Human evolution and inferior races

[Cerebrum123]

I came back to serious discussion before I should have. I need to take a break. If someone sees me come back to a serious discussion, give me a classic TWeb fish slap.

[KingsGambit]

From a Christian perspective:

Stating that evolution leads to racism is problematic for a couple of reasons, which do not even necessarily require one to affirm evolution. The fact is that we have a variety of traits in humanity, whether or not these were brought by evolution. (I was disappointed that nobody seemed to engage with my earlier analogy of disability.) Suggesting that racism is a natural consequence also would imply that it is simply natural to denigrate/look down on people with disabilities. The Christian (and only ethical) solution is to reject all of these as consequential, regardless of how people in the past have interpreted the data (and we know people will do whatever they want with data to try to find justification for what they want to do anyway).

The other reason is simple: if it turns out God did choose to create using evolution, what are we accusing God of?

[phank]

That due to natural selection some races are superior, mentally, and often physically.

But "superiority" is poorly defined. For example, would physical superiority be measured in terms of athletic ability, or resistance to disease, or average longevity, or speed of healing, or something else? My understanding is that all idenfiable groups overlap almost entirely in these respects.

One that denies the fact that racism, sexism, and other bad ideas were at the core of evolutionary theory, and expounded on in Darwin's own works.

Here, my understanding is that we start with what we can observe, and we attempt to explain it. We observe human variation. We attempt to measure it. According to our measurements, within-group variation FAR exceeds between-group variation. What do we make of this?

Not only that, but due to certain practices* some races had extraordinary advantages over other races, especially in matters of intellect.

I suppose the Chinese race excels at making paper dragons, the European race excels at finding other races inferior, and so on. Advantage seems bound to culture.

In Ontogeny and Phylogeny he said "Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory".

My reading is, he's not talking about modern-day racism, which is the deliberate denigration of out-groups. Darwin's "race" is what today we call subspecies, and the biological arguments for the existence of subspecies is indeed strong.

I regularly see you claiming how "species" is necessarily a blurry term.

Yes, this is necessary. Otherwise speciation wouldn't happen.

When interbreeding has been brought up before, you usually point exactly to that same argument. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

???I don't understand this point. Humans interbreed. They do so quite lustily. So?

[HMS_Beagle]

That due to natural selection some races are superior, mentally, and often physically.

One that denies the fact that racism, sexism, and other bad ideas were at the core of evolutionary theory, and expounded on in Darwin's own works.

Not only that, but due to certain practices* some races had extraordinary advantages over other races, especially in matters of intellect.

Those concepts are not now and were never part of evolutionary theory as it pertains to humans. They were attempts by certain human groups (late 19th century English Victorian society, 1930's Germany) to justify their position of dominance over other human groups. Actual ToE and the misuse of ToE for political ends are two very different things. SJ Gould wrote about this extensively in his book The Mismeasure of Man.

It's amazing how many Creationists continue to use the incredibly poor logic "Darwin was a (pick one: racist, misogynist, slavery supporter, puppy beater, academic failure, financial deadbeat) so the Theory of Evolution must be wrong".

[seanD]

From a Christian perspective:

Stating that evolution leads to racism is problematic for a couple of reasons, which do not even necessarily require one to affirm evolution. The fact is that we have a variety of traits in humanity, whether or not these were brought by evolution. (I was disappointed that nobody seemed to engage with my earlier analogy of disability.) Suggesting that racism is a natural consequence also would imply that it is simply natural to denigrate/look down on people with disabilities. The Christian (and only ethical) solution is to reject all of these as consequential, regardless of how people in the past have interpreted the data (and we know people will do whatever they want with data to try to find justification for what they want to do anyway).

The other reason is simple: if it turns out God did choose to create using evolution, what are we accusing God of?

I don't think this is a theological problem at all, as the bible never advocates fairness and equality among people, and in fact, inequality as a result of a curse actually started as a gender issue with the first two people in Genesis. Another thing is that the bible clearly demonstrates in many cases certain curses that fall on one's descendants (and no, I'm not talking about the so-called "mark" of Cain here) or descendants that will hold a superior position over another group of descendants. How far those descendants go can be a matter of debate, but it's still a viable argument, even if it's restricted to a natural process, to assume they carry on for some time from numerous generations to the next. I'm not necessarily making an argument here, just stating it's not as big of theological problem as you think.

[seer]

I don't think this is a theological problem at all, as the bible never advocates fairness and equality among people, and in fact, inequality as a result of a curse actually started as a gender issue with the first two people in Genesis. Another thing is that the bible clearly demonstrates in many cases certain curses that fall on one's descendants (and no, I'm not talking about the so-called "mark" of Cain here) or descendants that will hold a superior position over another group of descendants.

That doesn't follow Sean. Ontological equality, what we are by nature, is not the same as equality of position - political or otherwise, equality of talents or abilities. The fact that Eve was to submit to Adam, or the fact that I need to submit to my boss, does not touch on the fact that both Adam and Eve, or me and my boss, are equally created in the image of God.

[shunyadragon]

I am not "vilifying" him, I am showing who he actually was. You apparently are ignorant of his conclusions, and yourself are idolizing him, by protecting him from his own record. Perhaps not consciously, but that's what you are doing.

I am very familiar with his conclusions. Let's deal with contemporary evolutionary science and not 19th century science, and personal opinions. Darwin's statements on this subject were not based on his evidence he presented at the time. I like rogue06's response which follows. It is more accurate and complete, then your selective 'cherry picking' to support a contorted agenda on evolution.

[rogue06]

Okay, this is an honest question. In my admitted ignorance of the subject of human evolution, I'd like the experts in here to school me on how human evolution doesn't lead to the conclusion of superior and inferior ethnicities. IOW, I'm totally ignorant of how science explains the origin of ethnicities, so explain to me in layman's terms how certain races of people being genetically inferior (intellectually, physically, etc.) to other races is scientifically erroneous in the context of human evolution.

We could start with Darwin stating that all mankind constitutes a single species (a rather radical idea in his time) which are descended from a common ancestor (something that various supremacist groups such as the KKK, the Christian Identity movement and the Nazis all vehemently deny).

Next we could go with Darwin's statement that there is far more greater differences within a given race than between them. In "Descent of Man" he points out the problem with even trying to divide humanity into separate races stating, "that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them."

Later, modern genetic studies have confirmed Darwin's misgivings having demonstrated that humans are remarkably homogeneous genetically. IOW, genetic analysis has revealed that the vast majority of variation between humans correlates little, if at all, with any supposed racial boundaries.

Meaning that all humans are only one biological race which has led modern biologists to conclude that race isn't a valid biological classification

Further Darwin, for the most part, appears to have not been very fond of describing humans as belonging to different races which is why he often wrote about the "so-called races" of man or men (though he still employed the term on occasion probably because of its common usage). Two quick examples:

"It is not my intention here to describe the several so-called races of men."

"So again, it is almost a matter of indifference whether the so-called races of man are thus designated"

It also seems that Darwin subtly (or not so subtly) mocked the idea of dividing humanity up into numerous different "races" as other "capable judges" have done.

[Darth Executor]

From a Christian perspective:

Stating that evolution leads to racism is problematic for a couple of reasons, which do not even necessarily require one to affirm evolution. The fact is that we have a variety of traits in humanity, whether or not these were brought by evolution. (I was disappointed that nobody seemed to engage with my earlier analogy of disability.) Suggesting that racism is a natural consequence also would imply that it is simply natural to denigrate/look down on people with disabilities.

Why? I don't see how being better than someone means you have to denigrate or look down on them.

The other reason is simple: if it turns out God did choose to create using evolution, what are we accusing God of?

Wouldn't the same question apply to disability? Or just about any other human variation in ability?

[Darth Executor]

But "superiority" is poorly defined. For example, would physical superiority be measured in terms of athletic ability, or resistance to disease, or average longevity, or speed of healing, or something else? My understanding is that all idenfiable groups overlap almost entirely in these respects.

Depends what you mean by overlap. There's one kenyan population that smokes the rest of the world when it comes to running, for example, and the advantage is almost certainly genetic.

Here, my understanding is that we start with what we can observe, and we attempt to explain it. We observe human variation. We attempt to measure it. According to our measurements, within-group variation FAR exceeds between-group variation. What do we make of this?

Variation of what? When measuring different groups, if one wants an accurate picture it's not enough to measure variation (and if you mean genetic variation it's a pretty worthless measurement,). Measuring average ability seems more relevant. And when it comes to extraordinary achievements, measuring the incidence of extraordinary abilities even more so.

I suppose the Chinese race excels at making paper dragons, the European race excels at finding other races inferior, and so on.

Well, racism has been around for a long time, probably since before we were modern humans, and will exist until the end of time. Claiming the European race excels at finding other races inferior is absurd seeing how modern Europeans are almost certainly the least racist people on the planet. Most likely Europeans (and Chinese for that matter) excel at going along with the surrounding culture, whatever it may be. Hence their swinging from one extreme to the other.

Advantage seems bound to culture.

From a naturalist perspective culture would be a product of genes and environment.

My reading is, he's not talking about modern-day racism, which is the deliberate denigration of out-groups.

Yes, that was the original meaning of the word. These days it's the rough equivalent of the archaic "blasphemy" and used by everybody from liberals to creationists as a blunt object to slam against the skull of their opponents.

[Darth Executor]

Furthermore, how physically fit or mentally proficient or musically talented some-one is usually has far more to do with how much they exercise their body and their mind than it does to their genetics.

I dunno about musical talent but I doubt the first two are actually true. There's a .70 correlation between the iq of identical twins raised apart. Effort helps (particularly physically), but it's also likely that the willingness to do what it takes is genetically inherited, particularly if we are talking about a naturalistic universe.

So even if there was some racial difference in, say, mean IQ - and I'll stress again that there doesn't seem to be any - that would not mean that a specific individual of one race would automatically be superior to a specific individual of a different race.

Does anybody even argue this? I mean apart from nutjobs who think X race has no soul.

Finally, international travel and consequent inter-racial reproduction has led to such intermingling that racial boundaries are more a continuum than a discrete discontinuity. Finally, it's worth noting that those of mixed race are less likely to inherit two copies of recessive detrimental mutations, so until/unless humanity becomes fully racially intermingled, half-breeds are in that sense more likely to be genetically superior.

That genetic superiority doesn't seem to add up to much. In South America the relatively racially homogeneous countries (both white and native) are doing much better than the mixed up ones, at least in regards to murder rates.

[shunyadragon]

Even if it is not based on race, in a godless universe there could not be ontological equality. Some are smarter, some are more athletic, some are more cunning or ambitious, some more lazy, more emotional, less emotional, etc... And I would think that these genetic traits could spread through isolated races. Nevertheless, even if they do not breakdown on racial lines, they would breakdown individually.

Ontological equality is unrealistically unreal in any culture, but primitive Stone Age and Bronze Age Cultures have been documented to allow ontological 'diversity.' The elderly were cared for and healed, effeminate men had productive roles in the communities, and people of different sizes and strengths lived productively in these communities. Yes, 'natural selection' in primitive communities, as well as all life forms throughout the history of life, such as birth defects such as reproductive problems and physical defects do not survive 'naturally.' Again 'Eugenics' is relatively recent human judgment process as to who is fit to survive and who is not, and does not represent the 'natural selection' process of natural evolution.

[seer]

Ontological equality is unrealistically unreal in any culture, but primitive Stone Age and Bronze Age Cultures have been documented to allow ontological 'diversity.' The elderly were cared for and healed, effeminate men had productive roles in the communities, and people of different sizes and strengths lived productively in these communities. Yes, 'natural selection' in primitive communities, as well as all life forms throughout the history of life, such as birth defects such as reproductive problems and physical defects do not survive 'naturally.' Again 'Eugenics' is relatively recent human judgment process as to who is fit to survive and who is not, and does not represent the 'natural selection' process of natural evolution.

That is the point Shuny, ontological equality is impossible in a godless universe. With God it is possible since it is God that makes the judgment and assigns ontological value. And that value is not dependent on the whims of men or physical/mental shortcomings.

[Jonathandavid]

That is the point Shuny, ontological equality is impossible in a godless universe. With God it is possible since it is God that makes the judgment and assigns ontological value. And that value is not dependent on the whims of men or physical/mental shortcomings.

Priceless. For years I heard that my atheism asserts that "nothing has any value". Now equality is suddenly impossible in a godless universe. This can only mean one thing: zero does not equal zero. Christian math!

[phank]

That is the point Shuny, ontological equality is impossible in a FSMless universe. With he FSM it is possible since it is the FSM that makes the judgment and assigns ontological value. And that value is not dependent on the whims of men or physical/mental shortcomings.

I notice these minor little revisions make no meaningful or semantic difference at all. If anything, they only illustrate the arbitrariness and absurdity of the claim. And my version sounds better.