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Darwin a slavery abolitionist? Aw, come on!

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Luther College prof Robert F. Shedinger takes a critical look at Evolution News:

In 2009, noted Darwinian biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore published Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery, and the Quest for Human Origins. They argued the radical new thesis that Darwin’s species work was primarily motivated by an abolitionist desire to combat racist polygenist views of human origins and instead draw all humans together under the umbrella of common descent. This book has been both widely praised and widely criticized…

Shockingly, it turns out that these highly esteemed scholars play fast and loose with their sources and with basic tenets of historiographical research.

Therefore, I offer a series of posts here designed to lay out the evidence in detail. It is not merely that Desmond and Moore are selective in the sources they cite, filtering out only those which support their thesis. Many historians are selective. What I found in their historiography rises, instead, to a different level. – (March 16, 2023)

Note: The slave trade in Britain was abolished in 1807 and slavery through almost all the British empire in 1833 Charles Darwin’s life dates were 1809–1882, so he never knew a time when human beings were literally for sale in his own country. The biggest social issues of 19th century Britain revolved around wage slavery (including countless children) in the factories. It would be more interesting to know what he had to say about that than to hear his fashionable upper class Brit theories about the evils of chattel slavery elsewhere.

Comments
Robert Shedinger: Darwin’s Sacred Cause Is “Historical Fiction” - March 29, 2023 https://evolutionnews.org/2023/03/robert-shedinger-darwins-sacred-cause-is-historical-fiction/bornagain77
March 29, 2023
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They had a discussion on CRT at a school board meeting in Temecula, California recently. A black professor presented the history of CRT and why it was bad for blacks.
Professor Walter Myers DESTROYS CRT Narrative At School Board Meeting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE6UEFDwN2g&t=1496sjerry
March 28, 2023
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Sorry I didn’t have time to proof read the last post before I sent it March 26, 2023 at 9:31 am “Darwin didn’t own slaves as far as I’m aware and are you saying that scientists should keep their theories to themselves in case political psychopaths pervert them to support their genocidal ideologies?“ I stand corrected he had huh servants…… I also re-read my post and couldn’t find anywhere where I mentioned “that scientists should keep their theories to themselves in case political psychopaths pervert them to support their genocidal ideologies?“ Maybe that they should think more critically about the consequences of their theories before peddling them as fact Btw I thank you. I went on a little adventure reading things about Darwin to clarify my comment and I found many interesting things that were very enlightening. One was that every paper that I read(I read five of them) gushed about how amazing Darwin was for literally 8 to 10 paragraphs before they actually got to the point of their article. I didn’t find one paper that didn’t butter up Darwin so ridiculously that it made me want to puke. I don’t know why it felt like it was so biased………….. Then I found out that Darwin believed that everybody came from the same source “Adam”. This was interesting, because most people the believe in the Adam and Eve origin story often come to the conclusion that we are all related as we are descended from them. But apparently, in Darwin’s time everybody, believed that different people had different origins justifying inequality. He believed his theory was going to put light on human origin and show that we are nothing more than modified apes, and that we are all related because of our single origin…….Darwin honestly didn’t change his belief that we all had the same origin just what was the source of that origin……. Also interesting since the claim was his theory was to show we all were men and brothers for having the same origin….. Then, in almost every single paper, they bashed Christians/creationists fallaciously. Much of the criticism are the misconceptions you often toss around. All the while, I couldn’t help think (while I read those papers)that Charles really didn’t think about what his theory could become, because the next individual (Francis Galton) which embraced his lovely theory, coined the term eugenics and took the road where Darwins theory actually lead But yeah, that was very enlightening and I can see why you are all very passionate about Darwin because you write about him like he is a religious saint as he came to his unbelievable conclusions while studying barnacles of the Beagle………AaronS1978
March 26, 2023
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If we are all just animals then there should be no problem if we are treated thus. The Herd, short film by ALTER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeyHBNodwOkaarceng
March 26, 2023
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“Darwin didn’t own slaves as far as I’m aware and are you saying that scientists should keep their theories to themselves in case political psychopaths pervert them to support their genocidal ideologies?“ I stand corrected he had huh servants…… I also re-read my post and couldn’t find anywhere where I mentioned “that scientists should keep their theories to themselves in case political psychopaths pervert them to support their genocidal ideologies?“ Maybe that they should think more critically about the consequences of their theories though before peddling them as fact Btw I thank you. I went on a little adventure reading things about Darwin to clarify my comment and I found many interesting things that were very enlightening. One was that every paper that I read and I read five of them gushed about how amazing Darwin was for literally 8 to 10 paragraphs before they actually got to the point of their article. I didn’t find one paper that didn’t butter up Darwin so ridiculously that it made you want to puke. I don’t know why it felt like it was so biased………….. Then I found out that Darwin believed that everybody came from the same source from Adam. This is interesting, because most people do come to the conclusion that if you believe in the Adam and Eve origin, all human beings have the same origin and are related. But apparently, in that day and age, everybody, believe that they were different origins to human beings He believe this theory was going to put light on human origin and show that we are nothing more than modified apes, and that we are all related with a single origin…….Darwin didn’t really change his belief that we all came from the same source. He already had that belief in the first place he just changed what caused the origin Then, in almost every single paper, they bash the shit out of Christians, fallaciously in many cases stuff that I knew was very wrong And all I could think while I read, those papers was Charles really didn’t think about what his theory would cause, because the next individual (Francis Galton) that picked up his theory, coined the term eugenics and took the road where Darwins theory actually lead But yeah, that was very enlightening and I can see why you are all very passionate about Darwin because you write about him like a religious figureAaronS1978
March 26, 2023
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Relatd writes:
Are you offended…
I don’t think “offended” is the best descriptor of my reaction to your comment. “Bemused”, perhaps.Ford Prefect
March 25, 2023
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FP at 25, I'm not sure what you're on about. Are you offended that humans don't have wings or fins? Are you offended by the fact that you can't select animal features that you like? Or are you offended by the nonsense of "human exceptionalism"? Humans created night vision and sonar and radar. We have devices that can detect odors and chemicals to a fraction of parts per million. Animals can't do that.relatd
March 25, 2023
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Relatd writes:
By virtue of being human, it automatically makes you better than any animal.
Nonsense. Whales swim better than us. Birds fly better than us. Many animals run better than us. Many animals’ reaction time is faster than ours. Vision? Hearing? Smell? Taste? Other animals are better than us at all of those. And my echolocation is pitiful.Ford Prefect
March 25, 2023
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Seversky at 20, By virtue of being human, it automatically makes you better than any animal. You can mention any actual animal you want, but they still live in the wild, aside from pets. They have built no cities, and cannot do most things human beings can do.relatd
March 25, 2023
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Seversky at 18, Seriously? "However, then we start looking for the traits which distinguish “them” from “us” and, unfortunately, it’s but a hop, skip and a jump from “not the same as us” to “not as good as us”. That’s when the problems start." You seem to think God blew it and deserves correction. Regarding the average person, I think the only reason you're here is because people like me are deficient - in your opinion. So yes, "If it wasn't for people like you."relatd
March 25, 2023
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@18
As I see it, we make sense of the world around us by dividing it up into its smaller and more manageable component parts – a form of perceptual reductionism, if you like, from which the formal discipline of classification arose. We distinguish land from sea, mountains from plains, cats from dogs and so on. Within human society we distinguish “me” from “you” and “us” from “them” where “us” can refer to family/clan/tribe/village/town/province/nation and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, then we start looking for the traits which distinguish “them” from “us” and, unfortunately, it’s but a hop, skip and a jump from “not the same as us” to “not as good as us”. That’s when the problems start.
Firstly, I think that it's not a "hop, skip, and a jump" from "not the same as us" to "not as good as us". No doubt, all human cultures distinguish between members of that culture and members of other cultures. And sometimes, under specific conditions, there can be the further thought that one's own culture is objectively the best -- favored by the gods, unparalleled in art or war, etc. But I don't think there's anything intrinsic to the fact of tribal self-differentiation that leads to hierarchy -- not without a lot of other factors. Secondly, race and racism are importantly different from other categories of social difference and inequality. It's been argued by some historians that the very category of "race" was invented in the process of European colonialism. The idea that differences in skin color, hair type, etc are sufficient to justify a hierarchy of essences, stable enough to legitimize practices of chattel slavery and ethnic cleansing, does not really appear until the process of colonization is well underway.
I agree but we should also bear in mind that being a member of a privileged social class did not make him any the less the kindly and gentle man that he was according to contemporary accounts.
Sure, but so what? I'm sure plenty of Nazi officers were devoted husbands and caring fathers. How nice or kind someone is in their day-to-day lives just doesn't carry much weight with me.PyrrhoManiac1
March 25, 2023
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Chuckdarwin/16
I read a while back, and can’t recall where, that while still an Augustinian monk in Wittenberg, Martin Luther was such a wackadoodle that he would some days spend six or seven hours in the confessional confessing his sins in excruciating detail (how Augustine-esque). Eventually, none of the priests affiliated with the monastery would agree to sit in the confessional and listen to Luther drone on about his transgressions for hours on end. Kind of the Catholic version of Chinese water torture……..
You know, that does remind me of somebody ...
Seversky
March 25, 2023
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Relatd/9
“I have no problem being an animal.” You want to deny your Human Dignity? Stop it! Stop it now!
I think dignity is something people earn by virtue of the way they conduct themselves. It's not a perk of membership of a particular species.
You don’t eat out of a bowl on the floor, do you? (Don’t answer that.)
I've never eaten from a bowl on the floor as far as I can remember but I have from one on a table. Does this mean that dignity is to do with how high the bowl is off the floor?Seversky
March 25, 2023
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AaronS1978/8
@5 sorry Sev pointing fingers doesn’t dig Darwin out of the racism hole. Maybe next time don’t own slaves and create a theory the has supported racism for years later.
Darwin didn't own slaves as far as I'm aware and are you saying that scientists should keep their theories to themselves in case political psychopaths pervert them to support their genocidal ideologies?Seversky
March 25, 2023
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PyrrhoManiac1/6
I don’t quite know what it would mean to say that “the seeds of racism are in all of us”.
It's nothing profound. As I see it, we make sense of the world around us by dividing it up into its smaller and more manageable component parts - a form of perceptual reductionism, if you like, from which the formal discipline of classification arose. We distinguish land from sea, mountains from plains, cats from dogs and so on. Within human society we distinguish "me" from "you" and "us" from "them" where "us" can refer to family/clan/tribe/village/town/province/nation and there's nothing wrong with that. However, then we start looking for the traits which distinguish "them" from "us" and, unfortunately, it's but a hop, skip and a jump from "not the same as us" to "not as good as us". That's when the problems start.
Regardless, I see no reason to doubt that Darwin believed in a hierarchy of races, with Anglo-Saxons at the very top.
I agree but we should also bear in mind that being a member of a privileged social class did not make him any the less the kindly and gentle man that he was according to contemporary accounts.
At any rate, I don’t see a contradiction between recognizing the value of his contributions to science and thinking that he benefited from a racist society that he was unable or unwilling to call into question. For me, it’s much like the situation with Kant: I can recognize the value of his contributions to epistemology and moral theory, and also recognize that he was a passionately committed racist and anti-Semite.
Exactly so. Isaac Newton was apparently not a very pleasant man but that had no bearing on his mechanics. And a man who allegedly invented the cat-flap can't have been all bad.Seversky
March 25, 2023
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Off topic. This podcast may be of interest to some here on UD:
On today’s ID the Future, join host and geologist Casey Luskin and historian of science Michael Keas for a lively conversation puncturing a series of anti-Christian myths about the history of science, including the Dark Ages myth, the flat-earth myth, the myth that the discovery of how big the universe is rendered humanity insignificant, and the simplistic revisionist history of Galileo and the Inquisition. What about the claim in the recent Cosmos TV series that in abandoning his traditional Jewish faith, seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza was able to provide an improved framework for doing science? As Keas argues, the truth is just the opposite. Spinoza, he says, abandoned a key tenet of Judeo-Christian theology that had proven vital to the birth of science. https://idthefuture.com/1726/
bornagain77
March 24, 2023
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Seversky/5 I read a while back, and can’t recall where, that while still an Augustinian monk in Wittenberg, Martin Luther was such a wackadoodle that he would some days spend six or seven hours in the confessional confessing his sins in excruciating detail (how Augustine-esque). Eventually, none of the priests affiliated with the monastery would agree to sit in the confessional and listen to Luther drone on about his transgressions for hours on end. Kind of the Catholic version of Chinese water torture……..chuckdarwin
March 24, 2023
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Speaking of lycanthropes, Lon Chaney, Jr and Warren Zevon would have loved it...........................chuckdarwin
March 24, 2023
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Just uploaded:
The Dark Side of Evolution That They Do NOT Want You to See. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLg2j1U-j98
bornagain77
March 24, 2023
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the seeds of racism are in all of us
Distrust of others is built in. It’s a survival instinct. But it is not necessarily built on race. People a hundred years ago looked down on Italians, Jews and people of Slavic descent such as Poles. Before that there was distrust of the Irish. All are white and considered racist now by certain elements of society. My guess is that the people of Asia looked down on European a couple centuries ago. How many people know the richest area on the planet in the 16 and 17 hundreds was India and the people ruling there looked down on the Europeans showing up in ships.jerry
March 24, 2023
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CD at 11, Nothing surprises me anymore...relatd
March 24, 2023
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Relatd/9 Although I don’t eat from a bowl on the floor, I do occasionally drink out of the toilet……chuckdarwin
March 24, 2023
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PM1 at 7, With all due respect, don't you dare speak about "most of us" unless you have polling data from a recognized pollster in hand. "Some of us rise above the prevailing social consensus, some of us have no choice but to fight it, and most of us do neither."relatd
March 24, 2023
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Seversky at 4, "I have no problem being an animal." You want to deny your Human Dignity? Stop it! Stop it now! You don't eat out of a bowl on the floor, do you? (Don't answer that.)relatd
March 24, 2023
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@5 sorry Sev pointing fingers doesn’t dig Darwin out of the racism hole. Maybe next time don’t own slaves and create a theory the has supported racism for years later.AaronS1978
March 24, 2023
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@6
As for Darwin’s alleged racism, people who throw that epithet around would do well to remember that at least the seeds of racism are in us all. And if you want a really virulent example of anti-Semitism try reading On The Jews And Their Lies by the founding father of the Protestant Reformation, one Martin Luther.
I don't quite know what it would mean to say that "the seeds of racism are in all of us". Regardless, I see no reason to doubt that Darwin believed in a hierarchy of races, with Anglo-Saxons at the very top. For someone of Darwin's class position, at the height of the dominance of the British Empire, to question the belief in racial hierarchy that justified the Empire and his own class privilege, would have taken extraordinary moral courage and discernment. The fact is, the people who benefit from systemic injustice will tend to not recognize their society as systemically unjust. (Charles Mills calls this "the epistemology of ignorance".) Darwin was born into wealth and privilege at a time when that wealth and privilege was built upon the economic, political, and cultural inequalities of Victorian England and the British Empire. At any rate, I don't see a contradiction between recognizing the value of his contributions to science and thinking that he benefited from a racist society that he was unable or unwilling to call into question. For me, it's much like the situation with Kant: I can recognize the value of his contributions to epistemology and moral theory, and also recognize that he was a passionately committed racist and anti-Semite. This is not to make apologies for the past, either. Sure, Kant and Darwin were "products of their time" -- and so were their contemporaries who fought against slavery and other injustices. (Put otherwise, Bull Connor was a product of his time just as much as Martin Luther King Jr was.) Some of us rise above the prevailing social consensus, some of us have no choice but to fight it, and most of us do neither.PyrrhoManiac1
March 24, 2023
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@4
Why “just” animals? I have no problem being an animal. It’s just a classification after all. I don’t feel demeaned by it in any way although it sounds like there are some here whose egos are so fragile that they are.
I don't think it's just about fragile egos. The modern West depends crucially on the suffering of billions of animals in food production, medical experimentation, and entertainment. We consider these acts morally permissible because we consider the rights of animals to be weaker than the rights of humans. So it is not entirely out of line for someone to think that a general recognition that humans are animals would lead to a weakening of respect for human rights. There is also the important role of animal comparisons in the psychology of dehumanization: dehumanized groups are described as apes, vermin, rats, lice, beasts, cockroaches, etc. They are described as "animals" who "understand nothing but force". As I see it, there's an urgent need to recognize that animals themselves have an intrinsic moral status such that they ought to be treated with dignity, respect, and care (in species-specific ways). Only in conjunction with a moral and political revolution with regard to our interactions with nonhuman animals will it come to seem non-threatening to our sense of human dignity to realize that we are animals as well.PyrrhoManiac1
March 24, 2023
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As for Darwin's alleged racism, people who throw that epithet around would do well to remember that at least the seeds of racism are in us all. And if you want a really virulent example of anti-Semitism try reading On The Jews And Their Lies by the founding father of the Protestant Reformation, one Martin Luther.Seversky
March 24, 2023
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Why "just" animals? I have no problem being an animal. It's just a classification after all. I don't feel demeaned by it in any way although it sounds like there are some here whose egos are so fragile that they are.Seversky
March 24, 2023
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Darwin was a racist who pushed racially motivated views. One does not write a book like, Descent of Man, without being a racist.BobRyan
March 24, 2023
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