Open Letter

On RichardDawkins.net, Prof. Dawkins responds to a letter they received from a Jewish man who had recently seen Expelled and believed the movie's claim that Hitler was motivated by Darwinism. Here was his message:

Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!

Richard Dawkins was concerned that many people would believe the lies in this movie, so he wrote an open letter in response. Here are some excerpts, but you can read the entire letter here.

"[Hitler's] horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians...Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist

And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example, here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf.

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Hitler's obscene anti-Semitism was able to hold sway in Germany because there was a deeply embedded history of anti-Semitism in Germany, and indeed in Europe generally.

I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live.

Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind.

There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf."