Denialism

Ben Stein loses all intellectual credibility

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by

MarkH
in

On his blog Stein espouses one of the weakest attacks I’ve heard yet against evolution, and not even original. It’s a pathetic set of logical fallacies. Basically, he starts from the assumption that scientific theories arise if they serve the prevailing ideology of the time period, and because “Darwinism” was developed during the Victorian/imperialist age, it represents nothing but the worst aspects of that era.

Let’s make this short and sweet. It would be taken for granted by any serious historian that any ideology or worldview would partake of the culture in which it grew up and would also be largely influenced by the personality of the writer of the theory.

…

In other words, major theories do not arise out of thin air. They come from the era in which they arose and are influenced greatly by the personality and background of the writer.

…

Darwinism, the notion that the history of organisms was the story of the survival of the fittest and most hardy, and that organisms evolve because they are stronger and more dominant than others, is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism. When Darwin wrote, it was received wisdom that the white, northern European man was destined to rule the world. This could have been rationalized as greed-i.e., Europeans simply taking the resources of nations and tribes less well organized than they were. It could have been worked out as a form of amusement of the upper classes and a place for them to realize their martial fantasies. (Was it Shaw who called Imperialism “…outdoor relief for the upper classes?”)

But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was “owned” (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism. By explaining that Imperialism worked from the level of the most modest organic life up to man, and that in every organic situation, the strong dominated the weak and eventually wiped them out,

Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.

…

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

Wow. There are so many fallacies here I don’t know quite how to start. For one, if one assumed that his assumptions were correct, this would just be a genetic fallacy. But since we know this is absurd, and that evolution has persisted as a theory because of the consistency of the theory with observation of the natural world, we can reject this idiocy out of hand. But then he devolves into the fallacy of appeal to consequences – again based on false premises. Including the pathetic Darwin lead to Hitler canard. Again, even if this were true, it would be like saying we shouldn’t believe in physics because it leads to nuclear weapons. However, it decidedly isn’t true, and as we’ve discussed previously, is based on a disingenuous reading of history that the ADL has attacked as disturbing tactic to try to shift blame for the holocaust from anti-antisemitism to science. This is a doubly disgusting tactic. It attempts to shift the blame for the holocaust away from the antisemitic ideology of Hitler and Nazism (suggesting antisemitism is scientifically justified by evolution!), while simultaneously trying to exploit the victims of the holocaust for the benefit of the anti-evolution cause. Stein should be ashamed.
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Comments

  1. MartinM

    Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.

    One would think that a better argument would be, say, that only white people had souls, everyone else having been created on the fifth day along with the other animals.

    But it’s not like anyone ever believed that, eh?

    Reply
  2. Steve Murphy

    Excellent post – you win Ben Stein’s money (you sure as hell don’t want to “win” his intellectual honesty). Thanks for the reminder of the ADL condemnation of DJ “Jam Master Jesus” Kennedy’s tome of crap – I’d forgotten about that the ADL had zeroed in as well but it adds much to the already laser like analysis here.

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  3. katie

    Hmmm…I wonder what he thinks about Wallace? Being as he independently thought of natural selection, while not a privileged member of the aristocracy, I wonder what that says about Stein’s argument?

    Not to mention that the idea of evolution itself was discovered long before Darwin…

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  4. JFlav

    Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature.

    Not only does Stein make his own fallacies, he assumes everyone else does, too. Because if Darwin had used evolution as an “argument… for Imperialism,” that would be a clear naturalistic fallacy. Not that this would make evolution untrue, of course, just incorrectly applied.

    It’s no wonder, then, that Stein thinks “Darwinism” = Social Darwinism, because Social Darwinism is based on the naturalistic fallacy. Or, at least, it was rationalized that way.

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  5. Lassi Hippeläinen

    “Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was […] simply a fact of nature.”

    The expression “Manifest Destiny” was coined already in 1845…

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  6. Lance

    I’m afraid Mr. Stein shows his ignorance of the subject when he says,

    “Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.

    That is like complaining that electrical theory says nothing about the origin of electrons. Evolution is the theory that explains how organisms change by adaptation and mutation not a theory to explain abiogenesis.

    Ben should stick to economics and game shows.(And “playing” nerdy science teachers in movies.”

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  7. Janine

    Microbiology is to blame for the Holocaust. There is a direct line from Louis Pasteur to Hitler. Quite often, Hitler referred to Jews as bacillus in the German body that must be destroyed. If there was not this dangerous idea that there were micro-organisms (Which no one seen with their own eyes!) that made people sick, than Hitler never would have though of the Jews as a disease that must be contained.

    Funny that Stein is turning to that silly post modern idea of all ideas being a product of their times. He is using a silly tool of the left to try to justify his silly right wing idea. Oh for the days of pure ideals.

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  8. Colugo

    Stein’s argument is remarkably reminiscent of the political critique of Darwinism in general and sociobiology in particular.

    Rose, Kamin, Lewontin, ‘Not In Our Genes’, 1984: “Science is the ultimate legitimator of bourgeois ideology.”

    Lynn Margulis, Pharyngula chat room, 2007: “[Neo-Darwinian biologists] rarely acknowledge that their theoretical frames derive from an Anglophone-capitalist model…”

    Also see Mae-Wan Ho, Stanley Salthe, Brian Goodwin, Science For The People.

    This genre of criticism has variants, but in broad outline it asserts that Darwin’s theory was strongly influenced (if not determined) by Victorian political economy and prevailing ideologies; consequently, it is a scientific justification of the “bourgeois individualism” of industrial capitalism and associated Gilded Age abuses. Darwinist logic led directly to Social Darwinism. Darwinism’s individualistic ethos was later further distilled in the Modern Synthesis and sociobiology, the latter related to the intellectual impulses behind eugenics and the Holocaust. This atomistic, competitive, selfish portrait of evolution and ecology was used to rationalize ’80s Thatcherism and a host of social injustices from racism to unregulated capitalism. Darwinism / neo-Darwinism / sociobiology should be replaced by a more complex and progressive scientific perspective (variously described as “holistic biology” “dialectical biology” “systems biology” etc.).

    While Lewontin, Margulis and some other critics believe that there is validity to Darwinism (selectionism) within an evolutionary paradigm that is antithetical to capitalist individualism, others have no use for selectionism at all. The latter view is, of course, held only by a small minority of biologists.

    Stein’s argument is something of an extremist and dumbed-down version of the political critique of neo-Darwinism. It reads like a fifth generation copy that was put through a creationist filter. While it may have been independently formulated and Lewontin et al. cannot be blamed for how others make use of their arguments, it is difficult to avoid suspicions about the ancestry of Stein’s claims.

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  9. Ian Kemmish

    “Again, even if this were true, it would be like saying we shouldn’t believe in physics because it leads to nuclear weapons” – Or indeed that we shouldn’t have any truck with the Abrahamic faith because it is founded on and eternally used to justify racism.

    “Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was […] simply a fact of nature.” - Mr Stein finds a scientific argument (even a deliberately misconstrued one) more compelling than the clearly expressed will of a racist deity?

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  10. Blake Stacey

    Janine:

    Funny that Stein is turning to that silly post modern idea of all ideas being a product of their times. He is using a silly tool of the left to try to justify his silly right wing idea. Oh for the days of pure ideals.

    The days of pure ideals never existed. Quoting Meera Nanda,

    The right-wingers’ relativistic defense of mysticism as science is not based principally on Kuhn and Feyerabend, but rather on more nationalistic principles, which bear the hallmarks of Johann Herder and Oswald Spengler: namely, the idea that each nation has a “cultural soul” and a “destiny” that leave [their marks] on all intellectual efforts, from music and painting to science. Substitute “paradigm” in place of “culture”, and the right-wing was Kuhnian long before Kuhn.

    From the same source hyperlinked above, I quote an example of apparent left-wing postmodernism.

    [T]here has never been a science without presuppositions, one that is “objective” and free from values and worldview. […] That Newton’s system conquered the world was not a result of its internal truth content and value or of its persuasive power, but rather an aftereffect of the political hegemony that the British acquired in that era and that grew to an Empire.

    And, of course, the British Empire did not at all depend upon the technology which was founded in the science that began with Newton, did it? Steam engines, pshaw. But anyway, to continue, the same author also wrote the following:

    The case is simply this, that an idea born of the Enlightenment — that is, an idea of Western civilization, bearing the marks of a limited period — has set itself up as an absolute and declared itself a criterion applicable to all peoples and all times. Here we have an example of Western imperialism, a bold assertion of supremacy.

    Sounds like a French literary theorist trying to critique science, doesn’t it? Well, until you get to this part:

    Decisions grounded on a race-based worldview determine the basic form — the principle or elemental phenomenon — upon which a science is founded. […] A German can look at and understand Nature only according to his racial character.

    The author is Ernst Krieck (1882–1946), Nazi ideologue.

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  11. TomS

    First of all: A great many of the creationists insist on telling us that they accept microevolution. They only differ, so they tell us, in that they don’t accept that totally new “kinds” can arise by natural means. Evolution within “mankind”, for example, they would accept. And the “social darwinists” are, to be sure, only concerned with that scale to evolution, within “mankind”. Therefore, the creationists support the evolutionary basis that they find in “social darwinism”.

    Second: The creationists differ from contemporary evolutionary biology on a critical point, whether purposeful, intelligent intervention is needed to produce complex results, or to prevent deterioration. The “social darwinists” also thought that things would run downhill without intelligent (of the human sort) design. Therefore, the creationists give even more support for “social darwinism”.

    By the way, as a historical aside on this second point, remember that the early 20th century has been called “the eclipse of darwinism”, in part because it was not appreciated how much an undirected process like “natural selction” could do. If it weren’t an undeserved slur on the names of great scientists, a more appropriate tag would be “social mendelism” or “social lamarckism”. (I don’t think that the phrase “social darwinism” was used by any of its supporters, or during that era by anyone.)

    Third: Values in nature are the sort of thing that marks the pre-scientific attitude toward nature. “The courage of the lion” and “blue blood” and so on. Whatever processes nature uses do not set us examples for what we should do. This is another way in which the creationists agree with the “social darwinists” as opposed to the science of evolutionary biology.

    Finally, let me make it clear that I am not suggesting that creationism bears any blame for their support for the points above. It is only their inconsistency (a feature that is not unheard of for creationism) that I am calling attention to.

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  12. Orac

    Microbiology is to blame for the Holocaust. There is a direct line from Louis Pasteur to Hitler. Quite often, Hitler referred to Jews as bacillus in the German body that must be destroyed. If there was not this dangerous idea that there were micro-organisms (Which no one seen with their own eyes!) that made people sick, than Hitler never would have though of the Jews as a disease that must be contained.

    I beg to differ. Clearly oncology and surgery were to blame for the Holocaust, straight from the great surgeon Dr. William Halsted. Hitler also often referred to the Jews as a “cancer” eating at vital organs of the volk that must be extirpated if Germany was to become healthy again. Halsted postulated that tumors must be radically excised, a view that predominated in surgery for many decades…

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  13. Colugo

    It is hard to miss the class-based ‘social construction of science’ theme of Stein’s piece: “[Darwin was] from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman”

    Richard Lewontin is far more sophisticated, but again, political economy drives scientific theory:

    Lewontin, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, 1991: “This individualistic view of the biological world is simply a reflection of the ideologies of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century that placed the individual as the center of everything.”

    Interesting research, Blake Stacey. One of the criticisms of “left wing” postmodernism is that it is partly derived from proto-fascist and fascist philosophy: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Paul de Man. This is associated with, but not exclusive to, conservative critics of postmodernism. (For example, see Keith Windschuttle’s The Killing of History.)

    In addition, Nazi holistic biologists and psychologists attacked Anglo-American biology for what they viewed as its atomistic and mechanistic fallacies; in other words, the bourgeois individualism of the Victorian ethos decried by other critics. The Nazis believed that an appropriate application of biology to human affairs mandates the “ethnic state” in which members are self-sacrificing in the furtherance of group goals, which includes the imperialist domination and destruction of other groups. So, contrary to Stein, imperialism and genocide can be promoted in the absence of Victorian dog-eat-dog unregulated capitalism. (See Anne Harrington, 1996: ‘Reenchanted Science’ and Roger Proctor, 1999: ‘The Nazi War on Cancer.’)

    Nazi biology textbook: “The ethnic state must demand of each individual citizen that he does everything for the good of the whole, each in his place and with his abilities”
    http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/textbk01.htm

    Lysenkoists made their own poltical critiques of “Mendelism-Morganism.”

    French Lysenkoist group, ‘The Friends of Michurin’: “The Morganists’ reactionary ideology is not merely an ideological argument for them, a means of justifying the policy of the imperialists even in their most frightful racist crimes. The theory has become . . . the basic means of defending profits.” (Source: Valeria Soyfer, 1994: ‘Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science’)

    There have been many ideological critiques of Darwinism and its descendants over the decades; while each is distinctive, they share some tropes – particularly antipathy to the individualism of the ideology that purportedly underlies Victorian-rooted Anglo-American biology.

    I do not mean to suggest that their intellectual pedigrees alone invalidates holistic, Marxist, and postmodernist critiques of prevailing paradigms in evolutionary biology. That would be the genetic fallacy. In fact, I think they have legitimate points, however clouded they are by ideology.

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  14. Colugo

    Blake Stacey: Interestingly, Paul Feyerabend was a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, where he received the Iron Cross. However, I do not know what, if any, influence Nazi-associated philosophical streams had on Feyerabend’s views. (And I do not suggest that the postwar Feyerabend was a Nazi sympathizer.) I find some of Feyerabend’s arguments to be astute and provocative, while others are crackpot.

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  15. Janine

    Blake, I though you knew by now that sarcasm is my natural medium. That line about pure ideals was a joke.

    All that you quoted for me is not a surprise. National socialism is a difficult beast to try to describe. Except for it’s stated goals of Aryan supremacy and the elimination of Jews, it morphed itself to fit different populations. It was all things for all people. It could be leftist in that it set up social nets for the working class. It could be rightist in it’s giving corporations free run over all of society.

    Orac, perhaps Darwin, Pasteur and Halsted could be the trinity of the path of Nazism. Damn these scientists. If they never were born, there never would have been national socialism. I think it is time to turn away from all technology. It leads to fascism.

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  16. TomS

    … is a difficult beast to try to describe. Except for it’s stated goals … it morphed itself to fit different populations. It was all things for all people.

    This is a common description for social/political movements, as distinguished from scientific or other intellectual endeavors.

    I hesitate, however, to add that as a 4th point of similarities-and-differences.

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  17. Rob Jase

    I guess the history books will have to be rewritten to agreed with Mr. Stein.

    Clearly Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Gengis Khan, Attla the Hun and all the other imperialists mut have been evolutionists living in Victorian England.

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  18. Colugo

    Correction: Proctor’s (author of The Nazi War On Cancer) first name is Robert, not Roger.

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  19. Chris Noble

    William Shockley was a racist bigot. Does this mean that transistors and computers are racist too?

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  20. Pierce R. Butler

    When did Stein have any intellectual cred to lose?

    Fwiw, skimming the above excerpts against “Darwinism” reminded me greatly of reading Jeremy Rifkin’s Algeny some 20+ years ago, except that Rifkin’s prose has more polish, and his non sequiturs aren’t quite as vertiginous.

    If read charitably, Rifkin could even be said to offer a useful social message. Stein doesn’t come close.

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  21. barkdog

    Darwinism is a prop of the existing power structure! It reflects the needs of the dominant class! Does Stein have any idea that he sounds like an undergraduate who has just read his first Marx?

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  22. Valhar2000

    […]because “Darwinism” was developed during the Victorian/imperialist age, it represents nothing but the worst aspects of that era.

    Hey, I think Stein may be on to something. After all, ID is a phenomenon of our era, and it does represent nothing but the worst aspects of it.

    Wow, seriously, Stein is so full of crap I’m surprised his kidneys have not shut down.

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  23. Barry

    Orac, just like a surgeon, you’ve got to claim credit for everything 🙂

    However, from:
    “First of all: A great many of the creationists insist on telling us that they accept microevolution. ”

    This means that *creationists* were responsible for the Holocaust. It was clearly an attempt at intelligently designing some microevolution in the human race. They weren’t trying to create a new species, just modify an existing species. Also, it was done through planning and engineering.

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  24. Dallas

    “It attempts to shift the blame for the holocaust away from the antisemitic ideology of Hitler and Nazism (suggesting antisemitism is scientifically justified by evolution!)”

    What are you talking about? Stein is saying that social darwinism was USED as an excuse for nazism, not that it was the scientific cause of it. He doesn’t believe evolution is true, so of course he doesn’t believe it caused the holocaust. Plus, Stein is Jewish, so what reason would he have to justify anti-semitism?

    I would agree that the evolution as a result of imperialism argument isn’t rock solid, but your implication that he was blaming darwinism for the holocaust makes no sense.

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  25. MarkH

    Dallas, Stein has previously stated that he would have entitled his movie “from Darwin to Hitler” and said there would be no holocaust without Darwin. I’m not saying that he is anti-semitic, but that the argument is a cheap shot, that shifts the blame for the holocaust from anti-semitic ideology to evolution while trying to score cheap points off the holocaust. Social darwinism didn’t countenance the holocaust, it’s a poor read of history, and ignores that Nazis would use any excuse, scientific or not, to degrade the humanity of Jews.

    When people have made similar arguments, the ADL has agreed that it’s an offensive abuse of the holocaust’s memory (see the link), and it’s simply an incorrect argument for multiple reasons. Not to mention, even if true, an appeal to consequences.

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  26. TomS

    MarkH makes appropriate points.

    I’d also note the difference between so-called “social darwinism” and Darwin and evolutionary biology.

    Even the label “socal darwinism” was applied after-the-fact, and not by its advocates (or so I understand). It was not really “darwinist”, in the sense of accepting Darwin’s ideas of the efficacy of “natural selection” – which, after all, were out of favor at the time.

    I will allow that people who don’t understand evolutionary biology, who are operating with pre-scientific folklore or a partially-grasped “lamarckian” concept of evolution, would conclude that there is something “scientific” about those social/political movements. I can understand that creationists, some 50-100 years later, would be sincerely confused about that.

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  27. Steven Carr

    Hitler, of course, was a creationist

    “Thus for the first time a high inner purpose is accredited to the State. In face of the ridiculous phrase that the State should do no more than act as the guardian of public order and tranquillity, so that everybody can peacefully dupe everybody else, it is given a very high mission indeed to preserve and encourage the highest type of humanity which a beneficent Creator has bestowed on this earth.”

    “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.”

    From Hitler’s Tischgespraeche for 1942 ‘Woher nehmen wir das Recht zu glauben, der Mensch sei nicht von Uranfaengen das gewesen , was er heute ist? Der Blick in die Natur zeigt uns, dass im Bereich der Pflanzen und Tiere Veraenderungen und Weiterbildungen vorkommen. Aber nirgends zeigt sich innherhalb einer Gattung eine Entwicklung von der Weite des Sprungs, den der Mensch gemacht haben muesste, sollte er sich aus einem affenartigen Zustand zu dem, was er ist, fortgebildet haben.’

    I shall translate Hitler’s words, as recorded by the stenographer.

    ‘From where do we get the right to believe that man was not from the very beginning what he is today.

    A glance in Nature shows us , that changes and developments happen in the realm of plants and animals. But nowhere do we see inside a kind, a development of the size of the leap that Man must have made, if he supposedly has advanced from an ape-like condition to what he is’ (now)

    And in the entry for 27 February 1942 , Hitler says ‘Das, was der Mensch von dem Tier voraushat, der veilleicht wunderbarste Beweis fuer die Ueberlegenheit des Menschen ist, dass er begriffen hat, dass es eine Schoepferkraft geben muss.’

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  28. TomS

    Request for Steven Carr:

    Could you give some more details for the quotations from the “Table Talk”?

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  29. Colugo

    Historians Robert Richards and Daniel Gasman are engaged in a debate on the responsibility of Ernst Haeckel for Nazi biopolitics.
    http://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/staff/webpages/site.cfm?LinkID=259&eventID=34

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  30. Tyler DiPietro

    Question: Did Ben Stein ever actually have any intellectual credibility?

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  31. Darwin Youth

    That Darwin was a racist Victorian elitists, and a product of his times, colored his writings.

    You can see it in his discussion of “savage” “races” and his praise of his cousin Francis Galton…eugenics nut…in The Descent of Man.

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  32. Dawin Youth

    Yeah, Stephen and some of the other things Hitler said as recorded in The Table Talk, are that Christianity and Bolshevism were Jewish inventions.

    And that he would dispose of the church after he had won the war. (Dec 14th, 1941)

    Doesn’t sound like he favored Christianity, at least in private.

    And so what? Just another lying…and in this case insane…politician.

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  33. TomS

    My understanding is that the Table Talk is not a particularly reliable source. But, anyway, the one quotation given by Steven is translated in the English print version:

    “I once possessed a work on the origins of the human race. I used to think a lot about such matters, and I must say that if one examines the old traditions, the tales and legends, from close up, one arrives at unexpected conclusions.
    “It’s striking to realize what a limited view we have of the past. The oldest specimens of handwriting we possess go bak three or four thousand years at most. No legend would have reached us if those who made and transmitted them hadn’t been people like ourselves. Where do we acquire the right to believe that man has not always been what he is now? The study of nature teaches us that, in the animal kingdom just as much as in the vegetable kingdom, variations have occurred. They’ve occurred within the species, but none of these variations has an importance comparable with that which separates man from the monkey – assuming that this transformation really took place.”

    Night of 25-26 January 1942
    section 125, page 248

    Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, translators
    Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944
    London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953

    


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  34. W. Kevin Vicklund

    Darwin Youth – Darwin wasn’t praising Galton, he was merely softening the blow as he knocked down Galton’s inaccuracies. This was common among scholars of the time, and Galton was his cousin. Darwin was certainly elitist, but he quite neatly punctured a hole in Galton’s racial stereotyping, showing that the characteristics were a function of class.

    Here’s Darwin’s idea of eugenics, stated in modern terms:

    *Universal health care (with improved care available to those that can afford it)
    *Genetic screening and counseling
    *Elective abortion
    *Free contraceptives
    *Tax incentives that encourage wealthy families to have many kids and poor families to have few kids

    Reply

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