesterday’s conservative movement was this vile is debateable, but the sad fact is they can no longer control themselves due to the aforementioned success they’ve had using the assembly line form of rhetoric that, while not being the least bit accurate, is emotionally appealing in very banal ways.

    This is worsened by a Congress that is the least educated in American history, and a House of Representatives that is crawling with people that would just as soon throw people they don’t like in jail than debate them on the merits of a policy. These people got into office on sheer aggression and motivational disgust of systems they were told were useless. Of course, we know things like medicare and social security are not useless, but when the disagreeing party intentionally assails those ideas decade after decade, with no qualms about disregarding the positive facts for the existence of such programs, it’s no wonder people are used to a one word answer (usually a 4-letter word) to what they misperceive as a problem.

    Another contributor to their rampant disgust for anti-war opinions is the fact that we’ve been at war incessantly since the 60s. It’s only logical to think that after decades of being fed the same lines, people just default to the easy position, especially the ones that make them feel good about beating their chests for.

    Doing the right never has and never will be easy, and so that’s why we need to get our collective thinking asses in gear and fight them.

  51. says

    Is it possible we could extend Godwin’s Law to these assclowns? I think most of the public realizes that when people go for the Hitler comparison, their grasping at straws. Instead of Phase III of the Wedge, this should be the third time down for a drowning dogma. By creating noise we help that happen. Don’t stop writing letters to publishers, newspaper editors, politicians, scientists, and theologians expressing our raw disgust for this shiftless tactic.

  52. says

    I thought comments like htis from the article were striking:

    “We talk about the link between Darwin and Hitler, and in the middle ground, eugenics,” said Newcomb. “Darwin led to eugenics, which led directly to Hitler.”

    Striking because (firstly) the declaration is suspect at best; but such comments — there are others on abortion, for instance — totally overlook the bloody history that religion in general and Judaism, Christianity and Islam in particular have.

    After all, Catholicism led to the Crusades, which is every bit as much a “eugenics” program as anything the Nazis ever produced.

    Of course, they’re also overlooking the many Christians who spoke out in favor of Hitler…

  53. sammy says

    Kristine sayeth:

    HP, you should have said, “Yes–a National Socialist!” ;-)

    Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least its an ethos.

  54. George Cauldron says

    “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least its an ethos.”

    Shut the fuck up, Donny.

  55. T_U_T says

    Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least its an ethos.

    HEEELP ! the hitler zombie is upon us !

  56. Ichthyic says

    Hank –

    [quote]Kent Hovind is ahead of the pack on this aspect, of course. Golly, if I don’t just bust a gut laughing on the day he goes to federal prison, I might even write the guy a letter thanking him for all the years of entertainment, and his exhilarating final chapter. [/quote]

    I have just one word of caution for your jubilation, well a name actually:

    Jim Bakker.

    Don’t be surprised if after release, Hovind manages to play up his prison term as a case of being a martyr for “the cause”, and gets even more popular.

    Like a now famous comedian (Ron White) once said:

    “You can’t fix stupid”

  57. Greg Peterson says

    In George Steiner’s nifty little book “The Portage to San Cristobal of AH,” about a fantasy capture and trial of Hitler, when the previously silent Hitler finally speaks in his defense, he basically claims that everything he learned to do–the utter destruction, the genocide, the scorched earth–he learned at the feet of a rabi teaching him the Hebrew Bible. No one imagines that is anything but a clever bit of fictional irony, but would it shock anyone much if it turned out to be true? Steiner’s not wrong about the instructions on genocide in Bible’s Old Testament. Perhaps the brutality and suffering owes something to Moses, but it’s hard to think how it owes much to Darwin.

  58. says

    If that happens expect Europe, Canada and Asia to be the only places in the world where real science and learning survive.

    Are you assuming anything doing south of the Rio Grande isn’t real science, or just pretending it doesn’t exist?

  59. Graculus says

    Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least its an ethos.

    HEEELP ! the hitler zombie is upon us !

    Posted by: T_U_T

    Psssttt… it’s a quote from The Big Lebowski… a comedy. No need to call Orac.

  60. Pierce R. Butler says

    Here’s the latest on the forthcoming broadcast on Adolf Darwin:

    Coral Ridge Ministries Answers Anti-Defamation League Blast Against New Darwin-Hitler TV Special
    FORT LAUDERDALE, Aug. 22 /Christian Newswire/ — Coral Ridge Ministries issued a call today for “more history and less hysteria” in response to harsh, unfounded Anti-Defamation League accusations leveled against a new Coral Ridge Ministries produced television special linking Charles Darwin to Adolf Hitler.
    The special, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, which airs August 26 and 27 nationwide features historians and scholars who connect the dots between Hitler and the ideas penned by Darwin in his On the Origin of Species and later works.
    When ADL National Director Abe Foxman, who has not viewed our television program, calls it “twisted” and asserts that “Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people,” he ignores the historical fact that Adolf Hitler was an evolutionist.
    “Among German historians, there’s really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist,” according to historian Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler and a featured guest on the Coral Ridge Ministries television special. “He clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas,” said Weikart.
    British evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith wrote in the 1940s: “The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist. He has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.”
    Even leading evolutionist Niles Eldredge freely admits the link between Darwin and Hitler. Eldredge, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has written that “social Darwinism,” which he regards as an illegitimate offspring of Darwin’s theory, “has given us the eugenics movement and some of its darker outgrowths, such as the genocidal practices of the Nazis in World War II- where eugenics was invoked as a scientific rationale to go along with whatever other ‘reasons’ Hitler and his fellow Nazis had for the Holocaust.”
    But evolution was not incidental to Hitler’s thought. It was a “central aspect of his worldview,” according to Weikart, a leading scholar on the Darwin-Hitler nexus.
    “It drove pretty much everything that he did. It was not just a peripheral part of his ideology.”
    The argument for evolution’s impact on Hitler is strengthened by the fact that Darwinian thought heavily influenced Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hitler was hardly alone in his racist ideas fueled by Darwin and his intellectual progeny, who include Ernst Haeckel and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics which was a critical component of the Nazi killing machine. Hitler, according to Weikart, “was drawing on what many other scholars, biologists, and geneticists in Germany were preaching and teaching in the early twentieth century.”
    Dr. D. James Kennedy, President of Coral Ridge Ministries and host of Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, stated, “We have had nearly 150 years of the theory of Darwinian evolution. And what has it brought us- whether Darwin intended it or not? Millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed ‘inferior’‚ the devaluing of human life, and increasing hopelessness. Darwin’s legacy has been deadly indeed.”
    Coral Ridge Ministries has also published a companion book to the television special, Evolution’s Fatal Fruit: How Darwin’s Tree of Life Brought Death to Millions, which examines the social consequences of Darwin’s theory. Written by Tom DeRosa, Executive Director of the Creation Studies Institute (an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries), the book explains how Hitler tried to use genocide to speed up evolution and reveals how the American eugenics movement is likewise indebted to Darwin.
    To request review copies, or interviews with Dr. Kennedy, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy producers Jerry Newcombe and John Rabe, or Evolution’s Fatal Fruit author Tom DeRosa, please contact John Aman at xxx…
    Coral Ridge Ministries is a Christian broadcasting organization with radio and television programming that reaches into 200 nations.

    Less hysteria my fuzzy butt.

  61. Kayla says

    Climate change, relativity and quantum mechanics are all on the list of things this crowd are arguing against today.

    From what I’ve seen, they’re pretty much opposed to everything since Newton, except perhaps germ theory. And that’s not even counting the geocentists.

  62. JohnnieCanuck says

    Stanton’s comment appears to be in reference to the 2:36 post, as the URLs from 2:37 work for me.

    I am afraid. The CSS site especially, is professional in appearance. It all starts to fall apart as you delve deeper. Someone is investing a lot of effort to deceive as many people about science as they can. Just like all the person-years of effort put in to spreading religion. Not just a waste, but a counter productive waste. These people are dragging our future into their past.

  63. says

    Huh? I may have a kinda outside view of US politics (or poo litics, as it may be), but I was under the distinct impression that the screed host’s name was WorldNutDaily :-)

    – JS

  64. says

    Oh, so CSS is actually a cretinist front. For a while I thought they were an elaborately crafted joke, like dhmo.org. They had this really neat deriviation of an alternative to SpecRel. It actually took me a while to figure out where the logic broke down. But it looks like they removed it.

    The site is still good for laughs, though. I looked at one of their papers, and in the very first equation, they get the sign wrong. As Brayton over at Dispatches usually says: Bzzt, thank you for playing.

    – JS

  65. Millimeter Wave says

    Oh, so CSS is actually a cretinist front. For a while I thought they were an elaborately crafted joke, like dhmo.org. They had this really neat deriviation of an alternative to SpecRel. It actually took me a while to figure out where the logic broke down. But it looks like they removed it.

    As I mentioned earlier, I actually found the site after seeing something on the “Twin Cities Creation Science Association” web site about a project entered in their “science fair” revolving around the “spinning ring model of the atom”. A bit of googling led me to the CSS website. I found the whole thing quite horrifying; like you say, the whole thing is riddled with trivial mathematical errors, and yet it’s being taught to children as “science”. Yikes.

  66. David Harmon says

    While I am not, and have never been, a Christian, I do feel compelled to point out that they hardly invented racism, anti-Semitism, or genocide. All of those are derived directly from the common theme of tribalism, which dates back to, well, before there were any dates. ;-)

    Check out, for example, how the Egyptian god-kings treated their Nubian subjects, how the pagan Vikings laid waste to their neighbors, or how the Indian caste system directly links race and social status. For that matter, my bet is that the Neanderthals died at the hands of our own ancestors.

    Remember also that there was slavery for millennia before Europeans conquered Africa. One of the original reasons for practicing slavery, was specifically as an alternative to genocide. That is, “what do we do with these captives of war?”

    However bad thinks may look now, the modern world is a vast improvement over any prior period, because we’ve learned a lot about how to be civilized. But all of that is exactly what the neocons and fundamentalists want to destroy, precisely because it doesn’t let them go out and slaughter neighboring tribes like “God told them to”. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to destroy something than to create it….