BY JASON SCHIFO
In the summer of 2018, my family and I had the opportunity to attend a lecture at Answers in Genesis, given by Ken Hamm, its founding director. While I don’t agree with Ken Hamm on a number of topics and issues, the lecture he gave on race was thoughtful and challenging. So much so that much of what I am going to share in this article is from my memories of that lecture.
rac·ism /ˈrāˌsizəm/
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.
Racism is based on the idea that there are different human races, the “white race,” the “black race,” the “yellow race,” the “red race,” and so on. While it is generally assumed that people share similar characteristics, racism relies heavily on highlighting the inherent differences between people groups in an attempt to elevate one group over another in rights, privilege, and position in society.
The idea of racism has been around as long as different kinds of people groups have existed. The clearest example to give us some context comes from Hitler and the National Socialists Party (the Nazis), who promoted the idea that races were in competition with each other for superiority. Superiority being greater rights, privilege, and position.
There is a real problem with this kind of thinking.
It denies the straight line truth that there is only one race: the human race.
The term race has not always been defined as it is today. Prior to the 1800’s most people referred to “race” as cultural groups such as the “English race,” the “Irish race,” etc. This view however changed in 1859 when Charles Darwin published his book, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” originally titled, “The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”.
According to Darwinian thinking, different races descended from different ancestors separated by location and over periods of time. Some were more superior than others, in which he presented the idea of “natural selection” being naturally selected for survival and dominance. This has been popularized as the survival of the fittest.
I want to be very clear that my desire is not to debate, or even denounce Darwin’s theory of evolution in this article, but instead to have us understand that it has negative consequences. Darwinian thinking has played a major role in promoting the idea that different people groups or “races” of people evolved at different times and rates, making one more superior than another.
As a result of Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection, people started thinking in terms of different people groups as representing different “races,” some selected to succeed over others. It might be helpful as I use the words success and superiority, that we think of the word “power” and “control” because that is what it is ultimately about.
David Klinghoffer writing for Evolution News and Science Report (a pro-Evolution publication) says, “The thread of racism in Darwinian thinking isn’t a chance thing, a mere byproduct of Charles Darwin’s personal views as a “man of his time.” In a Darwinian scheme, someone must be the official subhuman. It’s why Darwinism can never get away from racism. Racism is implicit in the Darwinian belief system about how things happen.”
American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science, Stephen Jay Gould agrees with me as he claimed, “Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.”
Once Darwinian thinking took hold it unintentionally promoted the idea that races were in competition with each other for superiority. With certain groups adopting and perpetuating the notion of different “races” as a way to elevate themselves in society and position themselves for superiority.
This has resulted historically in people, consciously or unconsciously, having deeply ingrained prejudices against different people groups. And this misunderstanding is the crux of the problem because all people in the world today, regardless of skin color, language, traditions, geography, or social class, are human beings. To view the world as different “races” is to deny the core truth that we are one race, the human race.
Scientists agree that biologically speaking, there really is only one race, the human race. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times, C. Loring Brace, a biological anthropologist at the University of Michigan said, “Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality,” Solomon H. Katz, a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist agreed in saying, “Biologically, we are saying in essence that race is no longer a valid scientific distinction. Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.”
Darren Curnoe, writing an opinion piece for ABC News stated, “More and more scientists find that the differences that set us apart are cultural, not racial. Some even say that the word race should be abandoned because it’s meaningless.” Curnoe went on to say, “We accept the idea of race because it’s a convenient way of putting people into broad categories, frequently to suppress them, the most hideous example was provided by Hitler’s Germany. And racial prejudice remains common throughout the world.”
Even today as I am writing this article a prominent Yale scientist, David Gelernter, publicly denounced Darwinian thinking as not only improbable scientifically, but statistically and ideologically “a dead loss.”
Interestingly, people who love to pit science and the Bible against one another may be surprised to find that there is far more agreement than disagreement.
In Genesis chapter one, God created man in His image, elevating by that action the worth value and status of each person made in His image, and all share a common ancestry. This is important because if God created us, He also created the great diversity that we experience among us.
In Acts 17:26, in the King James translation says that we are all “one blood,” one race, the human race. We are intrinsically bound together by not just a biological truth, but also a spiritual truth.
Throughout the Bible people display, for good and bad, their differences, it does continually call us to live together beyond our differences as one. A major theme throughout the scriptures is unity.
Jesus, in one of His few prayers recorded from John 17, prays to God that, “they (we) may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).
In fact, the Book of Revelation says that all the peoples of the earth, with all their differences, will gather as “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9).
Armed with these two truths, science and the Bible, we cannot continue to perpetuate racist philosophies and ideologies to the success of one people group over others. Instead, we need to see others as we see ourselves and embrace that we are all one race; the human race.
Darren Curnoe closes his ABC article by saying, “I can’t see the political class or broader community adopting such a strong view against race any time soon.” Why? Is it because we cannot get past our differences?
No. Sadly, the answer is found in Darwin’s original published title, “The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.”
