Evolutionists - did you know that apparently we're all racist?

Question

http://www.thetruthforyouth.com/NEW%20Comics/SM/pages/SM_2.htm

I thought I was a rational, tolerant kind of person, but it turns out I'm a racist because I accept evolution! Thank God there are crazy fundie Creationists out there to tell me what I do and don't believe.

Answer 1

It does make you wonder though, especially when some very well known scientists have said they believe people of color are more lustful and not as smart as certain people. The guy who "discovered" DNA even said this, and recently had to apologize for it. I think what this kind of thing shows it that we can't believe everything a scientist says because he or she has Dr. in front of his/her name.

Answer 2

If the shoe fits..... wear sandals maybe?

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the ***** or Australian and the gorilla." Darwin, Charles. 1871. The Descent of Man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray. Volume. 1. 1st edition. p 201

Answer 3

The cartoon is not very explanatory. *Historically*, the theory of evolution *has* been used to support racism. I believe that Darwin himself had these same views - i.e. that the "white race" was superior (more advanced on an evolutionary scale) than the "black race". Modern science has (nearly) destroyed this concept, and the modern theory of evolution does not consider that differences between "races" are ones indicating evolutionary advancement of one "race" in comparison to another.

Or, in other words, that isn't true anymore. Guess what? We sciency types also no longer believe that the world is flat.

Jim, http://www.jimpettis. com/wheel/

Answer 4

Even I know enough about evolution to see the fault in this cartoon's ideas on evolution.

Answer 5

Wow, I never realized that me believing in evolution made me a racist atheist, oh, the error in my ways!

Answer 6

I got two pages in before I felt really embarrassed for the irrational creators of this tripe.

Answer 7

Darwin's first rough approximations were contaminated by the biases of his time, but contained truthful basics as well. He also threw in some major scientific errors, for one, the scientifically false concept of "race."

In modern times we have gone further, and gotten rid of the crap, and kept the good. We must honor Darwin's basic concept, even as we understand things he was wrong about. Most of these things, it can be argued, were due to his inability to fully apply his own theory.

Evolutionary theory can be considered racist IF you identify modern Africans as being the same as ancient Africans. In other words, positing that evolution STOPPED for them. This requires a belief that the biologically pretty minor development of different skin color is actually a big deal, and the other peoples that branched off continued to develop while the Africans stood still.

There is absolutely no evidence in either the fossil record or biological science that modern Africans are anything other than "homo sapiens sapiens," that is, modern humans. They are not "living fossils" of the folks "the rest of us" branched off from. They ARE us.

Another way evolution can be called racist is if you also include as an assumption the non-scientific concept mistakenly labelled "social Darwinism." This classic example of lazy and biased thinking, and incomplete application of a concept, considers each individual person in isolation. By not acknowledging that we are social animals that run in packs, and that societies are part of our development, one can look at the lesser development due to poverty of many individual black people as being symptomatic of "racial weakness" or "inferiority." It ignores, of course, the fact that poor people are not alone floating in midair - they are part of societies, societies that have bigotries, oppression, and varying opportunities available to their members. Without a "level playing field," you cannot make valid assumptions regarding someone's "fitness" by what their standing is on the "racetrack" of life.

One might accuse evolutionists of being guilty of enabling the fake "race" theories of Nazis and the like. "Well, Afican and other non-white nations are less technically developed. Isn't evolution the reason?" Darwin, with his thinking muddied by his Victorian British upbringing, and unable to fully accept the implications of his own theory, thought like that (see "savage races" quote by poster above).

Evolution is the reason IF you consider the minor developmental differences between peoples, that amount to only a few thousand years at most (even the differences between the most primitive tribesfolk to the most wired techies), as being critical differences due to them being further evolved.

Even 10,000 years is only TWO PERCENT of the span of existence of a species that is a half a million years old. And while that's the age of the oldest remains with most of the characteristics of our species found, we might be as much as five times older than THAT, making the difference FOUR TENTHS OF ONE PERCENT. Even if you accept the theory that we only branched off from our ancestors 100, 000 years ago, that's STILL only a 10% difference. Such a small difference in technical development can be easily explained by things like natural disasters retarding development, such as floods cutting folks off from raw materials, disease killing off Ugg the caveman who was the twentieth guy in a row to try to get his tribe to cook their meat, or predators wiping out tribes, or foreign invaders who have just a tiny bit better weaponry taking over, or a zillion other possible reasons.

So just because some African or Asian nations might be "less developed" than Europe or America, doesn't mean the people there are "less evolved." That would mean using WAY too short a time scale (which was the source of some of Darwin's errors too). By the way, another good concept to consider is presented in Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa."

So evolutionary theory does NOT "justify" racism.

In fact, if you go a little deeper, it is profoundly ANTI-racist.

More on this can be gotten by investigating the writings of the late Stephen J. Gould in Natural History magazine and his many books. He tried to do for evolution and biology what Carl Sagan did for space.

And if you can tell something about someone by their enemies, you have to respect a guy who was denounced by the Ku Klux Klan, the German Republikaners, and the racist Kach Party in Israel.

The human race lost a great deal when Dr. Gould died of cancer in 2002.

By the way, the creationist comic you linked to STANK. I can't BELIEVE they can't do better than that, even crippled as they are by the illogic of their beliefs.

Answer 8

Holy crap. That cartoon was awesome!

"How to convert an empty-headed cartoon character" is how I'd have titled it.

Thanks for the laugh :)

Answer 9

So why was there racism before evolution was discovered?

Answer 10

That was an incredible look inside the mind of creationists, and wow was it ever empty.