TV Producer Defends Documentary Exposing Darwin-Hitler Link
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
August 25, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A television documentary producer is defending a special set to air this weekend, which views the Holocaust and other deadly events as consequences of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and its inevitable social impact.The documentary titled Darwin's Deadly Legacy premieres on Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Hour on August 26 and 27. The program features 14 scholars, scientists, and authors who discuss and outline the historical and contemporary effects of evolution on society.
The documentary's producer, Jerry Newcombe, says it is important for Christians in particular to understand the social impact of Darwin's theory. ""Ideas have consequences," he explains, "and evolution lays at the root of so many different factors of our culture. We deal with some of those in the special, such as the school violence and the hopelessness among some young people today."
And taking the realm of contemporary law and policy as another example, Newcombe notes, "Right now we're in a fight, in a battle over the judiciary. Even in the Supreme Court itself, you have a conflict between those who believe and accept unguided evolution versus those who believe in God."
In fact, the special's producer points out, evolutionary theory has even been applied to the Bible. As a result, he observes, even some churches have been affected, and many church members now disregard fundamentals of Christian faith as symbolic statements or myths not meant to be taken literally.
"What I mean by that is you have a liberal, so-called Christianity where you have all these different liberal ministers and priests and priestesses that get up, and they basically preach a message contrary to the Bible," Newcombe says, "but the idea of it is that we've evolved, we know better than the apostles did. Some of those people, in a sense, imply that they know better than Jesus Christ as to what the religion of Jesus Christ should be all about."
Darwin's Deadly Legacy even connects evolutionary theory to Adolph Hitler's policies during his Third Reich. The documentary makes the case that the Holocaust can be linked to efforts by the German dictator to speed up the evolutionary process, as he understood it.
This supposition has drawn criticism from the Jewish group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has blasted the documentary and called it "an outrageous and shoddy attempt ... to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust."
In a statement, ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said this program is the result of "ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis."
Defending Anti-Darwinist Documentary's Take on Hitler
In response to the ADL's charge, Newcombe notes, "They haven't seen the program, so this is a criticism sight unseen." However, he does feel the Jewish group's ire is misdirected and says, "The fact of the matter is, I would think they would welcome any honest look at the Holocaust that looks at root causes, and that's one of the things we do."
With all the programs that have been done about the Holocaust, Newcombe feels few have ever really addressed it from the perspective taken by Darwin's Deadly Legacy. "Generally, people don't get into the root causes and look at what's the ideology driving this whole thing," he says. But the documentary Coral Ridge Ministries is about to televise, he insists, tries to expose and explain the sinister link between Darwin's theory and the mindset that made Hitler's Holocaust possible.
"The ideology driving the whole thing was the desire to create a master race," Newcombe says. "That's the whole thing, to create a master race, and some races interfered with that." He notes that historian Richard Weikart, a featured expert in the documentary and the author of From Darwin to Hitler, affirms that Hitler was a social Darwinist who drew on Darwinian ideas as he pursued his genocidal goals.
In addition to Weikart's expertise, Darwin's Deadly Legacy features commentary from Ann Coulter, author of Godless; Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial, and many others. The producers of Coral Ridge Ministries' 60-minute special say the TV special will show why evolution is a bad idea that should be "discarded into the dustbin of history."
