Was Charles Darwin a Racist?

[mr.macabre13]

That has to be one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever heard.
I’ve been a metal head for over 40 years, and I’m a huge fan of black/death metal music. Does this automatically make a Satanist?
Just wondering.

[Sheldon]

@sprinterforchrist

How can you say he wasn’t a racist when literally in his book he talks about sub human species and refers to the Africans and South Americans as sub humans.

False equivalence fallacy, racism is wrong, but not everything claimed by racists are therefore wrong. Also you’re ignoring context, and I suspect this nonsense is trolling, since by any contemporary standard Darwin was not racist, Jesus on the other hand according to bible upheld laws that were blatantly racist.

@sprinterforchrist

Hitler as well used evolutionary ideas to promote nazism.

Hitler was a theist, by your risible rationale, this would make theists fascists and or Nazis? Or somehow make theism wrong by association, the irony is palpable.

This is poor stuff, even for you. Here are some facts for you:

“The Reichskonkordat is the most controversial of several concordats that the Vatican negotiated during the pontificate of Pius XI. It is frequently discussed in works that deal with the rise of Hitler in the early 1930s and the Holocaust. The concordat has been described by some as giving moral legitimacy to the Nazi regime soon after Hitler had acquired quasi-dictatorial powers through the Enabling Act of 1933, an Act itself facilitated through the support of the Catholic Centre Party.”

[Simon_Moon]

For his time, Darwin was actually substantially less racist than his contemporaries. Not that it excuses him.

Darwin famously had debates with Captain Fitzroy , a staunch fundamentalist Christian, during the voyage of The Beagle. Where Fitzroy, a Christian (just to make it clear) defended race based slavery, and Darwin debated against it.

William Shockley, the main inventor of the transistor, was extremely racist. He advocated for eugenics.

Does that mean we should give up using all transistor based devices, lest we be considered racists?

Fact based discoveries or inventions, are true, independent of the personal foibles of the scientist who makes the discovery or invention.

Now that you’ve been corrected on your flawed logic of your posts by many people here, will you correct your thinking? Let’s see if you can be one of the few intellectually honest theists that post here.

[CyberLN]

In other words, even jerks can be creative and intelligent.

[skriten]

Of course some things are of such a magnitude as to deny ignoring or acknowledging, but more often there is much more nuance involved. If we were to dismiss everyone who has or has had objectionable behaviors, beliefs, or associations, we would have missed out on some very important ideas and applications, much to the detriment of society as a whole. The idea of expecting anyone to be above reproach because of a significant positive contribution is a childish notion. Obviously context is of utmost importance.
That said, very few contributions are of such significance as to compel compliance with abhorrent practices or beliefs.
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Edit shopping list: Pol Pot egg rolls, Stalin Vodka, Vlad Dracul knife set, Goering vitamins, Berdella steak sauce, BTK twine,
GW Bush good job brownies, Joseph Smith dice, Oppenheimer snap and pops

[Calilasseia]

@sprinterforchrist

How can you say he wasn’t a racist when literally in his book he talks about sub human species and refers to the Africans and South Americans as sub humans. Hitler as well used evolutionary ideas to promote nazism.

LIAR.

First of all. it’s a matter of public record, that Darwin was engaged in a furious argument with Captain Fitzroy aboard HMS Beagle, in which he made his view of slavery as anathema vigorously known. Oh wait, guess what, mythology fanboy? It just so happens that pretty much all of Darwin’s correspondence, as well as his books and papers, not only survive, but have been made publicly available online, so that we can fact check assertions by your ilk directly. When we visit that site, what do we find? First, let’s take a look at that account of the furious row with Captain Fitzroy

Fitz-Roy’s temper was a most unfortunate one. It was usually worst in the early morning, and with his eagle eye he could generally detect something amiss about the ship, and was then unsparing in his blame. He was very kind to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate terms which necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves in the same cabin. We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered "No. " I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answer of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything? This made him excessively angry, and he said that as I doubted his word we could not live any longer together. I thought that I should have been compelled to leave the ship; but as soon as the news spread, which it did quickly, as the captain sent for the first lieutenant to assuage his anger by abusing me, I was deeply gratified by receiving an invitation from all the gun-room officers to mess with them. But after a few hours Fitz-Roy showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me with an apology and a respect that I would continue to live with him.

There are other vignettes pointing to Darwin’s abhorrence of slavery, such as this from here:

I feel glad that this happened in the land of the Brazilians, for I bear them no good will—a land also of slavery, and therefore of moral debasement.

Indeed, Darwin made serveral pertinent observations about the hideous practices made possible by institutionalised slavery in Brazil during his visit, all of which he condemned.

Oh, and by the way, don’t bother quote mining any of his works, because that resource provides us with an easy means of discovering the usual quote mines we see from duplicitous propagandists for mythology. Indeed, so prevalent are quote mines among creationists in particular, that the Talk Origins website devotes a special section to creationist quote mines, and indeed, has a special section on creationist lies involving quote mining the work of Darwin.

Indeed, one of the quote mines covered in that section, is the “Darwin was racist” quote mine, viz:

@Darwin Quote Mine

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.

However, when we see the full text in its proper context, an entirely different view emerges, viz:

@Charles Darwin

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks incessantly occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ—between the elephant and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and other mammals. But all these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. 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,¹⁶ 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 negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Oh wait, trhat phrase was quote mined from a discussion on the nature of extinction, and how it affects the observational evidence for family trees in living organisms.. Unfortunately for you and your lies, I’ve been dealing with creationist mendacity for 14 years, and I can reel off a good many of the instances of discoursive duplicity peddled by creationists in my sleep, indeed, you’ll find I dealt with a whole brace of creationist lies in the document I presented in this thread. However, let’s move on, and deal with THIS blatant lie of yours:

@sprinterforchrist

Hitler as well used evolutionary ideas to promote nazism.

Oh dear, channeling the creationist liar for doctrine known as Richard Weikart does you NO favours here, not least because I’ve already dealt with them elsewhere, and was dealing with these lies a decade ago. I’ll refer directly to my searchable electronic copy of the Unexpurgated Edition of Mein Kampf, which is freely downloadable from the Gutenberg Project website, courtesy of this link.

First of all, let’s perform a little experiment. Let’s see if Darwin is mentioned anywhere in Mein Kampf, shall we? What do I find when I perform the requisite text search? I find this:

Number of occurrences of “Darwin” : ZERO

Number of occurrences of “God” : 37

Number of occurrences of “Almighty” : 6

Number of occurrences of “Creator” : 8

Hmm, starting to look as though once again, real world data is destroying your bullshit with thermonuclear ordnance. But, even better, is this passage, from pages 245 to 246 of Mein Kampf, viz:

Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law - one may call it an iron law of Nature - which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.

Deviations from this law take place only in exceptional circumstances. This happens especially under the compulsion of captivity, or when some other obstacle makes procreative intercourse impossible between individuals of the same species. But then Nature abhors such intercourse with all her might; and her protest is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that the hybrid is either sterile or the fecundity of its descendants is limited. In most cases hybrids and their progeny are denied the ordinary powers of resistance to disease or the natural means of defence against outer attack.

Oh look, that passage is practically a canonical version of the creationist “kinds” nonsense.

In short, Hitler’s view of biology was closer to creationism than to evolutionary biology.

Meanwhile, the Nazis’ real attitude to evolution was demonstrated during their book burning episode. Courtesy of the documentation thereof presented on this website by the University of Arizona. If we click on the link taking us to the lists of banned books under the Nazi régime, what do we find? We find the following set of guidelines from Die Bücherei, the handbook of works deemed seditious by the Nazis, and hence to be removed from public libraries and universities to be destroyed:

@Die Bücherei

6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).

Which translates as:

6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel).

In other words, the Nazis removed evolutionary textbooks from schools, universities and libraries, and destroyed them.

Looks like your lies are busted, mythology fanboy.

[skriten]

Thank you. Astute, as usual.

[Nyarlathotep]

Erwin Schrödinger was a child molester. Should we stop using his famous equation?

[Calilasseia]

Was he? Don’t recall hearing this on any of my usual grapevines … ???

[Nyarlathotep]

@Calilasseia

Was he? Don’t recall hearing this on any of my usual grapevines … ???

Right, I only heard it from a real old timer. Google the name: Ithi Junger.

[Calilasseia]

It seems one learns something new every day. Sadly, in this case.

[Calilasseia]

By the way, a point I forgot to mention in my earlier post was this.

Darwin was, no doubt, well aware of the activities of some of his fellow humans. Not least the activities of several of his fellow Britons, who at the time were pursuing colonialism and imperialism with frightening vigour. History teaches us that on numerous occasions, said pursuit of colonialism and imperialism involved lethal military force.

Even given the quaint and archaic prose he chose to deploy in his writings, it’s obvious to any honest reader of his work, that he regarded the likely elimination of indigenous peoples as a tragic, brute fact, and not, as sleazily asserted by creationists, some sort of desirable future objective. He saw the writing on the wall in an age where the first ironclad warships were still new technology, and breech loading artillery an experimental development. He was well aware that some would use these tools for conquest and resource theft, and that indigenous peoples armed with little more than bows and arrows would find themselves fighting a harrowingly unequal war.

Indeed, his view that imperialists would eventually erase indigenous peoples from the face of the Earth, has taken a new twist in recent years, with the advent of wars fought for resources by states acting on behalf of global corporations, and the use thereby of barely controlled mercenary armies.

But, in his day, his prediction was being made all the more tragically likely, by, wait for it, Christian missionaries sent out from imperial Britain to “convert” the natives. These missionaries acted with uncontrolled zeal to eliminate indigeous cultures, and replace them with a slavish devotion to a carefully cultivated religiosity, the real aim of which was to pave the way for imperial conquest. Those same missionaries were also ready to call upon military assistance to deal with any recalcitrant resistance to conversion.

One doesnt have to exert much effort, to learn how the Christian religion was weaponised in pursuit of colonial and imperial conquest, not just by the overlords of the British Empire of course. Spain had been involved in the same business since the time of Columbus, and even elementary history textbooks cover such topics as, for example, the Conquistadors, and the manner in which they effectively wiped out at least three Mesoamerican indigenous civilisations. A process conducted, of course, at least three centuries before Darwin was born.

Racism, and the verminous pressing into service thereof for reasons of conquest and political control, has been a festering sore upon human history for a very long time, and Abrahamic religions have their fair share of indulgence therein to account for. Indeed, the whole “Hamitic Races” garbage was wielded on a grand scale by the Ku Klux Klan, which was erected specifically as a Christian and creationist organisation. This particular piece of venomous nonsense is still peddled today in Ken Ham’s sleazy “creation museum”.

Finally, I’ll mention a basic fact about evolutionary biology, though doing so will be superfluous to the honest readers of my posts, namely, that what evolutionary biology teaches us, is that genetic diversity is an essential protection against extinction. Failure to maintain genetic diversity in a population weakens it, someties fatally, and the scientific data informing us of this is voluminous. Indeed, those who read Darwin’s works properly also become aware of this fact.

Variation is the fuel for evolution, and the farcical “monoculture” view of people like Hitler is so violently at variance with this fact, that only a fool or a liar could possibly claim that Hitler based his racial policies no the work of Darwin, even in the absence of the other issues I’ve presented above. The manner in which European royal families became inbred, sometimes to the point of producing heirs that were visibly riddled with deleterious mutations, teaches us this lesson even if no other source of data is examined - the Habsburgs in particular left a frankly scary legacy in this vein.

Though once again, I predict that facts of this sort will be ignored by the usual suspects.

[Calilasseia]

Oh, and as for what Darwin really thought about “races”, let s turn to pages 214-216 of The Descent of Man, viz:

@Charles Darwin

IT is not my intention here to describe the several so-called races of men; but to inquire what is the value of the differences between them under a classificatory point of view, and how they have originated. In determining whether two or more allied forms ought to be ranked as species or varieties, naturalists are practically guided by the following considerations; namely, the amount of difference between them, and whether such differences relate to few or many points of structure, and whether they are of physiological importance; but more especially whether they are constant. Constancy of character is what is chiefly valued and sought for by naturalists. Whenever it can be shewn, or rendered probable, that the forms in question have remained distinct for a long period, this becomes an argument of much weight in favour of treating them as species. Even a slight degree of sterility between any two forms when first crossed, or in their offspring, is generally considered as a decisive test of their specific distinctness; and their continued persistence without blending within the same area, is usually accepted as sufficient evidence, either of some degree of mutual sterility, or in the case of animals of some repugnance to mutual pairing.

Independently of blending from intercrossing, the complete absence, in a well-investigated region, of varieties linking together any two closely-allied forms, is probably the most important of all the criterions of their specific distinctness; and this is a somewhat different consideration from mere constancy of character, for two forms may be highly variable and yet not yield intermediate varieties. Geographical distribution is often unconsciously and sometimes consciously brought into play; so that forms living in two widely separated areas, in which most of the other inhabitants are specifically distinct, are themselves usually looked at as distinct; but in truth this affords no aid in distinguishing geographical races from so-called good or true species.

Now let us apply these generally-admitted principles to the races of man, viewing him in the same spirit as a naturalist would any other animal. In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by the long habit of observing ourselves. In India, as Elphinstone remarks,¹ although a newly-arrived European cannot at first distinguish the various native races, yet they soon appear to him extremely dissimilar; and the Hindoo cannot at first perceive any difference between the several European nations. Even the most distinct races of man, with the exception of certain negro tribes, are much more like each other in form than would at first be supposed. This is well shewn by the French photographs in the Collection Anthropologique du Muséum of the men belonging to various races, the greater number of which, as many persons to whom I have shown them have remarked, might pass for Europeans. Nevertheless, these men if seen alive would undoubtedly appear very distinct, so that we are clearly much influenced in our judgment by the mere colour of the skin and hair, by slight differences in the features, and by expression.

Note how he opened that exposition with the words “the several so-called races of men”. Already, he was starting to think in terms of differentiating between superficial and rigorous characteristics. Indeed, I’ll repeat this part of his exposition, because it provides a valuable insight:

@Charles Darwin

Whenever it can be shewn, or rendered probable, that the forms in question have remained distinct for a long period, this becomes an argument of much weight in favour of treating them as species. Even a slight degree of sterility between any two forms when first crossed, or in their offspring, is generally considered as a decisive test of their specific distinctness; and their continued persistence without blending within the same area, is usually accepted as sufficient evidence, either of some degree of mutual sterility, or in the case of animals of some repugnance to mutual pairing.

Oh look, possibly the first explicit statement in the history of science, of the biological species concept.

Now I’ll admit that I only had the “light bulb” moment with respect to this about ten minutes ago, while looking for more refutations of the “Darwin was racist” bullshit and lies, but while looking for the requisite passages, that one suddenly stood out for the reason I’ve just given.

You’ll also notice that he manifestly regards so-called “racial differences” as superficial from the standpoint of actual biology, in the last paragraph of his exposition. Unlike actual racists.

Later on, we have this, from page 226:

@Charles Darwin

But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke.¹⁷ This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive character between them.

Incidentally, footnote 17 reads as follows:

[quote
See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, ‘Introduct. to Anthropology,’ Eng. translat. 1863, p. 198-208, 227. I have taken some of the above statements from H. Tuttle’s ‘Origin and Antiquity of Physical Man,’ Boston, 1866, p. 35.
[/quote]

Oh look, honest citation of prior art. Something else we never see in mythology fanboy apologetics.

Oh, and pages 227 and 228 cover some of the issues that have faced taxonomists ever since Linnaeus launched the discipline as a rigorous scientific enterprise, and which even today, sometimes results in consternation among the taxonomic fraternity until the sledgehammer of DNA analysis is brought to bear on the matter.

Indeed, as an invertebrate zoologist, I’m aware of a particualrly fascinating example of the issues involved, courtesy of a South American butterfly known as Styx infernalis. This species ended up with this taxonomic designation for a reason - namely, that an analysis of its detailed anatomy, revealed this insect to be, in effect, a “parts bin” special, containing features found in four different Lepidoptera Families. Over the past 100 years or so, this unfortunate insect has been causing taxonomists to scratch their heads with respect to its exact Family placement, hence it being handed a taxonomic name effectively translating as “the butterfly from Hell”.

Staudniger originally placed this insect in the Pieridae, whereupon a re-examination led to it being moved to the now defunct Family Erycinidae. Ehrlich classified it as part of the Lycaenidae, in a SubFamily called the Styginae, while one worker in the field proposed that it be classified in its own unique Family, the Stygidae. Other workers proposed that it reside in the Riodinidae, where it enjoyed a tenuous status until DNA analysis was brought to bear upon it, which finally cemented its place in the Riodnidae, but with a twist - instead of being in the SubFamily Euselasinae, where almost all of the other South American members of the Family are placed, it was found to be part of the SubFamily Nemeobiinae, which is of Old World origin and distribution.

Now if this sort of hoo-ha can arise from a butterfly, it should come as no surprise that a species as diverse in apperance as Homo sapiens should have caused 19th century taxonomists some headaches.

Once again, the data is informative here.

[Tin-Man]

@skriten

GW Bush good job brownies,

Uh, hey… Uh, where can I get some of those? (Asking for a friend.)

[skriten]

@Nyarlathotep

Right, I only heard it from a real old timer. Google the name: Ithi Junger.

Thanks for posting. Sorry for the inappropriate post.

[skriten]

@Tin-Man

Uh, hey… Uh, where can I get some of those? (Asking for a friend.)

Well, they are baked in Washington DC, but distributed in New Orleans…

[SodaAnt]

You forgot Hitler ice cream cones:

[Kellii]

@sprinterforchrist

Well you believe the same thing as they did which in turn would make you complicent with racism.

We’re all guilty by association claims the man who worships a god who is a genocidal, baby killing, tyrant.
None of us think Darwin is infallible and right about everything.

[Sheldon]

@sprinterforchrist

Well you believe the same thing as they did which in turn would make you complicent (sic) with racism.

A spectacularly silly claim, but it’s not all bad, you seem to have invented a new word at least.

[rat_spit]

@Tin-Man

For the record, I don’t give a drop of rat’s piss about Darwin. (@rat_spit No offense, Ratty.

None taken. As long as you don’t mention anything about “spit”