Evolutionary apologetics is the defense of Darwinian theory against all challenges — scientific and otherwise. That Darwinism has not coincidentally been put to evil ends, while not in itself evidence of invalid science, would seem indisputable.

Its role in shaping Nazi ideology would also seem clear enough to anyone who has read a little about the subject. Because Hitler’s Germany can’t be topped for evil, the defense of Darwinism must have a refutation of the Darwin-Hitler connection.

Over at the website This View of Life, promising “Anything and everything from an evolutionary perspective,” SUNY Binghamton biologist David Sloan Wilson wraps up a series of essays by various scholars seeking “A New Social Darwinism.” Wilson writes:

Truth and reconciliation for Social Darwinism involves acknowledging the misuse of evolutionary theory, but it also involves acknowledging false accusations and the omission of benign uses of evolutionary theory.

From an apologetic perspective, those “false accusations” to be dealt with must include the stain of Hitler, an “invented history.” Invented? To show as much the series features an essay — “Was Hitler a Darwinian? No! No! No!” — by University of Chicago historian of science Robert Richards that takes shots at our colleagues Richard Weikart and David Berlinski, the film Expelled, and the “gossamer logic” of the “Intelligent Design crowd.”

Plenty of other scholars have recognized Hitler’s Darwinism, however crude and derivative. Richards mentions Hannah Arendt, John Gray, and the otherwise “astute historian” Peter Bowler, notably absent from the ranks of the “Intelligent Design crowd.”

In any event, Professor Weikart has already dealt with Dr. Richards in a series of posts here:

• “‘Was Hitler a Darwinian?’ Reviewing Robert Richards“
• “Ignoring Evidence, Caricaturing Critics: Robert J. Richards’s Was Hitler a Darwinian?“
• “Is Robert Richards Right to Deny that Hitler Was a Darwinian?“
• “Why My Critics Care So Much About the Darwin-Hitler Connection“

Why all the clamor to erase the Darwin-Hitler link? Weikart is characteristically astute:

[W]hy do they care about this at all? If they believe, as many do, that morality is simply “an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes,” as evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson and philosopher Michael Ruse famously put it, then what makes the illusions of some people superior to Hitler’s illusions? Why do everything possible — even denying obvious historical facts — to obscure the historical linkages between Darwin and Hitler? I have a hunch that at some level they recognize that their evolutionary account of morality is inconsistent with reality.

As to the facts, Richards “misquotes and/or ignores the context of quotations,” “ignores mountains of evidence,” “caricatures the positions of those he disagrees with,” “conflates certain key concepts,” ” totally ignores many of the most salient points I set forth in my books,” “even creates a new historical ‘fact.'”

Quite simply, evolutionary apologetics must have its own historical alternative reality. The defense of Darwin demands it, and so the dish is served.

Photo: Holocaust Memorial, Berlin, by Howardhudson via Wikipedia.