Ideology and Evolution

On the Huffington Post, John Farrell takes on John West's assertion that Darwin's views on race discredit evolution.  Because the anti-evolution crowd has failed to discover any credible scientific evidence to disprove evolution, they resort to name-calling one particular naturalist and blaming his discovery for every atrocity in the world since.  Let's look at this a little further.


Let's be clear: evolution is true.  Since 1859, no scientific idea have received more scrutiny and more examination.  Every experiment has confirmed the original hypothesis or has helped to shape our understanding of evolution.  Creationists have tried and failed many times to disprove evolution.  Because their "science" doesn't hold up, they resort to attacking the man who recognized what was going on.


Sometimes some people seem to think that Charles Darwin invented evolution.  He didn't.  He recognized the importance of selection in nature and provided a name for it.  Many people came before him and saw the power of selection (think farming and domestication), but no one had really applied that idea to all of the plants and animals- including humans.  He wasn't the only scientist at the time to understand natural selection (Alfred Wallace had the same idea at the same time) and virtually every biologist since has recognized the importance of natural selection and common descent.  Yet, with all the scientific evidence and consensus, Creationists have decided that they can disprove evolution by discrediting Darwin.


Americans hate racism or appearing racist.  We hate Nazis and the Holocaust.  With this in mind, Creationists love to label Darwin a racist, or at least more racist that his Victorian peers.  They blame him for the actions of Hitler (similar to blaming Jesus for the atrocities of the Crusades).  Sure, by today's standards, Darwin would be considered racist.  Victorians viewed their society as superior to all other peoples in the world.  Non-whites were presumed inherently inferior.  This anglocentric view affected most levels of the white world.  Similarly, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson would seem racist while advocating against slavery.  Actually, Darwin voiced much displeasure with slavery and the way native peoples were treated as he saw them in his travels.  Too often, Creationists lie by misquoting Darwin to create a misrepresentation of the person who discovered the importance of evolution.


But for a moment, let us accept the notion that Darwin was racist.  In fact let's label all those who accept evolution as racist.  How would that affect the science?  How does that discredit the mountains of evidence from fossils, dissections and genes?  A personal ideology does not affect the truth of the matter.  Evolution is true.  All organisms share a common ancestor and change over time through the nonrandom selection of random mutations.  How a particular person feels about different races makes no difference on the veracity of evolution.  For that matter, a person's religious affiliation, political identity, or position on the the BCS farce has no affect on the the evidence of evolution.  


For the record: Darwin would be considered much less racist that his peers and I have no particular evidence to claim that any certain evolutionists are racist.  I merely proposed the idea to prove the point that it doesn't matter.  I tend to believe that an understanding of evolution should help us to be less racist as a society- we are all pretty much the same.