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Author Topic:   Racial Evolution 101
i4c
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 109 (95311)
03-28-2004 1:36 AM


"It might also naturally be enquired whether man, like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races, differing but slightly from each other, or to races differing so much as they must be classed as doubtful species?"
- Charles Darwin, "THE DESCENT of MAN, and Selection in Relation to Sex." Princeton University Press, 1981, Chapter 1, Page 9
=====================
1 List the 7 general classifications which Darwin is specifying in this question.
2 List the 5 general 'a priori' pre-suppositions which Darwin is predicating his question on.
3 Do you think it is 'natural' to classify human beings according to racial and sub-racial divisions?
4 Do you think it is 'natural' to classify human beings into 'species' whether they are doubtful ones or not?
5 Do you think Darwin was a naturalist, a historian, a scientist or a racial philosopher?

Replies to this message:
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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 109 (95357)
03-28-2004 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by i4c
03-28-2004 1:36 AM


Darwin was a good scientist, and was conducting science based on what was known or believe in his time. A lot of scientific progress has been made in the last century and a half after Descent of Man was published. For one thing, there is much more genetic variation within each "race" than there are between "races". Racial characteristics are now accepted to be very superficial characteristics in what is a population of very closely related individuals.
What Darwin thought 150 years ago has very little interest in the current state of science. Perhaps, though, your interest is history?

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MarkAustin
Member (Idle past 4070 days)
Posts: 122
From: London., UK
Joined: 05-23-2003


Message 3 of 109 (96000)
03-30-2004 2:16 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by i4c
03-28-2004 1:36 AM


It has today been demonstrated that there is no charactaristic shared by any group of individuals which is diagnostic of that group.
Further, Darwin, although enlightened for that time - he was an opponent of both slavery and vivisection, and opposed rhe social darwinism that others read into his theories for example - would by today's standard be considered a reactionary. Things pass and things change.
In any case, the opinions of Darwin are irrelevant. What is important is his theory.

This message is a reply to:
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Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 109 (96099)
03-30-2004 7:37 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by MarkAustin
03-30-2004 2:16 PM


- he was an opponent of both slavery and vivisection, and opposed rhe social darwinism that others read into his theories for example - would by today's standard be considered a reactionary
It is my understanding that he believed that pigmy blacks and for that matter all blacks were/are soul-less inferior humans not as fully evolved as whites and that Hitler was highly influenced by Darwin's racism. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken.

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Replies to this message:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1722 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 5 of 109 (96101)
03-30-2004 7:41 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Buzsaw
03-30-2004 7:37 PM


Someone correct me if I'm mistaken.
Alternatively, you might substantiate your own claims with Darwin's writings, or other evidence. You know, just a thought.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 6 of 109 (96148)
03-30-2004 8:55 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by crashfrog
03-30-2004 7:41 PM


Alternatively, you might substantiate your own claims with Darwin's writings, or other evidence. You know, just a thought.
After reading my substantiation, CF, you might wish you'd have done the digging. You might have gotten by with a shallower dig.
.......few people likely are aware of the full title of Darwin’s most famous work: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The Oxford English Dictionary denotes that, historically speaking, the term “race” referred to a group of persons, animals, or plants connected by common descent or origin”in other words, similar to the way it is used today.
While many have argued that Darwin himself was not a “racist” (referring specifically to the fact that The Origin of Species did not include much discussion about Homo sapiens), his second book left little question about his personal views. Titled The Descent of Man, one entire chapter was dedicated to “The Races of Man.” In that book, Darwin wrote:
At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised 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 civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla (1874, p. 178).
While some have argued that Darwin was simply “predicting the future,” the chapter on human races makes painfully clear his beliefs on the subject.
Science and Religion - Evolution is of necessity racist
IN THE NEWS” WAS DARWIN A RACIST? Brad Harrub, Ph.D. http://www.killdevilhill.com
I can see where Hitler would have taken this football and ran with it. The Lousiana Legislature has introduced a bill denouncing Darwin on the basis that he was as bad as Hitler in his thinking and was Hitler's inspiration.
Note the ORIGINAL full title to THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past. buz

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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 Message 8 by Riley, posted 03-30-2004 9:14 PM Buzsaw has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1722 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 7 of 109 (96153)
03-30-2004 9:00 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Buzsaw
03-30-2004 8:55 PM


You seem to have misunderstood my position - it's not the characterization of Darwin as a racist that I object to - because he was a racist, like most people of his age - but rather unsupported assertions.
So, you supported your assertions. What would have been so hard about doing that in the first place?
Don't confuse acceptance of evolution with deification of Darwin. Making men into gods is your bag, not ours, Buz.

This message is a reply to:
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Riley
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 109 (96160)
03-30-2004 9:14 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Buzsaw
03-30-2004 8:55 PM


The Lousiana Legislature has introduced a bill denouncing Darwin on the basis that he was as bad as Hitler in his thinking and was Hitler's inspiration.
So the State of Louisiana, which sanctioning the trafficking in human beings for the first 55 years of Charles Darwin's life is now going to protect us from his racist legacy?
Beneath contempt.

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Replies to this message:
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Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 109 (96161)
03-30-2004 9:15 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by crashfrog
03-30-2004 9:00 PM


So, you supported your assertions. What would have been so hard about doing that in the first place?
I was relying on memory from one of Ken Hovind's TV lectures. Most folks post things they have learned without supportive evidence here in town up front. Why should I be expected to operate otherwise?

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Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 10 of 109 (96164)
03-30-2004 9:21 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Riley
03-30-2004 9:14 PM


So the State of Louisiana, which sanctioning the trafficking in human beings for the first 55 years of Charles Darwin's life is now going to protect us from his racist legacy?
Beneath contempt.
These are different people. Why should the atrocities of others be laid to their charge?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Riley, posted 03-30-2004 9:14 PM Riley has replied

Replies to this message:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1722 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 11 of 109 (96176)
03-30-2004 9:49 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Buzsaw
03-30-2004 9:21 PM


Why should the atrocities of others be laid to their charge?
Why stop at Darwin? Does the State of Louisiana stand ready to condemn the entire human population in the 1800's, including those residents of Louisiana?
If not, it's discrimination, plain and simple. Darwin neither invented racism nor was it's prime proponent. Hitler may have couched his racism in the language of natural selection but he also couched it in the language of the Bible. Is Lousiana ready to condem the authors of Leviticus as well?

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Riley
Inactive Member


Message 12 of 109 (96202)
03-31-2004 12:08 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Buzsaw
03-30-2004 9:21 PM


These are different people. Why should the atrocities of others be laid to their charge?
This is a defense from someone charging Darwin with racism based on societal standards a century after his death? Who claims he was an inspiration to Hitler?
The yardstick of history was a conscious choice on my part, and it's a shame it can't be brought down on some knuckles. Louisiana traded human lives, while Darwin was enlightened for his day. His "racism" is a modern construct. Theirs was not. Perhaps the legislature could cast its nets a little closer to home if it's so intent on denouncing historical racism.
Ancient history? Louisiana had more Jim Crow laws on the books than any other state; they were enforced until the 1960s. David Duke was elected to the legislature in 1989, ran for governor and the US Senate, and currently holds an elected position with the Republican party. The Louisiana legislature has no standing to lecture anybody on racism.

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MarkAustin
Member (Idle past 4070 days)
Posts: 122
From: London., UK
Joined: 05-23-2003


Message 13 of 109 (96241)
03-31-2004 3:57 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Buzsaw
03-30-2004 7:37 PM


In his writings Darwin consistently opposed slavery. Here are some selections. One quote will give the flavour of the whole:
quote:
Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. ...We had several quarrels; for when out of temper he was utterly unreasonable. 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 answers 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 request that I would continue to live with him." -- Charles Darwin, Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882 (restored edition)(1958), Nora Barlow editor, pp. 73- 74
Fitz-Roy was the Captain of the Beagle. Darwin nearly got himself thrown off the ship because of his opposition to slavery.
Yes, he almost certainly believed in a hierarchy of human "races" with the white population on the top. That was the general belief of the day: held by virtually all scientists and philosophers

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Garf
Inactive Member


Message 14 of 109 (97628)
04-04-2004 12:17 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Buzsaw
03-30-2004 7:37 PM


Hitler was highly influenced by Darwin's racism. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken.
Hi Buzz, I feel you're mistaken about him being "highly" influenced by this. Most, if not all, of his reasons seemed to center from the teachings of the Church he attended in his youth. Hitler was not an evolutionist or anything he considered "atheistic". He thought himself a Christian and he felt he was doing the Lords work by killing the Jews who had killed the savior.
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." -Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
If you need more evidence besides his speeches read his book, Mein Kampf. "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." Adolf Hitler. Years later, when in power, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech in 1938. Hitler goes on and on about this stuff... Acclaimed Hitler biographer, John Toland, explains his heartlessness as follows: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god..."
Hitler's Germany also combined the state with the Church. Soldiers of the vermacht had belt buckles inscribed with: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). His troops often were sprinkled with holy water by priests. Under his administration, Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools.
The Lousiana Legislature has introduced a bill denouncing Darwin on the basis that he was as bad as Hitler in his thinking and was Hitler's inspiration.
"Hitler's inspiration" came from two things: Christianity, and WWI. He had fought on the frontlines in WWI and was severely distraught when he learned the German politicians had surrendered Germany. All the thousands he watched die in the trenches from bullets, artillery, and gas had died in vein he thought. He needed to place blame and this is where his Christian side came in to place it on the Jews who were referred to as "perfidious Jews" ("perfidy" means treachery) by the Church he had been an alter boy for in his youth in which he was an acclaimed "soldier for Christ". Hitler's life story is a sad one filled with extreme violence and brain-washing beliefs that made him into a terrifying individual. All of this shouldn't be that surprising really given the very extensive history of Christian crimes against the Jews for having "killed their savior". As Zangwill put it, "The Jews are a frightened people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have broken them down."
P.S. I highly suggest, as mentioned by a friend, these books:
Helmreich, Ernst Christian, "The German Churches Under Hitler," Wayne State University Press, 1979
Hitler, Adolf, "Mein Kampf," translated by Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971
Laffin, John "Hitler Warned Us: THe Nazis' Master Plan for a Master Race," Brasseys Inc., 1995
Scholder, Klaus, "The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol 1" Fortress Press, 1977
Scholder, Klaus, "The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol 2" Fortress Press, 1977
Snyder, Louis L., "Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen," Berkley Books, 1990
Toland, John, "Adolf Hitler," Anchor Books Doubleday, 1976
Macfarland, Charles S., "The New Church and the New Germany," Macmillan Co.
[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-05-2004]

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Garf
Inactive Member


Message 15 of 109 (97692)
04-04-2004 3:30 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by MarkAustin
03-31-2004 3:57 AM


Just wanted to mention that MarkAustin makes some very good points.
You really need to understand the time that Darwin lived. Thinking that "whites" were better then "non-whites" was very old and very accepted in the society. If you ever read some of U.S. President Lincoln's own speeches (the ones that weren't "revised" for modern reenactments) you would think he was a racist by today's standards. "I agree with Judge Douglas that he [a black] is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments," (Lincoln in a speech on Oct. 13, 1858 -- Lincoln-Douglas Debates) The Founder's Library - Lincoln-Douglas
Does this mean that Lincoln was a racist lunatic and that we should blame him for other's racism? Certainly not. Lincoln was influenced by the society in which he grew up in, that is to say, a society that believed whites were better then blacks and had so for hundreds of years before Lincoln or Darwin were even born (If you need proof of the oldness of racism I can offer it as well). Overall, Lincoln helped civil rights and was against slavery of a person based on race, a lot like Darwin.
P.S. Sorry for getting so far off topic.
[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-04-2004]

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