Richard Weikart is an arm of the Discovery Institute’s disinformation brigade. A couple of years ago he published a book attempting to link Darwin to the Holocaust in a blame-sharing arrangement. This book and some of its arguments appear to be the foundation of the text used to write the script for the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” featuring Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein.
Which is to say, the basis for the movie is dubious. Weikart’s scholarship creating links between Darwin, science and Hitler is quite creative. It is also based on arguments created from Darwin’s writings that mislead the innocent about evolution, science and history, or which get Darwin and evolution exactly wrong.
Michael Ruse published an op-ed in a Florida paper in February — a piece which is no longer available there (anybody got a copy? Nebraska Citizens for Science preserved a copy) — and Weikart responded, restating his creative claims. Alas for the truth, Weikart’s canards are still available at the Discovery Institute website, putting an interesting twist on Twain’s old line: The truth will go to bed at night while a falsehood will travel twice around the world as the truth kicks off its slippers.
Looking for Ruse’s piece, I found Weikart’s response here and here. I composed a quick response pointing out the problems, which I would like to posit here for the record — partly because I doubt Darwiniana gets much traffic, partly because the censor-happy folks at Discovery Institute don’t allow free discussion at their site, and partly so I can control it to make sure it’s not butchered as Weikart butchers Darwin’s text.
At Darwiniana I said:
Weikart’s strip quoting of Darwin is most disappointing. [Weikart wrote:]
Darwin claimed in chapter two of The Descent of Man that there were great differences in moral disposition and intellect between the “highest races” and the “lowest savages.” Later in Descent he declared, “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.” Racial inegalitarianism was built into Darwin’s analysis from the start.
Darwin argued the differences in intellect and manners between the “highest” of men and the “lowest” of men did NOT change the fact that we are are all related — legally, Darwin’s argument would evidence a claim absolutely the opposite of what Weikart claims. Here are Darwin’s words from Chapter II of Descent of Man, as Darwin wrote them, without Weikart’s creative editing:
Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea-urchins, and a Howard or Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other. [emphasis added]
That’s not inegalitarianism at all — Darwin’s saying they are the same species, related closer than the poets allow. If we stick to the evidence, and [do] not wander off into poetic philosophy, we must acknowledge that Darwin’s own egalitarian spirit shows here in the science, too. It would be an odd kettle of fish indeed that a crabby guy like Hitler, who shared the antiscience bias of Weikart’s organization, would suddenly accept the science of a hated Englishman that ran contrary to his other philosophies. Who makes the error here, Hitler or Weikart? If they both think Darwin endorsed racism, they both do — but there is not an iota of evidence that Hitler based his patent racism on science, let alone the science of an Englishman.
As to the second quote, Weikart leaves the context out, and the context is everything. Darwin is not arguing that “savages” (the 19th century word for “aboriginals”) were less human, nor that they are a different species. He was arguing that in some future time there would appear creationists like Dr. Weikart’s colleagues at the Discovery Institute who will deny evolution because, once Europeans and others with guns conduct an unholy genocide (which Darwin writes against in the next chapter), and once humans wipe out chimpanzees, orangs and gorillas, the other great apes, the creationists can [then] dishonestly look around, blink their eyes and say, “Where are the links? There cannot be evolution between (Animal X) and humans!”
Darwin wrote:
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 (18. ‘Anthropological Review,’ April 1867, p. 236.), 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, [emphasis added] and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
In the end, Darwin wrote against genocide, against racism, and in favor of the higher thinking abilities of all dark-skinned people. He wrote in favor of Christian morality. Darwin himself remained a faithful, tithing Christian to the end of his life.
Such a man, and such amazing science, deserve accurate history, not the fantastic, cowardly and scurrilous inventions Dr. Weikart has given them. We should rise to be “man in a more civilized state” as Darwin had hoped.
Update, July 24, 2008, nota bene: To anyone venturing here from the Blogcatalog discussion on intelligent design: Get over to the site of Donald Johanson’s Institute for Human Origins, and especially look at the presentation “On Becoming Human.” Also check out the Evolution Gateway site at Berkeley, especially this page which explains what evolution is, and this page which offers some introduction for what the evidence for evolution really is. One quick answer to a question someone asked there: Between H. erectus and modern humans, H. sapiens, in the time sequence we have fossils of H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis. It’s pretty clear that Neandertal is not ancestral to modern humans, but instead lived alongside modern humans for 50,000 years or so from the Middle East through Southern Europe. To the question of actual transitional fossils, you’d need to hit the paleontology journals — there are a lot. You may also benefit from taking a look at the articles at this special Nature site.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] in approaches. Discovery Institute Fellow (and serial denier of same) Richard Weikart reprises his slander against Spencer and Darwin being responsible for the Holocaust. It seems that if you want to create […]
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Charles Darwin to Charles Kingsley, 1862:
“It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing & clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.”
(Search on Darwin Correspondence Project.)
Darwin’s Introduction to The Descent of Man, 1871, on Ernst Haeckel:
“This last naturalist, besides his great work, Generelle Morphologie (1866), has recently (1868, with a second edit. in 1870), published his Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, in which he fully discusses the genealogy of man. If this work had appeared before my essay had been written, I should probably never have completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have arrived I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine. Wherever I have added any fact or view from Prof. Haeckel’s writings, I give his authority in the text; other statements I leave as they originally stood in my manuscript, occasionally giving in the foot-notes references to his works, as a confirmation of the more doubtful or interesting points.
… Prof. Haeckel was the only author who, at the time when this work* first appeared, had discussed the subject of sexual selection, and had seen its full importance, since the publication of the Origin; and this he did in a very able manner in his various works.”
*Darwin is referring to The Origin
Does this mean that Darwin endorsed everything Haeckel espoused? Of course not.
Translated German wikipedia page on SS racial researcher and Ernst Haeckel Society council member Gerhard Heberer
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Heberer
All of this would be of solely historical interest were it not for the fact that creationists are attempting to invalidate modern evolutionary biology by connecting Darwin to the Holocaust. This is unfortunate. When the arguments of Weikart or West are peeled back to their essence, their core is that materialist naturalism (which Darwin is the exemplar of) desacralizes humanity, and that it is this desacralization that ultimately leads to eugenics, the Final Solution etc. But that’s nonsense – societies with a sacralized ethos are just as atrocious as those supposedly driven by materialist naturalism. In addition, Nazism decried materialism and anti-teleology. That is a point that anti-creationists should be making in regard to Nazism and science.
(Then again, caution should be taken in any generalization of Nazi science. See Anne Harrington on Nazi holists vs Nazi mechanists – peripheral to this topic, but it shows the plurality of Nazi scientific views.)
But perhaps this is also an opportunity to emphasize that scientific legitimacy is not contingent on the moral nor even intellectual authority of any founder or genius.
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“… and Nazism, and how the latter two long predate Darwinism.”
I meant the former two. I’m sure there are other typos.
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“Hitler bears the responsibility for Hitler’s sins, not Darwin, not Jesus, not Luther.”
Agreed.
I am not a proponent of the Weikart-Expelled thesis. But I am troubled by a counter-narrative that insists that Darwin was more of an egalitarian than he was and makes the Nazis were more anti-evolutionary than they were.
The first response to Weikart-Expelled should be to explain to them three fallacies: the naturalistic fallacy, the genetic fallacy, and the fallacy of argument by consequences. Then remind them of Christian complicity in slavery, Western imperialism (50 million killed according to RJ Rummel), and Nazism, and how the latter two long predate Darwinism. We don’t have to make Darwin into an antiracist (by today’s standards) or the Nazis into anti-evolutionists (or caricatures of contemporary fundie creationists).
I am an atheist and I accept modern evolutionary biology.
A racial egalitarian is not just someone who notes that races are all well-adapted to their respective native habitats or that all races or individuals are valuable; he or she believes that races are basically equal in hereditary intellectual endowments.
Darwin, Descent of Man:
“The belief that there exists in man some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls of savage and civilised races, of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series.”
“There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other,—as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain. … The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation, and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual, faculties.”
“whom Darwin distrusted and distanced himself and his theory from”
Haeckel scholar Robert J Richards has countered this characterization of the Darwin-Haeckel relationship. (I think it was Gould who really pushed the ‘Haeckel the renegade’ line. )
“Can you tell us what part of Darwin’s theory the Nazis are supposed to have employed? ”
Artificial selection of domesticated plants and animals has been going on for millennia, as has infanticide of handicapped newborns. A rhetoric about how human populations are supposedly biologically degenerating appeared in the West at least by the 18th century. So all of that long predates The Origin.
However, the deleterious effects of the relaxation of natural selection under conditions of civilization made degeneration inevitable. (As it turns out, that was wrong.) Galton discussed this before Darwin wrote Descent; later, German racial hygienists, American eugenicists, and Hitler in Mein Kampf brought up the same theme. If you would rather say that the Nazis relied on Galtonian theory as part of their biopolitics, that’s actually more accurate in terms of priority.
The other side of racial hygiene is the inevitable, natural, and progressive nature of struggle between populations. Darwin did not invent that; I mentioned Andrew Jackson, there was also Hegel and others. This literature, which really takes off in the 18th century – way before The Origin – essentially serves as a secular rationalization of imperialism and its mass slaughters. (Prior to that, there was plenty of relgious rationalization of these things.) Thomas Jefferson, American Enlightenment man, had horrendous scientific racist views.
Note that Darwin was a multilevel selectionist and believed that selection occurred between individuals, populations, and species.
“Evolution itself was generally flat on its back by 1900, and there is little evidence of any revival of it by 1925 in Germany.”
That is simply incorrect. If you meant Darwinism – specifically, natural selection, (the so-called ‘eclipse of Darwinism’) rather than evolution, that is arguable.
But there were many streams of thought that influenced the development of Nazi ideology. For example, racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was not an evolutionist, was of course important to Hitler’s thinking. And there was Luther, Marr, Wagner etc.
If I recall correctly Hitler discussed the mass murder of Jews before he was imprisoned for the putsch. However, Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene and similar texts went a long way towards rationalizing Nazi biopolitics for biomedical professionals, in particular the murder of the handicapped. Eugen Fischer, an author of Human Heredity, was one of Mengele’s mentors.
It is important to recognize that Nazi biopolitics was not just the views of Hitler but supported by a scientific hierarchy that included biologists and physicians – and developed decades before Hitler came to power. Some of these, including Fritiz Lenz, were internationally respected and had friendly colleagues at Cold Spring Harbor (which once had a eugenics center) and other American and British institutions. Eugenics, scientific racism, and Social Darwinism were internationally mainstream, though of course the Nazi manifestation of these were far more extreme than in other countries.
The Nazis did not have a consensus stance on all aspects of biology, though there were many shared views. Darwinism and Haeckelism were condemned by Nazi ideologists for their lack of teleology, materialism and atheism. Yet an Ernst Haeckel Society formed within the SS. Some Nazi biologists, including Heberer and Lorenz, worked within a Darwinian-Haeckelian paradigm. And the architects of German eugenics – Ploetz, Woltman, Schallmayer – were profoundly influenced by Haeckel. Not surprisingly, Haeckel prefigured a number of aspects of Nazi biopolitics.
Darwin and Wallace were personally kindly and humanitarian men, who abhorred slavery and Western colonial atrocities. Yet they could also look at what they believed was the big picture with a sense of philosophical composure.
AR Wallace, ‘The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced From the Theory of “Natural Selection”‘ (1864).
“It is the same great law of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life,” which leads to the inevitable extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped populations with which Europeans come in contact. The red Indian in North America, and in Brazil; the Tasmanian, Australian and New Zealander in the southern hemisphere, die out, not from any one special cause, but from the inevitable effects of an unequal mental and physical struggle.”
In any case, what Darwin and Wallace thought about anything is of no relevance to the validity of modern evolutionary biology.
Some sources:
Patrick Bratlinger. 2003. Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930.
Christopher M. Hutton. 2005. Race and the Third Reich.
Robert N. Proctor. 1988. Racial Hygiene.
G. Stein. 1988. Biological science and the roots of Nazism. American Scientist 76:50-58.
Paul Weindling. 1989. Health, race and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870-1945.
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Colugo:
Darwin’s noting the different stages of development of various populations is far from racism. What Darwin expressly does NOT do is claim that any particular population, dark-skinned or light, is inherently superior to any other, except in the stages of development. If you read that Wallace piece, Wallace says the same thing: Sure, the Pacific Islanders appeared behind the Europeans in development — through no fault of the islanders, since they simply lacked horses. (This is the theme of Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs and Steel; reading Darwin one should be struck by how closely his views parallel Diamond’s, though Darwin lacked the 200 years of research that Diamond had on the migration of humans and animal and plant species.)
Specifically, with regard to the Tierra del Fuegians, whom Darwin regarded as astoundingly “savage” in that they went without clothing in almost all seasons and seemed to prefer living without shelter, as opposed to keeping the clothes the Britons gave them and building shelters as a few had learned, Darwin noted that in Tierra del Fuego, Englishmen would be at a competitive disadvantage. With regard to the Tasmanians, whose slaughter preceded Darwin’s study by two or three decades, Darwin observed that the aboriginals in Tasmania, New Zealand and Australia generally were superior to Europeans in that place. While noting that Europeans had waged war upon the Tasmanians (the population was reduced to a few hundred by the time Darwin got there), Darwin lamented that the action had occurred at all, lamented the loss of variation, and did not in any way gloat that the lighter-skinned Europeans had triumphed in the “war.” I think you’d do well to read what Darwin actually said, and the use he made of examples.
What evidence have you of any inegalitarian claims by Darwin? I believe the evidence runs heavily the opposite way . We know he abhorred slavery — there was the famous row between Darwin and Capt. FitzRoy aboard the Beagle, Fitzroy claiming that the Bible said Africans were inferior and should be subject to slavery, Darwin arguing that Africans are equal and that slavery is an abomination.
We know Darwin befriended perhaps the only African in Edinburgh while he was there. There is no evidence of racial bias in that relationship, either in the close friendship they developed, nor the way Darwin regarded the man as his mentor in tiaxidermy.
Darwin went out of his way to befriend “Jeremy Button,” the Fuegian who was being returned to Tierra del Fuego by the Beagle. While Darwin makes scientific observations of the man, there is no hint of racist bias. Quite the contrary, it seems from all writings that Darwin regarded Button as a friend, and was both troubled and confused when Button reverted so completely to his “savage” ways upon return to his people.
The row with FitzRoy was precipitated in part by Darwin’s speaking of the Brazilian’s and Argentinian’s treatment of Africans. In his book on the voyage, Darwin speaks of the slave uprising he witnessed using the most glowing terms to describe the Africans. He said that the Africans employed a well-thought-out strategy, and displayed military acumen worthy of any of the greatest, fabled Roman generals. That directly contradicts claims that Darwin thought about blacks in racist terms.
We have Darwin’s comments on slavery. The entire Wedgwood clan, to which Darwin belonged and into which he would marry, was opposed to slavery and put their fortunes to work to eradicate the practice from Britain, largely on the grounds that it was racist (Adam Smith had provided the economic arguments against slavery in 1776).
So what is your evidence to the contrary? So far, we have Weikart’s misquoting of Darwin — scurrilous misquoting — and as to the letter and Darwin’s views of “Turks” (by which he generally means any part of the Ottoman Empire), by today’s terms, you’d have to call that “nationalism.” Darwin lived in a time when Christians preached that darker skinned people were different species, subject to “dominion” by whites. Darwin didn’t have the evidence from DNA to note that there is just one human race with variations, but considering that he lacked the solid evidence, it’s remarkable that he understood that in a population, superior traits would win out. With regard to economic performance and survival, the English system did indeed seem superior to that of the Turks. Read Darwin’s letter carefully; he’s not saying anything about different species, and especially he is not arguing that one race is superior to another. Surely you did not mean to skew Darwin’s words, but it helps to look at the entire argument he was making. Darwin said there is no purpose to evolution, no idea of “progress” (contradicting your earlier argument); and he notes the unpredictable nature of the whole enterprise:
No purpose means no higher or lower races, either, since no race could claim to be superior by God’s design. This is exactly and precisely counter to Weikart’s claim. Darwin continued:
Again, contrary to Weikart and almost all creationists, Darwin notes his faith that there is a God who created the universe, despite his having found natural causes for almost all the design the religionists claimed as evidence for God. Darwin simply was not anti-Christian, and definitely not anti-God, nor anti-morality. He understood the power of evolution, but he did not claim to have replaced the need for religion nor any religious thought himself. And pay special attention to his next sentence. He’s kept his sense of humor.
In the next few lines he eschews racism, noting that humans simply cannot say one group of people is superior to another; or in the extreme, that one person is better than any other person.
And then Darwin dispenses with the idea that certain civilizations have progressed because of divine design that one group would triumph over another; you’ve confused Darwin’s point, I think:
Darwin does not write to denigrate the Turks; he merely observes that what many had seen as purpose in the drive of the Ottoman “civilization” to supplant Europeans and the English had failed to occur, largely due to “competition,” which we must assume to mean triumph of trade, since there were few direct skirmishes between the English and the Turks prior to the year of the letter (World War I was three decades into the future).
I think you’ve misinterpreted Darwin’s intent. His words in that letter, especially in context of his arguments, do not support a judgment of “racist” against Darwin.
Yes, I am aware there are “scholars” who claim a connection from Darwin to Hitler. My point is that they fail to show such a connection, as Weikart fails. Hitler knew very little of evolution; what he knew, he claimed to be wrong. Darwin’s books were burned as contrary to the National Socialist idea, as were many others. Evolution itself was generally flat on its back by 1900, and there is little evidence of any revival of it by 1925 in Germany. Evolution theory does not support genocide in any way; Tom Gilson suggests that it’s Darwin’s fault if Hitler simply misunderstood the ideas, and that of course is poppycock, and a scurrilous reach to try to blame Darwin unjustly.
Can you tell us what part of Darwin’s theory the Nazis are supposed to have employed? No.
Evolution does not include murder as a part of its theory, nor does it endorse genocide in any way. Hitler’s racist views were confirmed well before he learned anything about Darwin. Hitler did not try to outcompete Jews and Gypsies. Hitler did not try to keep the good genetics of Jews and Gypsies. Hitler blamed them for Germany’s ills, and tried to get rid of them. His laws were not based on any biological recognition other than if people can’t eat, can’t get money, and can’t get housing, they will move or die. When they couldn’t get out of the way fast enough to please Hitler, he turned to mass murder.
Haeckel was dead. There is no evidence that anyone in power in the Third Reich relied on anything Haeckel said — in fact there is significant evidence they though Haeckel a nut. So, since Darwin’s ideas were not used, but were ridiculed and insulted, since the Nazis burned Darwin’s work, since the best link from Darwin to Hitler goes through Haeckel, whom Darwin distrusted and distanced himself and his theory from, and whom the Third Reich ignored, where is the link?
Seriously, do you think any part of that scheme resembles evolution theory? Then I urge you to study the theory and find out what it really says.
Murder is not a part of evolution theory. Hitler bears the responsibility for Hitler’s sins, not Darwin, not Jesus, not Luther.
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Another quote-mining fraud associated with the DI, color me surprised. It seems that Expelled has touched off a new wave of Holocaust revisionism – it’s crank magnetism in action. I’ve seen comments on blogs claiming that Hitler talked about natural selection (as opposed to Spencer’s “survival of the fittest”) in Mein Kampf, and that despite what “some people” say, Nazis really targeted “all non-Aryans.” Weikart might have cause to condemn “Spencerism” as an influence upon Hitler, but since evolutionary biology isn’t based upon Spencerism, that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
Prof. Ruse’s article – or an updated essay – needs to be put up at ExpelledExposed, TalkOrigins, and so forth. People like Weikart can only succeed if we do not remain vigilant. I can’t put it more eloquently than Dr. Jacob Bronowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA
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“That’s not inegalitarianism at all — Darwin’s saying they are the same species, related closer than the poets allow.”
Darwin’s thinking on race certainly is inegalitarian by any reasonable definition of the term. And just because Darwin is aware that the populations belong to the same species does not preclude inegalitarianism.
Reread this part: “Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition… and in intellect.”
Darwin is noting the extremes and emphasizes that they grade into each other. So do purple and orange, or 100 degree and -20 F, or a horizontal plane or a vertical one, given enough intermediates. That does not mean that these extremes – he highlights the profoundity of these differences – currently overlap. Two of his points are that there are many intermediates and that populations can change.
Darwin was not an early 21st Century egalitarian liberal. He was a Victorian upper class Whig. Of course he was a racist by today’s standards. By the standards of his era, in which some thought that nonwhites belonged to different species, he was pretty progressive. He wasn’t an essentialist in his racism – nonwhites could evolve to the level of whites, there were intermediates, one species etc. – but he was a racist. But what notables of his era weren’t? Not many. Darwin was one of the greatest scientists, but let’s accept him as he is.
“between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian”
The part about a future state of humanity superior even to the Caucasian (note the “even”- he believed Caucasians to be currently superior) is similar to the conclusion of a paper by Wallace that Darwin thought highly of.
http://www.wku.edu/%7Esmithch/wallace/S093.htm
Note here, the higher-lower language, and the “progress of civilization” in relation to population extinction. (Incidentally, Andrew Jackson said the same kind of thing about racial extinction before The Origin.)
Darwin to William Graham, 1881:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1887_Letters_F1452/1887_Letters_F1452.1.html
“Lastly, I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”
“there is not an iota of evidence that Hitler based his patent racism on science, let alone the science of an Englishman.”
A number of scholars of Nazi biopolitics have discussed the fact (see, for example Proctor, 1988, Racial Hygiene) that while imprisoned for the Beer Hall Putsch Hitler read and was influenced by Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene by Baur, Fischer, and Lenz. The Oral History of the Human Genetics Project (a John Hopkins & UCLA project) describes the book as “the bible of human genetics instruction in Europe and the U.S., as well as the handbook to the Nazi eugenics program.”
Weikart’s thesis is distorted and simplistic. Refuting it does not require that new errors be created.
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[…] Interesing comment on Weikart issue Check out this commenter’s blog: https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/the-wrong-stuff-on-purpose-weikart-misquotes-darwin/ […]
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I think I understand why newspapers don’t archive their material on line, but I really disagree with it. I was pleased when the New York Times changed their model to put most of their stuff up for free, for good. History teacher’s dream, really.
I got a copy from the Nebraska Citizens for Science page. Isn’t it interesting how garbage like Weikarts can appear forever at the website of the poor, picked on Discovery Institute, and be linked to on a thousand creationist sites, but Ruse’s serious scholarship sinks out of sight?
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The Tallahassee Democrat has stopped archiving its old issues. You could probably ask Ruse for a copy, though. AFAIK, he’s still at Florida State.
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