The dark history of the shameful movement underpinning the biggest human atrocities of the 20th century was powerfully outlined by Ben Stein in his important documentary which is a must-see for anyone serious about science, about faith, and about freedom. Did I leave anybody out?Stein followed the scientific community's lockstep loyalty to Darwinism backwards in time, and ended up at the Nazi gas chambers, which first killed disabled people. They were just practicing Darwinism, by speeding up the process of natural selection, formerly called survival of the fittest, by eliminating "useless eaters". Society bought into this toxic mentality because it came from doctors and scientists.
Stein followed the eugenicist trail to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who worked overtime to rid the world of people like my immigrant grandparents. While she was ostensibly offering women choice, secretly she was seeking to rid American society of the 'unfit'. More Darwinism in action. We are still in the midst of the nightmare of Sanger's legacy; 46 million Americans have died of abortion, far surpassing the darkest dreams of Hitler and Stalin together.
Ben Stein did us the invaluable favor of holding a spotlight of truth on some of society's darkest secrets, and those valiant scientists who have dared to reveal them to academia. They were expelled from their positions and blacklisted from obtaining further employment. Oxbridge and Ivy League graduates who have produced world renowned work. They mentioned Intelligent Design once and they were gone. Nothing but strict Darwinism will be tolerated by academics. What happened to scientific inquiry and academic freedom?
Stein then exposed the utterly laughable theories of scientists who would rather make up grotesque fairy tales about Extra Terrestrials coming to earth and planting "human seeds" from which we emerged, to life's beginnings as molecules bumping together as they "rode the backs of crystals".
With his trademark aplomb and vintage film clips adding humor and highlighting the outrageous statements captured by his camera, Ben Stein has created a classic which will one day be appreciated, as the film that drew society bent on self-destruction, back from the precipice.
If it's not too late.
If we continue to allow ourselves to be dominated by dogmatically atheistic scientists whose agenda blinds them to the fact that evolution is a 150 year old theory which has NOT withstood scientific advances, we will find ourselves in a totalitarian state. The scientists themselves admitted on camera that they wish to destroy the power religion holds on culture, and relegate it to an innocuous hobby, like knitting.
Global warming and political correctness will have replaced the Judeo-Christian belief in the dignity of man, the pinnacle and master of God's creation. We will find ourselves enslaved to a materialistic ideology. Our very right to exist will be determined by what the powerful consider a worthwhile contribution to society, against our carbon footprint.
Many of us may not make the cut.
Terri Schiavo didn't.
46 million unborn Americans didn't.
See the trailer here.
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13 comments:
Rome has stated that evolution isn't contrary to what the Church teaches so I do not understand why you are taking the position you are.
Or are you one of those Catholics that picks and chooses which portion of the religion you follow based on your "feelings" and "whims"?
The Church doesn't teach evolution, and even if certain aspects of the theory natural selection were to be accepted, the idea of the Vatican accepting those fantasy-based tales of human origins is laughable.
Certainly the Holy Father has given us ample evidence of his rejection of moral relativsim, secularism and materialism which are the outgrowth of Darwinism. Pope Benedict said at the Youth Rally at Dunwoodie, "My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers; its influence grew – infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion – before it was fully recognized for the monster it was. It banished God and thus became impervious to anything true and good."
Sounds like the Holy Father rejects the secularism of Darwin.
It is one thing for the Church to reject "moral relativism, secularism and materialism which are the outgrowth of Darwinism." It is quite another to say that the Church rejects evolution. The Church accepts any and all science that reveals the truth without denying God's primacy and one could certainly say that there is basis for accepting many aspects of evolution.
More specifically, as Catholic Answers succinctly sums up for us:Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.
Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.
While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.
Although I also reject moral relativism and many other philosophical developments that have been drawn from evolutionary theory, I see no reason to throw out the baby with the bath water. God may act in any way that seems good to Him and it may well have been that evolution is what he used to create us. Let us be clear about what is being criticized here.
They were just practicing Darwinism, by speeding up the process of natural selection, formerly called survival of the fittest, by eliminating "useless eaters". Society bought into this toxic mentality because it came from doctors and scientists.
The error you are committing, and it is a common error among Creationists, is summed up here in this misrepresentation of Darwinian evolution. It is not survival of the fittest but survival of the fit, and it cannot be sped up through culling. Genetic diversity is beneficial to species survival, but genetic homogeneity is not. If environmental factors change, what was previously a disadvantage may become an advantage, and those who have the advantage will then be more fit, whereas they may have been less fit previously. If the changes are drastic enough, less fit genetic lines may be wiped out. Hence, for population survival, genetic diversity is preferred because in the face of dramatic environmental changes, a diverse population is more likely to produce surviving offspring. This is contrary to eugenicism, which seeks genetic homogeneity. The eugenecists--who were indeed, many of them, respected scientists--misunderstood evolution, partly because of lack of data, partly through their own fault.
Stein could have said much more about Darwinians and Eugenics: Darwinism-Eugenics.
Since there is absolutely nothing in Darwin's writings or Evolutionary Biology that called for the murder of unfit, how exactly is their any clear link betweent the two? Mankind has been breeding, slaughtering, raising and hunting animals for millenia, so isn't breeding and slaughtering humans a logical if sick step? I think there is a better link between Vatican indifference to the Holocaust, a millenium of Catholic anti-semtism to both Holocausts than Darwin, so you are in the postition of the pot calling the kettle black. I remember that the bullies who tormented me in school about Hitler and pushed me around and said all Jews should die, were of impeccable Catholic backgrounds and ignorant in Evolutionary Science. But I guess the one of the beauties of being Catholic is the ability to indulge in self righteous hypocrisy and evil under some self deluded aura of godliness, ala the Mafia or the Fascisti.
Actually, there is very good evidence that the Vatican was not at all indifferent to the Holocaust, with the Nazi regime documenting watching the Pope because he was one of the few public figures of the time to speak out against them. And, though he never directly named them, everyone (including the Nazis) knew quite well what he was talking about. The Vatican sheltered many Jewish people when roundups were happening, etc. In fact, it was due to the Pope's strong Christian witness that the chief rabbi of Rome felt prompted to investigate whether or not Jesus fulfilled the ancient prophecies. He wound up becoming Catholic.
So I think there is good evidence for saying that, although factual evidence may be ignored, such as by the shameful Catholic ignoramuses who bullied you, there is never any shortage of people who are willing to expound on matters based on the connections they have made and consider to be "logical." This clearly is the case among those who linked Darwinism and Eugenics, which was considered a legitimate philosophical construct at the time it was being embraced by the intellectuals of the time.
if the Church was so concerned about the Holocaust, why didn't they tell the world the news and then call the war against the Nazis a just war? The Nazis occupied Rome for a year so if the Church was so bad ass about it's (belated) love for Jews and opposition to Nazism, why didn't the Nazis move against the Vatican? Compare that to Warsaw in the same time frame. Don't forgtet, like in the Ukraine and Hungary as well as elsewhere, Hitler's minions were aided eagerly by Jew hating Catholics and orthodox Christians.
Darwin and evolution are not Eugneics and Eugenics was not the prime mover for the Holocaust, it was anti-Semitiam. As far as your patronizing little anecdote about the chief Rabbi converting to Catholicism, well it's a shame more people don't convert away from Catholicism to Judaism, especially after witnessing the Church's failure to little more than offer scattered refuge to the Jews. Or the many brutal moral lapses of Catholics in the heartland of Catholicism?
Don't forget that many of the
authoritarian regimes at that time in Europe: Spain, Vichy France, Croatia, the old Polish regime, Hungary, the Ukranian nationalistic ones were Catholic, fascist and intensely anti-Semitic. By I guess those Ukranians who murdered about 10% of the Jewish population there during the Russian Civil War did it out of their concepts of eugneics and Darwinism.
I think the connection between Evolution and the Holocaust is tenuous at best, and both Ben Stein and Leticia are full of crap. Ben Stein is a third rate intellect and that movie is already heading for the Wal MArt bargain bin. Why not indict the people who made machine guns, chemists, the railway innovators and operators for the Holocaust too? After all, were not those Sciences and technologies involved too? Darwin talked about SPECIES in NATURE, not RACES in CIVILIZED SOCIETY. People understood breeding and heredity long before any Scientists told them: "Mate fast stallion with fast mare for more fast horses. Kill off the runts of the litter to keep the bloodline strong. Smart man marries smart woman and has smart kids."
Okay, so take your anti-intellectual, phony (un)holier than thou spiel and cram it! Take a good look at yourselves in the mirror, and while you are doing that, don't forget it was the good old Italian Fascists, in the heart of Catholic Italy, who got the ball rolling for Hitler and the rest. Hitler was Catholic too. So let's make a movie about Catholicism's link to the Holocaust instead so all the theo-con twits will have a chance to go ballistic and rave about Jewish and Red oppression. Just like those evil Hollywoood Jews did to blessed Mel Gibson, who of course was no anti-Semite. Give me a break, even the last two Popes acknowledged the link between Catholica and other Christian (remember Luther?)anti-semitism and the Holocaust.
Even John Cornwell, author of Hitler's Pope, has modified his views somewhat ... "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany."
Perhaps he has read some of the information that you have not encountered. You may wish to read a book published in 2005 by Rabbi David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler's Pope.
This is a well-researched piece from a nonCatholic who has no interest other than the truth. You may be interested to see what he has to say.
I never said the Vatican was complicit in the Holocaust, but from June 4 1944 to the end of the War, Rome was occupied by American and British forces. Even it it was still occupied by Nazis, they still could have done more. For instance I don't hold Pope Benedict's sevice in Hitler Jugend against him, and since he was in diapers when Hitler took over, it wasn't his job to oppose them. But I also categorically refuse to call him or his father anti-Nazi either, since they didn't even write any anti Nazi graffiti on the bathroom stalls. Like all those other good Christians in Germany, they did the Reich's bidding. It was all those ordinary people just doing their jobs efficiently that made Germany work. Like I said earlier, the millions of anti-Semitic Catholics and orthodox Christians in Europe who helped out the Nazis in the Final Solution didn't hate the Jews because they were taught(hah) about the "Origins of Species" in high school; if they went to school at all.
I realize there is a noxious group of neocon Jews who feel they must brownnose theocon. Well, if those Christians impress you so much, convert!
Notice how I played the ball back into your court, instead of parroting last month's theocon line about Darwin = Auschwitz, you have some ugly history of your own to explain away. I guess I made my point.
I notice that you are conveniently ignoring the many Catholics who were killed in the camps as well as the Jewish victims. They were by no means as numerous but were still there alongside their fellow man.
I cannot deny that Catholics and Christians have committed atrocious crimes in the name of religion throughout history. However, the Church does not claim to be a home for saints but a hospital for sinners, as I believe it is Peter Kreeft who says this.
There are good and bad in any group of people of any religion. Which is why recent popes especially, as you noted, have gone out of their way to apologize and atone for the sins of their flock of the past. However, I also note that this apology is unaccepted by you as there is such anger remaining. I am very sorry for whatever has happened, whether in history or personally to you to generate such feelings. All I can do is to apologize and keep you in my prayers for healing and God's grace.
If you read back over my comments you will notice that I have not been commenting on the Darwin angle ... therefore your quarrel in that area is not mine to deal with as I did not generate the post or those comments. :-)
Jule,
Yes Catholics died in the camps, but not because they were just Catholics, or Hitler would have been there too. My point, which no one here can refute, is that the link Between Darwin and the Holocaust is as tenuous as the link Between Christain Anti-semitism and the Holocaust is strong. So when I read some sniggering theocon sing praises of hosannas to this dreck of a movie, my answer to him is "Take a good look in the mirror, hypocrite! Where were all the godly people in the underground?" As far as the oppression of "Big Science" against ID people, cry me a river for that is fatuous right wing PC myth making at it's finest.
As far as crackpot Eugenicists go, the people who would adapt the "morals" of nature to human society are morally dumb, to be charitable. But it didn't take Scientists to teach people how to breed or hunt. The Nazi Party anti-Semitism or Final Solution was not something that was arrived at by Scientific method. Neither Hitler, his main henchmen, nor the founder of the party were scientists. That doesn't mean that many Scientists were evil and attracted to Nazism and well as Communism. No one ever said that Science was to be the whole of life or Scientists were above the law.
Oh, by the way, the last violent pogrom in Europe was in Catholic Poland by Catholics in 1946, where these Catholics murdered Holocaust survivors trying to reclaim their homes. But I'm sure that had something to do with the Evolution class in their school, not the ugliness handed down through the centuries in their religious background.
But I don't hold Christianity responsible for the Holocaust either. These people, Nazis and Christians, were not acting according to Christian principles. But if Science has a problem with ethics, so does religion. And being smug and condemnatory about legit Science practiced honestly is not Christian or honest. But your patronizing attitude guarantees my reciprocal contempt. I don't want or need your prayers, I have done nothing wrong nor need your guidance and aid. When people like you say they are going to pray for someone they disagree, that is the height of patronizing smugness. I have not insulted you, but simply pointed out some ugly truths about your Church's history,
I truly meant only the best but clearly am falling short.
I'd say "peace be with you" but fear to offer offense yet again as nothing I can say is going to be good enough.
Signing off ...
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