If you were to read the litterarture of the time, I doubt that you would find anything that would not be considered extremely racist by today’s standard. He was a man of his age, I suspect that in a 150 years, some concept that appear completely natural for us will also appear completely alien and possibly repulsive to our descent. However by the standard of his time, Darwin was quite liberal, he did not advocate extermination or alienation of the other races, he just saw them as different and less advanced. And AFAIK he was not an advocate of the extermination.

But even if he had his bad sides (he is a human after all) that would not change the importance of his discoveries and theory. Many other famous and revered human being held for granted thing that would be abbhorent by today’s standard. Aristotle is considered a a foundation of modern ethics. Greek at his time were considering all women and non greek as barely human, and have no problem with death penalty…

As for the Hitler comparison, that is stupid beyond contempt. Should we hold Jesus responsible for the crusades? After all the crusaders went in his name…

Whoa, both the Darwin AND the Hitler card in the same post. That’s hardcore creationism I must admit.

Now, if Darwin was the one to figure out how evolution and natural selection work, why should his other opinions about races matter in this regard? Heck, even if he liked to molest little children and call all women sluts it still hardly affects whether or not he is the father of the theory of evolution and a great scientist because of that. Even if the creationists’ favourite devil Hitler himself had devised these theories and then by using them as an excuse exterminated millions of people, it hardly makes the theory itself any more valid or invalid.

They are completely different matters, how Darwin was like as a human, and how he was like as a scientist. Even a bad, evil, racist nazi could be a clever scientist. And what comes to Darwin himself, he was actually quite liberal and tolerant by the standards of his time. Unlike, say, the christian church…

For Darwin: As we both told you, racism was definitely part of the world view of the western world in the XIXth century, so there is nothing surprising in Darwin’s word. And Darwin being willing not to treat member of other "races" as animals would be considered quite liberal by the standard of his time. Not so by those of our time.

For the crusades: I am not completely sure, even access to the scripture has not prevented religious wars, racism and quite a lot of horrible deeds all in the name of one god or another. But that is beside the point, my point was that the darwinian theory in no way imply the interpretation that has been done by the Nazis in Germany. I doubt that would have even remotely approved. And I would remind you that Evolution by natural selection is a description of the relation between population of organisms. There is no such thing as more evolved, superior, or anything that would justify a genocide. It only talks about reproduction rate and change in relative composition in population. In fact the Nazi use would be more based on Galton’s eugenism (a philosophy that use NS as its core, but make decision that do not naturally follow evolution). This is a really bad argument against evolution, and starting a discussion at the godwin point is probably not the very best idea…

And yet…

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 … -life.html

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/arti … p?id=10581

Darwin was no more racist than he was allowed to be by society at that time. Just like many people today are only as accepting of homosexuality as society allows them to be. If someone was a racist as Darwin today, that person would be in an extreme, but it was normal at that time. Within every movement of people there is a range of normality that most people stay within. That is what Darwin did as far as racism is concerned, though he challenged society with his science.

Completely untrue. It does tell us what we probably are – but it can never address the question of who or why we are. Anyone attempting to draw conclusions along those lines, using evolution as proof, is a fool.

Clearly, to you, if evolution is true it must replace God – and everything that you’ve associated with your belief in God, such as morality and purpose.

So basically what you’re saying is that you think it’s impossible that humans could have evolved the capacity to differentiate right and wrong – to be fair and just?

The FACT is that humans have an individual capacity to develop philosophies and morals – regardless of where that capacity came from. Scientific evidence points to the probability that this capacity originated via evolution.

If it’s possible for you to imagine a world were all morality and ethics no not originate from some benevolent deity – do so, and take a second look at the world you live in.

Maybe so, but it still doesn’t make evolution and natural selection untrue. Even if the truth is unpleasant, it is still the truth.

And it’s absurd to think that a human society is uncapable of forming moral and ethical rules without some divine text. After all, even the bible has been written by men, so all moral rules you take from there are invented by us and us alone. I accept evolution and natural selection, yet I still don’t have any urge to kill weaker people or think that a certain group of people is inferior to some other because of their skin colour etc.

Hey now, careful! Some members of this forum are firm believers in Jesus/Mary toast miracles.

But on a different note, how about this: Saying there is no god is just as illogical as saying there IS a god. Such statements can only exist outside the scientific process, as they are untestable.

This is just your belief and you have no evidence to support it, aside from your personal convictions. How do you expect any of that to have any relevance?

Clearly we have the capacity for concieving of such a thing as spirit or supernatural. You say this capacity comes from an unseen unproveable source. Evolution hypothesizes that it comes from our genetic lineage – and provides evidence that we have indeed evolved to our current state. Furthmore biology (not evolution) has shown that our perceptions of spirit, supernatural, morality, conscience, etc can all be altered by changing chemical balances.

I’m not saying that we’re all hopeless automatons completely reliant on our genes and physiology – and lacking all free will. We’re clearly not – though our biology probably influences much more than we’re willing to admit.

I understand the conclusion you reached, because you are a person of faith. Of course, when something good happens that you can’t explain, it’s a miracle. When something bad happens that you can’t explain it’s god’s "mysterious ways." Who are you to question the motives or methods of God, right?

When something happens that has no explanation: that is the beginning of the scientific process. The process then goes on to question why, research, form hypotheses, perform tests, and have the results scrutinized by the scientific community. From this point, the results are added to a larger body of work so that eventually enough evidence may accumulate that we can come to an answer which we have a high enough level of confidence in.

Faith skips all of these steps, and lands neatly at a conclusion with 100% certainty. Furthermore, there is no scientific way to test supernatural events (thus the word supernatural).

Science is clearly not the answer to all of life’s questions. This is why I said that someone who uses evolution to determine their morality is a fool. My point is merely that faith/superstition has no place in science, and science has no place in personal morality.

People will use anything they percieve as a credible source of truth to justify their actions. Slavery was justified by many through the Bible (black people bore the "mark of Cain"). Hitler justified killing off the Jews not only by evolutionary semantics, but also by biblical anti-semitism (Jews killed Jesus, etc).

If someone took those quoted lines from the Origin of Species and started trying to do away with all "primitive races." Would Darwin be at fault, or would the person be at fault for misunderstanding the theory of evolution, and taking Darwin’s thoughts out of historical context? Has anything like that ever happened in Christianity…? Hmmmm Crusades, David Karesh, Jim Brown, witch-hunts, gay-bashing… How about Islam? Hmmm suicide bombers, genital mutilation, oppressive sexism…

Ok guys, this is getting out of hand

Now, it is my opinion that whenever you study things like evolution you will inevitably reach some sorts of ethical dilemmas, which is why i don’t mind having this type of discussion on the forum even though they are not science talk per se. However, saying stuff like
"We are Christian–that means we follow Christ –not man, not Allah, not Karesh, not Manson or Hitler, nor Darwin. We follow with men who follow Him.

I pray one day you’ll find Him relevant, because He found us relevant enough to die for us."

proves to me that you have a philosophy that is pretty much incompatible with this forum’s science philosophy, which is clearly stated in our rules. In cases like this, I must intrude in your talk and remind you where you are. You are on biology-online.org, not on letstalkgod.com or something similar.

I understand that – but those sadly are not proof of anything. They are only meaningful to you, and are not relevant in a scientific context.

Heat-rushes can be explained by capillary dilation due to emotion or hormones (or a fever)
Someone that has a 24-hour flu could psychosomatically add symptoms if they thought they had something else.
Dogs behave weirdly sometimes…
(I’m not saying this is what happened, but only demonstrating to you that there are other possible explanations than the one you leaped to)

The original point was that regardless of the source of our beliefs, convictions, morals, etc; they exist. To say that a scientific explanation of our origin negates our morality is not a valid conclusion.

I find that quite interesting that he was racist, even though it was more than common in his time – you would think that such a great mind would have pondered the notions of his society a little more…

How is this surprising? If you think about it, at that time the black people were way behind the Europeans and Americans whent it came to technological advancement. Many of Darwin’s contemporaries thought it as a certainity that the black people were inferior to the whites – the evidence seemed overwhelming. It was only much later, when the black people got their freedom and integrated into the more advanced society, that they managed to prove they are on the same intellectual level as the whites and other people as long as they have access to the same level of education and welfare (their physical prowess had been proven many times before that, often in very unfortunate ways, such as working in the cotton fields…)

I think Darwin did a great deal of pondering about the notions of his society, but sometimes even that doesn’t guarantee the right conclusion. At that time, it must have really seemed like the blacks were never going to reach the same level the whites had achieved.

So basically are you guys saying that Darwin was racist because of his environment. Does that mean we should pardon all those murderes, and criminals, who grew up in bad environments. No, of course not, he was an adult, and capable of thinking for himself, and he should be able to take the blame just like any other person, not protected because he was famous.
Darwin’s hypothesis of evolution, is very racist. His idea of the survival of the fittest applying to humans basically sanctions what Hitler did, now I am not saying that he saw what would happen because of that flawed belief, he would have had to have been a madman for that, and I don’t think he was. He was just an extremely racist (even at that point in time) person, and he didn’t realize the consequences of his beliefs.

@AstusAleator There actually is scienctific and historical evidence supporting the Bible.
If you want I can post it here, but anyways, having faith in something is not a bad thing it is actually a very necessary part of life. It actually takes more faith to believe in evolution, than in creation. Please look at this link http://www.great-quotes.com/quote/1117193, it will explain a lot.

@AFJ I hope you don’t take offense at me correcting you, I am a teenager, but I just have to say something. Did you know that there actually is evidence for Creation? Before I say that though, I would like to say that The Second Law of Thermodynamics actually prevents Evolution from being proved. So if Evolution is out of the picture, then the only competitor worth a second look is Creation. Now if you would like to find Historical and Scientific evidence for Creation, then check out the last page of the subject 5 Proofs for Evolution, and read the comments on Why I Believe In Creation, on the Evolution forum.

I don’t think anyone is saying that it Darwin or anyone else had some special right to be racist. But while condemning Darwin you must equally condemn the whole white christian society of that time – by today’s standards it was an incredibly racist society. You must always reflect the persons whose actions you judge on the society and time they lived in. Virtually all "great leaders" of the past would be horrible war criminals if they lived today. Alexaner the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, you name it – they were all products of their time and are considered as heroes nowadays even though they caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and attacked another countries and dreamt of conquering the world. Not so much different from Hitler’s doings… only Hitler did his doings on a completely different time with different values. It is funny how you guys can always summon Hitler to help you when fighting against evolution and Darwin.

Also, you ask whether murderers and criminals should be pardoned because if they grew up in bad neighbourhoods. It might surprise you to know that most Western societies do this: a criminal can be pardoned completely, even if they committed a murder, if it can be shown that their environment had so much effect on their actions that they could not use their free will to prevent themselves doing what they did. In other words this means that a person is stated to be criminally insane and spends their time confined in a mental health institution – but they are not convicted of murder (exact details of this naturally depend on the country and its legistlation).

Also, when many lesser crimes are being judged the effect of the environment is taken into consideration. It is just a question of how much emphasis a given society puts on the environment: certain Arabic nations, for example, do not really care about it. A crime is a crime and you pay for it equally no matter what the circumstances were. Most Western societys often give some thought for the environment affecting the crime.

Yes, even a lot of the white population, that called themselves Christians at that time, were extremely racist, but there were a lot of real Christians, who opposed it strongly. Just because a person calls themself a Christian, does not mean that they always are (a lot of people at that time considered it fashionable, to be Christians), although I grant that there were a lot of real Christians, who chose their pocketbooks over their morals. I totally agree that a lot of famous people and generals back then were ruthless, and I do not like the fact that they were never put on trial for their crimes, but if you will notice, a lot of those people, based their beliefs on the same idea, that Darwin came up with many years later. People use Hitler as an example, because it is a lot easier to see Darwin’s ideas in his actions.

As to what you said about criminals, I know that, but just because it is commonly done, does not mean that it should be done. About the comment about the criminally insane, there are three types of people who become criminally insane, those who are so taken up with hatred or grief, that they go insane meting it out on others, and those who are who went insane, and then went around doing crimes, and those who fake being insane to get off the hook. The first and third deserve to be punished (regarding to the first example, I am saying they should be punished if they ever get over being insane), but obviously the second does not deserve to be punished.

To answer your third comment, it is important that you understand the difference between environment and circumstances.
Environment-the totality of surrounding conditions
Circumstance – That which attends, or relates to, or in some way affects, a fact or event
Obviously the two are different, and the circumstances, are different than the environment.
If you grew up in a place where lots of people stole from each other, you would still not be immune to the laws of your country, and shouldn’t be able to get off the hook, whereas if you were forced to steal something, by people who had threatened your family, and actually had the power to harm them, it would be a different case altogether.
I know this is kind of an extreme circumstance, or example, but it seemed a pretty simple way of putting it.

It is hardly Darwin’s fault that Hitler used his ideas in the way he did? 🙂

I think we’re getting side-tracked here. What kind of a person a scientists was has nothing to do with the scientific work they did, as long as the scientific work was done according to the scientific method. A scientist could be a complete racist and serial killer, but it would not lessen the value of their findings if, for example, they found a cure for cancer during their career.

Likewise, Darwin may or may not have been a horrible person and a racist (though I do not thing he was much of either), but still it does not affect his scientific findings.

Also, even if the truth is unpleasant (like evolution for many christians), it alone does not make it untrue. If a scientist would show in his paper, again just an example, that the black people are more intelligent than the white people, it would cause a terrible uproar. The scientist might be labeled a racist, his work might be denounced, some tyrant might use these ideas to form a black supremacist nation where the white people were persecuted – but the results would be there and should only be proved or disproved by doing relevant scientific studies.

Similarly, the creationist arguments are invalid against the theory of evolution, because they do not have any solid evidence either against evolution or for the support of creation. In a modern world it is just not enough that you have a 6000 year old book as a proof and you tell that having a creator is more "logical".

Einstein married his first cousin – Does that invalidate relativity? Heisenberg worked on developing nuclear weapons for the Nazis – Should we downgrade the importance of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle? William Shockley co-invented the transistor and was a racist. So should we all sell our computers in protest? Learn to pick the diamonds out of the s**t, wash your hands, and move on.

Here Here, Even if darwin believed that tuna fish sandwiches are better than peanut butter and jelly it has no bearing on his increadibly useful theory. Attacking him personally (especially after he’s dead) is sure evidence that you can’t argue with his ideas.

It’s not about Darwinism and the theory of evolution that Darwin is stuck.
I will repeat here what has already reported on a parallel topic.
Darwin created the theory of the origin of species through natural selection. And the idea of ​​"Evolution from simple replicators to thinking crown" – stick it to him from evil. It is a stabilizing natural selection has preserved the remains of reasonableness in this brainstem three-race kind of Homo Sapiens throughout more than half-billion years of the paleo-history of vertebrates – since the Middle Cambrian. It is only necessary to understand that no such "evolution", like, from simple replicators to the "crown of the evolutionary creation" was not. "Evolutionary Theory" – is a particular religion, created for the convenience of creationist critique of science. So, for science is complete bullshit. Really should be discussed Devolutionary theory with the main role of Darwin stabilizing selection, which has not yet been created.
(Now, try: http://translate.google.com/translate?h … ge_id%3D82)
The first multicellular in the Proterozoic were far smarter and more perfect than us, they still knew how to sculpt a morphological, functional, genetically inherited invention, using a special interface peptide-nucleic technology of their ancestors
(http://translate.google.com/translate?h … .agro.name) and created the so-called "Complex traits – vision, the brain.
But after a universal humanity Cambrian amphibious vertebrates and amphibious arthropods began to regress. Initially, the stem species of amphibians and ceased to be a metamorphosis began leaking in the egg or the placenta (in vertebrates) or in the egg or cocoon (arthropods). From the central stem of multiracial repeatedly adjourned degradanty blind species, which are very well specialized in their little niche, but it lost the remnants of intelligence and vast strata of the universal gene pool … By the way, the mass of the genome of the ancient "fish" and the modern salamander is three times richer than human, we do not have the metabolic pathways "vitamins", "the essential amino acids, have no electric organs, can not hear and does not pronounce the ultrasound …
So, even retaining the basic of race, people now have not one in the Cambrian … Or in Wende! If it were not for "viral vector civilizations" would long ago have disintegrated into several dead-end specialized primatoids …
(http://translate.google.com/translate?h … ge_id%3D49)
But racism, monoregional theory of the origin considered very specifically lead to this collapse. That the owners of these tools to "divide and conquer" are the main customers of the "theory of evolution" and monoregional theory of races and species. This is it, incidentally, is extremely important to us foist idea that Neanderthal man was "another species of man" and did not interbreed with Cro-Magnon. So, apparently, go down and we are orderly rows along the path of arthropods – the ants and termites will become another relic of the collective …
(http://translate.google.com/translate?j … ge_id%3D32) – if fantastic ancestors aliens not warning in advance and not just settle us a couple of dozen Cambrian mermaids from the strategic reserves:
(http://spacenoology.agro.name/?page_id=4912) 😀