"Biologically a race is generaly thought of as a variety, or
subspecies, within a given species. In terms of evolutionary
plhilosophy, it may represent a stage in the evolution of a new
species. Thus different sub-species within a species may very in
their respective degrees of evolutionary advance over the
ancestral species, depending upon the relative efficiencies with
which the postulated evolutionary mechanism of mutation,
segregation, natural selection, etc., have been functioning in
each case.
This leads to the observation that racism, in the sense of
struggle between races and the conviction that one race is
superior to others, must be based on evolutionism, not on theism.
Evolutionary scientists may not all be "racist" in their personal
or political philosophies. Neverthless, the various philosophies
that have promoted racism have, quite understadably, used the
supposed universal evolutionary process as their intellectual
framework for such a position. Nazism and Marxism are two notable
examples."
Since you and Morris seem to know so much about the foundations of
racism, maybe you wouldn't mind explaining to the rest of us where
racism, slavery, and other generally mean things came from before Darwin
published Origin of Species. Slavery started in the Americas in the 1500's and
1600's. Martin Luther was a rabid anti-semetic. Jews were discriminated
against in Russia and across Europe all through the Middle Ages. Romans
persecuted the Christians. Before Christ, slavery was common amongst the
Greeks and Egyptians (and probably everyone else; those are just ones I heard
about), and is recorded in the Old Testament. NONE of them ever heard of
evolution, and yet they managed to be mean to other races. These are examples
of a great number of "various philosophies that have promoted racism" to use
Morris' words and did NOT use "the supposed evolutionary process as their
intellectual framework for such a position".
I ask you: what was their intellectual framework? Be careful what you
say; I think most people on the list have stopped listening to you, because
your posts generally don't make much sense. If their intellectual framework
was not based on evolution, that calls doubt on Morris' conclusion that
evolution was responsible for racist philosophies.
On a more general note, I suggest you think hard about what you are
trying to acheive in your posts. Since you apparently haven't noticed, almost
everyone here is Christian and committed to reconciling science and
Christianity. Many people are ex-YECers, though, because they have looked at
the EVIDENCE and found it against YEC. So if YEC is what you are fighting for,
just start fighting for it and let people tell you why they changed their
minds. Your vague diatribes against "evolution", "evolutionism", etc, are
thoroughly unhelpful, since you never define what you mean by these terms (if
you paid attention to others' posts, you'd realize there are a zillion
variations on the theme of "evolution" - some atheist, some reductionist, some
(many) Christian). So, two more general questions:
1) What do you have against the scientific theory of evolution, factually?
What facts disprove it?
2) What do you believe about the origin of the universe/earth/life/humanity?
Thanks for listening (I hope you were listening).
Nick
through the Middle Ages.