AiG’s Gould quote

When I was looking through a photo gallery from the Creation Museum, I noticed that one of their exhibits contains the following quote from Stephen Jay Gould:

This is from Gould’s 1977 book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny.

It seems to be a fairly common creationist claim that the theory of evolution has led to racism, and most of the supporters of evolution at this board tend to deny that it has. I was wondering whether AiG is quote-mining here, but I can’t find the entire quote online anywhere, and I don’t own a copy of this book. Is Gould saying something here other than what it looks like he is, or has the theory of evolution actually caused racism to become more common?

If he’s saying what it sounds like he’s saying, I think I understand the reason why this would have been the case. The same sorts of cladistic techniques that are used to determine which groups of animals are more derived than others can also be applied to humans, in order to show which ethnic groups have changed the least from humans’ apelike ancestors. In the past this has usually involved measurements of things such as skull proportions, which is one of the most common measurements used in modern cladistics, but it seems that other measurements such as ethnic differences in intelligence can also be used for the same thing.

This idea isn’t racist per se, but it can definitely lead to some unusual conclusions. While Googling this quote from Gould in order to try and find it in its proper context, I found an explanation of one of these analyses that was conducted on Aboriginals, leading to the conclusion that they were a “missing link” between humans and other primates. In the early 20th century, the evidence that some groups of humans were cladistically closer than others to our ancestors (although not using those words, since cladistics weren’t invented until much later) was used as a justification to display an African pygmy in the Bronx zoo. According to the New York Times, most scientists at that place and time thought this was a reasonable thing to do.

If this is what Gould is talking about, why do the supporters of evolution at this board deny that there’s been any connection between evolution and racism? It only lends credence to creationism when evolution’s supporters deny something that’s supported by evidence.

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Hmm. I wonder how many times we have said that its the evidence that matters, not some ...person's opinion. Gould, Einstein, Newton, the queen of sheba..

THEIR OPINION CARRIES NO WEIGHT AS EVIDENCE

And do they ever, ever ever provide any evidence? a poll? a survey? an epidemiological study?

In the same way we deny the Xtian God. WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE

Lets pick a group of racists at random...the KKK. Now, in your opinion, do they strike you as evolutionist or religious types?

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EDIT: double post

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Did you read my entire post? I just gave some. The fact that African pygmies are cladistically more basal than Caucasians was used as a reason to display one in a zoo exhibit.

Does displaying a black person in a cage at a zoo not qualify as “racist” in your opinion? I can probably find some other examples of similar things, but I didn’t think it was necessary to provide more of them than this.

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Lets say the ToE made some people think that their racism was justified. So what? Does that change any of the evidence?

Personally I consider the "chain of being" concept that many early naturalists still held on too far more influential behind justifying racism, after all the ToE posits that we are all just as evolved.

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Oh well, if it happened in 1920, well, there we go then. Lets take all our science from that era

bye bye dna.

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I hear stories from the chamber / How Christ was born into a manger
And like some ragged stranger / Died upon the cross
And might I say it seems so fitting in its way
He was a carpenter by trade / Or at least that's what I'm told
--Mercy Seat, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Racism has NOT grown more common since evolution was proposed. In our century, racism in our country has dramatically reduced. And either way, that is not even what Gould was saying.



He didn't say racism increased, he said biological arguments for racism, ie, biological justification for racism. Racism has existed in spades since the beginning of recorded history. I think the progress has been in the right direction.

Aggie, I am on dialup which is very cranky this morning, so I can't make a link, but I know that Wikipedia, though not always a great source, has an excellent article on this very topic, complete with many cites and bibliography. It shouldn't be hard to find.

I found the quote without attribution here. If they are the original authors of it, it would seem AIG misattributed an idea to lend it more credence. Oddly, this is also exactly what the broader quote is talking about. As the concept of evolution became better and better supported, more people began trying to tie their preconceived notions to it. The quote doesn't say that there were more racists after Darwin, only that a specific argument popped up more.

Aggie, there will always be idiots. Some more advanced idiots choose to look to (admittedly perhaps mis-interpreted) science to justify their idiocy. That doesn't mean that the theory of evolution itself is justification for racism or xenophobia any more than the germ theory of disease is justification for becoming a recluse and sterilizing all your eating utensils. Each case is taking the otherwise relevant theory much farther than it should.

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