Question for evolutionists
- Thread starter Riprorin
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HomeBrewerDude
Lifer
- Jan 18, 2001
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911paramedic
Diamond Member
- Jan 7, 2002
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Ditto.
While certain "races" show inherent advantages, I think most of these advantages are due to cultural factors rather than any innate ability. Genetically, there's no difference between races.
Agreed.
I only bring this up becuae of the views of many evolutionists.
For example:
Darwin spoke of the "gorilla" and the "negro" [sic] as occupying evolutionary positions between the "Baboon" and the "civilized races of man" ("Caucasian"); viz: At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes ... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro [sic] or Australian and the gorilla.
Thomas Huxley wrote: "No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successively with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites." (Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, 1871)
Huxley believed that the Australian Aboriginal peoples to be perhaps the "lowest" race in evolutionary terms, and one perilously close to racial extinction.
Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton, who founded the eugenics* movement, believed very strongly that intelligence was mainly hereditary. He was also convinced there were profound differences in mental ability between the races. He regarded Negroes as barely human at all.
Robert Chambers in his classic Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, concluded that the Negro was "at the foot of" the Mongol, the Yellow race between, and Caucasians at the top. Chambers himself taught that the "various races of mankind, are simply . . . stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. . ." and that the Blacks were the least developed, and the Caucasians were the highest, most evolved race.
Although support for Darwin's theory was by no means universal, by the 1920s textbooks such as George William Hunter's 1914 Civic Biology that supported the idea that man had evolved from a lower life form, were prevalent in public schools. The message provided fuel to the United States' growing and the eugenics movement. It concluded that as man descended from a lower life form, he evolved to varying degrees of accomplishment.
Henry Fairfield Osborn, professor of biology and zoology at Columbia University from 1908-1933 and President of the American Museum of Natural History's Board of Trustees wrote: "The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolians, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the bodily characteristics . . . but of the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old-youth of the species Homo Sapiens."
In evolutionary theory, the survival advantage factor is the chief explanation for the existence of most differences. Because these differences result from the survival advantage that they confer upon an organism, an evolutionist must assume differences between or within a group likely exist because they provide some inherent survival advantage for the animal. Since the key survival advantage of humankind over 'lower animals' is intelligence, consequently differences in this trait likely also exist between the races. This is exactly what has been assumed by many eugenicists, evolutionists, sociologists, and psychologists, both before and since the time of Darwin. This conclusion has justified a wide variety of governmental and scientific policies, not the least infamous were racial genocide programs.
The two races most often compared are the 'Caucasian ' and 'Negroid', now commonly called the 'white' and 'black' races. The dominant western cultural ethos, that whites were 'superior ' and blacks 'inferior' and more 'ape-like', was commonly reflected in science books published from 1880 and 1980.
H. Klaatsch, a prominent German evolutionist, concluded that human races differ not only because of survival factors, but also for the reason that they evolved from different primates. The blacks came from the gorillas, the whites from the chimpanzees, and the Orientals from the orangutans, and it is for this reason that some races are superior. He concluded that "the gorilla and the Neanderthal man" have a close biological affinity to "a large number of the living African blacks . . ."
The racism which developed from the theory of evolution was by no means confined to Blacks. One of the leading American eugenicists, Charles Davenport, founder and director of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory, concluded that Black Americans were below Caucasians-but so were several other groups. Among the groups that he included were 'the Poles, the Irish, the Italians, and . . . the Hebrews' and even the Serbians, Greeks, Swedes, Bohemians.
I think that it's a legitimate question. Why don't you butt out if you don't have anything relevent to add to the discussion?
OrganizedChaos
Diamond Member
- Apr 21, 2002
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evolution is a process that takes time. we will have to wait a few thousand years to see who wins.
Originally posted by: Zakath15
What's up? Feeling a little wussified today?
I think I'm the opposite of a wussy. I raise hard issues that you don't want to confront.
Originally posted by: Riprorin
Originally posted by: Zakath15
What's up? Feeling a little wussified today?
I think I'm the opposite of a wussy. I raise hard issues that you don't want to confront.
No, they're issues that I confront every day. I was talking to yellowfiero, if you'd taken enough time to actually read the entire post.
apoppin
Lifer
Aren't there evolutionists who believe - like creationists - that we are just ONE race (the human race with variations)?
Ok, the guy who came up with the idea was apparently an ignorant racist. So what? If Hitler had discovered how to use wormholes like in scifi movies, woudl that make the discovery any less good?
apoppin
Lifer
I thought so.
It's kind of hard for me to imagine the human family descending from anything but an original pair .
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