Is evolutionism racist?

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First, while not all evolutionists are racists, the theory of evolution is racist in the extreme. In his book The Descent of Man Charles Darwin 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.” In addition, he subtitled his magnum opus The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” Thomas Huxley, who coined the term agnostic and was the man most responsible for advancing Darwinian doctrine, went so far as to say, “No rational man cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.” Huxley was not only militantly racist but also lectured frequently against the resurrection of Jesus Christ in whom “[we] are all one” (Galatians 3:28).

Furthermore, for evolution to succeed, it is as crucial that the unfit die as that the 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.” Adolf Hitler’s philosophy that Jews were subhuman and that Aryans were supermen led to the extermination of 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.” It is significant to note that crusaders who used force to further their creeds in the name of God were acting in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ, while the worldview of Hitler, however, was completely consistent with the teachings of Darwin. Indeed, social Darwinism has provided the scientific substructure for some of the most significant atrocities in human history.

Finally, while the evolutionary racism of Darwin’s day is politically incorrect today, current biology textbooks still promote vestiges of racism. For example, the inherently racist recapitulation theory* not only is common fare in science curricula but has been championed in our generation by such luminaries as Carl Sagan. This despite the fact that modern studies in molecular genetics have demonstrated the utter falsity of the recapitulation theory. The fact that recapitulation is inherently racist is underscored by no less an evolutionary authority than Stephen Jay Gould who lamented that “recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the pervasive racism of white scientists” in the modern era.

Adapted from Fatal Flaws

For further study, see Hank Hanegraaff, Fatal Flaws: What Evolutionists Don’t Want You to Know (Nashville:W Publishing,2003).


Genesis 1:27


*Recapitulation theory, better known by the popular evolutionary phrase, “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” is the odd predilection that in the course of an embryo’s development the embryo repeats or recapitulates the evolutionary history of its species.

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