even go as far as to say that certain ethnic groups are less evolved
than others. November 28, 2000
Hello! I'm Kerri and this is Kimmi.
There is a culture war waged in our society
today. A war between two conflicting world views. It is being inculcated into
the minds of young people that they are little more than intelligent apes. This
view is put forth in classrooms everyday. Some
even go as far as to say that certain ethnic groups are less evolved
than others.
Darwin was one of those who held this view. Darwin’s subtitle is very telling
in this area. His subtitle [to On The Origin of Species ] is The
Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Existence. Darwin also
said, "... the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate,
and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time,
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 then the Caucasian, and some ape or
low as baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the
gorilla."
One of my science teachers insisted that
Italians are the least evolved because they are hairier than other people
groups. If, as my teacher said, there are some groups which are less evolved,
then what makes what Hitler did wrong?
Hitler believed in
evolution! Evolution gave Hitler the reason for the attempted genocide
of the Jews, as well as the Gypsies, the handicapped, the elderly people and
others he felt to be less superior, less evolved or not fully human. Evolution
promotes racism because, obviously, not everything or everyone evolves at the
same rate. So, why not get rid of the lesser evolved? In his book Hitler used
the German word for evolution over and over again. His Mein Kampf, meaning My
Struggle, was greatly influenced by Darwin’s subtitle, which was
"…Struggle for Existence." Hitler constantly referred to the German
race as the highest evolved race. In the chapter, "Nation and Race,"
he said "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus
sacrificing his own greatness, only the born weakling can view this as cruel,
but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not
prevail any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be
unthinkable." He also said, "Those who want to live let them fight,
and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not
deserve to live."
There are still vestiges of evolutionary
provoked racism today. The National Geographic Society put forth a display
called "4,000,000 years of bipedalism in its magazine. They drew nine
hominids from Australopithecus Afarensis all the way to H. Sapiens. The sequence
went from darker, Australopithecus Afarensis, to lighter, Homo Sapiens. The
editors admit that the skin color is speculative but they said, "Since the
three Homo Sapiens variations depicted were based on fossil evidence in Europe,
Mr. Matternes gave them a lighter tone." Yet, the last four had lighter
skin tones while the fourth was based on evidence from Kenya Africa.
Hitler also believed in the survival of the
fittest. William Jennings Bryan said, "that it was Darwinism that was at
the basis of that doctrine ... that might makes right." Entomologist Vernon
L. Kellogg, mentioned by Gould said, "That human group which is in the most
advanced evolutionary state ... should win in the struggle for existence."
But how can one judge which race is in the most advanced state? Does one
use the measure of how hairy one group is?
Not
only is racism a logical conclusion from the teaching of evolution but one must
question if instinct can be deemed right or wrong? If we are little more than
apes, how can we say an action is wrong? How can we then punish that action? The
naturalists claim that survival is the goal of morality. Consider two cavemen in
neighboring villages; one kills the other in cold blood. We are being asked to
believe that he feels guilt because such an act undermines his survival. In the
rest of the animal kingdom, killing the opposition seems to secure just the
opposite, more available food and resources. Do we punish animals because they
kill? No, because that is their instinct! If we are only animals then when we
kill we are only acting on our animal instincts. It is logical to do what our
animal instinct tells us. The naturalists have in mind at their core self
preservation, but does self preservation truly capture what we mean when we say
a thing is moral?
Many things that fall into the moral category
have to do with self-denial. Do we expect teenagers to deny themselves if they
are told they are glorified animals? Yet our schools teach evolution and are
surprised when promiscuity and racism are rampant on our campus.
We were curious who believed in evolution and
who believed in creation so we did some polling and asked people these
questions: Do you believe evolution? Why or why not? Where did you first hear
the theory of evolution? And how did it affect your life? We asked sixteen
people these questions. Eight of the sixteen said that they did believe in
evolution. Among the evolutionists there were many different and confusing
beliefs. One of the evolutionists said she did and didn't believe in evolution.
She said that she believed in the type that you could observe. She was, however,
unclear about what she meant. Another said she believed in a God guided
evolution but she was quick to point out that she thought the big bang was
poppycock. She was trying to mix what she had been taught in school with what
her parents had taught her. Another six believed in evolution. All the
evolutionist said that they believed in evolution because they thought it was
supported by scientific facts. It is taught in science class as a scientific
fact and is permeated throughout the science curriculum. Embedded throughout the
books are millions of years ago. These evolutionists also said that they
believed evolution because they thought we could not just come out of nowhere.
The obvious question is, doesn’t evolution have to start with nothing?
One of the evolutionists had been taught the
theory in first grade. The other seven evolutionists had been taught evolution
in the seventh grade. When we asked the evolutionists how it affected their
lives all but one said that it didn’t affect their life. The person whose life
it did affect said that the belief conflicted with her parent’s view and
caused problems with her and her parents. Her parents are Bible believing
Christians and she thinks their views are ignorant and not intelligent.
Eight of the people we asked said that they
were creationists. They were creationists because they thought the theory of
evolution is just plain stupid. They also said that they believed the Bible was
the infallible word of God. When we asked them when they first learned about the
theory of evolution they said they learned about evolution in the seventh grade.
They also said it did not affect their lives, except one said that when he was a
child it confused him. He tried to mix his belief in the Bible with evolution.
For a while it made him doubt Christianity and the Bible. As a child he thought
the evidence presented was solid and true. Now he is an ardent Creationist and
Christian.
All the creationists we interviewed did not
know any of the facts, scientific or otherwise, that supported creation.
My mother is an aid in a sixth grade
classroom. She tutors a little boy with cerebral palsy. The teacher in this
classroom was teaching evolution and the children in the class jumped to a
logical conclusion. They came to the conclusion that people with physical or
mental disabilities were less evolved than those who do not have physical or
mental disabilities. The children were so adamant that my mother rolled the
sixth grader out of the class.
Also it was obviously confusing to some of the
religious students in this class. They eventually asked if Lucy was Eve and they
were interested in knowing who Adam was. The teacher informed the students that
they would learn about that in college. She is now teaching culture. She is
teaching that the Ten Commandments came from the Hammurabic code and that
Babylon invented the Bible.
Sir Arthur Keith says, "Evolution is unproved and un-provable. We believe it
because the only alternative is special creation, which is unthinkable."
The theory Sir Arthur Keith describes as unproved and un-provable is taught in
high schools as an undeniable scientific fact. This is an intellectually
dishonest thing to do.
It is also intellectually dishonest to be
teaching students everything from the geologic column to the theory of
recapitulation.
We have a choice here: we can believe God or
we can believe man. We can believe that we are created in Gods image and that we
are answerable to him or we can believe that we are only glorified animals that
are answerable to no one. How we live our lives and how we view the world around
us and also how we treat others can be answered in what we believe. And what we
believe determines who we are.
Dobzhansky, Theodosius, "Evolution at Work," Science (May 9, 1958), pp. 1091-1098.
p. 1091
"In turn, biological evolutionism exerted ever-widening influences on the natural and social sciences, as well as on philosophy and even on politics. Not all of these extrabiological repercussions were either sound or commendable. Suffice it to mention the so-called Social Darwinism, which often sought to justify the inhumanity of man to man, and the biological racism which furnished a fraudulent scientific sanction for the atrocities committed in Hitler’s Germany and elsewhere."