A reviewer of the new documentary Human Zoos: America’s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism poses some questions he hopes will be broadly discussed:
– How was it that people who considered themselves Christians could troop through exhibitions, such as at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and gawk at other groups of people exhibited like animals? Just because they came from more “primitive” cultures, such as the Philippines’?
– How could thousands of church-going New Yorkers, over several sold-out weeks, go to the Bronx Zoo to gawk at Ota Benga, an African pygmy kidnapped from his faraway home, and displayed in a cage with orangutans, as the “missing” link in evolution? (After protests from black clergymen, he was eventually released, but ten years later committed suicide.)
– How exactly did America’s intellectual elites, in the 1920s and 30s, fall in love with eugenics, and back laws in 13 states that forcibly sterilized thousands of Americans — just for flunking culturally biased IQ tests?
– How can the eugenics organization, Planned Parenthood, which sponsored those laws (soon emulated in Nazi Germany), still be a major force today, receiving hundreds of millions in federal funding? John Zmirak, “‘Human Zoos’ Exhibits the Racist Toll of Darwinism” at The Stream
He adds, “I didn’t use to believe it, but I’ve come to see that the single most powerful force for dissolving religious faith in the West was, and still is, Darwinism.”
The idea that someone has to be the subhuman is a powerful one and it probably motivates a lot of popular Darwinism.
Follow UD News at Twitter!
See also: J.R. Miller on Darwinism, racism, and human zoos
and
In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.
Did he verify that those attending the zoos/world’s fairs were actually Christian? Or does he assume that, based on the time when it occurred–that everyone then was a Christian?
I wonder if this is really the case. I find that a lot of people accept that Darwin’s ToE is correct in some respects, but they still believe in some kind of supreme being. They don’t see a great conflict between ToE and their religious views.
I would suggest the obvious nonsense spread by the likes of Henry Morris, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, etc. has taken perhaps a greater toll on religious faith. Unfortunately, these people are very visible on the internet and therefore take up a lot of space in the discussion, making it more difficult for those who practice a more “reasonable faith*” to get their message across.
Hugh Ross is an example—I always enjoy listening to him.
I tend to agree with DaveS. I don’t think that there is a significant decline in the belief in God, or at lest in some higher power. What has declined is the following of various organized religions. And, frankly, the people most responsible for this are the hierarchy in the various organized religions. Whether it’s the outright racism and homophobia of groups like the Westboro church, the pedophilia cover-ups of the Catholic church, or the blind literal interpretation and judgmental attitude of many of the evangelical groups, many people see the corruption, racism and homophobia that can creep into organized religion.
Dave S and Ed G maintain that it was not Darwinism that led to the corrosion of the moral values of Christianity but,,,
and
So according to the logic of Dave S and Ed G, it is not the indoctrination of school children with the outright deception of Darwinian evolution that is main cause for corroding belief in God, and Christianity in particular, but it is Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and the corruption in ‘the hierarchy in the various organized religions’ that is the main cause.
Give me a break!
The hole in that argument is so huge I can drive a semi-truck through it.
The devastating effect upon the world of Darwinian indoctrination has been catastrophic. From genocides, to abortions, hundreds of millions of lives across Europe Asia and America, have been lost due to the atheism inherent within Darwinism.
Whereas scandals in Church hierarchy have been fairly common place throughout history. (Shoot it was the religious leaders of Jesus’ day who were his main enemies and who orchestrated his crucifixion.),,, Yet Christianity, despite fierce opposition at times, weathered all those scandals of the Church hierarchy, thrived and grew, and even continues to thrive today, save for in supposedly developed countries. ,,, Yet even today America, mainly due to the independence of American Churches from state interference, America stands, somewhat, as a surprising exception to the steep slide in Christianity that has occurred across Western Europe over the last century or so. (save for in liberal denominations in America that, among other things, tried to compromise Christianity with Darwinian evolution, otherwise known as “Theistic Evolution”)
And even though I do not think that YEC is correct, and am a Old Earth Creationist myself, at least the ‘science’ of YEC is a far cry better than the ‘just so stories’ that permeate Darwinian pseudoscience. In fact, save for some pretty bad dating discrepancies, one could argue that the ‘science’ of YEC matches the evidence fairly well.
Thus for Dave S and Ed G to try to lay the blame for the decline in Christianity (in developed countries) at the feet of Young Earth Creationism and the corruption in ‘the hierarchy in the various organized religions’ is naive at best and dishonest at worst.
A few supplemental notes:
Verse:
BA77
Sorry BA77, but my Christian values have not been corroded by my Darwinian education. They are as strong as they have ever been. But I find it a complete cop-out for Christians to blame a theory proposed by a Victorian scientist on the inability of organized religion to present their case in a way that attracts and holds people. To be honest, religion has screwed up big time. We have a message with universal attraction that can’t compete against a theory that proposes that we have no purpose and meaning. The problem is not Darwin, it is organized religion. Even a first year marketing student could sell the Christian message. It takes religion to screw it up.
Ed George, you are a sample of one person.
I used a sample of hundreds of millions of people. Even the entire World’s population at one point.
Guess who’s data points are far more robust?
BA77
Not yours.
How weak was the Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) message that a theory that says that we have no meaning or purpose could dominate over one of promise and hope? Surely the blame must be laid at the feet of organized religion. Darwin didn’t have the financial or political support that the churches did, yet you claim that he is winning. I don’t see this as anything other than the complete failure of organized religion. After all, what did Darwin have to promise? Death and being eaten by worms. That’s it.
Ed George, although you far too easily dismiss the dramatic negative effect that forced indoctrination of Darwinism in public schools has had on Christianity, you may find it surprising that you are in large part correct when you state that “the blame must be laid at the feet of organized religion”, but not for reasons that you presuppose.
Darwin, who’s only college degree was in “liberal’ Anglican theology, extensively used “bad liberal” theology, instead of any compelling empirical evidence and/or mathematics, to support his self confessed ‘one long argument’ in his book “Origin”:
To this day, since Darwinism is still in abject poverty as far as having any compelling empirical evidence to support its grandiose claims, leading Darwinists are still heavily reliant on ‘bad liberal’ theology in order to try to make their case.
Thus Ed G. you are correct to say “the blame must be laid at the feet of organized religion” since it was the organized “liberal” Anglican religion that was, in large measure, taught to Charles Darwin at college, and which was in fact the faulty theological basis on which he formed many of his arguments in his book.
Thus, it is not so much a failure of Christianity on a whole, as you are trying to imply, as it was an infiltration of secular ideology into liberal theology.,,, It was a theological Trojan horse, if you will, that gave, and still gives, Darwin’s ‘one long argument’ a foothold into undermining faith in God and/or Christianity.
(With outright lying about the true state of the scientific evidence to school children, providing the other foothold,,,, see Jonathan Wells’ books, “Zombie Science” and “Icons of Evolution”)
Of related note:
Read the bottom of the linked article. It’s religiously oriented. That doesn’t automatically make it wrong, but right away there’s a slant to it.
It points out,
That’s significant. Racism was already a thing. Sure, Darwin justified it. But are we really to believe that racism was just about to end, but then Darwin happened?
The worst dehumanization – outright slavery, owning humans and viewing them as property – preceded Darwinism. If Darwin wrote his books and then people kidnapped half of Africa you could maybe blame Darwin.
Wouldn’t people who attend more universities and are exposed to more Darwinism exhibit more racism than less educated people? That’s not the case.
If one believed that correlation implied causality (which I do not) it would be easier to make the case that Darwin led to a decline in racism. But I can’t see the case that Darwin was responsible for something that both preceded and followed him.