Darwin, Racism, and Evolution

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Although much of what Charles Darwin wrote is now ignored, he is treated with reverence by many admirers. Indeed, he is the Prophet of evolutionism. When posting material about his racist views, atheists are often outraged — outraged, I tell you! It has been said that discussing his racism is an ad hominem. He was a product of his times, after all. That means it is irrelevant, but they still tidy it up.

Not hardly! It was instrumental in his philosophies and what he presented as science.

Muddy river with rocks, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen
It is well documented that Charlie considered white people the top prize of evolution while those with darker skin were closer to apes. He also said that eventually, civilized people would exterminate lesser races and apes. (I never understood why that would be necessary except in his worldview.) Racism was fundamental to his version of evolution.

As for being a product of his times — not buying it. There were prominent white people in Victorian England (and elsewhere) who did not share his views. Also, Darwin was already a racist when he began for formulate his version of evolutionism, so his beliefs shaped his vacuous science. If he had believed the Bible, he would have learned that there are no races; the Creator only made one.

In the wake of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), thought leaders in Europe and the United States used his theory of evolution by natural selection to justify violent and dehumanizing treatment of non-whites around the globe. This much is well known. Less widely recognized is that Darwin’s case for ape-to-man evolution rested in no small part on his racist view of non-whites.


The jump from ape-like to human may seem like too great a leap for mindless evolution, he conceded, but not, he suggested, if we recognize that the “lower races” are far closer to apes than are the “higher races,” with Caucasians, in his view, at the top of the human evolutionary pyramid.

 To read the rest, see "Darwin’s Racism of the Gaps." Also for your consideration is "Charles Darwin was not a Slavery Abolitionist."