Richard Weikart

Richard Weikart is an associate professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus and is a fellow for the Discovery Institute. He is a controversial figure for his writings, and attacks on evolutionary theory.

He received a bachelor's degree in 1980 from Texas Christian University, an master's from Texas Christian University in 1989, and a doctorate from University of Iowa in 1994.[1]

Controversy and criticism

Weikart's 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler, Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany was funded mostly by the Discovery Institute as part of the wedge strategy.[2] This strategy aims to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."[3] As the book cover of "From Darwin to Hitler" explains, Weikart presents evolution as "The philosophy that fueled German militarism and Hitlerism is taught as fact in every American public school, with no disagreement allowed. Every parent ought to know this story, which Weikart persuasively explains."[4] In The Journal of Modern History (March 2006) Ann Taylor Allen, a professor of history at the University of Louisville explained that Weikart's talk about "Darwinism" is not based on any careful reading of Darwin himself but on vague ideas by a variety of people who presented themselves as "Darwinian." Moreover, fundamental elements of Nazism like anti-Semitism cannot be attributed to Darwinism since it predates evolutionary theory. Allen concluded, ""This picture of the Holocaust as the outcome of a 'culture war' between religion and science leads to serious distortions on both sides. The 'Judeo-Christian' worldview is unproblematically associated here with many beliefs--such as opposition to birth control, legalized abortion, and assisted suicide--that many believing Christians and Jews would reject. And 'Darwinism' is equated with a hodgepodge of ideas about race, politics, and social issues. If all these ideas were to fall into well-deserved obsolescence, this would in no way detract from the validity of Darwin's contributions to modern biological science. Neither religion nor science is well served by this oversimplified view of their complex history."

Weikart's thesis

Ending the "Conclusion" of From Darwin to Hitler, Weikart writes:

Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism, especially in its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations, neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world's greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy. Darwinism - or at least some naturalistic interpretation of darwinism - succeeded in turning morality on its head.

For Weikart, Darwinism implied a refoundation of ethics, from a transcendental, divinely ordained ethics with humans created specially in the image of God, to an immanent, historically given ethics with humans being mere animals, and ethics being whatever furthered evolution. Weikart sees this as a devaluation of human life, since only life that furthers evolution becomes of value.

Charles Darwin didn't break with Christian ethics, operating with social instincs such as sympathy (corresponding with 'love thy neighbor'), but Darwin did not devalue humans. Rather his point was, not that humans are like animals, but that animals are like humans. Also Hitler mentions in Mein Kampf the low morality among his contemporary Germans, in particular the egoism and the low sense of Duty. Hitler's plan was not the evolution of any new race but a "roll-back" to the original "Aryan" race of the Age of Migration and the early First Reich. Therefore, it would seem that Weikart's thesis does not hold.

Works

• The Myth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1997.
• Socialist Darwinism: Evolution in German Socialist Thought from Marx to Bernstein. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1999.
• From Darwin to Hitler, Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany. Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.

See also

• Wedge strategy
• Discovery Institute
• Center for Science and Culture (part of the Discovery Institute)

Links

• Richard Weikart Home page
• Discovery Intitute profile of Richard Weikart