“The complete title of Darwin’s most famous work, often abbreviated to The Origin of Species, was The Origin. of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. As Koster notes about Darwin’s view on race,

‘[he]never considered “the less civilized races” to be authentically human. For all his decent hatred of slavery, his writings reek with all kinds of contempt for “primitive” people. Racism was culturally conditioned into educated Victorians by such “scientific” parlor tricks as Morton’s measuring of brainpans with BB shot to prove that Africans and Indians had small brains, and hence, had deficient minds and intellects. Meeting the simple Indians of Tierra del Fuego, Darwin wrote: “I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man; it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal . . . Viewing such a man, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world.”1

Darwin’s belief that some races (such as blacks) were inferior to others became so widely accepted that, as Haller concluded: ‘the subject of race inferiority was beyond critical reach in the late nineteenth century.2 Although Darwin opposed all forms of slavery, he did conclude that one of the strongest evidences for evolution was the existence of living ‘primitive races’ which he believed were evolutionarily between the ‘civilized races of man’ and the gorilla:

‘At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla. … It has often been said … that man can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate and other changes; but this is true only of the civilized races. Man in his wild condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country.’ 3

The missing link wasn’t missing but, many evolutionists of the time concluded, lived in Australia and other faroffplaces.4 The existence of some living races was openly viewed as irrefutable evidence of a graduation of living creatures ‘linking’ humans to the monkeys (or today ‘to our common primate ancestor’). This ‘scientific conclusion’ was interpreted as compelling evidence for evolution, thus a large number of biology textbooks of the time discussed the ‘hierarchy of the races’ topic.’

1. Koster, John, 1988. The Atheist Syndrome, Wolgemuth and Hyatt Publishers, Brentwood, Tennessee p. 50.
2. Haller, John S. Jr., 1971. Outcasts From Evolution: Scientific Attitudes to Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, p .132.
3. Darwin, Charles, 1896. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex; The Works of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Company, New York (First edition by AMS Press, 1972), pp. 241-242.
4. de Laubenfels, M. W., 1949. Pageant of Life Science, Prentice-Hall, New York. Source no longer extant or known to me.

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Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation

Philosopher of Mathematics Dr. David Berlinski

Nothing matters. The Problem with Atheism Nobody Talks About.

— Church Father’s on Genesis 1-11

Jesus affirms the special creation of Adam and Eve at the beginning (Mark 10:6).
Luke connects the human lineage of Jesus to Adam (Luke 3:38).
Jesus links the doctrine of marriage to Adam and Eve (Matthew 19:4–6).
Paul connects the doctrine of the church to Adam and Eve (Ephesians 5:30–32).
Paul argues for family order because of Adam and Eve (1 Corinthians 11:8–12).
Paul attaches the origin of sin in the world to Eve (1 Timothy 2:13–14).
Paul also connects death from sin to Adam (Romans 5:12–14).