In a previous article, I explored the dark connection between evolution and racism. As expected, that touched off some anger among evolutionists who insist that neither they nor their theory are racist. I cannot speak for them personally, but I can speak for evolution itself. In this post, I want to examine why evolution breeds racist people.
Before going any further, please understand that I am not implying that not all evolutionists are racists, nor does being racist automatically make you an evolutionist. There are plenty of evolutionists who are not racist people, just like there are plenty of Creationists who are racist. The difference is in the ideology. Creationists who are racists cannot be ideologically consistent, since the Bible makes it clear we are all of one blood. However, evolutionism permits a person to be ideologically consistent and racist at the same time.
Evolutionism requires a lot of things, but the one most pertinent to this discussion is variation. Without variation, evolution cannot happen under any circumstances. This requisite variation can produce varying races if you will, with vast outward differences. This is what we see in humans. However, evolution also requires a substantial amount of death. Not all of the variations produced can survive. There would not be enough food or habitats for them all to survive. This is where natural selection comes into play. This mechanism selects against the variants least fit to survive, all but eliminating them from the gene pool. In some cases, variants are completely eliminated. Evolutionary dogma states that the elimination of these variants helps the species grow stronger and more fit to survive.
It is that idea, that the death of variants improves the gene pool, which has bred racism. Stephen Jay Gould, the promoter of punctuated-equilibrium, admitted this. “Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory .” In other words, evolution gave scientific life to racism. If this is the case, which variants are to be removed? Those which are the least fit to survive.
Herein lies the opening for racists. Defining exactly what is fit and what is not is subjective and dependent upon multiple different conditions. Impose the right conditions, and just about anyone can be declared unfit. If someone can be declared unfit, or less fit, then evolutionarily speaking, they are a hinderance to the betterment of the species. If they are thus hindering our evolutionary progress, they should be eliminated.
Why is it then that evolutionists embrace racism? Because it is consistent with their worldview. No one wants to view themselves or those like them as inferior. Because evolution demands that the lower races be eliminated via natural selection, races that survive for any period of time are forced into believing that they are the most fit. To believe anything else means that someone else can come along and justifiably use survival of the fittest to marginalize or eliminate them. This fear of being unfit forces races to loudly trumpet themselves as most fit. As each race does so, conflict is created. Fearing for its own survival, and having already proclaimed that every other race is inferior, a given race may resort to violence to subdue or eliminate the other races. This is the process by which evolutionism breeds racism in people who follow it. Having accepted the dual concepts of evolution and race, these converts follow the evolutionary precepts to such a point that they cross the line from name calling to violence. Of course, not every evolutionist follows this path, but it is a path open to every evolutionist because it is the logical progression of evolutionary precepts.
The notion of fitness allows supremacist groups of all stripes to baselessly claim that they are somehow superior to every other skin tone of man. Taking this superiority logic a step further, it should come as no surprise that people commit race-motivated crimes. This has not been helped by politicians turning skin tone into a political talking point, rather than pointing out it is merely a matter of melanin.
However, the truly scary part of this evolutionary notion of race and fitness is where the race logic leads. By classifying someone, purely based on their skin tone, or any other reason, as unfit to survive, they become less human and more ape. If these unfit people/apes are so classified, others around them will care less about their lives, making them easier to dispose of if it is so desired. Nowhere was a better example of this than Nazi Germany. Hitler classified the German people as a master race; Aryan. Every other race was supposedly inferior to these Aryans and thus had no value, except for their usefulness to the Aryans. Six million Jews were murdered in an event known to history as the Holocaust. Because their lives had no value, Aryan Nazi medical professionals performed sadistic experiments on them in death camps. Hitler was so intent on creating and purifying this master race, he forbade Aryans from having marital relations with lower races, under pain of death camp internment and/or death.
Hitler was not alone. The Japanese of the same era provide another example. Convinced that they were the most highly evolved race, they butchered their way across much of coastal China in the late 1930s. When they captured British and American soldiers, they often forced them to march brutally long distances to crowded labor camps, bayoneting those who, from either wounds, disease or dehydration, could not keep up. The most famous example of this is the Bataan Death March.
The Nazis and Japanese committed monstrous atrocities in the name of a “master race”, but did not look at themselves as doing anything wrong or evil. Those they murdered and tortured were not fully human in their eyes. Rather, they were subhumans, hindering the evolution of a stronger, more fit mankind. This is where the logic of evolution leads. Countless other examples could be cited. The eugenics movement, the Soviet ethnic cleansing of Chechnya, the bitter ethnic wars of the Balkans, the massacres of rival tribesmen in Sudan and Kenya all serve as painful reminders of the ugly fruits of evolutionary racism. To be ideologically consistent evolutionists, one must embrace the death of “lower” races so that one’s own, fit, race can thrive. There is no other alternative, if evolution is true, except the extinction of one’s own race.
Creationists reject all of this logic. I can look at those who differ from me and not feel remotely threatened. They, like myself, are made in God’s image and are thus equal in His eyes, be they white, black, brown, red or some other shade of melanin.
In His Image 