Racism and Evolutionary Thought

Consider the following excerpt from a letter written by Charles Darwin in 1881:

“I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of
civilization than you seem inclined to admit…. The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have
beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant
date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized
races throughout the world.”1

Lest this be considered merely an aberration, note that Darwin repeated this sentiment in his book The Descent of
Man, he speculated, “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.”2 In addition, he
subtitled his magnum opus, The Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

And Darwin was not alone in his racist ideology. Thomas Huxley, who coined the term agnostic and was the man
most responsible for advancing Darwinian doctrine, he argued that:

“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the
superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities
are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor,
he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a
contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy
of civilization will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means
necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest. But whatever the position of stable
equilibrium into which the laws of social gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for
the result will henceforward lie between Nature and him. The white man may wash his hands of it,
and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom
of the matter, is the real justification for the abolition policy.”3

Huxley was not only militantly racist but also lectured frequently against the resurrection of Christ, in whom “[we]
are all one” (Galatians 3:28). In sharp distinction to the writings of such noted evolutionists as Hrdlicka, Haeckel,
and Hooton, biblical Christianity makes it crystal clear that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
male nor female” (Galatians 3:28). In Christianity we sing, “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in
His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” In the evolutionary hierarchy blacks are placed at the bottom,
yellows and reds somewhere in the middle, and whites on top. As H. F. Osborn, director of the American Museum
of National History and one of the most prominent American anthropologists of the first half of the twentieth
century, put it:

“If an unbiased zoölogist were to descend upon the earth from Mars and study the races of man
with the same impartiality as the races of fishes, birds and mammals, he would undoubtedly divide
the existing races of man into several genera and into a very large number of species and
subspecies.

“ … This is the recognition that the genus Homo is subdivided into three absolutely distinct
stocks, which in zoölogy would be given the rank of species, if not of genera, stocks popularly
known as the Caucasian, the Mongolian and the Negroid.

1
Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, I, Letter to W. Graham, July 3, 1881, p. 316; cited in Darwin and the Darwinian
Revolution, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), p. 343.
2
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed. (New York: A. L. Burt Co., 1874), p.178.
3
Thomas Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (New York: Appleton, 1871), pp 20-1.
 “The spiritual, intellectual, moral, and physical characters which separate these three great
human stocks are far more profound and ancient than those which divide the Nordic, Alpine and
Mediterranean races. In my opinion these three primary stocks diverged from each other before
the beginning of the Pleistocene or Ice Age. The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the
Caucasian and Mongolian, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair,
of the bodily characters, such as the teeth, the genitalia, the sense organs, but of the instincts, the
intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the
eleven-year-old youth of the species Homo sapiens.”4

Think of the historical consequences that are the direct and logical results of the naturalist worldview. For instance,
Adolf Hitler, appealed to the people of his country to have a backbone to advance the logical outworking of their
worldview. Now mind you, not all naturalists are racists or killers of the less fortunate… however, this is a logical
outworking of philosophical [or, metaphysical] naturalism.

“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of
its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he
does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law
[natural selection] did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic
life would not be conceivable at all…. If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should
mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an
inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to
establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.”5

Hitler referred to this dispensation of nature as “quite logical.” In fact, it was so logical to the Nazis that they built
concentration camps to carry out their convictions about the human race as being “nothing but the product of
heredity and environment” or as the Nazis liked to say, “of blood and soil.”6

It is significant to note that some of the Crusaders and others who used force to further their
creeds in the name of God were acting in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ. 7

The teachings of Osborn, Huxley, Hitler and others like them, however, are completely consistent with the
teachings of Darwinian evolution. Indeed, social Darwinism has provided the scientific substructure for some of
the most significant atrocities in human history. For evolution to succeed, it is as crucial that the unfit die as the
4
Henry Fairfield Osborn, “The Evolution of Human Races,” Natural History (January/February 1926), reprinted in
Natural History, vol. 89 (April 1980), p. 129.
5
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translator/annotator, James Murphy (New York: Hurst and Blackett, 1942), pp. 161-
162.
6
“The SS Blood and Soul,” one of four videos in a video series entitled, The Occult History of the Third Reich (St.
Lauret, Quebec: Madacy Entertainment Group, 1998); Now in DVD – ISBN: 0974319465).
7
This is a side note for those who are of the Christian faith: The Bible does not teach the horrible practices that
some have committed in its name. It is true that it's possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we
look closer at the details it produces evil because the individual people [“Christians”] are actually living in rejection
of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it [religion] can
produce evil, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism (non-religious
practices) actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We're talking about tens of millions of people as a result
of the rejection of  God. For example: the Inquisitions (2), Crusades (7), and the Salem Witch Trials killed about
40,000 persons combined (World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana). A blight on Christianity?
Certainty. Something wrong? Dismally wrong. A tragedy? Of course. Millions and millions of people killed? No.
The numbers are tragic, but pale in comparison to the statistics of what non-religious criminals have committed; the
Chinese regime of Mao Tse Tung, 60 million [+] dead (1945-1965), Stalin and Khrushchev, 66 million dead (USSR
1917-1959), Khmer Rouge (Cambodia 1975-1979) and Pol Pot, one-third of their respective populations dead; etc,
etc. The difference here is that these non-God movements are merely living out their worldview, the struggle for
power, survival of the fittest and all that, no natural law is being violated in other words (as atheists reduce
everything to natural law – materialism). However, when people have misused the Christian religion for personal
gain, they are in direct violation to what Christ taught, as well as to Natural Law.
fittest survive. Marvin Lubenow graphically portrays the ghastly consequences of such beliefs in his book Bones of
Contention:

“If the unfit survived indefinitely, they would continue to ‘infect’ the fit with their less fit genes.
The result is that the more fit genes would be diluted and compromised by the less fit genes, and
evolution could not take place. The concept of evolution demands death. Death is thus as natural
to evolution as it is foreign to biblical creation. The Bible teaches that death is a ‘foreigner,’ a
condition superimposed upon humans and nature after creation. Death is an enemy, Christ has
conquered it, and he will eventually destroy it. Their respective attitudes toward death reveal how
many light years separate the concept of evolution from Biblical creation.”8

Adolph Hitler’s philosophy that Jews were subhuman and that Aryans were supermen (mirroring the beliefs
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood) led to the extermination of about six million Jews. In the words of
Sir Arthur Keith, a militant anti-Christian physical anthropologist: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently
maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consistently sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of
evolution.”9

Karl Marx, the father of communism, saw in Darwinism the scientific and sociological support for an economic
experiment that eclipsed even the carnage of Hitler’s Germany. His hatred of Christ and Christianity led to the mass
murder of multiplied millions worldwide. Karl Marx so revered Darwin that his desire was to dedicate a portion of
Das Kapital to him. In 1983, the dissident Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been awarded the prestigious
Templeton Prize for religious progress. In accepting the award, he gave a clear assessment of the tragedy that had
been so devastating to his homeland:

“I have spent well-nigh fifty tears working on the history of our Revolution. In the process, I
have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already
contributed eight volumes of my own towards the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that
upheaval. But if I were to asked today the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that has
swallowed up some sixty-million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat:
‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened’.”

It should be noted as well that Darwinian evolution (man evolving from lower creatures) is sexist as well. Under the
subheading “Difference in the Mental Powers of the Two Sexes,” Darwin attempted to persuade followers that…

“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a
higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can women – whether requiring deep thought,
reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands…We may also infer…[that] the
average of mental power in man must be above that of women.”

In sharp contrast to the evolutionary dogma, Scripture makes it clear that all humanity is created in the image of God
(Genesis 1:27; Acts 17:29); that there is essential equality between the sexes (Galatians 3:28); and that slavery is as
repugnant to God as murder and adultery (1 Timothy 1:10).

Appendix

Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947).

p 15
“Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible
with the law of evolution … as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws

8
Marvin L. Lubenow, Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Baker Book House, 1992), p. 47.
9
Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), p. 230. See appendix for more
quotes by Keith.
 are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is
destroyed.”
p 28
“To see evolutionary measures and tribal morality being applied rigorously to the affairs of a
great modern nation we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced
that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy.”
p 72
“Christianity makes no distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers.
In this respect, the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind
the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long ages to produce? May we not say,
then, that Christianity is anti-evolutionary in its aim? This may be a merit, but if so it is one which
has not been openly acknowledged by Christian philosophers.”
p 150
“The law of evolution, as formulated by Darwin, provides an explanation of wars between
nations, the only reasonable explanation known to us. The law was in existence, and wars were
waged, for aeons of time before Darwin was born; he did not invent the law, he only made it
known to his fellow men.”

Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, last paragraph.

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”