I was somewhat aware of the lineage of Nazi racialist ideology, but I always thought it was a misapplication of Darwin's ideas. It turns out I was wrong.
If "You Think Darwin Sounds Like A Nazi, There Is A Connection"
by BurnTheShips 57 Replies latest jw friends
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Gopher
So you're out to try to spoil Darwin's birthday celebration, Burn?
I will limit my comments to the part about "Descent of Man". The post from Driscoll you slapped into this forum implies that Darwin was racist. I'd say Darwin was quite advanced for his time -- based on the fact that he rejected polygenism which was definitely racist, and believed that all humans are of the same species.
Here's a bit from the Wikipedia article that discusses the "Descent of Man" and Darwin's views on the races.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man#Human_races
The questions of what "race" was, how many human races there were, and whether they could be "mixed", were key debates in the nascent field of anthropology in Darwin's time. After the American Civil War (1861-1865), the question of race and slavery were brought to the forefront in anthropology in the United States and Europe. Many scientists from the Southern U.S. were publishing long monographs on why the "Negro" was inferior and would soon be driven to extinction by newfound freedom, with an implication that slavery had been not only "beneficial" but "natural". Darwin was a long-time abolitionist who had been horrified by slavery when he first came into contact with it in Brazil while touring the world on the Beagle voyage many years before, and considered the "race question" one of the most important of his day. Darwin opposed the polygenism theory, developed by scientific racist discourse, which postulated that the different human races were distinct species ("polygenism") and were likely separately "created". To the contrary, Darwin considered that all human beings were of the same species, and that races, if they were useful markers at all, were simply "sub-species" or "variants." This view (known as "monogenism") was in stark contrast with the majority view in anthropology at the time, that Polygeny was supported by thinkers of many backgrounds, such as the zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist Louis Agassiz, and by later thinkers who would interpret Darwin's theory to imply that races had been evolved at different times or stages. Darwin's own views of this were that the differences between human races were superficial (he discusses them only in terms of skin color and hair style), and much of Descent is devoted to the question of the human races. Aside from the aforementioned encounter with slavery on the Beagle, Darwin also was perplexed by the "savage races" he saw in South America at Tierra del Fuego, which he saw as evidence of a man's more primitive state of civilization. During his years in London, his private notebooks were riddled with speculations and thoughts on the nature of the human races, many decades before he would publish Origin.
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5go
WOW I though you stated you believe in evolution and find it compatible with the bible. I guess blackboo has a friend again.
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BurnTheShips
WOW I though you stated you believe in evolution and find it compatible with the bible. I guess blackboo has a friend again.
I can believe evolution explains biological diversity and still disagree with the man Darwin on certain applications of his theory.
Burn
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Witness 007
Very interesting thanks!!!!!
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jaguarbass
Ive read Darwin and Ive read the bible both cover to cover and I have a theory that those who cheer loudest for either have read neither.
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BurnTheShips
Not out to spoil anything Gopher. I was not even aware of the birthday. I stumbled across the link above in an email today. Here is the original article.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/13930496.html
I think it raises valid points about the value judgements Darwinism makes with respect to the human race.
Burn
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kurtbethel
Darwin and his family practiced eugenics. They would marry almost exclusively with the Wedgwood family for several generations. It is no suprise that his ideas would support eugenic theories as they are likely intended to.
For more detail, read some of the things written by his grandson, Charles Galton Darwin, especially the book The Next Million Years.
Darwinism and eugenics is closely intertwined. -
5go
I can believe evolution explains biological diversity and still disagree with the man Darwin on certain applications of his theory.
Burn
Considering the time he lived I will give Darwin the benefit of the doubt, but this thread smacks of an attempt to discredit him and his theory in some way. He got some of it wrong so.
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