Monday, October 10, 2011

Quote of the Day 10.10.11: An Atheist Judges Hitler

"Some atheists do believe in ethical absolutes, some don’t. My answer is a bit more complicated — I don’t believe that there are any axiological claims which are absolutely true, except within the context of one person’s opinion.

"That is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so are ethics. So, why is Adolf Hitler wrong? Because he murdered millions, and his only justification, even if it were valid, was based on things which he should have known were factually wrong. Why is it wrong to do that? Because I said so. Unless you actually disagree with me — unless you want to say that Adolf Hitler was right — I’m not sure I have more to say. Some atheists do believe in ethical absolutes, some don’t. My answer is a bit more complicated — I don’t believe that there are any axiological claims which are absolutely true, except within the context of one person’s opinion.

"That is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so are ethics. So, why is Adolf Hitler wrong? Because he murdered millions, and his only justification, even if it were valid, was based on things which he should have known were factually wrong. Why is it wrong to do that? Because I said so. Unless you actually disagree with me — unless you want to say that Adolf Hitler was right — I’m not sure I have more to say."

Mariano answers this Atheist here.

My take is this:

Rational Hitler Eugenics Under Materialism:
1. Evolution is True, scientific and ethical.
2. The Aryan “race” is superior.
3. The perfection of Mankind is the object of Humanism’s New Man.
4. Non-Aryans are weak, and weaken mankind.
5. The Aryan race and Humanism's New Man are threatened by increasing populations of Non-Aryans.
6. Natural Selection is slow, too slow to combat the rise in weak populations.
7. Assisting natural selection is scientific and ethical. And necessary in a world in which natural selection no longer discriminates against the weak.
8. The eugenic removal of weak, Non-Aryan populations is scientific, ethical, necessary, and pursues the Humanist goal of perfecting mankind.
Under the proposition that "ethics/truth is in the eye of the beholder", there is no factual (truth) error in Hitler's murderous eugenics. There was only a misjudgment that the Aryans were actually strong enough to conquer the entire world: they were not. But that was not part of the actual ethical rationale.

3 comments:

Martin said...

Evolution is the polar opposite of Hitler and eugenics. Eugenics is artificial selection, and has been known for thousands of years. See: dogs.

Evolution is natural selection. The idea from Darwin was that "Hey, you know how we breed and shape dogs into all these different varieties by selecting the traits we want? Maybe the same thing happens in nature based on environment, all on its own!"

Hitler and eugenics is going back before Darwin and using the model of artificial selection to improve stock.

See also: command economy vs free market economy.

I've dropped atheism thanks in part to you; I will eventually break you in regards to evolution. That is my repayment. :)

Stan said...

Now, now - I didn't say that it was natural selection for Hitler's eugenics to occur... although, since humans are natural and Hitler was human... And without free will and all, then the deaths under Hitler would have to be nature seeking a niche.

The whole idea of eugenics is to guide selection in order to produce (evolve rationally rather than randomly) better humans, rather than to wait for natural selection to do whatever it would do. I think we agree there, except that the official term, eugenics, was coined by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton. The idea specifically was to eliminate bad traits from the white race. In other words, de-select undesirables. At first it was via sterilization (performed in California etc), then abortion, then euthanasia (pull the plug / deny health care to the elderly), etc. Nowadays it is proposed to de-select certain defective babies up to several years after birth (Peter Singer).

Eugenics never seems to die.

The point was that Hitler's insanity could be justified under Materialism, Scientism and Humanism.

FrankNorman said...

People who go the "this is true because I say so!" route generally start to try to force their opinions on others at gunpoint. Example in hand - the National Socialists believed that the continued existence of the Jews (and other groups) would be wrong.

What that guy's "judgment" of Hitler boils down to, is saying that the Nazi's were wrong because they lost.