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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Objections to evolution | 12/15 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00 | kb-cron |
In 1917, Vernon Kellogg published Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in France and Belgium, which asserted that German intellectuals were totally committed to might-makes-right due to "whole-hearted acceptance of the worst of Neo-Darwinism, the Allmacht of natural selection applied rigorously to human life and society and Kultur." This strongly influenced the politician William Jennings Bryan, who saw Darwinism as a moral threat to America and campaigned against evolutionary theory; his campaign culminated in the Scopes Trial, which effectively prevented teaching of evolution in most public schools until the 1960s. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote August 8, 2005, in NPR's Taking Issue essay series, that "Debates over education, abortion, environmentalism, homosexuality and a host of other issues are really debates about the origin — and thus the meaning — of human life. ...evolutionary theory stands at the base of moral relativism and the rejection of traditional morality." Henry M. Morris, engineering professor and founder of the Creation Research Society and the Institute of Creation Research, claims that evolution was part of a pagan religion that emerged after the Tower of Babel, was part of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies, and was responsible for everything from war to pornography to the breakup of the nuclear family. He has also claimed that perceived social ills like crime, teenage pregnancies, homosexuality, abortion, immorality, wars, and genocide are caused by a belief in evolution. Pastor D. James Kennedy of The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and Coral Ridge Ministries claims that Darwin was responsible for Adolf Hitler's atrocities. In Kennedy's documentary and the accompanying pamphlet with the same title, Darwin's Deadly Legacy, Kennedy states that "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler." In his efforts to expose the "harmful effects that evolution is still having on our nation, our children, and our world," Kennedy also states that, "We have had 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, increasing hopelessness." The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture fellow Richard Weikart has made similar claims, as have other creationists. The claim was central to the documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) promoting intelligent design creationism. The Anti-Defamation League describes such claims as outrageous misuse of the Holocaust and its imagery, and as trivializing the "...many complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry. Hitler did not need Darwin or evolution to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people, and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness. Moreover, anti-Semitism existed long before Darwin ever wrote a word." Young Earth creationist Kent Hovind blames a long list of social ills on evolution, including communism, socialism, World War I, World War II, racism, the Holocaust, Stalin's war crimes, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot's Killing Fields, the increase in crime and unwed mothers. Hovind's son Eric Hovind claims that evolution is responsible for tattoos, body piercing, premarital sex, unwed births, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), divorce, and child abuse. Such accusations are counterfactual, and there is evidence that the opposite seems to be the case. A study published by the author and illustrator Gregory S. Paul found that religious beliefs, including belief in creationism and disbelief in evolution, are positively correlated with social ills like crime. The Barna Group surveys find that Christians and non-Christians in the U.S. have similar divorce rates, and the highest divorce rates in the U.S. are among Baptists and Pentecostals, both sects which reject evolution and embrace creationism. Michael Shermer argued in Scientific American in October 2006 that evolution supports concepts like family values, avoiding lies, fidelity, moral codes and the rule of law. He goes on to suggest that evolution gives more support to the notion of an omnipotent creator, rather than a tinkerer with limitations based on a human model, the more common image subscribed to by creationists. Careful analysis of the creationist charges that evolution has led to moral relativism and the Holocaust yields the conclusion that these charges appear to be highly suspect. Such analyses conclude that the origins of the Holocaust are more likely to be found in historical Christian antisemitism than in evolution. Evolution has been used to justify Social Darwinism, the exploitation of so-called "lesser breeds without the law" by "superior races", particularly in the nineteenth century. Typically strong European nations that had successfully expanded their empires could be said to have "survived" in the struggle for dominance. With this attitude, Europeans except for Christian missionaries rarely adopted any customs and languages of local people under their empires. Creationists have frequently maintained that Social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature, since the theory of natural selection is merely intended as a description of a biological phenomenon and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon is good or that it ought to be used as a moral guide in human society.
=== Atheism ===