>ICR made their standard charge that racism comes from a belief in evolution.
>This is absolutely unbiblical. Racism comes from sin of man and has been
>around with us for a long, long time. Long before Darwin ever lived.
Amen. The cartoons and diagrams showing "evolution" at the root of a tree
bearing all kinds of evil fruit (we've all seen them) are also absolutely
unbiblical. The plain testimony of the whole of Scripture says that
sin belongs at the root.
Problem is, ICR -- indeed, anyone -- can find plenty of evidence for the frankest
racism in the writings of prominent evolutionists, Darwin included. Here's a
slice, for example, from Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president (at the time this
was written) of the American Museum of Natural History:
Care for the race, even if the individual must suffer -- this must be the
keynote of our future. This was the guiding principle which underlay
all the discussions of the Second International Congress of Eugenics
[Osborn was elected president of the Congress, which he proudly records
in a footnote] in 1921. Not quantity but quality must be the aim in the
development of each nation, to make men fit to maintain their places in
the struggle for existence. We must be concerned above all with racial
values; every race must seek out and develop and improve its own
racial characteristics. Racial consciousness is not pride of race, but
proper respect for the best qualities and characteristics which each
race possesses. Purity of race is today found in but one nation --
the Scandinavian; but Scandinavia has been seriously bled by emigration --
so many of its best men have left the homeland for America that today
the dependent class is relatively large; realizing these conditions, the
Scandinavian people have set foot a movement to keep the best men
and women at home, and such a movement has also been begun in
the United States. Such new racial consciousness is a hopeful sign,
and with it before our eyes we need not despair. [_Man Rises to
Parnassus_, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1927, pp. 186-87]
"Care for the race, even if the individual must suffer" -- try squaring that
with Matthew 18:12-13 or Luke 4:25-27.
Or consider Ernst Haeckel:
Among the lowest tribes of nations, most of the individuals resemble
one another so much that European travelers often cannot distinguish
them at all. With increasing civilization the physiognomy of individuals
becomes differentiated, and finally, among the most highly civilized
nations, the English and Germans [gee, what a surprise; PAN], the
divergence in the characters of the face is so great that we very rarely
mistake one face for another. [_The History of Creation_, New York:
D. Appleton and Co.; 1876; p. 281]
Funny story about this. Throughout medical school, my wife had a
second generation Asian-American (Japanese) room-mate, a woman is now a
lieutenant commander surgeon in the U.S. Navy. This woman had grown
up in a heavily Asian section of Los Angeles, and rarely spent any time
with Anglos. When she arrived at medical school, in the Midwest, she
complained to my wife that "all the white guys look exactly the same to me!" --
whereas the Asian male med students were easy to distinguish from each
other.
So go figure.
Bottom line: it's a waste of time, unbiblical, and enttrely too easy to
blame any theory or doctrine for racism. Given the universality of sin,
one can always find a nice big "racist" stone to heave, in any direction,
as soon as one wants a stone. One is bound to hit a "creationist," an
"evolutionist," or one's neighbor. The biblical message is ALL HAVE SINNED,
on this point as on all the others.
Paul Nelson