Yes. and evolutionists also have had ideas that some/all do not use any more. What about the peppered moths in England, the embryonic recapitulation idea, the evolutionary status as not- quite-human given to nomadic peoples in various parts of the world, even that changes within a species add to changes from one species to another – eg. the tree of life given in the 1962 NSW General Science course.

The idea of “not-quite-human given to nomadic peoples in various parts of the world” was well and truly alive well before Darwin was born. It was one of the main reasons that so many people, including most Christians in teh southern states in USA, were opposed to the abolition of slavery. If these people weren’t really human, then the biblical phrase about “one blood” didn’t apply to them.

This could lead to a whole thread on the way a large number of Christians supported slavery, and in some parts of the world (notably South Africa and southern USA) the idea that people with dark skins weren’t really human persisted unto well into the 20th century.

Darwin was, in fact, one of those who claimed that all human beings were descended from the same ancestor, unlike many slave-owners in USA who believed that Negroes, in particular, were a separate creation. This may well lie at the base of the way South Africa and southern USA were, in the 1930s and 1940s, a major bastion for opposition to evolution, as well as the lenght of time it took in those places for people with black skins to get even a semblance of civil rights.

Ken Smith

Related Articles:

• Greece: can you believe this/them?
• Syria February 2012: Two Perspectives
• EGYPT: THE GROSS INSECURITY OF THE DHIMMI
• Female Circumcision in the Maldives, the Islamic Movement and Islamophobia
• Australia Day message

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.