You wrote:

By the way, the American Eugenics Society was started in 1922 and dissolved not until 1994. Richard Lewontin, quoted below, belonged to it. Theodosius Dobzhansky was its chairman of the board in 1956. J.B.S. Haldane was a member. You think maybe their Darwinism had something to do with them being members?

If by that you mean to say that evil men twist the ideas of others to justify evil actions then yes, I agree.

The Origin of Species and/or The Descent of Man was used by those people to justify their actions in the same way the Spanish Inquisition used the New Testament of Jesus Christ to justify theirs.

The moral thrust of that movie was so significant for me. It was difficult at times but the message of freedom and hope that shined through at the end really helped me see what the movement is really about.

This movie will do more for ID Bill then you will ever know. ID has now entered the mainstream for the first time as it actually is and in the context in which it actually exists as an alternative to the bankrupt theory of DE.

I want to thank you Bill for all that you have done. While God has been under great attack in this country for some time now we have managed to let them know that there truly aren’t any atheists in foxholes.

The connection between DE and immorality is an inextricably essential one.

Hardly. How can educated persons be so mind-numbingly ignorant of history:

The Passing of the Great Race which Hitler called “my Bible”

I’ll refrain from linking to works by Margaret Sanger and Lothrop Stoddard to avoid the spam filter.

You think the racists in the country are more influence by the Bible than Mrs. Sanger? Why is Planned Parenthood happily accepting donations targeted specifically at promoting abortions among blacks?

I don’t think I will finish reading your blog pages at this moment. I started to read the one on Weikart but as I glanced it over decided it was too long for the time I have right now.

In your comment here you’ve just said:

You are worried about the sentence “Everyone does good service, who aids towards this end.” What is meant here obviously is that, everyone, that aids towards making the laws of inheritance thoroughly known, does good service.

Of course that’s what Darwin said. And when the laws are thoroughly known then what? According to Darwin, this:

Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind;
When the principles of breeding and inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man;
he might by selection do something not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities;
all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children;
(man) must remain subject to a severe struggle;
our natural rate of increase, though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by any means;
Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted;
There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring.

You:

Ask any YEC about the problems of recessive alleles that cause diseases.

Isn’t ir ok to figure out the laws of inheritance, so some diseases might be avoided or at least known beforehand? Yes, I am aware that today, in many countries, a woman pregnant with a child with a hereditary disease will be offered an abortion. It’s a valid question, whether the woman is given sufficient advice, and whether the offer is given in too many cases. I have heard claims that you can get an abortion if you don’t like the gender of the embryo.

But to me this is a VERY different issue than whether Darwinian mechanisms are sufficient for the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. And I can’t see how you are required to embrace an Intelligent Designer, because you may be skeptical about abortion policies.

None of this touches upon the question we are discussing. It is not whether or not this or that is okay, what our positions are on abortion, ID or the structure of the e. coli flagellum.

Darwin mentions consanguineous marriages, so we must assume that’s what he meant.

Good, yes, let’s assume that Darwin meant what he said, but not just in the single sentence, but in the entire paragraph which houses that sentence. See above.

Me:

What Darwin thought, like Galton to follow, was that laws should encourage the fit to have more offspring than the unfit so that man might continue to improve genetically.

You

Not so sure about that. Darwin and Galton merely wanted to avoid a lowering of public health – not necessarily a genetical improvement, and certainly no master race.

Darwin:

Yet he might by selection do something not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities.
…
but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even partially realised until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. Everyone does good service, who aids towards this end….
On the other hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society.
Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate of increase, though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by any means. There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring.

Let’s once again assume Darwin meant what he said.

You said:

I will have to look closer at this, since it doesn’t fit with, what else I have read from DoM – and I have been reading it yesterday.

You’ll forgive me if I’m unable to feign surprise that Darwin appears self-contradicting and diffuses his points.

Ahh; but I have read Weikart now and can say that it misrepresents him as an absolute conclusion, but not as a tentative conclusion. Read my post linked to ad the beginning of this post.

Perhaps you can quote me your relevant points. The ones that demonstrate that Weikart says “No Darwin,No Hitler”.
Here’s Weikart’s response to someone else who made that accusation:

I think it’s silly to claim that Darwin is personally responsible for the Holocaust, and I overtly reject this position in the conclusion of my book: “It would be foolish to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, as though Darwinism leads logically to the Holocaust. No, Darwinism by itself did not produce Hitler’s worldview, and many Darwinists drew quite different conclusions from Darwinism for ethics and social thought than did Hitler.” (p. 232) My arguments are not as simplistic as Richards seems to think.
…
My book–despite the title–is not the simplistic Darwin to Hitler story that Richards implies it is. Richards may not like the fact that many leading Darwinists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries promoted infanticide, involuntary euthanasia, and racial extermination, but they did. Richards is certainly free to argue that these Darwinists were wrong to apply Darwinism in this way, but then he should be criticizing these Darwinists, not me.

You:

If a person is not a product of society, it must be a product of biology, which is ‘Darwinism’, isn’t it? Are you a Darwinist?

Or do you think some intelligent designer has made us? That’s a possibility; but of little relevance – whether made by an intelligent designer or determined by genes we are born into an already existing society that simply doesn’t care. We are ‘raised’ (I’d rather say ‘lowered’) into that society by mechanisms existing before our birth.

Of little relevance indeed.

I doubt that Darwin’s book had a huge influence on the social background of the time; ptobably Charles Dickens’ novels had much more.

Opinion noted.

I am not so sure about this – again I will suggest that you read my two posts linked to at the beginning.

Perhaps if I have time later.
Your inability thus far to critically read passages before you, as demonstrated yet again in this comment, doesn’t make me think I will get much from your reviews.