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Darwin's Deadly Legacy
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Darwin's Deadly Legacy is a creationist film starring D. James Kennedy, asserting that Adolf Hitler grounded his genocidal actions on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The film was produced by Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM). The film aired August 26-27, 2006 during Coral Ridge Ministries' the "Coral Ridge Hour," accompanied by a book titled Evolution's Fatal Fruit: How Darwin's Tree of Life Brought Death to Millions. A prebroadcast CRM blurb boasted that "the program features 14 scholars, scientists and authors who outline the grim consequences of Darwin's theory of evolution and show how his theory fueled Hitler's ovens." CRM spokesman John Aman contended that "Darwinism is a philosophy, it's a worldview, and one of the key things in it is that evolution advances by death, so death is a good thing. Hitler thought he was doing civilization a favor by eliminating lives that were not worth living. We, of course, think that is an egregious moral tragedy and a consequence of the worldview that was initiated by Darwin and popularized by his followers."
The film stars James Kennedy, Ann Coulter, Lee Strobel, Richard Weikart, Jonathan Wells, Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, Ken Ham, Ian Taylor, Earl Tilford, and (very briefly) Francis Collins. Yes, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. However, after viewing the film, he was "absolutely appalled" at how his comments were used in the film. "I had no knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory."[1]
An ad funded by the CRM states that millions of Americans are being lied to, a lie hiding as scientific fact. The film then presents a short book titled Evidence for Creation: Intelligent Answers for Open Minds by Tom DeRosa, foreword by James Kennedy.
The Anti-Defamation League "blasted" the film: "Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either 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."[2]