Building on my last blog about Natural Selection and the genetic story concerning dogs, let’s look at how “race” developed amongst humans. We are all the same species, but we do have many physical differences. How did the races develop?
First, we need an incident that separated man across the face of the Earth. If you are an atheist, you may want to attribute it to ‘wanderlust’. If you are a believer, the obvious incident would be the Tower of Babel.
5 And the LORD came down to see the city [Babel] and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:5-9
Nimrod built the first, ‘great’ cities mentioned in Scripture. According to the Book of Jasher (chapter 9), the people intended to build the tower tall enough to access heaven, kill God, and place Nimrod upon the heavenly throne. I’m not saying this is a great plan or that there was any chance of success – evil doesn’t always need to have a logical basis.
The Book of Jubilees confides that 600,000 men worked for 43 years to build it, so there was a very large group of people that were unified in the evil plans of Nimrod.
Yahweh “confounded” their language and the people presumably separated themselves into groups that spoke the same language. People tend to do this when they find themselves in a foreign land . . . they tend to gravitate towards people with the same culture and language (e.g., Little Italy, Chinatown)
As a side note, all these people already had the same culture and the same religion, so after the confusing of the tongues, they maintained the same gods but their gods now had multiple different names. This is why so many pagan religions appear to worship the same gods.
As was the case with our dogs, humans (all descended from Noah) moved to different areas with different climates and adapted to their new surroundings . . . or died.
Adaptations like skin color (melanoma helps protect against the harmful effects of the ultra-violet rays of the Sun) and body mass (more padding is better in colder climates).
Over time, these genetic differences became identifiable traits for different groups of people, but it did not change anyone into a different species. It did help to identify people as an ‘outsider’ making it easier to discriminate against them.
People within the group (or race) were preferred to those outside the group. Often, people inside the group openly manifested their dislike and/or distrust of the outsiders.
Wars pitted different groups against each other, and because the other group was not as strong, they were thought of as an inferior race. Since they are inferior, it is okay to kill them, loot them, and enslave them.
Race-based discrimination has multiple sources, many of which preceded Darwin, but evolutionary theory gave “a powerful push to a scientific version of racism that still impacts us today,” said John West, vice president and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. (Darwin’s Racism)
In other words, Darwin ‘scientifically’ legitimated racism.
Four decades after the United States outlawed slavery, Samuel Phillips Verner purchased a young Mbuti pygmy man named Ota Benga from slave traders in the Congo for the World’s Fair exhibit. In 1906, officials at the Bronx Zoo in New York City put Benga in a cage with an orangutan. When two African American clergymen raised objections to his inhumane treatment, The New York Times responded with an article assuring people that “the pygmies … are very low in the human scale.”
We are quick to cancel books, today, based on racism, but Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1842), is an exceptionally racist tome, but its principles are required learning in our schools.
In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Darwin claims that “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 extertimated.”
The term “Anthropomorphous apes” is used to reference “the negro or Australian [aborigine] and the gorilla.”
Racism was no longer just a personal prejudice; it was now science and science embraced it wholeheartedly.
The Eugenics movement rose in the 1880s with a book by Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton. Inquiries into Human Fertility and its Development (1883) coined the term, “eugenics” which is Greek for “good in stock”
Eugenics sought to guide evolution through ‘planned’ selection rather than the randomness of natural selection. The “higher races” would be more successful by harnessing the “overwhelming power of heredity.”
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/timelines/eugenics
Many countries adopted eugenic policies, intended to improve the quality of their populations’ genetic stock. Such programs included both positive measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly “fit” to reproduce, and negative measures, such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. Those deemed “unfit to reproduce” often included people with mental or physical disabilities, people who scored in the low ranges on different IQ tests, criminals and “deviants”, and members of disfavored minority groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
Planned Parenthood arose from this movement.
In Mein Kampf (1924), [Adolf] Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. “There is today one state,” wrote Hitler, “in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.”
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics’ movement. “I have studied with great interest,” he told a fellow Nazi, “the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.”
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his “bible.”
The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics – History News Network
The brutality of the Nazi’s “Final Solution” brought discredit to the eugenics’ movement, but its goals are still being worked towards by groups like Planned Parenthood, who base 86% of their abortion clinics close to minority neighborhoods.
Belief in evolution does not make someone a Nazi, but you cannot be a Nazi (or a Communist, which killed many, many more people than the Nazis did) without belief in evolution.
The Christian or Believer stand should be that we are all the same race, the human race. Science supports what Genesis told us thousands of years ago.
Scientists have long suspected that the racial categories recognized by society are not reflected on the genetic level.
But the more closely that researchers examine the human genome — the complement of genetic material encased in the heart of almost every cell of the body — the more most of them are convinced that the standard labels used to distinguish people by “race” have little or no biological meaning.
The criteria that people use for race are based entirely on external features that we are programmed to recognize.
Do Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows – NY Times, Aug 22, 2000
Maybe if we stop fixating on race?
But the genes that explain the phenotypic differences between populations only represent a tiny part of our genome, confirming once again that the concept of ‘race’ from a genetic standpoint has been abolished.
Dr Lluis Quintana-Murci of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, Feb 4, 2008
With modern molecular evolutionary techniques, we can find over time genes in any one local area of humanity that are shared by all of humanity throughout time. There are no distinct branches, no distinct lineages. By this modern definition for race, there are no races in humanity.
Alan R. Templeton, professor of biology in arts and sciences at Washington University, Sep 1, 2011
Race is an industry that haters and dividers use to amass fame and fortune. It is a political tool used to bludgeon opponents and the adherents of it are sought after to gain advantage by perpetuating lies that have been disproven for decades.
Democrats seek to intensify the lie through the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in our schools. They are literally teaching that some children are sub-standard. Darwin would be so proud.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked that his children be judged ‘by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin’. He choose to say “color of their skin” rather than use the term, “race”. Interesting.
This is definitely not the stand of the Democratic Party today.
We all have color in our skin. A white man is not white in the same way a black man is not black. We all have differing shades of brown and that is genetic.
So what shade were Adam and Eve?
If they were ‘white’, as depicted in numerous movies, then the ability to pigment to darker colors would not exist.
The same would be true if they were ‘black’, as is presupposed if man originated in Africa. There would be no variation to produce light-skinned children
If the Creator gave them variety in their genes, then they would be able to produce children of many shades.
Because of this variety, parents can even produce twins of different shades.
What the facts show is that there are differences among us, but they stem from culture, not race.
We’re All the Same (Sep 10, 1998) – www. abcnews.com (ABC has since removed this article)
If someone tells you, “I don’t see color”, then they are being disingenuous (unless, of course, they are blind).
Even color-blind people see shades.
We need to get to the point where we do look to the content of character rather than the color of skin. Based on the content of the character of most politicians and their operatives, they can never allow us to reach that point, so they will continue to try to divide us by ‘race’.
You must decide, will you base your thinking on God’s Word or man’s imaginations? In God’s Word, there are two races: Believers and Unbelievers. We get to choose which one we want to belong to.
26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:26-29
We are one in Christ who believe (have faith) and act according to His Word (“put on Christ”).
14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial [Satan]? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, 18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
2Corinthians 6:14-18
Stop believing the way the World wants you to believe. Stand for something eternal and true. Stand on God’s Word.
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Romans 12:1-2
Be reasonable – don’t be a bigot. Renew your mind to what is good and perfect.
