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Does evolutionary thought propagate racism?

PhantomLlama

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Lets try another approach. The USA has a much higher proportion of creationists and lower number of evolution accepters than the UK. Does anyone have any statistics on relative amounts of racism in these countries. Or statistics for the rest of Europe, which has hardly any creationists in it? Then we can do an analysis of the figures.

Also, do not forget that other factors can be involved in such things as the rise of racist beliefs. It could be that other factors caused the rise of racism after evolution. Evolution just gave them another thing to hang on to to try and defend their beliefs.

And also remember that whether or not it promotes racist thought, or even whether or not it is actually racist itself, is irrelevant to its accuracy as science. If a scientific study showed that caucasians were intrinsically superior to other races, if the science was sound we would have to accept it. (We wouldn't, of course, but that is a different issue)
 
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Nathan Poe

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Today at 03:15 PM Arikay said this in Post #42

Yeah, lets try this.

Evolution is not racist.

Creationism is not racist.

People are racist.

People believe in both evolution and creationism.

Does that make sense?

Makes perfect sense to me. A bigot is a bigot, and they will rationalize their bigotry with whatever's handy, be it pseudoscience or pseudoreligion.
 
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seebs

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Today at 02:15 PM Arikay said this in Post #42

Yeah, lets try this.
Evolution is not racist.
Creationism is not racist.
People are racist.
People believe in both evolution and creationism.
Does that make sense?

Indeed. I've seen people try to justify racism from the Bible, and it's just as stupid as trying to justify it from half-baked notions of evolution.
 
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lucaspa

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Apparently the creationists never read that part of Acts.

Sorry, Crusadar, but in examining sources it is clear that creationism ws the justification for racism. See the list of books below. When Darwin came out with Origin in 1859, it dealt a huge blow to racism because now the different races were NOT special creations that could be discriminated against, but all relatives from a common ancestor and thus all equally human.

"The foundation of modern "scientific" racism was Gobineau's (1853-5) Essay on the Inequality of Human Races. Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) was a one-time diplomat who held that humanity is divided into three races, white, yellow and black. He considered that his reasoning established that the black race had an "animal character, that appears in the shape of the pelvis"; has a crude yet powerful energy; and dull mental faculties but has an "intensity of desire". The yellow race has little physical energy; feeble desires; mediocrity; a respect for order; and "does not dream or theorise". The whites have an energetic intelligence, perseverance, instinct for order, love of liberty, and sense of honour; they can be cruel, but when they are "they are conscious of their cruelty; it is very, doubtful whether such a consciousness exists in the negro".
"Gobineau was, naturally enough for Europeans of his day, a Biblical literalist; and he remained so all his life, seeing in Darwinism a negation of his view that races always had been and always would be as they now are"
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/cg_science_of_racism.htm

Look at this creationist attempt to refute natural selection. It is based on racism:
"Suppose a white man to have been wrecked on an island inhabited by negroes ... Suppose him to possess the physical strength, energy, and ability of a dominant white race ... grant him every advantage which we can conceive a white to possess over the native .. Yet from all these admissions, there does not follow the conclusion that, after a limited or unlimited number of generations, the inhabitants of the island will be white. Our shipwrecked hero would probably become king; he would kill a great many blacks in the struggle for existence; he would have a great many wives and children, while many of his subjects would live and die as bachelors ... In the first generation there will be some dozens of intelligent young mulattoes, much superior in average intelligence to the negroes ...for if a highly favored white cannot blanch a nation of negroes, it will hardly be contended that a comparatively dull mulatto has a good chance of producing a tawny tribe." Jenkin, F. 1867. Darwin and the origin of species. North British Review, June. In SJ Gould, Fleeming Jenkin Revisited in Bully for Brontosaurus, 1991.

Isaac de la Peyere, Preadamitae, 1655, English edition, Men Before Adam, 1656. Peyere was a French theologian and Huguenot. The book claimed that Adam was not the first man and that the Bible is not the history of mankind, but only the history of the Jews. He was censured by the Pope but kept looking for support for his theory. Part of his rationale came from his interpretation of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. His pre-Adamite theory later became the basis for 19th century theories of polygenism and modern racism. You can see the thread yourself in the works below--other races not descended from Adam, just the white race. A discussion of this work can be found in Encycl. Judaica, 1972. So the idea of races did not originate with Darwin, but with a card-carrying Christian. And the concept of racism came over 200 years *before* Origin of the Species was written.

Charles Carrol The Negro a Beast; or, In the Image of God, 1900 American Book and Bible House. "The Negro created a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master -- the White man" "All scientific investigation of the subject proves the Negro to be an ape, and that he simply stands at the head of the ape family." (of course, he is wrong about the science, since evolution shows all the races to belong to the same species) Genesis prohibits mating with "beasts" [Negroes]: they were created a different "kind". God destroyed mankind in the worldwide Flood because man had corrupted his kind by amalgamation with Negro beasts. Negroes were taken on the Ark along with other animals. Has a chapter "The Theory of Evolution Exploded; Man was Created a Man, and Did Not Develop from an Ape" Says there are only 2 origin theories, and they are in "absolute conflict": biblical creation and atheistic evolution.

In the Image of God, 1967, Destiny Publishers. "The Bible stands as an impregnable bulwark against Christendom's modern slogan that all men, regardless of color, are blood brothers ... The simple truth regarding the origin of races demonstrates conclusively that the Negroes and the white race do not have a common ancestry." (quite a contrast to evolution, which says they do and are the same species) The book goes on to cite many Bible passages proving the "beasts" are bipedal servants of "man" and distinct from other animals. Presents scientific evidence of physiological differences which demonstrates that Negroes were created to be beasts of burden. Cites A Hislop's The Two Babylons, 1916, to prove that Nimrod--founder of all false religions--was black. The "atheistical theory of evolution" is a "spurious doctrine" which aligned itself with apostasy and led to "disbelief in the scientifically accurate but simply-worded statements of the Bible."

Walter T. Galusha Fossils and the Word of God, 1964, Exposition Press. God divided man into four colors and wants them to stay separate. The Devil, however, "will try to get them to unite and in this way defeat God's purpose." Is standard creationist fare for the rest, including support for creation of Adam and Eve and Noah's Flood (2130 BC according to book).
 
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gladiatrix

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What a load of bull!! After reading 4 pages of this creationist smear of Darwin with the "Hitler/evolutionist/racist" tar brush, time to set the record straight..

From Creationists, Hitler and Evolution

When "Hitler was an atheist" argument is shown to be a fallacy, creationists will invariably try to blame Hitler's cruelty on evolution, their second-favorite whipping boy for the evils of the world after atheists/Satan. FYI, the phrase "survival of the fittest" was NOT coined by Darwin, but by the philosopher Henry Spencer. Furthermore, this phase, reluctantly adopted by Darwin, does NOT mean the survival of the meanest, strongest bad guy on the block at the expense of the weaker. This is the common mischaracterization by religionists and erstwhile "social Darwinists" like the American industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller et al, who first coined the phrase to justify their underhanded, dog-eat-dog corporate warfare and exploitation of their workers. What this phrase really means , IN CONTEXT, from Introduction to Evolutionary Biology

And your source for this tidbit from Gould is?? After finding out what a load of cobblers "Hitler was an evolutionist" was, I want to see where you got this.
 
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The Barbarian

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"Yet the prophecy again has its obverse side. Somehow they have only gone so far and no farther. The Japhethites and Semites have, sooner or later, taken over their territories, and their inventions, and then developed them and utilized them for their own enlargement. Often the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have become actual personal servants or even slaves to the others. Possessed of a genetic character concerned mainly with mundane matters, they have eventually been displaced by the intellectual and philosophical acumen of the Japhethites and the religious zeal of the Semites."

This is from a book written by ur-Creationist Henry Morris
(The Beginning Of the World, Second Edition (1991), pages 147-148)

Science (and thus evolutionists) had learned long before this that biological races do not exist in humans. The above is neither scientific, nor scriptural, but merely the prejudices of a creationist.

Pray for Morris.
 
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lucaspa

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Jet Black said:
this seems a bit flawed though, if He didn't, then why would different races be able to interbreed?

Yes, creationists are internally inconsistent in this. But that is true of all racists, creationists or those misusing evolution. Those misusing evolution claim that races are different species, ignoring, of course, that human populations interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Thus showing that they are the same species by the exact biological species concept.

Racism is a strong meme that corrupts any other meme it comes in contact with. Racism will take Christianity, creationism, or evolution and twist them to justify racism. There is a book entitled The Evolution of Racism by Shipley (I think) that details just how racists suborned evolution.
 
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I think it would be good to note that Darwin is the original mind behind the whole of the evolutino theory. He wrote a book people call today "The Origin of Species", but you won't hear very many evolutionists recite the whole title, which is "The Origin of Species and Favored " (emphasis added). Thats not the whole of the title, but that is more of it. It would also be good to note that Darwin himself was a hardcore racist and sexist.
 
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The Barbarian

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Darwin, like most people of European descent at the time, was a racist. However, Darwin was of the opinion that all human had the right to freedom and the fruits of their own labor. He was considered a radical for that, by the creationists of the time.

In fact Darwin's ideas on race were almost precisely those of Abraham Lincoln, who also thought that blacks were inferior, but deserved freedom and dignity.

As science has progressed, evolutionists have learned that there are no biological races in humans.

On the other hand, creationists have not learned as much. Henry Morris, one of the the founders of modern creationist doctrine, tells us that blacks spiritually and intellectually inferior to other people.

I wonder if you can find a modern evolutionist who would say so...
 
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fragmentsofdreams

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History is full of brilliant bigots. We judge their contributions to science on the scientific merits, not their other beliefs.
 
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Given that "Origin" has only one, oblique reference to human evolution, I've always suspected that creationists make a mountain out of a molehill when they fasten on his use of the word "races" in the title. It has always seemed obvious to me that "race" in Darwin's usage was interchangeable with "variety".
 
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SLP

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Crusader isn't as bright as he makes himself out to be. I ran into his arrogance at DarwinTalk. He made a lot of scientific sounding claims, but it was easy to find flaws in his basic understanding of issues. When I pointed these out, he said I was 'rude' and decided to ignore me.

But then later he accused me of plagiarizing myself; didn't seem to understand that posting an abstract from a paper is not plagiarism; then actually posted my name on several occasions, apparently in a feeble attempt to intimidate me.

After I mentioned that it is easy to find out who people are, he sort of stopped posting there.

Typical arrogant pseudo-know it all blowhard with just enough knowledge to make big mistakes.
 
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PhantomLlama

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Did he break out the pseudo-biblical language? When I beat up one of his posts he started saying things like 'from where dost thou get this nonsense young man?'

Priceless.
 
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