Did the theory of evolution increase racism and anti-semitism in general?

Question

I read somewhere that it did, what is your thoughts?

Answer 1

Yes. It made Darwin and others think that Africans were a subspecies.

Here are some links to some good articles on how the theory of evolution have impacted people's thinking on racism.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/racism.asp

Answer 2

Asking whether evolution increased racism and anti-Semitism is like asking whether Christianity did.

Anyone who claims that evolution allowed people to refer to Africans as a subrace - and anyone who gets their "facts"(!) from AiG, seriously needs a reality check. Looking at the question another way, what about the "curse of Ham"? Doesn't *that* effectively relegate Africans to the status of a slave race - and with divine sanction, no less?

Of course, neither are exactly true. *People* (non-African people, obviously) viewed Africans as a subrace long before Darwin put pen to paper. Why? Because most African nations weren't as technologically advanced, so they were exploited.

Ditto anti-Semitism. What has anti-Semitism to do with evolution? One might as well say that it has to do with the prevailing Western belief-system - after all, according to Christian legend, the Jews killed Christ.

Again, neither are exactly true. Anti-Semitism has existed for nearly two millennia, because the Jews, despite losing their homeland, spread across the planet and *retained their identity, traditions and culture* rather than being integrated with and assimilated into the host populations. So wherever they went, they were always the "outsiders", targets of suspicion and mistrust, which occasionally spilled over into fear and hatred when events made them a convenient scapegoat - whether one refers to the collapse of the German economy or the Black Death.

It's easy to point the finger. Whether that finger-pointing bears any relation to reality is another matter.

The bottom line is this. People will derive twisted interpretations from whatever they learn in order to support their own preconceptions and prejudices. If you view Africans as a subrace, you'll rationalize it in whatever way you see fit, whether it's by reference to the curse of Ham or by reference to some twisted aberration of eugenics.

Answer 3

No. Some racists and anti-semites misuse the theory of evolution to "prove" the truth of their prejudices.

Answer 4

I donot know whether it increases racism or anti-semetism, but I can say that sure it will increase the "confusionism" in general among the mankind.

God has created all the spiecies in full form.He has designed everything perfectly.You can know more how ,by visiting the following .

Answer 5

No that is ridiculous. Whatever your source was is a source of racism and anti-semitism... evolution is a proven scientific fact.

Answer 6

Possible!But I think there is no link between faith and sciences!Evolution is just a theory of scientist and still a big question!Biblically,we are from adam and eve,so there is a big difference and it is man's option to choose what to believe!

Answer 7

the theory of evolution itself didn't increase racism. its how people interpreted it. example: hitler used the idea of evolution to preach that the aryan race was the end product and that other races were less evolved

Answer 8

Christians hate to think!

Jesus? Dying?

What is the Imacculate Conception supposed to mean?

(NOT A VIRGIN BIRTH! - betcha)

Jesus, the basis of Christianity? .

If Jesus died, he could NOT have been God.

Gods do not die? Do they?

If Jesus 'died' on Friday and 'undied' on Sunday, what else besides Saturday was sacrificed?

Did Jesus give up Saturday for us? Big deal!

If Jesus died for our sins, there should not be any more sins, else why go through with it?.

If Jesus really DIED, he should be dead, dead, dead!

If you swallow this stuff, you are not going to like the folks who don't. You want them to swallow it too.

'Believers' want everyone to convert to their non-thinking.

Jews don't believe in Jesus, and therefore....

Answer 9

no.

the words you refer to, are the fruit of a bunch of social scientists who are paid heavy cash to "study" society and consequently need to justify their scam in inventing stupid terms to qualify basic social or political contexts. nothing more and remember...sociologists are amongst the biggest cheats in their "so called" studies of society....study society for yourself and give the sociologists and big...

Answer 10

Darwin is the father of modern racism. His theory was taken up and commented on by such "official" founders of modern race theory as Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and this racist ideology that emerged was then put into practice by the Nazis and other fascists. James Joll, who spent many years as a professor of history at universities such as Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, explained the relationship between Darwinism and racism in his book Europe Since 1870, which is still taught as a textbook in universities:
Charles Darwin, the English naturalist whose books On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, and The Descent of Man, which followed in 1871, launched controversies which affected many branches of European thought… The ideas of Darwin, and of some of his contemporaries such as the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, …were rapidly applied to questions far removed from the immediate scientific ones… The element of Darwinism which appeared most applicable to the development of society was the belief that the excess of population over the means of support necessitated a constant struggle for survival in which it was the strongest or the 'fittest' who won. From this it was easy for some social thinkers to give a moral content to the notion of the fittest, so that the species or races which did survive were those morally entitled to do so.
The doctrine of natural selection could, therefore, very easily become associated with another train of thought developed by the French writer, Count Joseph-Arthur Gobineau, who published an Essay on the Inequality of Human Races in 1853. Gobineau insisted that the most important factor in development was race; and that those races which remained superior were those which kept their racial purity intact. Of these, according to Gobineau, it was the Aryan race which had survived best… It was... Houston Stewart Chamberlain who contributed to carrying some of these ideas a stage further… Hitler himself admired the author [Chamberlain] sufficiently to visit him on his deathbed in 1927. Hitler's idea of a hierarchy and conflict between the races was inspired by Darwinism.
German evolutionist biologist Ernst Haeckel was one of the most important of Nazism's spiritual fathers. Haeckel brought Darwin's theory to Germany, and formulated it as a program ready for the Nazis. From racists such as Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Hitler adopted a politically-oriented racism, and a biological approach from Haeckel. Careful examination will reveal that these racists all derived their inspiration from Darwinism.
Indeed, a deep Darwinian influence can be found among all Nazi ideologues. When we examine the Nazi theory, which was given form by Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, we see in it concepts such as "natural selection," "selective mating," and "the struggle for survival between the races," all repeated dozens of times in Darwin's The Origin of Species. As also mentioned earlier, the name of Hitler's book Mein Kampf was inspired by Darwin's principle that life was a constant struggle for survival, and those who emerged victorious survived. In the book, Hitler talked of the struggle between the races, and maintained that "History would culminate in a new millennial empire of unparalleled splendor, based on a new racial hierarchy ordained by nature herself."

In the Nuremberg party rally in 1933, he proclaimed that ''higher race subjects to itself a lower race …a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right."

That Nazism was influenced by Darwinism is accepted by almost all historians who are expert in the period. Peter Chrisp expresses it this way in his The Rise of Fascism:

Charles Darwin's theory that humans had evolved from apes was ridiculed when it was first published, but was later widely accepted. The Nazis distorted Darwin's theories, using them to justify warfare and racism.

The historian R. Hickman expresses the influence of Darwinism on Hitler in these words.

[Hitler] was a firm believer and preacher of evolution. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his psychosis, it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important because]… his book, Mein Kampf, clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and the extermination of the weak to produce a better society.

http://www.harunyahya.com/fascism1.php