It contrasts the scientific theory that mankind came out of Africa about 100,000 years ago with the creationist portrayals of Adam and Eve as white people. I was struggling to understand this obsession with genetics in theology and suddenly it make sense.
I believe in an historical Adam and Eve. But I am quite sure that they were not white. Until recently even Europe was populated by dark skinned people. The scientific evidence supports this conclusion.
Where did the white people all come from anyway? Unlike blue eyes, white skin is not a singular mutation but an adaptation to living in northern climates – people who originally came from Africa like everyone else. These white people – both the European and Asian variety – descended upon the world in a series barbarian invasions from the north. Of course it was all about supremacy from the beginning to justify taking land, wealth, and all the other benefits of human civilization, from the people living down south.
Of course I am greatly oversimplifying. Scientists have tracked a number of different light skinned genes coming into Europe. And one of them came to Europe from the Middle East 7,800 years ago. So it is conceivable that an historical Adam and Eve were not completely dark skinned.
Apparently the skin color of the Sumerians is a hotly debated issue. Some like to quote Sumerian texts in which they call themselves “black heads.” Unfortunately we don’t have painted art from the Sumerians just sculptures and thus the color depended on the color of the stone used. Most of the stone used was light colored but there are some dark colored ones too.
Not really on topic, but it does remind me of a reason why white supremacy is so stupid – it’s like taking personal credit that your great- or great-great-grandmother wasn’t born in West Africa.
I think it’s stupid to argue skin colour.
A couple of thoughts…Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world…they were not fearful of the issues we face as a result of sin (global warming, ozone depletion, skin cancers etc)
I believe skin colour is simply an adaptation to the environment we find ourselves in…it’s impossible to know skin colour of Adam and Eve based on current environmental conditions. They may have been white as snow or black as night…my gut tells me something in between is a safe place to reside on this one. It doesn’t really matter though.
She sounds like a woke Karen. “You are racist if you reject evolution.” I can’t do anything but laugh. I would be more inclined to buy into this the further back in time we went, but how about people just reject evolution because its contrary to a plain reading of the Bible, the book they base their entire life on? Racism and white-supremacy are evil terms to me. Horrific and grotesque but some people like to throw them around so much, they are becoming watered down. They now mean “you disagree with me.” I remember criticizing something Lori Lightfoot (mayor of Chicago) did on facebook as hypocritical regarding Covid and I was told by a colleague I was misogynistic and racist for doing so. Some of these woke individuals find everything racist.
I’m not even sure why unsubstantiated nonsense like that is on “Scientific American.” And yes, I know its an opinion piece but it is an embarrassment. Are the millions of people of color who reject evolution also white supremacists? The mark of Cain being for black people? What, do we live in the 1800s still? Outside a fringe minority of actual white supremacists, evangelicals today don’t believe this. Are there not actually white-supremacists who actually appeal to evolution in defense of their racism?
This isn’t just woke nonsense, it’s actively harmful.
Given the amount of harm that bad attitudes to science can do, the scientific community needs to be doing whatever it can to try and get the evangelical community on board. This means that they need to be attempting to provide some reassurance that science isn’t the enemy of faith, and isn’t something “secular” that is not to be trusted.
People reject evolution for all sorts of reasons with varying degrees of cockaloopyness, but only in a tiny minority of cases does white supremacy have anything to do with it. In fact, most creationists find white supremacy and racism every bit as abhorrent as the author of this hit piece do.
By tarring them all with the same brush, articles such as this don’t do anything to dispel evangelical concerns about science; on the contrary, they just serve to reinforce them. Especially when they appear in publications that serve as the popular face of mainstream science, such as Scientific American. And then they wonder why so many evangelicals end up denying climate change, buying into every covid conspiracy theory going, and denouncing vaccinations and masks as if they were some form of mind control by the Antichrist.
While rejecting evolution in itself does not mean racism, in my experience most racist people seem to often reject evolution. Just like wanting to build a wall between USA and Mexico. The desire for the wall itself is not racist , but I’ve never met a white American racist who did not want the wall. Like I never met someone who was really racist, and then was like “ oh I support open borders and it’s true, we evolved from primates out of Africa “. Though I’ve met racists who believed in evolution as well, normally not as many but they would make comments about “similarities” between races and animals and less evolved. But those people never understood evolution and usually made contradictory statements about creationism as well.
But i definitely see the reason why racists would want to deny evolution and claim they were the race made by god so that the other races were the byproduct of sin, curses or something. It’s similar to how the Black
Hebrew group talks that Jews were actually black and that gentiles were black but that whites are not gentiles or Jews, but the byproduct of a cursed race. I’m not 100% certain what they believe but they are a racist group that rejects evolution typically and uses some weird version of creationism. I remember being a kid once and going to a sausage festivals in a small German American town and the KKK was there and I was given a book and read it by them and asked some questions that brought the content to my parents eyes and so they tossed it out and the KKK book was making claims that Adam and Eve was white and that back when animals could talk people could fall in love with them and have kids and that’s how other races came about and that’s why god ordered the genocide of those other nations and their livestock.
We can see our cultural history in the different ways Jesus or his mother have been painted. Look at those pictures. The artists selected the models from their surroundings and culture. That is why in most pictures, Jesus looks like a western pale-skinned person. I remember seeing a picture of Jesus that was drawn according to a vision of Jesus. No surprise, it followed the model of most pictures of Jesus in western countries.
We are the children of our culture. When even the pictures of Jesus tell that white is better than darker skin it is no wonder that there is hidden and more or less subconscious racism around us.
This kind of racism is not restricted to the western world. You can find it almost everywhere around the globe. I remember hearing a chinese(?) story telling about the times when humans were made. Humans were put to owens. Some were taken too soon out from the oven (pale-skinned people), some were too long in the owen (black-skinned people). Those who were taken out at the right moment were what humans should be like, having the skin color of East-Asian people.
Once you hear of the “Mark of Cain” theologies it does start to come into focus. Of course, those theologies arose from already existing racism. But it does give some historical context to why the US has a much higher percentage of evolution denial than other comparable Western countries.
Considering how there are many Islamic creationists, whose creationism goes hand in hand with antiwesternism, I don’t think creationism is a race-issue.
“claim they were the race made by god so that the other races were the byproduct of sin, curses or something.” A claim along these lines appears in some Nation of Islam teaching, saying that whites were made by the devil. Of course, some treatment of others by whites could produce that impression, but it does illustrate the equation of antievolutionism with white supremacy is flawed.
I was struggling to understand this obsession with genetics in theology and suddenly it make sense.