There’s nothing so low people like Ham and Ware won’t stoop to it. Ham will get free publicity for his park (Beliefnet fell for it, for instance) and for his book.
I’d be very surprised if they could find any instance of Darwin advocating racism. And if they say his theory was used to advance racism, it was abused in that way. But the Bible has also been used to advance racism; I eagerly await their book slamming the Bible.

People have the uncanny ability to support racism in just about anything form the Bible to the theory of evolution. It ain’t about anything but fear. Different races are a wonderful thing and adds beauty to the earth much like flowers, how some people can see anything else is amazing to me.

Never heard this before anywhere I’ve been. What a stretch, more dribble drabble.

Well said cknuck.

Well, Mr. Ham (a fitting name for a discussion about racism and religion does have a point, so I have to agree with Cknuck and Nnmns—Darwinism HAS been used to justify racism, regardless of what Darwin believed. And, of course, religion has as well. I think it’s pertinent to point out that Mr. Ham is not denying that—after all, he points out that his crusade against racism began against the church.
God bless.

OK, along with dinosaurs and people living on earth together, and the earth being only a few thousand years old, and Adam and Eve were the first people on earth…this accusation that Darwinism encourages racism, proves this man is living in a real fantacy world…sci fi movie world. GEEZE!
Evolution is wrong because it contradicts the Old Testament? Who wrote the OT? Men! Who made up the story of Creadtion…MEN.
BTW, if Adam & Eve were the first folks on the earth, how did the rest of us get here? Did those two populate the earth or were they the trial couple?
Ham is probably making tons of bucks from his museum…for the folks who have fallen for this bologna.

cknuck-
“People have the uncanny ability to support racism in just about anything form the Bible to the theory of evolution. It ain’t about anything but fear. Different races are a wonderful thing and adds beauty to the earth much like flowers, how some people can see anything else is amazing to me.”
As nnmns said, “Well said cknuck.”
If only you could carry this thougth one step further.
Peace!

pagansister-
Come on now, you know that we are all descendents from Adan and Eve.
Peace!

cknuck:
“Different races are a wonderful thing and adds beauty to the earth much like flowers, how some people can see anything else is amazing to me.”
Beautifully said, cknuck!

You know, boys and girls, I’m not aware of a single instance in which the Darwinian theory of evolution (TOE) has actually been used to justify racism. It may have been, of course, but I cannot think of even one example! The Nazis based their hatred on crackpot reinterpretations of a combination of Teutonic tribal myths and an outrageous misuse of the then popular “science” of eugenics (since shown to be mythological in itself).
What the Christians call the Old Testament, on the other hand, is an explicitly and unapologetically racist (actually “ethnicitist”) document. When God elected, as the text avers, one ethnic group to favor and cast out all the others to disfavor and discriminate against, God’s worshipers got — bingo! — instant rationale to kill and enslave the outcasts, which they promptly did, on God’s explicit instructions.

And the Bible promotes war.

golfdad, insomuch as the old Testament, you had to be there.

Cknuck: I saw the movie; doesn’t that count?

lol; good sense of humor

Sadly, evolution can be used to argue just about anything one chooses to address, whether or not it actually applies. As a Christ follower, I am not phased by the Darwinian evolutionary perspective. God can use whatever method suits His purposes. Racism is a human agenda.

Creationism promotes lazy theology, incomplete biology, and tooth decay (OK, I may be a bit hyperbolic on the tooth thing – but I have a feeling thses were likely the same folks who decried flouride in our water supplies).
Teach it if you must in church, but do not expect other students to submit to your proseltyzing (which is all “teaching” Crationism or Intelligent Design would be). There is enough material for the kids to learn that we do not need to muddy the curriculum withe faith positions.
ENUF! Move on. Let it go.

I would guess that none of you have read any of Mr. Ham’s books or heard him speak- I have.
He is an intelligent man, saying some things that need to be heard.
If any of you doubts that the way evolution is taught has led to racism, I suggest you read some history books .
No doubt, the Bible too has ,at times ,been misused in this way- but,it has also been the basis for ending slavery and beginning the Civil Rights movement.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers and evolution does not threaten my faith- I do feel that faith in a loving creator- God(of many , diverse people groups- not – “races”) is better than
ever-changing theories and racist ideas .

What I don’t get is why there is such a surprise or why this even seems like news. Answers in Genesis has always taught Evolution does indeed fuel racism and genocide. Their motto: “Defending the Bible Starting at the Very First Verse” indicates this. The Human Race first began from the creation of one man and one woman. In turn there is not many races, but one Human Race. All decedent from that one man and one woman.
Are their differences among individuals? Of course. Someone native from say India is not going to carry the same appearance as someone native of Africa or England. But when talking about skin tones, eye color, certain features of a particular people and compare them to another your only speaking of the slight differences that have taken place within genetic patterns.
There really is no such thing as racism no matter how much people wish to claim there is. It’s just one group being prejudice over another simply because they have too much or too little of the melatonin pigment within one’s skin. Or because they come from a differnt country. Or speak a separate language. It divides the one human race and says there are some parts of the human race ‘more’ human than another.
As for how evolution -is- used racism and genocide: Two examples. Can someone same the infamous fuhrer of Germany during World War II who had countless individuals murdered since, in his eyes, they were not of the so-called ‘superior race’. Three guesses and the first two don’t count. If you guess Adolf Hitler you get a star.
Or what about Margret Sanger, a researcher of and promoter of eugenics (the science of attempted improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics), who first began Planned Parenthood to focus on sterilizing the mentally disabled and getting rid of minorities as well as the poor by targeting them specifically for abortion. One only need to look up the organization’s history — particularly that of it’s founder.

I do not support the teaching of the theory of creation in our public schools. As has been noted, this is proseltyzing. Proselityzing disguised as science…..is proseltityzing none the less.
I have no doubt that some have used the theory of evolution to justify racism. Lord knows the Bible has been used to justify a lot of prejudice, discrimination, and bigotry.
The key word here is “used”. Mankind has used many otherwise benign objects/ideas to justify their adjenda.
Peace!

Until they allow the teaching of Terry Pratchett’s Creation story from the Discworld stories along with (and equally emphasized)the Genesis Creation stories, the Hindu, Bhutu, Navaho, Inuit, Celtic, Norse,or Tolkien’s, I am convinced we need to stick with those theories that are subject to the rigors of scientific method.
Look at the violence done in the name of so many religions. Humanity will always find some justification for exacting horrendous terrors on each other. The fault lies not with the literature but with the fools who abuse it for their own purposes.

{I}There really is no such thing as racism no matter how much people wish to claim there is. It’s just one group being prejudice over another simply because they have too much or too little of the melatonin pigment within one’s skin. Or because they come from a differnt country. Or speak a separate language. It divides the one human race and says there are some parts of the human race ‘more’ human than another.{/I}
I agree almost entirely with this, though to say “too much or too little” melatonin is wrong-headed; what’s evolved for one area doesn’t work the same in another so it’s just “different” amounts of melatonin.
{I}Can someone same the infamous fuhrer of Germany during World War II who had countless individuals murdered since, in his eyes, they were not of the so-called ‘superior race’.{/I}
Hitler used those racist ideas to get political power. Racist ideas existed long before evolution and I’m not aware of any evidence Hitler was a fan of the theory of evolution except maybe to pervert it for his purposes. What is beyond question is that the Holocaust of the Jews was possible because of the pervasive Catholic and perhaps Lutheran teaching of them being “Christ killers”. So that abomination has a lot more to do with religion than with evolution.
{I}Margret Sanger, a researcher of and promoter of eugenics (the science of attempted improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics), who first began Planned Parenthood to focus on sterilizing the mentally disabled and getting rid of minorities as well as the poor by targeting them specifically for abortion.{/I}
Apparently you’ve read a very biased biography that left out a lot. I suggest anyone wanting to know about Sanger start with her Wikipedia entry. Clearly she was a complex person and to some extent a product of her times, as are we all. But I do not see evidence of the kind of racism you describe at all. In fact her clinics helped people of all races gain control of their fertility at a time when that was illegal in many places.
A quote from Sanger from that article:
“We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother… Only upon a free, self-determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment.”

Ok, I used { when I should have used less than. You get the idea.

So we are doing ad hominem attacks on darwin now?
Is Young Earth, and Gap Creationism that weak?

A bonus round question…
Through which of Adam and Eve’s kids are we all related?
Now, as to how all this happened – details, details, details. Why mess up a fine story with sordid, naughty details?

Bonus Question answer (in reverse)
TheS si rewsna eht. Nos driht a dah yeht os delixe saw dna lebA dellik niaC.
The first death was a murder, so setting the tone for all the violence that religion was sure to spawn.

aiko:
We all came from the creation of one man and one woman? You really beieve that? My question is, how did more folks descend from the 2 boys they had? Cain and Able (trying to remember the story). Think I’ll stick with evolution…hard to believe that if a god plopped 2 folks, a breeding pair, you’d think she/he would have made another pair that would have 2 female children, thus someone for Cain and Able to breed with…before Cain kills his brother, that is. Certainly would have plopped more that 1 male and 1 female on this planet, if indeed creationism had any validity to it. (which it doesn’t)
As for genocide…how does one explain the tribes in Africa killing each other…all of them are the same “color”.

RATS! Even in reverse I cannot keep the typos out. The answer to my Bonus Question should read (in reverse) “hteS”. And as with every third child, there is almost no mention in the rest of the Bible or any of the church school lessons, no baby book, no photos. So the precedent was set at his birth.

In case anyone is still reading this, here’s a pertinent article.

Sure, the Darwinian theory of evolution could be used by some madmen to justify their evil intentions, but if Ham’s ultimate goal was, by saying this, to disprove evolution, he did a very poor job in it. Anything, ANYTHING, can be taken and used for good…or for evil. It is up to those individuals who are exposed to such teaching to decide.
And your point, Mr. Ham?

“David L. Schultz, associate professor of biology at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, said Darwin was egalitarian and had a history of speaking out against slavery.”
True, however, the basic tenets of Darwinian theory most certainly fueled many racist superman theories that were the basis for a lot of the ethnic purges that plagued the twentieth century. Then again, a few well twisted passages of scripture supported slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the Klan in America.
Like Isaiah, we’re confronted with the question of whose report we CHOOSE to believe. When we believe the report of the Lord, we’re dismissed as overought religious nuts. If we identify with Darwin, we’re dismissed as godless cynics. In today’s religio-fascist economy, we have a dynamic polarized paradigm wherein there is no room for the potential of one report affirming the other in any positive manner. Capernicus ran into the same rifts with his church when he pointed out that the earth revolves around the sun, challenging the wrongly held belief that the universe revoled around the Church of Rome, the seat of GOD on the earth.
There is no doubt that many of us believe the report of the Lord. That notwithstanding, countless scientists have given us reports that very well affirm the report of the Lord. Darwin’s report did not say we are merely the offspring of soul-less slime and lower orders of primates. Yet, as highest order of the sapien branch of the earth tree of life, humanity has steadily evolved over the last few million years, mainly to fit the changes of our ever evolving habitat and environment. That we’re still the dominant species after the passage of millions of eras is the greatest testament to the reality that God saw us evolve, and said that it is GOOD! Every single species indigenous to this planet that has not undergone that minutia of biological maturation neeful to just biologically survive the progression of human civilazation is either devolving or already extinct. What more is evolution than this?

Just a side note, a bit of trivia for “rage. Copernicus ran afoul not only of The Church, he infuriated Luther. In fact, Luther was so convinced (based on his “solo scriptoris” theory) that the front piece of his greatest work has, without explanation, a graphic with the traditional version of the solar system / univers, with the earth at the center. He was as convinced of Copernicus’ heresy as the Pope was of Luther’s. O’ what fun the mid-1500s were!

Descrimination between 2 entities as seperate is illusion.