Re: ICR and its slurs

Bill Hamilton (hamilton@predator.cs.gmr.com)
Thu, 22 May 1997 16:30:56 -0400

At 4:13 PM -0400 5/22/97, Jim Bell wrote:
>It's not a question of causality. It's a question of justification (as you
>should have noted from Rich's wording, "which he justified..."). Just to
>clarify the question starkly, try this: Please justify your characterization
>of Hitler as a "murderous tyrant," without any appeal to a transcendent moral
>system.
>
>The main point remains: evolutionism can be a powerful, and logically
>compelling, justification for racism and genocide. It is not subject to moral
>correction, as, e.g., Christianity is. It can only borrow moral capital. It
>should acknowledge the debt.

I doubt that Hitler would have worried had he not had Darwinian theory to
serve as part of his justification for killing Jews. The Germans who
persecuted Jews in Luther's time needed no justification other than that
the Jews weren't impressed by Luther's German New Testament. Torquemada
needed no other justification than that the Jews wouldn't accept the
Catholic faith. The pogroms against Jews in the 19th and early 20th
centuries needed no other justification than that they stubbornly refused
to accept Christianity. In the Middle ages they were blamed for enriching
themselves by making loans at interest (when Christians were prohibited
from doing so), or for spreading the Black Plague (when they probably
retarded its spread because their hygene customs were healthier than those
of the Christians). Prejudice will kill first and pick up whatever
justification is handy.

Bill Hamilton
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William E. Hamilton, Jr, Ph.D. | Staff Research Engineer
Chassis and Vehicle Systems | General Motors R&D Center | Warren, MI
William_E._Hamilton@notes.gmr.com
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