Richard Weikart

Richard Weikart
Born	July 1958 USA
Occupation	Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus
Known for	Historian of modern Germany, Advocate of intelligent design
Spouse	Lisa Weikart
Children	Joy, John, Joseph, Miriam, Christine, Hannah, and Sarah
Website	csustan.edu/History/Faculty/Weikart/

Richard Weikart (born July 1958) is head of department of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and is a senior fellow for the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute. In 1997 he joined the editorial board of the Access Research Network's Origins & Design Journal. Weikart's work focuses on the impact of evolution, which he and the Discovery Institute term Darwinism, on social thought, ethics and morality. His work and conclusions are controversial.

He received a bachelor's degree in 1980 from Texas Christian University, a master's from Texas Christian University in 1989, and a doctorate in history from University of Iowa in 1994. He is married to Lisa Weikart with seven children.

Work and publications

As a Christian in the 1970s, Weikart began studying intellectual history on the belief "that much modern thought had debased humanity." Weikart is the author of three books, the first being The Myth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Is His Theology Evangelical? about the relationship of the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a founding member of the Confessing Church, who was hanged for his involvement in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler) to Evangelicalism. Weikart's second book is Socialist Darwinism: Evolution in German Socialist Thought from Marx to Bernstein, which contains work from his dissertation. The book argues that Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, August Bebel, Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein "biologized" social theory for a "scientifically grounded socialist theory." His third book, From Darwin to Hitler has been widely criticized by the academic community, but promoted by Christian creationists (see below). He is currently working , Hitler's Ethic, a book about Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs. According to Denyse O'Leary, Hitler's Ethic, which Weikart says "will demonstrate that evolutionary ethics was a central feature of Hitler's ideology."

Weikart's other publications include two book chapters, eight journal articles, eight encyclopedia articles, and thirty-six book reviews.

From Darwin to Hitler

Weikart is best known for his 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany. The Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, "provided crucial funding" for the book's research. Prominent historian and critic of the Intelligent design movement, Barbara Forest, states that the book is tied to the DI's 'wedge strategy' of attacking Darwinian science as morally corrupting. 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."

In 2008, he appeared in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a pro-Intelligent design movie, which among other claims, strongly implies that Charles Darwin's ideas led to Adolf Hitler's atrocities. In The Modesto Bee, Bret Carroll, Weikart's colleague in the Stanislaus history department, wrote "That 'intelligent design' is not a scientific theory" and the Expelled movie "misuses Weikart's research by mistakenly implying that Darwin led inevitably to Hitler. In fact, scientific theories, even those like Darwin's that address organic life, are morally neutral." He also appears in Coral Ridge Ministries' 2006 creationist film "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" in which Weikart claims "Darwinian ideology is the core" of Nazism and D. James Kennedy, therefore, concludes "No Darwin, no Hitler." In addition, Creation Ministries International cites Weikart as "reinforcing the Darwin–Hitler connection." In 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.

In Weikart's book he states:

Darwin clearly believed that the struggle for existence among humans would result in racial extermination. In Descent of Man he asserted, "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."

According to talk.origins, this is a common creationist quote mine. In a debate with Weikart in May 2008, Hector Avalos said that the quote is often "misrepresented" in creationist literature, and that Darwin was reporting and criticizing the extermination of people at a time of colonial expansion, rather than promoting it. In the passage "there is nothing in Darwin's words to support (and much in his life to contradict) any claim that Darwin wanted the "lower" or "savage races" to be exterminated. He was merely noting what appeared to him to be factual, based in no small part on the evidence of a European binge of imperialism and colonial conquest during his lifetime." Darwin's passage, in full context, reads:

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Academic reception

The academic community has been critical of the book. Andrew Zimmerman, a professor of German history, was critical in his review in the American Historical Review, writing "Weikart presents an image of Darwinism at once both too narrow and too broad." Zimmerman wrote, "The German Darwinians who are the focus of the book appear only as advocates of eugenics, racism, and imperialism, although presumably these policies were informed by a broader intellectual project. At the same time, German anthropologists, who opposed Darwinism before the turn of the century (as a doctrine possessing no more empirical foundation than revealed religion does), are lumped with Darwinists, since these anthropologists also supported imperialism and racist hierarchies." Weikart replied to Zimmerman's criticism to which Zimmerman offered a rebuttal saying Weikart "distorts the history of Darwinism and anti-Darwinism in Germany in ways that reflect theocratic agendas in present-day American politics." Weikart has written some responses to reviews on his webpage.

Nils Roll-Hansen, historian and philosopher of 19th and 20th century biology at University of Oslo, also reviewed the work and was critical of it in a review published by Isis calling it "selective" and containing "insufficient attention to historical change-leaving out political, social, and economic factors as well as the role of new knowledge in genetics-make his overall argument unconvincing." In addition, Hector Avalos, a professor of Religious Studies, wrote an essay "exposing the historical flaws found in the work of Weikart" and argued "that the defense of genocide, infanticide and "eugenics" by creationists actually has a very venerable and lengthy tradition that precedes Darwin." Sander Gliboff, professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, criticized the work saying "It is dismaying to see such opinions being passed off as results of scholarly research." Jonathan Judaken, professor of History at University of Memphis, wrote that while it is a "significant study," he "fails to follow the rich nuances of the discourse/practices and institutions that have preoccupied the contemporary generation of intellectual historians, who have paid attention to the continuities and ruptures within systems of thought. So his presentation of racism, for example, reiterates a rationale that does not stand up to the critical scrutiny of intellectual history." Larry Arnhart, a professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University wrote "Weikart doesn't actually show any direct connection between Darwin and Hitler. In fact, Weikart has responded to my criticisms by admitting that the title of his book is misleading, since he cannot show any direct link between Darwin's ideas and Hitler's Nazism." In addition, Robert Richards, historian of Darwin and eugenics at University of Chicago, wrote "It can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis."

In The Journal of Modern History, Ann Taylor Allen, a professor of German history at the University of Louisville, reviewed Weikart's book. She 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.

Besides the academic criticisms, Weikart was criticized by Jeff Schloss, Professor at Westmont College and former Discovery Institute fellow, in the Christian American Scientific Affiliation's publication regarding the Expelled film. Schloss wrote that the "ideas that are attributed to Darwin (such as natural selection makes might right in social policy) were actually not advocated but repudiated by Darwin and his immediate colleagues." Weikart wrote a response.

Bibliography

• Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in August 2009.
• The Myth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Is His Theology Evangelical? San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1997. ISBN 1573091499
• 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. ISBN 1403965021
• "Darwin and the Nazis," The American Spectator, April 16, 2008

See also

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

External links

• Richard Weikart Home page
• Profile of Richard Weikart from the Center for Science and Culture
• Creationists for Genocide, an essay critical of Weikart's thesis, by Hector Avalos (Professor of Religious Studies, Iowa State University)
• Avalos and Weikart debate (audio)