Should We Cancel Darwin?

During a presidential election
season, most Americans would
normally be thinking about the
campaign more than any other topic.
Yet another serious issue—racism—continues to occupy the nation’s mind.
Since the horrific killing of George
Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer
last May, racism has filled the news as
much as it did during the civil rights
struggles of the 1960s.

Amid the angry demonstrations
with people crying for change, one of
racism’s most insidious influences has
been almost completely overlooked.

Modern views about human origins
are built on a toxic error. Unless these
opinions change, racism will keep raising
its ugly head. Any serious desire to
solve racism must inspire the question,
“What about the influence of Charles
Darwin’s racist views? Should they be
banned (or ‘canceled,’ in popular jargon)
from the culture?”

Darwin’s Racism

In a sequel to the better-known On
the Origin of Species, Darwin’s The
Descent of Man argued that humans,
having descended from apelike creatures,
were continuing to evolve and
produce various races. Darwin posited
that some races were more developed
than others. Throughout Descent,
Darwin labeled different people groups
other than his European race as “low”
and “degraded,” including Africans.
Darwin argued that the “highest
races and the lowest savages” clearly
differed in their “moral disposition”
(Darwin, 445).1 These “savages,” he further
claimed, possessed “insufficient”
powers of reasoning (Darwin, 489). At
the end of Descent, Darwin declared
he would prefer to be descended from
a “little monkey” or an “old baboon”
as opposed to an Indian “savage” from
South America (Darwin, 919).

Darwin’s racism and belief in white
supremacy were an outgrowth of his
ideas regarding natural selection.

Darwin’s racism and belief in white
supremacy were an outgrowth of his
ideas regarding natural selection (a
view popularized later by others as
“survival of the fittest”). Accordingly,
he excused aggressive colonial imperialism
with the comment, “The civilised
races of man will almost certainly
exterminate, and replace, the savage
races throughout the world” (Darwin,
521). Although he may not have explicitly
endorsed such imperialism, Darwin
saw the elimination of nonwhite
races as the natural result of white
Europeans, who “stand at the summit
of civilisation” (Darwin, 507), being the
superior race.

Such reasoning, even before Darwin
laid it out, was essentially the
same rationale used by European,
Muslim, and American slave traders,
who viewed the Africans as less than
human and deserving of enslavement.

Of course, racism has been prevalent
for millennia, including within the
Christian church. Because they have
misinterpreted and misapplied biblical
texts, many Christians deny the value of
humankind created in the image of God.
In the Western world in general, Darwin
wasn’t even the first to put forth biological
arguments for racist views. To his
credit, Darwin detested slavery. (However,
his apologists today feebly cite that
fact to mitigate his appalling racism and
instead declare that Darwin was just a
product of his times.)

Some honest evolutionists have
acknowledged that even though Darwinism
didn’t cause racism, it fueled it. The
famous late scientist Dr. Stephen Jay
Gould wrote, “Biological arguments for
racism may have been common before
1859 [the date of Darwin’s Origin of the
Species], but they increased by orders of
magnitude following the acceptance of
evolutionary theory.”2 Yet some historical
figures are so high on the pedestal
of our secular society that they appear
beyond reach, even in today’s “cancel
culture.” The hypocrisy is glaring. (At the
same time, we can’t ignore the fact that
racism has emerged too many times in
America’s church history.)

But Don’t Erase Darwin

So should today’s cancel culture seek
to erase things that are reminders of
the racist history of Western nations?
Should we delete the sad chapter of Darwin
from history books and museums? I
suggest not. There are important lessons
to be learned. Just as historians should
not erase Nazism and Communism
from textbooks and museums, they
should not ignore the consequences of
bad beliefs like Darwinism—such as the
way his ideas fueled racism—but should
learn from them.

In 2004, my family visited southern
Germany and enjoyed seeing the Bavarian
Alps and beautiful towns like Rothenburg.
But we also toured the notorious
Nazi concentration camp of Dachau as
an unforgettable way for our three sons
to learn more about the evils of anti-Semitism.3 The victorious Allied forces could
have razed Dachau to the ground, but
some wise leaders realized that preserving
the barracks and ovens would help
later generations not forget one of history’s
most virulent acts of racism.

Similarly, removing Darwin and his
errant beliefs from schools and museums
is not realistic, for they are too
entrenched in society. Yet at the very
least his racist views should be exposed
and included. All of Darwin’s beliefs,
warts and all, should be presented to
students. This includes the many that
are unscientific and not in support of
his ideas of amoeba-to-man evolution.

Sadly, almost no public schools challenge
evolution. Students are not permitted
to develop their critical thinking
skills to consider the flaws of Darwin’s
ideas. They are rarely taught that his proposed
mechanism for evolution, natural
selection, does nothing to produce new
genetic information that would be necessary
to turn one creature into another.

If they were consistent, cancel-culture
advocates would ban Darwin from
society. But most won’t touch him, for
he is like a prophet for their worldview.
Even if they condemn racism, they
blindly still want to commemorate Darwin.
From him, they have a supposed
scientific justification for rejecting the
Creator and living as they please with
regards to abortion, sex, and so on.

The Solution

The answer to racism is found in
God’s Word.

The Bible’s history is crucial to a true
understanding of “race.” God’s Word
reveals that all humans are descended
from Adam and Eve. At the tower of
Babel, God separated the rebellious people
by both geography and language. The
population broke up into sub-groups,
and as people married within their
own group, certain genetic features (like
skin shade and eye shape) became more
prominent. Some people groups ended
up with light skin and others with dark
skin. All people today are actually shades
of brown, depending on the amount of
melanin, the main pigment, in our skin
(and some other minor factors). There
are no truly black or white people.

The Bible also explains why people
mistreat each other. Because all people
are descendants of Adam and Eve, we
all inherited the same problem: we’re
sinners, like our first parents. As rebels
against God, we deserve death. But the
good news for all people, regardless of
their ethnicity, is that Jesus Christ was
sent by God (John 3:16) and stepped
into history to die on the cross and
be resurrected. He now offers the free
gift of eternal life to those from every
nation, tribe, and people who will put
their faith in him (Revelation 7:9).

It’s more important than ever that
Christian leaders and parents proclaim
the biblical worldview starting with
Genesis. Millions of children in Christian
homes are being lost to the godless
secular culture as they attend government-run schools and hear the pervasive
antibiblical thinking in museums
and media. At the same time, all students
should learn about Darwin’s racism
and not see his views erased.

Believers should display an unflinching
passion to fight human abuses and
injustice. We believe our solutions,
based on God’s Word and its true history
of the human race, are the most
effective means to eliminate the roots
of evil. We must speak with confidence,
pray in faith for our country, and proclaim
the unchanging good news of the
gospel. If we do, then along the way we
will see racism reduced as well.4

SourceThis article originally appeared on answersingenesis.org

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