On this episode of ID the Future, From Darwin to Hitler author and historian Richard Weikart speaks with Mike Keas about a recent book on Darwinism, Christianity, and war by Michael Ruse. Weikart says that in the course of the book Ruse appears to shift from warning others about treating Darwinism as a secular religion to himself embracing it as such.
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On this episode of ID The Future, Tod Butterfield talks with CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Richard Weikart about his recently published book Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich. In particular, Weikart explores Hitler’s pantheism and his antipathy toward Christianity.
On this episode of ID the Future, hear part 3 of author and historian Dr. Richard Weikart’s discussion of his latest book, The Death of Humanity. Dr. Weikart examines the philosophical concept of NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria), and how morality fits into the Darwinian process.
Read More ›On this episode of ID the Future, author and historian Dr. Richard Weikart continues to discusses his latest book, The Death of Humanity. Dr. Weikart gives more insight into the trends and tensions that have developed in Western thought out of the Darwinian view of life.
Read More ›On this episode of ID the Future, hear from author and historian Dr. Richard Weikart as he discusses his latest book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life. The Death of Humanity traces dangerous trends in Western thinking that reject the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable — reminding us that ideas have consequences.
Read More ›On this episode of ID The Future, professor and Center for Science & Culture fellow Dr. Richard Weikart discusses a recent attack on esteemed neurobiologist Dr. Ben Carson for his doubts about Darwinian evolution. Carson is the speaker at Emory University’s 2012 Commencement. Last week, an open letter from a handful of Emory faculty members appeared in the school’s newspaper criticizing Carson’s lack of respect for evolution and accusing him of making inappropriate statements about ethics and morality. Weikart explores the implications of evolutionary ethics and sheds light on this current academic freedom issue.
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On this episode of ID The Future, the second of two in this series, host David Boze continues a discussion with Discovery Institute fellow Dr. Richard Weikart, author of two books exploring the links between Darwinian theory and Nazism. On this podcast, Weikart talks about the moral and logical challenges involving evolutionary ethics. Is morality simply “an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate”, as biologists Michael Ruse and E. L. Wilson suggest? What did Darwin believe about morality? Is there an objective morality, or is it relative and evolving even today? Listen as Weikart builds a compelling case against evolutionary ethics and recent criticism of his books. Weikart is the author of two books on the subject: From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany and Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress. ALSO: Read Weikart’s detailed response on Evolution News & Views to recent criticism of his books.
On this episode of ID The Future, the first of two on this topic, Discovery Institute fellow Dr. Richard Weikart discusses his response to critics of his work showing the links between Darwinian theory and Nazism. “It’s clear that he [Hitler] uses Darwinian terminology and concepts quite frequently, not only in Mein Kampf but also in his second book and in many of the speeches…” Tune in to find out what Weikart’s critics are saying and how he refutes their claims. Weikart is the author of two books on the subject: From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany and Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress. ALSO: Read Weikart’s detailed response on Evolution News & Views to recent criticism of his books.
On today’s ID the Future, science-and-religion scholar Robert Shedinger makes the case that a well-known biography of Charles Darwin, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, is deeply misleading. Specifically, the book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore holds that Darwin was significantly motivated in his scientific work by abolitionist sentiments; and Shedinger says, not so fast. He had spent considerable time reading Darwin’s correspondence and had seen no evidence of this thesis, so he reread Darwin’s Sacred Cause, this time tracking down all the key citations the book offered as evidence, and a pattern soon emerged. The sources the authors cite didn’t actually support their thesis. Some were totally irrelevant. Some were cited completely out of context. In other cases, the authors gave the impression that Darwin said something when the comment they attributed to him was stitched together from multiple correspondences and the constituent comments were often about something else altogether. Shedinger says he realized that this biography that looked to be so well documented amounted to “historical fiction.” The effect of the biography is to misrepresent Darwin in such a way as to make those who reject Darwinism appear to be opposing a saintly anti-abolitionist. While Darwin did have anti-slavery sentiments, it didn’t drive his science and he himself was anything but free from racism. In fact, his case for human evolution partly rested on deeply demeaning racist attitudes toward indigenous peoples. For more on this, see historian Richard Weikart’s book Darwinian Racism. Also in this episode, Shedinger tells host Michael Keas about how he went from a scholar fully persuaded of Darwinian theory to a skeptic of modern evolutionary theory and attracted to the theory of intelligent design. Shedinger lays out his case against Darwinism in his recent book The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms.