What is the historical connection between Nazi racism and Darwinian evolution? Historian Richard Weikart explores the ideological origins of Nazi racism and its links to social Darwinism as he answers questions submitted from viewers around the world about his new book Darwinian Racism: How … » Go
To hear some tell it, Adolf Hitler was a Christian creationist who rejected Darwinian evolution. Award-winning historian Richard Weikart shows otherwise. According to Weikart, Darwinian evolution crucially influenced Hitler and the Nazis, and the Nazis zealously propagated evolutionary theory … » Go
Since the Enlightenment many secular ideologies have contributed to the devaluing of human life by arguing that human life is the product of chance processes. This has led to the erosion of the Judeo-Christian sanctity-of-life ethic, spawning the present “culture of death,” where many … » Go
Adolf Hitler is long dead. Nevertheless, his name is still invoked every day as a rhetorical smear. By drawing usually dubious connections to Hitler and the Holocaust, partisans charge their opponents with guilt by association. This unfortunate cultural twitch has even been canonized as … » Go
Is human life valuable, or are we just a cosmic accident? Does human life have any overarching purpose or meaning, or are we a meaningless blob of chemicals? Drawing on extensive historical and contemporary sources, CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Richard Weikart argues that, since the Enlightenment in the … » Go
For a man whom history can never forget, Adolf Hitler remains a persistent mystery on one front — his religious faith. Atheists tend to insist Hitler was a devout Christian. Christians counter that he was an atheist. And still others suggest that he was a practicing member of the occult. … » Go
Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Richard Weikart is a featured speaker at this year’s National Conference on Christian Apologetics, hosted in Charlotte, NC, on October 13-15. Come hear Dr. Weikart cover topics addressed in his new book, The Death of Humanity: Are Humans Intrinsically Valuable … » Go
This award-winning 14-minute documentary tells the little-known story of the influence of Social Darwinism on German militarism leading up to World War 1, including an exploration of the German military’s genocidal policies in Southwest Africa (modern Namibia). The video features the work of … » Go
Apparently my two books, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, and Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, caused Robert J. Richards of the University of Chicago to pop a fuse. His fifty-page essay, “Was Hitler a … » Go
Almost 500 Emory University faculty and students have expressed their dismay that their commencement speaker on Monday does not toe the ideological line when it comes to evolutionary biology. Yes — gasp — the renowned Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson does not believe in evolutionary … » Go
As I explained in two previous posts (here and here), in his book Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America (Cornell University Press, 2021), Carl Weinberg tries to take a minor feature of anti-evolutionism — the claim by some that communism is an evil fruit of … » Go
I have been reviewing Carl Weinberg’s recent book, Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America (Cornell University Press, 2021). (See my previous post here.) For the most part the book is not a diatribe (except for the Epilogue, which is a virulent rant … » Go
Carl Weinberg’s Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America (Cornell University Press, 2021) promises to be an explosive book exposing creationism as a tool of Christian fundamentalists to attack communism (as well as other progressive moral causes, especially … » Go
Scholars today are cranking out multitudes of books exposing the racism in our society. Three prominent examples from 2021 — published by academic presses — are Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism, Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, and J. Russell … » Go
A recent psychological study by Stylianos Syropoulos et al. published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that Americans who disbelieve in human evolution have higher levels of racism and prejudice (Stylianos Syropoulos, et al., “Bigotry and the … » Go
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 8 of Richard Weikart’s new book, How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. The term “alt-right” has come to have a pretty elastic meaning, with the popular news media applying it to all sorts of groups. … » Go
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 1 of Richard Weikart’s new book, How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. The official Nazi Party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, focused mostly on politics and current events and only rarely … » Go
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 1 of Richard Weikart’s new book, How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. When Darwin began compiling evidence for biological evolution in his notebooks in the late 1830s, he included human evolution in his … » Go
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 1 of Richard Weikart’s new book, How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. In 1881, toward the end of his life, Charles Darwin wrote to a colleague that the “more civilised so-called Caucasian races have … » Go
Last week Whoopi Goldberg said the Nazi Holocaust was not about race. The comment may seem wildly misguided. And it is. But she’s not alone. Her comment betrays a widespread misunderstanding about the history of racism. Her comment probably springs in part from confusion about whether the … » Go
