EVOLUTION AND RACISM

The Biologos Foundation, promoting evolution for Christians, disclaims any connection between racism and evolution:

·       Evolutionary theory is descriptive of the development of species, not prescriptive for how humans ought to treat one another. As Christian biologist Denis Alexander notes, people have long used evolutionary theory for ideological purposes but this abuse is entirely unjustifiable. It is a philosophical add-on, not a necessary entailment of the scientific picture.

Instead, a foundation for racism is endemic to this theory. In contrast, the Bible never calls humans “animals.” Instead, there exists an absolute separation between animals and humans created in the likeness of God.

However, according to evolution, we are a just one small step away from our ape-like forebears, even if the emergence of humanity might have been a long and slow process of a gradual and ongoing transformation. This means that among humans, some are evolutionarily more distant (and evolved) from our ape-like ancestors than others. Consequently, this had led the most famous German evolutionist of his day, Ernst Haeckel, to claim what had been commonly accepted among his peers:

·       ”You must draw [a line] between the most highly developed civilized people on the one hand and the crudest primitive people on the other and unite the latter with animals.” (Karl Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, 76)

Although today evolutionists angrily deny this equation, it is inseparable from their theory.