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People who deny evolution rarely try to attack it on a scientific basis - more often,
they will make sentimental pleas to try to make you feel bad if you do accept evolution.
Rarely will someone say "Aha, I've found some new evidence that proves evolution
does not happen.". Instead, they will use emotional appeals to convince
us that Bad Things come about as a result of belief in Evolution, such as immorality,
abortions, promiscuity, communism, fascism and the general downfall of all civilised society.
It's as if they're trying to say "Well, maybe evolution might be sort of correct,
but if you're a Good Person you shouldn't believe in it anyway. Jesus wouldn't if
he was around today."
People tend to get very emotional about the subject of evolution. Evolution shows how humans are related to the rest of the animal kingdom, and how we descended from a common ancestor along with the gorillas, chimps and orang-utans. People like to think that humans were special creations of God, and completely different from the other apes (well, we are - by about 0.5% 8) ). Because evolution has obvious implications for the ideas of Special Creation and the existence of the soul (only available to Homo sapiens, apparently) it becomes a target for Bible-believing fundamentalists. They cannot attack it scientifically, so instead they try to discredit it in the minds of believers.
Social ills caused by the Theory Of EvolutionOne of the more common Threats To Society Caused By Evolution is, apparently, racism. The argument made by anti-evolutionists (such as creationists and the religious right) goes like this:"Evolution proposes the survival of the fittest. The strongest survive. Therefore any group that has an advantage over another has the right to oppress or exterminate the weaker group. This removes the weak genes from the gene-pool, making the species stronger as a whole. As far as evolutionists are concerned, it is perfectly acceptable for whites to dominate blacks and should even be encouraged." This is, quite frankly, a load of snail-snot. Evolution, like any other scientific theory, is simply an attempt to explain observed natural phenomena. People who do use the Theory of Evolution to support their own political agendas are simply trying to add a stamp of authority to their offensive prejudices. Basically, racists will latch onto pretty much anything if it appears to support their views. You find racist Christians using the Bible to "prove" that blacks are inferior to whites (e.g. God cursed the children of Ham and turned their skin black, therefore all blacks are cursed by God), or trying to use evolution to scientifically "prove" the same thing (e.g. God created the white "race" in His image, but blacks evolved from monkeys). Their ideas cannot stand up on their own, so they must try to find some well-known respectable ideas that appear to back them up. Unfortunately for them, anyone who actually understands the theory of evolution can instantly see that, if anything, it destroys racism. For a start, there is not really such a thing as "race". We are all members of one species. The genetic differences between, say, P.W.Botha, Nelson Mandela, Louis Farrakhan and Bill Clinton are utterly insignificant. Go back up your family tree a few dozen generations are you are probably related to most people in your town. Back a few hundred and you're related to most people in your country. Back a few thousand and you're a cousin of everyone on your continent. Go back far enough and it's easy to see that every human on the planet is related. Blacks, whites, browns, yellows and reds did not all evolve seperately. We are all descended from common ancestors (no, not Adam and Eve). Put an eskimo, an Australian aborigne, a Masai, an Icelander, a Japanese and a Neo-Nazi white-supremacist in the same room. To a biologist, that's a family reunion of distant cousins. Keep going. Back several thousand more generations and you're related to all the mammals on the planet, from rats to whales. Back more and you're a cousin of all vertebrates. And so on and so on. The theory of evolution tells us how things work, not how we should treat each other. I believe Richard Dawkins said something like "The theory of gravitation tells us why things fall to the ground. That doesn't mean we should push people off tall buildings." (I'll try to verify this, but it was something like that). People who try to use religion or science to discriminate against others do so simply because, on their own, their worthless beliefs cannot stand up to any scrutiny. Accepting the theory of evolution does not mean that you have to start killing people of a different colour, homosexuals, the physically or mentally disabled or people who disagree with your beliefs. Accepting the theory of evolution (I don't say "believing" because it's not a matter of belief or faith when there is so much physical evidence) is simply a case of wanting to understand the world as it really is, not how you might wish it to be. If anything, the theory of evolution should encourage people to have more respect for each other. Someone is not inferior to you because they have a different skin colour, or slightly different facial characteristics. You are directly, if distantly, related to them. All this stuff that people come out with, like "Well, I'm not a racialist, but it's a known fact that blacks have smaller brains." is simply nonsense. It's a fact that blacks have darker skin than whites, but that's about it. It's as stupid as saying "Of course, people with red-hair are born criminals. And all those freaks with green eyes should be killed at birth!" Evolution does not lead to racism - ignorance, fear and bigotry do. Those who claim that the theory of evolution causes racism etc. either do not understand it or understand it but choose to misrepresent it in order to gain support for their own theories and policies. ©Adrian Barnett 1998 |
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