Yes that is correct, and I would agree that the belief (or ideology) of these people was based on a twisted interpretation of those passages in the Bible - again I repeat, the topic is if Darwin (and his theory) promoted genocide. I have stated that I do not think Darwin was particularly inclined to genocide, but the incontrovertible fact is that his theory, and natural selection, was spoken of, to promote a “humane” approach to the removal of races that were naturally rendered extinct. If you have data or historical facts that shows this is untrue than let us see it.
btw Australia modified the constitution to allow Aborigines to be counted, and to vote, in 1962 (I think this is the exact date).
In plain English, ToE and natural selection justified to these people genocide on a national scale, so much so they believed they were helping nature in a humane way. Surely this is plain enough.
Sorry if I’m missing this somehow, but who exactly is the Australian prime minister and what is the case in question? I looked around a bit but couldn’t pin it down.
Do you think any of us don’t know what was said? Yes, it was said. Darwinism and Evolution were stated as a primary reason … by any number of diabolical people.
The point of our threads is that if someone had convinced them that the YEC position was correct … do you think they would have stopped their efforts to exterminate various sub-groups?
Though Native Americans were given citizenship in 1924 it wasn’t until 1948 court rulings that most could vote in New Mexico and Arizona, for Maine in 1953 (state legislation) and for Utah 1957 (state legislation) (and not till 1965 when the Voting Rights Act passed that various other barriers dropped).
Just about everything was used to justify racism and genocide including various interpretations of Christianity (e.g., On the Jews and Their Lies by Martin Luther or the various gyrations of the Reformed Churches in South Africa to justify apartheid). The Theory of Natural Selection was also misused to justify evil actions. Should both Christianity and the Theory of Natural Selection be rejected because of the misuse? Or should they be judged on whether they are true?
I was unaware of these dates - it is truly shocking that we so called civilised nations would act in this way.
But let us face it - anti-Semitism for example, is considered repugnant and with it all the ideology that justified such actions. The same can be said for racism and genocidal outlooks. The ideology must be acknowledged, and also the beliefs that grew out of such outlooks must be abandoned. It is smug for us to say we know what is true and previous societies did not. As I pointed out, many of the people supported such practices because people who they relied on said natural selection was just that - the error promulgated by science and scientists is particularly repugnant because people are told science has shown such a thing is true. You will not find anyone saying otherwise. Now beliefs are still derived from NS, but of course we now really really know what is true. If we apply the same arguments to other areas we tend to be more circumspect.
My initial post dealt with the constitution of Australia when it became a nation at the start of the 20th century, and remarks made by a Prime Minister during such a period on the race of aborigines dying out.
There is little daylight between justifying an act and promoting it. And “helping nature” may be part of a quote, but it may also be an impression I formed, so I will leave it at this point.
I probably shouldn’t have used the word ‘true’. Science improves our understanding of the world but always with the idea that there is more to understand still; it changes and corrects itself. For instance it is science that points out that the ‘human races’ are social constructs not biological races and that biologically we are remarkably homogeneous.
Racism and genocidal outlooks predated Darwin (note the eradication of Tasmanian natives was mostly completed by 1833). And it was the prevailing ideology that European Christians were a superior race that had the right to subjugate ‘inferior races’ that twisted science and religion and philosophy to support that view.
Moral philosophy can be informed by science but is a separate discipline. Moral philosophy also affects how science is done. In the US we now have Institutional Review Boards to vet proposed experiments to try to avoid the grave mistakes of the past (e.g., the Tuskegee experiment).
When the Australian federation passed its first legislation, enshrining the “White Australia” policy and effectively denying Aboriginal people the vote, few voices were raised in protest. Progressives and conservatives alike saw the preservation of the more evolved white race as central to national identity.
And in parallel I think this overstates. I think the available evidence suggests strongly that (as has been suggested above) if Darwinism was not yet known, this would not have led to racial equality, and some other rationale for the “preservation” of the white race would have prevailed. The words “more evolved” are not the key words there at all.
This could be an interesting read:
It might be illustrative to see if there was any more generalized concern for aboriginal welfare among clergy such as the Bishop Perry mentioned in the ABC article.
I was interested in pointing out the way people acted and how they used their understanding and belief in Darwinian evolution in this instance (and the eradication of Tasmanian aborigines). I understand that we cannot argue on the basis that evolution caused the practice of racial inequality or genocide - just that it was used to promote such things.
We as communities have come some way since then, and many communities, including Australia, are working to redress such horrors and seek reconciliation, so I would encourage comments that include this. I suggest we should not be defensive regarding Darwinian evolution since the facts are clear - nor am I suggesting the theory of evolution magically caused tolerant people to become murderous racists.
History show us that natural selection was part of the mix that we know was genocide.
Understood. I guess I don’t see the importance of its being used in that way in a larger context. It could hardly have been expected to be used in any other way given the prevailing mores and practices of the time. Now that those have greatly changed, NS doesn’t seem to be used in this way as far as I know.
But that history is there for what it’s worth, granted.
Yes, I agree. And to expand the discussion on mores and practices, I will add this comment to indicate why I discuss this matter in the way I do. (I think you may not be an evolutionary creationist (EC), so I may be addressing the wrong person, but it is the subject of this site).
The questions that Christians often find difficult is theodicy - why God allows pain and death. This difficult area is usually a theological one and discussions deal with sin and redemption.
When people say God works through evolution and natural selection, we may face an impossible theological position, and that is God is partial to some and condemns others (selects some and not others). This is a vast contradiction of Christian teaching, in that God is not a respecter of persons, and all are treated equally, if they sin, or if they do good.
I suggest that NS played a significant part through EC in such atrocities because many intellectuals accepted EC during that time - when the vast majority of people declared themselves as Christians.
@marktwombly, your point about the subt-title of Darwin’s most famous book is often made, and it’s partly correct. Your final sentence (as quoted) is entirely correct.
As for the title, a few years ago I quickly (not slowly and carefully) tabulated the uses of the words “race” and “races” in the Origin of Species, with an eye on pigeon-holing them by context. Since it was a back of the envelope tabulation, not intended for publication (just to answer my own question) but only for casual reference in my classes, I won’t certify its full accuracy–but, I confident of the accuracy of my overall impression, which I am about to state.
Darwin used those two forms of that word dozens of times, and in all but a very few instances he was referring to animal or vegetable types, not humans. Consistent with this conclusion, there’s just two index entries related to human “races.” If you want to check this more carefully, it’s not hard to do since the book is now digitized and publicly available for free. (I’d be happy to have you give us better numbers than the vague ones I’ve given here. I leave them vague b/c I don’t want to back specific numbers without doing the work more carefully myself.) Indeed, humans are almost entirely absent from the book as a whole, though to be sure he intended his ideas also to apply to humans, as he later did in Descent of Man.
I could show you zillions of passages in other books about natural history by other early or mid-nineteenth century authors, in which the default meaning of “race(s)” is biological types, specifically in references to plants or non-human animals. Of course, the various human “races” had been characterized and identified long before Darwin, and it’s easy to find non-evolutionary, special creationist theories of their origin. One of the most common such theories attributes it to the “curse” God placed on the children of Ham in Genesis 9:25. A colleague (a biblical scholar) tells me that he’s seen this idea in very early Jewish texts, and I’ve seen it often in Christian texts from many centuries.
Here, e.g., is a place where the great Christian chemist Robert Boyle refers to the idea (in his 1664 book about “colours”), a passage that is interesting also b/c of his attitude toward just explaining away skin color by a bare appeal to the Bible:
“There is another Opinion concerning the Complexion of Negroes, that is not only embrac’d by many of the more Vulgar Writers, but likewise by that ingenious Traveller Mr. [George] Sandys, and by a late most learned Critick, besides other men of Note, and these would have the Blackness of Negroes an effect of Noah 's Curse ratify’d by God’s, upon Cham; But though I think that even a Naturalist may without disparagement believe all the Miracles attested by the Holy Scriptures, yet in this case to flye to a Supernatural Cause, will, I fear, look like Shifting off the Difficulty, instead of Resolving it; for we enquire not the First and Universal, but the Proper, Immediate, and Physical Cause of the Jetty Colour of Negroes; And not only we do not find expressed in the Scripture, that the Curse meant by Noah to Cham, was the Blackness of his Posterity, but we do find plainly enough there that the Curse was quite another thing, namely, that he should be a Servant of servants, that is by an [H]Ebraism, a very Abject Servant to his Brethren, which accordingly did in part come to pass, when the Israelites of the posterity of Shem, subdued the Canaanites, that descended from Cham, and kept them in great Subjection. Nor is it evident that Blackness is a Curse, for Navigators tell us of Black Nations, who think so much otherwise of their own condition, that they paint the Devil White. Nor is Blackness inconsistent with Beauty, which even to our European Eyes consists not so much in Colour, as an Advantageous Stature, a Comely Symmetry of the parts of the Body, and Good Features in the Face. So that I see not why Blackness should be thought such a Curse to the Negroes, unless perhaps it be, that being wont to go Naked in those Hot Climates, the colour of their Skin does probably, according to the Doctrine above deliver’d, make the Sun-beams more Scorching to them, than they would prove to a people of a White Complexion.”
Dr. Ted -
It’s worth a lot, thank you very much! I have long been aware of the extra-biblical views on curses on human races, but I was not as aware of Darwin’s use of the word race.
Search for “races” and you’ll find it. A bit later, you’ll find another place where he spoke of “the human race” collectively. You get a sense of the complexity that is obliterated when people say in an unqualified way that Darwin’s title was openly racist. It wasn’t.
Silliman was a steadfast opponent of pre-Darwinian versions of evolution (he died only a few years after Darwin’s book came out), so it’s not as though he was deliberately trying to “spin” Darwin in his use of the word “race(s).” He simply reflects standard practice in the 1820s and 1830s, when Darwin was still quite young.
This is a tricky topic and Ted has done a great job of presenting a balanced perspective. In a range of opinion on Darwin and his legacy there are two extremes: hagiographies that automatically defend Darwin as a reflex, and mud-slinging that portrays Darwin as a moral monster. The historical Darwin resists both caricatures.With respect to the first extreme, there are those who seem to feel that a criticism against Darwin impugns his science, and thus he must be defended or excused at all costs. With respect to the second extreme there are those who do intend their criticism to impugn his science. As is usually the case in these instances, the truth is rather more complicated. Although it is probably never possible to separate a scientist from his or her science completely (for example, it’s impossible, I think, to separate Oppenheimer completely from the A-bomb, morally and otherwise–and a scientific theory and certainly technology can have intentionality built into it), for the most part the science should be evaluated independently of the personalities involved–when it is the science that is being evaluated. The historian, on the other hand, tries to avoid doing this, especially when looking at the origins of a theory.
There is of course a strong biblical precedent for a Jew or Christian to object to making someone, including a scientist, into a saint: the biblical injunctions against idolatry. Darwin was a human being and hence flawed–like all of use.
In 2009, Adrian Desmond and James Moore added to their well-received biography of Darwin the book: Darwin’s sacred cause: race, slavery and the quest for human origins. An excerpt can be found here:
Details about the book can be found here:
In this book Desmond and Moore argue that Darwin’s anti-slavery views were a strong motivator behind his desire to promote the unity of the human race. He did this through his evolutionary theory. Oddly, though, he ended up in a similar place to Creationists or any Christian who believes in human monogenism through common descent from Adam and Eve.
(One can be against the institution of slavery and still have lingering racist or mildly racist ideas, however, and this was the case in both instances of Darwin–a man who could also be accused of ‘classism’ by today’s standards).
As Ted has rightly pointed out, racist ideologies have appealed to both science and the Bible over the centuries. Science and the Bible have also both been associated with anti-racist arguments.