Charles Darwin - Sacred Cause - Abolitionist?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Your latter comment is like saying Karl Marx was a staunch Marxist.

If I had said that Galton was a staunch Galtonist, it would be.

And if I had been born to Japanese parents and raised in Japan, I would be Japanese.

[_EAllusion]

Your latter comment is like saying Karl Marx was a staunch Marxist.

If I had said that Galton was a staunch Galtonist, it would be.

And if I had been born to Japanese parents and raised in Japan, I would be Japanese.

Marxism isn't defined strictly as thinking what Marx thought, so it's not tautological in that sense. It's just a set of ideas that bear the name of the person most instrumental in coming up with them. The similarity derives from fact that both are key founders of the intellectual movement so it becomes trivial to say they are very much a part of it. I chuckled when I saw that. I was just ruffling you here a bit. \

As for the other point, you're steeped in anti-evolutionist writing and I see you on occasion mistakenly assert false ideas accepted as common wisdom among them. I'm betting there was a real good chance you might overstep your bounds and claim Darwin advocated something he did not, probably related to superior races wiping out the weaker. That's very common in anti-evolutionist writing, including Weikart's referenced here, which you have elsewhere professed to be a fan of. If you want to specify what you mean by "interested" in eugenics, by all means do so. After all, being interested in eugenics can range form being Galton to being DCP and having read up on it. It's a pretty broad term to reflect on.

[_dartagnan]

I fail to see how being an abolitionist makes one anti-eugenics.

"At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised 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 exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla." (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man p. 178)

He also went on to say,

"Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties. Everyone who has had the opportunity of comparison must have been struck with the contrast between the taciturn, even morose, aborigines of S. America and the light-hearted, talkative negroes."

Yikes. I guess Dan was right.

I have also heard that Abraham Lincoln was actually a racist, but nobody seemed to be aware of it because he was known for being assassinated and ending slavery. What wasn't widely understood was that Lincoln had a plan to ship all blacks to Africa.

[_EAllusion]

Lincoln believed in the racial superiority of whites and described blacks as near subhuman animals. He was a free soiler when elected president, though later became convinced of the necessity of ending slavery. Initially, he favored not allowing any new territories to become slaveholding states while holding the status quo in the rest until slavery was choked off. He favored the somewhat popular plan of repatriation to Africa where they or their ancestors were taken from. Liberia is a country set up for this purpose if you aren't aware of that.

What do you think Darwin was talking about in that first quote Kevin?

[_JohnStuartMill]

I don't see what's so awful about the second quote. Darwin was saying there was a difference in personalities between the two, not that they were both intellectually inferior. He didn't even say in that section that the personality difference was innate, although he might have said that in another section.

[_Ray A]

Lincoln before he became "The Great Emancipator":

“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

http://www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/debate4.htm

[_Daniel Peterson]

I invite right-thinking people here to condemn Abraham Lincoln and all his works.

[_JohnStuartMill]

I condemn Abraham Lincoln's racist thinking, and apply the same skepticism to the rest of his statements as I would to those of any other human being.

[_EAllusion]

I don't see what's so awful about the second quote. Darwin was saying there was a difference in personalities between the two, not that they were both intellectually inferior. He didn't even say in that section that the personality difference was innate, although he might have said that in another section.

The second quote is a straightforward example of what DCP called Darwin's appalling racism. It's racist to be sure. Brigham Young is a monster by comparison, but I think it is fair to say Darwin's views in modern terms would be contemptibly racist. Darwin did think he was talking about biological characteristics there. As I said before, he tended to conflate culture with biology. His personality distinctions aren't particularly terrible, but they represent false prejudices. It's on the level of Reggie White's racist speeches if you remember those.

In the first quote, Darwin is just expressing his belief that colonialist power was going lead to the "savage" peoples being wiped out. He opposed this. He was just stating it as a matter of fact prediction. It was part of a broader point he was making that you don't need an unbroken chain of gradual development to be present in order for evolution to have happened, because populations of organisms get wiped out.

On a cultural level, what he said is probably true and seemed inevitable in the context of the height of European colonialism. On a racial level, not so much. Hence the racism. The first quote is probably second on the list of most often misrepresented Darwin quotes, usually through falsely implying that Darwin wanted aboriginal peoples to be wiped out or more specifically that Darwin thought this was ought to happen given the truth of evolutionary theory.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Brigham Young is a monster by comparison

By comparison to what?