There is a growing movement to promote the theories and philosophy of naturalist, Charles Darwin, with some equating his views on evolution with the foundation of modern science.
Incredibly, it is reported that even some Christian clergy (a group that has a long history of excoriating Darwin's theories) is joining the evolutionary bandwagon fearing that not to do so would stigmatize them as backward, outmoded and antithetical to Darwin's supposed wondrous illumination of science.
It is, of course, irrational to latch on to Darwin, a layman and atheist, as the harbinger of science; a man of minimal learning and scientific credentials. And to neglect men like Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton, who are universally accepted as giants in the sciences and who believed that all existence was created by the intelligent design of a Divine Being.
Moreover, to accept and to celebrate Darwin is also to lend credence to his racism. And to blindly follow his lead on evolutionary theory would be to go down a path that has no scientific validity and one that Darwin himself admitted was dubious and uncertain.
Darwin's hypothesis proposed that "beings that adapted to the habitat in the best way transferred their qualities to subsequent generations; these advantageous qualities accumulated in time and transformed the individual into a species totally different from its ancestors. Darwin called the process 'the evolution of natural selection.' 1
This notion, under girded with racial superiority beliefs, held that whites had developed to the highest level from the primordial ancestors of man (which allegedly were primates).And that other races occupied lower rungs of development with blacks holding the lowest and most primitive loop on the evolutionary chain. And consistent with Darwin's survival of the fittest evolutionary scheme and projections, blacks and all other non-whites would eventually be done away with by the "natural selection" process. In his book, The Descent of Man, Darwin predicted:
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races
of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout
the world." 2
And over a hundred years later, Adolph Hitler would express a similar idea in his infamous testimonial, Mein Kampf:
"History would culminate in a new millennial empire of unparalleled splendor,
based on a new racial hierarchy." 3
Charles Darwin was influenced by several pseudo-scientific theorists before him. They include the physicist, Edward Long, who insisted that blacks were of a different species and lower order; Charles Linnaeus, who grouped human beings into four categories (with whites on top) and ushered in the modern age of racism; Thomas Malthus, who coined the term "natural selection;" and the French biologist, Lamark, who fortified Darwin's theory that human traits were influenced by environment and passed down through successive generations causing them to mutate and to evolve.
Yet Darwin, Lamark and the others that influenced him were working with the relatively primitive technology and archaic scientific instruments of their time. Also, studies such as genetics, biochemistry, microbiology and biomathematics which would have exposed their theories for the fiction and quackery that they were, had not been developed. In fact, Darwin was no more than a amateur naturalist; a pseudo-scientist who never benefited from a formal education in biology.
The record shows that Darwin's theory is, perhaps, the most destructive in human history. It spearheaded an era of racism that the world had never known and gave justification to a devilish mind-set that resulted in the exploitation and decimation of entire groups of people simply because of the darkness of their skin and the differences of their physical traits and characteristics.
Later in the next century, his dogma of survival of the fittest and anti-spiritual materialism provided intellectual cannon fodder for communist theorists Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and ushered in the Soviet holocaust under the brutal dictator, Josef Stalin, along with the slaughter of millions of human beings under Adolph Hitler.
For cognizant with the philosophy of natural selection is that might makes right, and that the strong have a duty and a moral right to dominate and/or eliminate those that are considered weaker, because it is nature's (not God's) providence and plan to do so.
References:
1. Haruun Yahya, "The Evolution of Deceit," Arastirma Publishing (2002) p.42
2. Ibid. p.44
3. Ibid p.17
4. "Scientific Racism in Enlightened Europe," by shah Aashna Hossain, accessible online at: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/mode/1852
Steven Malik Shelton is a journalist and human rights advocate. He can be reached at malikshelton19@aol.com
© Mar 2009 By Afromerica || [TOP]
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Racism, Pseudo-Science and Charles Darwin
