Is the TOE Racist?

In the Science Forum > Is it Science? > Induction and Science, Rob makes the following claim. For the entire OT post see: http://EvC Forum: Induction and Science -->EvC Forum: Induction and ScienceNaturally, I dispute the claim that the theory of evolution, as properly understood, in any way leads to racism. I would like to see if anyone here is willing to dispute this claim with any evidence they may be willing to present.Coffeehouse?Edited by anglagard, : proper grammar, put questionmark after racist

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

This question often comes up. It is examined in this talk.origins page: Creationism Implies Racism?The last line of that linked article "All this shows that racism is perfectly happy to rely for its foundation on creationism rather than evolution."

anglagard,It does not logically follow that evolutionists should be racist, the ToE in & of itself in no way implies such a position. What happens is people search for things to support their a priori notions. Much the same can be said of religious atrocities & intolerances, too.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Firstly biological science recognises that all humans are members of the same species. The whole idea of miscegenation is nonsense.Secondly evolution does not stop. The platypus may be a "primitive" mammal but that only means that it is not descended from the major branch in evolution that most modern mammals descend from. It is not identical to its distanct ancestors - it has evolved in a different way than the "mainstream" of mammalian descent.Applying that to humans, we cannot say that one "race" - to the extent that race is a meaningful biological classification (not far) - is more evolved than any other.Thirdly traits which are superior in evolutionary terms are not necessarily those which we would conside "better". Thus even if a racial group were to be "more evolved" it might not be any better in a way that we would consider significant. All we can say is that that grouping would be better suited to its distinctive environment (there has been enough interbreeding that generally useful traits wil tend to spread between races anyway). An example might be the greater lung capacity of those who live high in the Andes.

Thanks for bringing this up, anglagard; I wanted to comment on this very thing.Native Africans are no closer to monkeys than Europeans; all human beings are the same distance in time from the last common ancestor.

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"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

Abridged from the OP: Chiroptera in Message 6 successfully rebuts the claim about Native Americans: I'd like to address the first part of Rob's statement: This type of chain of illogic is now all too familiar. It contains at least two significant errors.The first error is in ascribing to evolution a term laden with moral overtones: superior. Rob meant it in the sense that one race is morally or intellectually (or both) better than another. Evolution contains no such judgments. The measurement of one race being better than another is solely in terms of the competition to produce the next generation. A superior race is merely one that has outcompeted another in the race to reproduce. Evolutionary superiority says nothing about morality or intelligence.It is often joked that the eventual inheritors of the planet will be cockroaches because they successfully resist all attempts to eradicate them and will eventually outcompete us for the planet. This type of competitive assessment is the only one that evolution makes: if a race produces more and more individuals at the expense of other races that produce fewer and fewer individuals, then that race is competitively superior in that particular environment. The losers could be the moral, ethical and intellectual superiors of the winners, but that isn't the criteria evolution uses.Another mistake is that there is nothing in evolution about an inherently superior race. Which race wins the battle for survival isn't solely a function of inherent characteristics. It's a relative measure of those characteristics against the requirements of the environment. In the arctic the most competitive species have thick coats, and thin-coated species will be at a disadvantage. At the equator the opposite is true. Environment is all important. Back to cockroaches again, our moral, ethical and intellectual superiority won't do us a bit of good after a global nuclear war. In a radioactive environment the cockroaches probably have a serious competitive advantage. But in normal northern climes we compete pretty good against cockroaches (it takes some effort to have a serious cockroach problem in the north), but in the south the cockroaches compete better, right? Any southerners want to dispute that? It's all a matter of suitability for the environment.So if evolution is true, as Rob's statement provisionally considers, then a "superior race" is a relative term according to the interplay between inherent characteristics and environment. It is objective considerations that play out to determine evolutionary winners and losers. Rob's meaning laden terms like "ruthless" and "monstrous" are value judgments that cannot be read into blind evolutionary processes. It would be like calling geology "ruthless and monsterous" after an earthquake, or calling meteorology "ruthless and monsterous" after a hurricane or typhoon.I did read the full text of Rob's original post in that other thread. Aside from the parts about God, it primarily reflects a profound lack of knowledge about biology and evolution, and a grave misunderstanding of the nature of scientific inquiry generally. I think Rob should ask himself how much sense it would make to inject God into some kind of objective investigation he's likely to make, such as trying to figure out the source of a funny noise coming from his truck's engine compartment. This might help Rob see that injecting God into scientific inquiry makes just as little sense.--Percy

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It contains at least two significant errors.

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Another error it contains is that even if Europeans and Africans do represent different "branches" of the human tree, and if one of these "branches" can be deemed as more "highly evolved" it is still not clear whether it would be the Africans or the Europeans who should be designated "superior". Rob assumes without question (and probably without even realizing he is making this assumption) that if there is a "master race" it is the Europeans, and that he assumes that we will all assume that the Europeans are the "superior" race.That these assumptions are made without even realizing it shows, I think, how racism is really due to subjective and arbitrary value judgements, and someone who is racist will be able to read her racism into whatever principles form the foundation of her beliefs on biology, whether it is science or creationism.

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"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

Yes, yes! That's the real core of the matter. Well said!--Percy

IndeedIt’s human nature to coral and elevate you and yours to some level above every other group, be it at an individual or national level. If it’s not race then its other demarcations, often arbitrary with rarely any real evidence to back them up. It could be that you look down on those who show poor taste in their daily reading material: thus, inferring a lack of superiority of their intellect. Do they read ”The Times” or “The SUN”.If we eliminate race and other utterly unfounded claims of biological superiority, a new division will arise to segregate and separate. Just look at the homosexual debate, as it is no longer fashionable to pick on the black man, the gays get the majority of the hate. Same game: Different target.It is never about how bad ”they’ are, it always about how much better ”we’ are. It is about placing you and yours at the top of the pile. Even the poor and down-trod will play the game by despising the rich and well off as being inhuman slaves to greed and elitism, with out realizing they in doing so are just as bad. Placing themselves morally above the rich because they "make do with what they have, and have to work damn hard to remain there".

Isn't it obvious that black people are closer to monkeys than whites?After all, when a white person is raised by wolves, doesn't he act just like the King of England?

Bingo.I have long marveled at the "race card" as it is played by some opponents of the ToE. With one hand, it is played to create an illusory version of the ToE, with the other to bluff opponents into false dilemmas using appeals to consequence.Supporters of the theory are accused of racism: If you believe humans evolved first in Africa and then populated the world, the accusation goes, then Africans are closer, temporally and geographically, to our common ancestry with the great apes. According to your theory, these arguments continue, human populations that moved into new, more challenging environments continued to evolve and improve; those who were "left behind" did not. If the races of humankind reflect this exodus from Africa and populating of the world, then some races are, inevitably, more evolved than others.That's the straw man. He's been torched upthread. But the social and political psychology of the argument remains interesting.Next we add the appeals to consequence twist: If you embrace the ToE, you embrace de facto racism.Supposedly, then, the supporters of ToE are pincered neatly by twin false dilemmas, one explicit, one implicit. Explicitly, either we must reject the ToE, or we must accept racism as a natural and accurate phenomenon of our kind; implicitly, we must sacrifice either our liberal condemnation of racism or our liberal support of the ToE. The rhetorical maneuver is intended to expose the contradictions of a world view, not just a scientific theory. I think the argument has special appeal to some religious opponents of the ToE because they are also social conservatives weary of being themselves accused of racist views. I agree the process exposes some contradictions, but not those intended.It's a house of marked cards, of course, and pointing out the misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the ToE has been done upthread far better than I could do.There are especially rich ironies in all this. Observing an attempt to hoist an opponent by his own petard that blows up in its author's face might alone seem worth the price of admission. But the stink of the 19th century monkey house Darwin supposedly exiled us to is all over it, and the smell of fear, and the kerosene and char of burning crosses, and the stench of hypocrisy, and mostly it just makes me sad.Edited by Omnivorous, : typo: he->theEdited by Omnivorous, : Late edit..."panard"->"petard" with the neologistic error preserved in amber here.

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According to a recent statistical analysis, all humans probably descend from one person who lived between 2,000-5,000 years ago, and all people who were alive 5,000-7,000 years ago whose lines did not die out are all ancesters to everyone now alive. Brotherhood of ManIf this analysis is correct, it certainly seems to show that no "race" is any closer to "lower" primates than any other. Does anyone else have any thoughts?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

It may be relevant to this discussion, but IMO the content of that article is too significant to be buried in this topic.I strongly suggest you expand the content of your message and submit it as a new topic. I guess it could go directly into In The News but I would prefer it go to "Human Origins" via a Proposed New Topic.Adminnemooseus

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Petard perhaps?

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Oops! Wrong Planet