Cao falls for more ignorant bullshit

Poor Cao. She swallows whatever looney Right Wing Meme of the Moment happens to come along. This time, it’s the idea that Hitler believed in evolution:

Stalin, Marx, Carnegie, Hitler–those are just a bunch of dead guys (who all believed in Evolution).

The subtext, of course, is that Evolution Is A Bad Bad Thing. The problem, of course, is that Cao is wrong — again. There is ample historical evidence that Hitler, in fact, believed in ‘special creation’. Ed Brayton points out that all one has to do to confirm this is to read “Mein Kampf”:

The full text of the book is available online and it’s not hard to find the evidence of this. To wit:

“Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and does not allow God’s handiwork to be debased. For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God’s Creation and God’s Will.”

He explicitly says that we are made in the image of God (well, some of us, of course, by his reasoning):

“And, further, they ought to be brought to realize that it is their bounden duty to give to the Almighty Creator beings such as He himself made to His own image.”

He endorses the common creationist argument about change being fixed within a "kind":

“Walking about in the garden of Nature, most men have the self-conceit to think that they know everything; yet almost all are blind to one of the outstanding principles that Nature employs in her work. This principle may be called the inner isolation which characterizes each and every living species on this earth.

Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law — one may call it an iron law of Nature — which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.

And to top it off, he says that humans did not evolve from apes:

“From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump, as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today.

Cao also regurgitates some shopworn, long-since-discredited creationist lies, as well:

• “Mutations DELETE information from the genetic code.” — FALSE
• ”[Mutations] generally occur only very rarely.” — FALSE
• “Darwin’s theory said… that life itself was not created by God, but happened because the right chemicals came together by chance in the ancient ocean.” — FALSE
• There are no intermediate forms in the fossil record. — FALSE
• “We shouldn’t have found handfuls of objectionable fossils, but billions of intermediates validating the theory.” — FALSE

And the evolution-caused-the-Holocaust crowd, always, always neglects to acknowledge the centuries of Christian anti-Semitism in Europe. Yosef 52 has an excellent collection of examples of this shameful legacy of Christianity, including this gem from Martin Luther:

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blaspemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must pratice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengenance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly – and I myself was unaware of it – will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. (remainder omitted)

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuternomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: “what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord.” Thoses villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people’s obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], “You are Peter,” etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the righ to teach.

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let they stay at home.

It’s clear that, like so many on the far right, Cao prefers to remain ignorant of the facts of both science and history. The best one can do in such cases is call out this ghastly ignorance for what it is.

UPDATE 08/30/06 8:36 PM EDT: Cao demonstrates again that the facts mean nothing to her. Even in the face of Hitler’s own words proving that he believed in ‘special creation’, she blithely posts another lie on her site:

Hitler was not a creationist

What can you do in the face of such utter, blatant, knowing dishonesty, but shake your head and wonder how people like Cao can become the deliberate liars that they are?

UPDATE 08/31/06 9:23 AM EDT: JM O’Donnell hosts the 42nd Skeptics Circle, and early on points us to several recent and relevant posts:

Currently the creationists have been shacking up with a really good friend of theirs: the dreaded Hitler zombie. While not hanging out in my pool (making it all mucky) and shouting incomprehensible things at people he doesn’t like, the Hitler zombie often enjoys eating the brains of people making ridiculous comparisons between evolution, himself, NAZIdom and various other aspects of the third Reich. Thankfully, Scientia natura tackles some of the ridiculous arguments creationists make on this topic in evolution, Darwin and Hitler. When they aren’t trying to compare evolution with Hitler, creationists resort to other ridiculous arguments instead as Tara Smith from Aetiology covers in Influenza viruses = evidence for design. Those whacky ID creationists, what won’t they claim? Finally, the Pandas Thumb has a lovely series covering the latest collection of ridiculous claims in Johnathan Wells’ new book. I don’t recommend buying the book and instead just reading the rebuttal. Your sanity will thank me for it later. If you ask me, I’d rather face the zombies than deal with creationists nonsense.

UPDATE 08/31/06 9:23 AM EDT: Ed Brayton:

Mark Plus posted a comment last night that included a great idea for the perfect retort to all this Darwin leads to Hitler crap. Here it is:

And on 9/11, the World Trade Center was knocked down by creationists who hate evolution. What’s your point?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!