A yet-to-be broadcast television special created by Coral Ridge Ministries has been targeted for criticism by the Anti-Defamation League.
 The results of Darwin’s theories? |
Just one day after bloggers took their shots at “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy”, which features more than a dozen experts in various fields talking about the connections between Darwin’s theories, eugenics, Hitler and abortion, ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman issued a statement.
“This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.”
Kennedy, an author and Christian broadcaster, had just announced the inquiry into Darwin’s “chilling” social impact, a production set to air nationwide on Aug. 26-27 on “The Coral Ridge Hour.”
Then the comments started appearing on the Pharyngula website, among others, offering stinging criticism of those on the show.
One of those targeted was Human Genome Project Director Francis Collins, whose book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” was published only a few months ago.
“I have no idea what role Collins is going to play in this dishonest piece of trash, but I hope he is properly ashamed of being associated with it,” one critic said. “Unfortunately, we’re going to have to watch it to find out.”
Collins explained that he had been interviewed by Coral Ridge about his book, and the taping was inserted into the program without his advance knowledge.
Then came Foxman’s criticism.
“It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of ‘Christian Supremacists’ who seek to ‘reclaim America for Christ’ and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law,” he said.
Coral Ridge responded with a call for “more history and less hysteria.”
“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,” the ministry group said.
“Among German historians, there’s really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist,” said historian Richard Weikart, author of “From Darwin to Hitler” and a guest on the television special.
“The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist. He has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution,” said British evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith in the 1940s.
Even Niles Eldredge, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said there’s a link.
“Social Darwinism,” he wrote, “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.”
“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,’ said Kennedy.
The documentary was done to “show why evolution is a bad idea that should be discarded into the dustbin of history,” according to Wikipedia.
WorldNetDaily columnist Ann Coulter also was a target for the critics who have yet to see the program.
She has, the critic contended, “no knowledge of science or history,” and others on the program are nothing but “creationists.”
Producer Jerry Newcomb said the show 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.
Coulter, who also wrote the bestselling “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” said Hitler simply was taking Darwinism from the theoretical to the practical.
“He thought the Aryans were the fittest and he was just hurrying natural selection along,” she said.
Coral Ridge Ministries said it also has published a companion book to the television special, called “Evolution’s Fatal Fruit: How Darwin’s Tree of Life Brought Death to Millions.”
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