THE
SURVIVAL
ADVANTAGE OF HUMANS
The most significant
difference between humans
and animals is the brain.2 Humans are classified as a high
level
primate with a brain superior to all others. Intelligence is the
quality
which blesses humans with their major survival advantage over all other
animals.3 Upright posture, the development of a thumb and
many
other characteristics differentiate humans from other primates, but the
crucial difference – and the factor responsible for humankind's
superior
achievements – is clearly the brain, especially the cerebrum:
'... those
with the larger brains
had the best chance of surviving to reproduce themselves among the
perils
of new lands, and of finding ways to adapt to new modes of living. The
selective pressure for better brains must have been very intense.' 4
It is hypothesized that
human evolution resulted
from a fortunate set of conditions which caused some primates by the
process
of selection to develop a slightly higher intelligence than others.
This 'intelligence edge' conferred upon them a clear survival
advantage, improving
compared to their less fortunate relatives their ability both to escape
predators and secure life support elements from the surrounding
environment.5
All
other things being equal, the higher the intelligence, the more
successful
the organism will likely be in obtaining food, escaping predators and
finding
shelter.
Intelligence also
enables
an animal to more
effectively learn survival methods and tricks from its life experiences
so as to both successfully escape and avoid possible predators in the
future.
This survival advantage
would consequently
slowly result in those primates with higher intelligence numerically
increasing
and, likewise, those with less intelligence decreasing. The former
group
would eventually become more numerous, resulting in a fairly defined
group
which was separated from others by their higher intelligence.
Importantly,
even within this fairly defined group would exist individual
differences
in intelligence. These differences would enable certain group members
to
be more likely to survive than their peers.
This occurs by several
identical or similar
mutations occurring which confer a survival advantage on two or three
individuals,
so eventually these traits would likely spread throughout large
sections
of the breeding population. If this population was reproductively
isolated,
the result would be a state of affairs in which the race that inherited
these mutations would be in this area superior to the others. In each
isolated
group, we would expect that several would eventually become superior in
at least one way compared to other populations. Consequently, the
separate
discernible groups would eventually grow in numbers as the beneficial
traits
numerically spread throughout an isolated population.
Also, within
each
group would exist
discernible differences which would confer upon them a survival
advantage
compared to the population which was not part of the 'better' group.
Thus,
a 'superior' race would sooner or later develop within the
group
which would eventually predominate. Within each race would exist ongoing
evolution, and this evolution would produce discernible differences
between
the subgroups in each group which would become more and more
distinct.
By this process, eventually evolving out of this defined group would be
another group having an even higher mean intelligence. This subgroup
would
in time become differentiated enough to be classified as a race or
subspecies,
and eventually as a species. Evolution theory concludes that it was
through
this process that modern Homo sapiens resulted.6
The source of evolution,
therefore, is differences
within the species.7 If every member of a population
had
an identical genotype, evolution could not occur for the reason that it
results from nature's selecting from existing differences.
Without
differences, one organism could not possess an advantage over any
other.
Survival and reproduction success would then depend only upon
fortuitous
factors, and not upon any innate advantage that specific structures
confer.
For an organism to possess a structural survival advantage compared to
others, structural differences must first exist. Even a
population
that is homogeneous for some trait would sooner or later become
heterogeneous
for mutation-caused traits that gave a selection advantage. Because it
would take centuries for the population to again become homogeneous for
that trait, trait variety would be by far the most common condition
in the natural history of most animals.
Evolution also requires
changes in the environment
that result in increased adaptation by some organisms, and this in turn
would force other living things to also become better adapted in order
to survive. Examples of these environmental alterations include changes
in the mean temperature, in the composition of the land, the type and
distribution
of the foliage, and the kind of animals in a particular region.
The increasing level of
adaptation of an
animal type will enable them to increase numerically, thus consuming a
greater amount of the available life support resources. Then, in
response
to the lower amount of food, their competitors would also need to
continually
increase their level of adaptation and improve their survival
techniques
to successfully compete. Consequently, the existence of differences
within
the gene pool is crucial to both the survival and evolution of an
animal
species.8 Differences are imperative to provide nature
something
to select from, and without these differences adaption improvement
could
not occur. An organism's continued successful competition with the
ever-increasing
complexity around it requires the first step, biological
differences.
This is especially true of the evolving competition and defence systems
that protect an animal from the competition of plant and animal
organisms
within its environment.
The assumption that most
animals have maximized
their adaptation, and thus little evolution is occurring today, is
offered
more as an effort to respond to difficulties in the theory than it is
as
a conclusion based on empirical evidence. Because of the recent drastic
changes in the environment recently brought about by humans, evolution
should be occurring at a far more rapid pace today than in the
past.9,
10
Theoretically, this
process will continue
forever, and humans will continue to evolve to new heights in the
future.
Even in the last few thousand years, it is claimed that persons with a
greater intelligence had a better chance of surviving. As Pilbeam11
explained:
'The
expansion of the
human brain is
extraordinarily late in the hominid story, occupying perhaps only the
last
15% or so of the total time.'
Not only is increased
intelligence important,
but as Smith noted, its extremely rapid increase is viewed as crucial
to
evolutionary theory:
'The evolution of
modern man from non-tool-making
ancestors has presumably been associated with and dependent on a large
increase in intelligence, but has been completed in what is on an
evolutionary
scale a rather short time – at most a few million years. This suggests
that the transformation in the brain which provided the required
increase
in intelligence might have been growth in size with relatively little
increase
in structural complexity – there was insufficient time for natural
selection
to do more."12
Significant differences
are often required
for evolution because minute differences in many traits would not
confer
to any one member a large enough advantage over the other members of
the
culture or society to effect life or death differences during the
fertile
years. The differences would have to be great enough for a clear
survival
advantage to exist up to the end of the animal's reproduction period.
The
difference between humans and lower mammals is enormous, and according
to most evolutionists this evolution occurred in a relatively short
period
of time. Consequently, clear differences must exist for what is
actually
megaevolution to occur.13
In summary, for human
evolution to occur,
biological differences within the species Homo sapiens is
necessary
to enable selection to select. The crucial factor that has given humans
their survival advantage is their intelligence. If this factor was
historically
important in producing the numerical success of Homo sapiens, it
follows that intelligence would still be of critical selection
importance
today.
Although some
evolutionists argue that it
is now less important, much of the reason for this conclusion is
because
they now recognize the enormous harm to society that this belief has
produced.14,
15 Most structural differences which effect the
intelligence that
blesses us with a survival advantage and which are genetically
transmittable,
even if they first developed in a single organism, would likely
eventually
spread into future generations. The net effect is they would produce a
defined group that is superior to the original group, resulting in a
new
race.
Biologically, 'races'
are
often called subspecies
and are defined as animal groups that are physiologically and
chromosomally
distinct from other members of the species but which can interbreed. In
humans they are differentiated primarily by such characteristics as
skin
and hair color, hair texture, and skull, nose and eye shapes.16
In evolutionary theory,
the survival advantage
factor is the chief explanation for the existence of most differences.
Because these differences result from the survival advantage that they
confer upon an organism, an evolutionist must assume differences
between
or within a group likely exist because they provide some inherent
survival
advantage for the animal. Since the key survival advantage of humankind
over 'lower animals' is intelligence, consequently differences in this
trait likely also exist between the races. This is exactly what has
been
assumed by many eugenicists, evolutionists, sociologists, and
psychologists,
both before and since the time of Darwin.17-21
This conclusion has
justified a wide variety
of governmental and scientific policies, not the least infamous were
racial
genocide programs.22, 23
Human evolution is
generally divided into
two types:
(1) monophyletic
or the Adam and Eve
theory, the widely accepted view that all races descended from one
common
ancestor, or a very small number of highly interbreeding progenitors.
(2) polyphyletic,
the view that humankind
evolved from many lines, thus the races today are fundamentally
different
because different races had different ancestors.24 M
Eiseley25
notes that this view was advocated by the French anthropologist Pouchet
who in 1864 discussed the implications of evolutionary theory and
anthropological
investigations which had shattered the belief that all races were
descendants
of Adam and Eve, thus in a literal sense were brothers. In Pouchet's
words, 'What will become of the Unity of the human species, if we
can prove
that certain races are not a whit more intelligent than certain
animals…?' 26
Klaatsch, a prominent
German evolutionist,
concluded that human races differed not only because of survival
factors,
but also for the reason that they polyphyletically evolved from
different
primates. The blacks came from the gorillas, the whites from the
chimpanzees,
and the orientals from the orangutans, and it is for this reason that
some races are superior. He concluded27 that 'the
gorilla
and the Neanderthul man' have a close biological affinity to 'a
large number of the living African blacks…'
Klaatsch was only one of
many researchers
advocating a polyphyletic view of human evolution. Other similar ideas
were proposed, and some were widely accepted for many years.28, 29
In a revealing statement, Klaatsch stresses that:
'…we cannot deny that
the recent tendency
of anthropology is not to support the idea of unity of the race that
has
been suggested by religion and sentiment considerations. Modern science
cannot confirm the exaggerated humanitarianism which sees our brothers
and sisters in all the lower races.'30
Harvard's Hooton even
advocated that:
'we must rid
ourselves of the false
prophets of cultural salvation and the witless preachers of human
equality.
The future of our species…is dependent on [the application of
evolutionary]
biology.
We must have fewer and better men, not more morons…'31
The biological concept
of
race as we know
it had its modern roots when social Darwinism was embraced by many
scientists.32,
33 The works of Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, the founder of
the
eugenics movement, were of a major influence.34 Cohen
concluded
that:
'The most emotionally
charged question
in psychology, indeed, in any branch of science today, comes in two
parts:
"Is intelligence hereditary, and if so, are there hereditary
differences
in intelligence among the races?" The question is not a new one. Sir
Francis
Galton, with whom the study of human intelligence really began,
believed
very strongly that intelligence was mainly hereditary. He was also
convinced
there were profound differences in mental ability between the races. He
regarded Negroes as barely human at all. "The mistakes the Negroes made
in their own matters," he wrote in Hereditary Genius. "were so
childishly
stupid and simpleton-like as frequently made me ashamed of my own
species."
Such views were not unusual for a Victorian Englishman who had spent
some
years in Africa.' 35
Many of the early
evolutionists were outspoken
racists, and racial inferiority views were assumed lobe proven, and
thus
were less a subject of debate or concern than one today would assume. 36,
37 Haller concludes that:
'science became an
instrument which
verified the presumptive inferiority of the Negro and rationalized the
politics of disenfranchisement and segregation into a social-scientific
terminology.' 38
And that
'to understand
attitudes of racial inferiority
in the context of nineteenth-century science and social science is a
first
step in fathoming the depth of race prejudice in our own day.
Inferiority
was at the very foundation of their evolutionary framework and,
remaining
there, rose to the pinnacle of "truth" with the myth of scientific
certainty.
To see racial prejudices in their scientific robes is to understand…why
attitudes of racial inferiority have continued to plague western
culture.'39
The success in breeding
cattle, dogs and
other animals with certain desired characteristics gave empirical
support
to the concept of racial breeding as advocated by eugenicists and later
Hitler and others.40 This idea was central to the
eugenics
movement
which was in vogue in the middle of the last century and supported by
many
of the most prominent scientists of the time.41, 42 Eugenics,
the notion that humans could improve the race by selective breeding,
was
also highly accepted by the educated public, especially in Europe and
the
Americas. Sir Arthur Keith, one of the leading evolutionary
anthropologists
of our century, stated that he was proud that:
'The German Fuhrer,
as I have consistently
maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the
practice
of Germany conform to the theory of evolution [by applying
eugenics
to governmental policies].' 43
DARWINISM
AND RACISM
The complete title of
Darwin's most famous
work, often abbreviated to The Origin of Species, was The
Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of
Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life.
As Koster notes about
Darwin's view on race,
he:
'never
considered
"the less civilized
races" to be authentically human. For all his decent hatred of slavery,
his writings reek with all kinds of contempt for "primitive" people.
Racism
was culturally conditioned into educated Victorians by such
"scientific"
parlor tricks as Morton's measuring of brainpans with BB shot to prove
that Africans and Indians had small brains, and hence, had deficient
minds
and intellects. Meeting the simple Indians of Tierra del Fuego, Darwin
wrote: "I could not have believed how wide was the difference between
savage
and civilized man; it is greater than between a wild and domesticated
animal...
Viewing such a man, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are
fellow
creatures and inhabitants of the same world.'44
Darwin's
belief that some
races (such as
blacks) were inferior to others became so widely accepted that, as
Haller
concluded: 'the subject of race inferiority was beyond critical
reach:
in the late nineteenth century.'45 Although Darwin
opposed
all forms of slavery, he did conclude that one of the strongest
evidences for evolution was the existence of living 'primitive races'
which
he believed were evolutionarily between the 'civilized races of man'
and
the gorilla:
'At some future
period, not very distant
as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost
certainly
exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout tile world. At
the
same time, the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The
break between man amid his nearest allies will then be wider, for it
will
intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even
than
the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now
between
the Negro or Australian and the gorilla… It has often been said…that
man
can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate and other
changes; but this is true only of the civilized races. Man in his wild
condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his
nearest
allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when
removed
from their native country.' 46
The missing link wasn't
missing but, many
evolutionists of the time concluded, lived in Australia and other
far-off
places.47 The existence of some living races was openly
viewed
as irrefutable evidence of a graduation of living creatures 'linking'
humans
to the monkeys (or today 'to our common primate ancestor'). This
'scientific
conclusions was interpreted as compelling evidence for evolution, thus
a large number of biology textbooks of the time discussed the
'hierarchy
of the races' topic.
The man who some regard
as
the actual modern 'discoverer' of evolution by natural selection,
Alfred Russell Wallace,
also espoused essentially the same idea.48 In his
words,
'the weak dying was
necessary to improve
the race because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be
killed
off leaving the superior – that is, only the fittest would
survive.' 49
This was the essence of
Darwinism, and race
differences and fitness of these differences (racism) was at its core.
Although Darwin was far
less racist than
many of his disciples, especially Spencer, Haeckel, Hooton, Pearson,
and
Huxley, his theory provided the basis for the latters' extreme
racism.
As Poliakoy50 noted, Darwin's primary spokesman in
Germany,
Ernest Haeckel, was 'the great ancestor' of Nazi biology theoreticians.
Importantly, Darwin did little to oppose this conclusion which spread
like
wild-fire from his works.51
Since Darwin's writings
were critical in
the development of evolutionary theory, his thoughts on the application
of his theory to racism are crucial to understand how the racism theory
spawned. Although he was known as a kind and gentle man, Darwin openly
gave his support to eugenic ideas which gradually won acceptance in the
scientific community, both in Europe and the United States. Darwin,
evidently
highly influenced by his early theological and religious training,
said:
'I have always
maintained that excepting
fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard
work.'
Later, convinced
that the
eugenic theory
was valid,
'In The Descent
of Man, Darwin
canonized Galton with the words; "we now know, through the admirable
labours
of Mr Galton, that genius… tends to be inherited."'
52
By the beginning of the
19th century, every
discussion of social problems was permeated with 'scientific
notions
of class [and] race,' and that
'nearly every one of
these theories
had some practical applications as its corollary: political; social or
cultural; and meanwhile biological research, anthropology amid the
science
of language had intensified, not abated, the use of "race thinking".'53
Even Chambers in his
classic Vestiges
of the Natural History of Creation, about which Darwin said that
without
this book he might never have written The Origin of Species,
concluded
that the Negro was 'at the foot of' the Mongol, the Yellow
race
between, and Caucasians at the top.54 Chambers himself
taught
that the 'various races of mankind, are simply…stages in the
development
of the highest or Caucasian type…' and that the Blacks were the
least
developed, and the Caucasians were the highest, most evolved race.55
People have always
tended
to assume they
were better than those who were culturally different, but most ideas of
biological racial inferiority are fairly recent. Since up to the time
of
Darwin it was almost universally regarded that all humans were
descendants
of Adam and Eve – a view called monogenism – most
concluding
that all humans must literally be biological brothers.
Although some
individuals
developed ingenious
hypotheses to justify the conclusion that Blacks were inferior, such as
God created them as a separate race (some concluded that the 'beasts
of the earth' discussed in Genesis was the Black race) this view
has
never held much weight in historical Christian theology, Protestant,
Catholic,
or Orthodox.56-60 As Proctor opinioned:
'Prior to
Darwin, it was difficult to
argue against tile Judeo-Christian conception of the unity of man,
based
on the single creation of Adam and Eve. Darwin's theory suggested that
humans had evolved over hundreds of thousands, even millions of years,
and that the races of men had diverged while adapting to the
particularities
of local conditions. The impact of Darwin's theory was enormous.'
Consequently, until the
middle 1800s, most
Westerners believed that all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve,
thus
we are all brothers. Up until the widespread acceptance of evolution,
the
only justification for racism was the belief that God cursed certain
groups
or created other Adams who were inferior – a view called polygenism
– which could be identified by physical traits such as skin colour, or
that some groups degenerated biologically more than others – but were
still
our brothers.
As Gould notes, 'nearly
all scientists
were creationists before 1859, and most did not become polygenists',62
and
Walbank and Taylor conclude:
'...Darwinism led to
racism and anti-semitism
and was used to show that only "superior" nationalities amid races were
fit to survive. Thus, among the English-speaking peoples were to be
found
the champions of the "white man's burden ", an imperial
mission
carried out by Anglo-Saxons. … Similarly, the Russians preached
the doctrine of pan-Slavism and the Germans that of pan-Germanism.'63
On the question of
racism
and Christianity,
especially as exemplified in Germany, Sir Arthur Keith stated that:
'Christianity
makes no distinction of
race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In this
respect
the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the
races
of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through
long
ages to produce?'64
The racism which
developed
from the theory
of evolution was by no means confined to Blacks. One of the leading
American
eugenicists, Charles Davenport, founder and director of the prestigious
Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory, concluded that Black
Americans
were below Caucasians – but so were several other groups. Among the
groups
that he included were 'the Poles, the Irish, the Italians,
and...the
Hebrews' and even the Serbians, Greeks, Swedes, Bohemians.65
He attributed a wide variety of negative racial characteristics to each
different group:
Poles tended to be
independent although self-reliant,
the Italians tended to commit crimes of personal violence, the Hebrews
were a mixture of slovenly Serbians and the tidy Swedes, and the
Germans
and Bohemians were given to 'thriving'. He was concerned that the
immigrants
then flooding the United States would rapidly cause the American
population
to become darker in pigment, smaller in stature, and more involved in
crimes
of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, and rape.
Davenport taught that a
woman should not
marry a man without a thorough knowledge of his biological and
genealogical
history. He felt a woman should act like a stockbreeder who carefully
checks
the pedigree of a potential sire for his colts or calves. Davenport
argued
that the state should control who is able to breed, reasoning that if
the
state had the right to take a person's life, surely it could deny
permission
to reproduce. As a highly respected scientist, Davenport's ideas were
highly
influential at the time and no more radical than those advocated by
many
other scientists and intellectuals. In the late 1930s, the policies
that
Germany, then the most advanced nation in the world, was advocating
were
very similar.
The two races most often
compared are the 'Caucasian' and 'Negroid', now commonly called the
'white' and 'black'
races. The dominant western cultural ethos, that whites were 'superior'
and blacks 'inferior' and more 'apelike', was commonly reflected in
science
books published from 1880 and 1980. The textbook drawings which depict
our supposed immediate ancestors, such as Homo erectus and Homo
habilis, typically have very pronounced Negroid race
characteristics
including dark skin, kinky hair and Negroid facial features. Modern man
(Homno
sapiens), though, is often pictured as having light skin, straight
hair, a flat forehead, a narrow nose and small lips.66
Most of the drawings of
'ape-men' and early
humans even today still show pronounced Negroid traits (for examples
see
Time-Life, The Neanderthals,67 and Early Men,68
April 1984 Science 84 cover). In addition, the fact that
certain
Negroid facial features are closer to the facial characteristics of
many
primates (the kinky hair, flat-nose, large lips, and sloping forehead,
as well as the cheek and jawbone construction) has lent superficial
support
to this contention. The Caucasian race would for this reason be more
evolutionarily 'fit', meaning it was a 'superior' race. As the major
survival element
in human evolution is intelligence, the conclusion that the higher
evolved
race, the Caucasians, possessed a superior intelligence was
uncritically
accepted for decades. Differences in intelligence were viewed as the
key
factors in human evolution because mind was a major factor of survival,
and thus of selection.
The belief that
evolution
normally produced
racial inequities was often noted, even exemplified, in the standard
biology
textbooks published around 1900. The popular American high school
biology
textbook by Hunter, titled A Civic Biology,69 in the
section on evolution under the subtitle 'The Races of Man', stated that
'at the
present time there exists upon
the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the
other in instinct, social customs, and to an extent, in structure.'
The five races were then
ranked from inferior
to superior as follows:
'There are the
Ethiopian or Negro type,
originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the
Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including
the
natives of China, Japan and the Eskimos; and finally, the
highest
type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white
inhabitants
of Europe and America.'70 (Emphasis mine.)
The textbook states that
the 'highest' race
is the Caucasians, who are specifically 'higher' developed in terms of 'instincts,
social customs, and... [physical] structure.'71This
book, widely adopted by American public high schools for over 30 years,
was the text John Scopes used when he was a substitute biology teacher
and was later convicted of violating the Butler Act, the law against
teaching
evolution in public schools. Also, typical of the views of the educated
at this time is an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica
which,
under the heading 'Negro', stated:
'By the nearly
unanimous consent of
anthropologists this type occupies...the lowest position in the
evolutionary scale…the cranial sutures…close much earlier in the Negro
than in other races. To this premature ossification of the skull,
preventing
all further development of the brain, many pathologists have attributed
the inherent mental inferiority of the blacks, an inferiority which is
even more marked than their physical differences… the development of
the
Negro and White proceeds on different lines… in the former the
growth
of the brain is...arrested by the premature closing of the cranial
sutures...
The mental [differences] are at least as marked as the
physical
differences... No full blooded Negro has ever been distinguished as a
man
of science, a poet, or an artist...' 72
Moser, in reference to
the
above quote, argued
that:
'…as to
whether the Negroes in America
have produced any great men ... the Encyclopaedia Britannica
edition
of 1903 [claims that they have not]: the 1970 edition does [not]
make
this admission.'
Then Moser adds that it
is
his conclusion
that:
'...American Negroes
that have made
contributions to various fields, sports, science, etc., but… It
is only that Negro that has a mixture of white genes in his system that
has risen to the level where he has produced on the level with the
white
race.' 73
The man primarily
responsible for the widespread
acceptance of evolution in the 19th century, Thomas Huxley, wrote soon
after the black slaves were freed that:
'No rational
man, cognizant of the facts,
believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior,
of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible [to
assume] that, when all his disabilities are removed,...he will be
able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed
rival, in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by
bites.'74
Negroes were viewed by
evolutionists then
as being in certain ways unredeemably, unchangeably, and irrevocably
inferior
to whites.75 And racist sentiments such as these were held
by
many, if not most, prominent 19th century biologists who were
evolutionists.
In a review of a recent work which documented this beyond question,
Burnham76
noted:
'After 1859,
the evolutionary scheme
raised additional questions, particularly whether or not Afro-Americans
could survive competition with their white near-relations. The
momentous
answer [from the scientists] was a resounding no... The
African
was inferior – he represented the missing link between ape and Teuton.'
Darwin was keenly aware
of
the implications
of his theory on race. In the sixth chapter of The Descent of Man,
he speculated that survival of the fittest pressures would eventually
eliminate
both the black race, which he considered inferior, and other 'lower
races'.
In addition, he concluded:
'I could show [that
war had] done
and [is] doing [much] ... for the progress of
civilization...
The
more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow
in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant
date...an endless number of lower races will have been eliminated by
the
higher civilized races throughout the world.' 77
And Morris78
noted as to Darwin's
sub-title of his book The Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle
for Life:
'It is clear
from the context that he
had races of animals primarily in mind, but at the same time it is also
clear… that he thought of races of men in the same way.'
One of the many examples
which illustrates
that the 'graduations in the evolutionary level of living man' view was
a major aspect of evolution is a response to a Dr Austin H. Clark, a
biologist
at the Smithsonian Institution, who proposed that evolution proceeds in
'jumps'79. Note that the quote draws support from the now
discredited
Piltdown
Man, and the Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men
(both now
shown to be different races of modern humans) for evidence.
'Dr Clark
calmly reverses the old saying
that nature never proceeds by leaps, and assures us that this is her
only
method or procedure. Yet man, as the skull history shows us so clearly,
proceeded by slow steps from the Pithecanthropus, the Piltdown Man, the
Neanderthal Man, to the Cro-magnon Man, who distinctly represents the
modern
type. If nature were as broad a jumper us Dr Clark believes, the first
man should have shown the high, civilized type of today. But we do not
have to go back to fossils. The lowest type of men now living, the
Australian
savages, are at a sufficiently great remove from the civilized type to
overthrow Dr Clark's theory, which, instead of embodying the good
points
of the creational and developmental theories, actually combines the
difficulties
of both...' 80 (Emphasis mine.)
And Harvard evolutionist
Gould concluded
that racism was so widespread at this time that Darwin's co-author,
Alfred
Russel
'Wallace was one
of the few non-racists
of the nineteenth century [evolutionists]. He really believed
that
all human groups had innately equal capacities of intellect. Wallace
defended
his decidedly unconventional egalitarianism with two arguments, one
anatomical
the other cultural. He claimed [in contrast to the claims of
almost
all evolutionists of his day] first of all, that the brains of
"savages"
are neither much smaller nor more poorly organized than our own [and
that]…in the brain of the lowest savages, and, as far as we know,
of the prehistoric races, we have an organ...little inferior in
size and complexity to that of the highest type.'81 (Emphasis
mine.)
The differences in
behavior found between
the black and white races, Wallace concluded, contrary to the
conclusions
of evolutionists around him, were because of cultural conditioning
which 'can integrate the rudest savage into our own most courtly
life.'
The reason for Wallace's
'unconventional
egalitarianism' is explained by Gould as follows:
'Wallace, the
hyperselectionist, the
man who had twitted Darwin for his unwillingness to see the action of
natural
selection in every nuance of organic form, halted abruptly before the
human
brain. Our intellect and morality, Wallace argued, could not be the
product
of natural selection; therefore, since natural selection is evolution's
only way, some higher power – God, to put it directly – must have
intervened
to construct this latest and greatest organic innovation.' 82
Gould notes that Darwin
was 'positively
aghast at Wallace's abrupt about-faith at the finish line itself.'
83
He wrote Wallace in 1869 that 'I differ grievously from you, and l
am
very sorry for it.' Wallace, sensitive to the rebuke, thereafter
referred
to his non-racist theory of human intellect as 'my special heresy.'
An important argument
that
Hitler used to
support his programs of racial genocide of the Jews, Blacks and other
groups
was that they were genetically 'inferior' and that their interbreeding
with the superior Aryan race would adversely affect the latter's gene
pool,
polluting it, and lowering the overall quality of the 'pure race'. 84-87
As
Himmelfarb notes:
'From the
"preservation of favoured
races in the struggle for life" [that is, Darwin's subtitle to
Origin
of Species] it was a short step to the preservation of favored
individuals,
classes or nations – and from their preservation to their
glorification...
Thus, it has become a portmanteau of nationalism, imperialism,
militarism,
and dictatorship, of the cults of the hero, the superman, and the
master
race...recent expressions of this philosophy, such as Mein Kampf
are, unhappily, too familiar to require exposition here.' 88
Instead of
letting chance
factors dominate
reproduction decisions, Hitler proposed that the scientists use the
power
of the state to influence these decisions so that the gene pool would
shift
to what 'informed conclusions' concluded was the desired direction.
Consequently,
Hitler encouraged those individuals that he perceived as having Aryan
traits
to mate, and discouraged 'interbreeding', supposing that this policy
would
gradually cause the Aryan race to evolve 'upward'. He believed that the
Nazi race programs would further evolution by intelligently deciding
which
traits were not beneficial, and preventing those with them from
reproducing.
FROM
THEORY TO SOCIAL POLICY
Little eugenic concern
existed in Darwin's
day about Blacks and Jews in Great Britain, but there was much concern
about Blacks and Jews in America and Jews in Germany. This was largely
because the United States had a much larger population of Jews and
Blacks
than Great Britain, which at that time was much more homogeneous.
British
eugenics was marked by more concern over inferior classes rather than
inferior
races compared to the American and German eugenicists.89
Especially
of concern was the results of miscegenation. Many studies were
completed
relative to the effects of Black and White marriages – one researcher
concluded
that the Negro race was gradually being 'bleached' by intermarrying
with
Whites, and that the Whites were not so appreciably tanned as the
Blacks
were bleached.90
Numerous 'scientific'
studies concluded that
miscenegation offspring tended to have more of the negative traits of
Blacks
such as inferiority in mental capacity, than the positive traits of
Whites.91
One massive American study by a Princeton psychology professor and the
chairman of the National Research Council concluded:
'The essential
point is that there are
10,000,000 negroes here now and that the proportion of mulattos to a
thousand
blacks has increased with alarming rapidity since 1850. According to
all
evidence available, then, American intelligence is declining, and will
proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial admixture becomes more
and
more extensive. The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid
than the decline of intelligence of European national groups, owing to
the presence here of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly,
facts that our study shows. The deterioration of the American
intelligence
is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent
it. There is no reason why legal steps should not be taken which would
insure a continuously progressive upward evolution. The steps that
should
be taken to preserve or increase our present intellectual capacity must
of course be dictated by science and not by political expediency.'
92
The extent to which
eugenics has filtered
into American society was illustrated by the fact that the American
chief
wartime mental tester was Robert M. Yerkes, a student of the works of
Francis
Galton. One of his professors at Harvard was Charles Davenport, and his
work with mental tests was in conjunction with Ernest E. Southard of
the
Harvard Medical School. Southard was an active eugenicist who worked
with
Davenport and others. 93, 94
One of the more well
known
American scientists
involved in the testing movement was Louis Terman of Stanford. He
attributed
I.Q. to heredity, and undertook one of the most extensive psychological
research studies ever to research this question. His work is summarized
in the mammoth five volume set Genetic Studies of Genius,95
published by Stanford University Press. The first volume was published
in 1925, and the last, published in 1959, was entitled The Gifted
Group
at Midlife. This work is a 35-year follow-up of the group of
students
that were originally identified by the researchers.
Yerkes, Terman and
Godard
(Godard is most
known for his 1912 study of the Kallikak family: A Study of the
Heredity
of Feeblemindedness)96 developed the well-known Army
Alpha
I.Q. test used on draftees literate in English, and the Army Beta, used
for everyone else.97 The army efficiently and rapidly
administered
these tests to millions of people, a task that was believed to be of
enormous
importance for the war effort.
From the army Alpha and
Beta, as well as
the Stanford Binet (a modification of the original Binet published in
France),
developed the entire American testing movement. From I.Q. tests came
performance,
personality, projective and a wide variety of other tests which are now
an important part of Western society. A contemporary concern is that
these
tests were designed to be aptitude tests, but are culturally
biased
and depend heavily upon one's educational, social and cultural
background.
They are in fact achievement tests, interpolating aptitude skills from
the achievement score. The army tested over 1,700,000 persons – and its
alleged success is a key factor that also spurred on the wide use of
testing
today.
The army data was also
used to study race
differences and prove 'conclusively' that certain races were
intellectually
inferior – the Mediterranean were inferior to the Nordic, and the
Blacks
were inferior to all other races. According to the test, the average
adult
Black living in the United States had the mental age of a
10-year-old
White.96 These demeaning results were due to educational,
cultural
and social reasons, but the tragedy is that the results were used to
conclude
that social and educational programs to help certain races were
ill-advised,
or at the least, would not significantly change their intelligence or
performance.
Many scientists, educators, and others believed that offering equal
opportunity
in the schools was likewise also ill-advised, concluding that to best
use
scarce resources, one should concentrate on training the most capable.
The effect of
these tests
was not only Black
racism, but racism against a wide variety of groups including those
from
Eastern and Southern Europe, all Orientals, and others. The most
visible
expression of this ethnic and racial hatred was to restrict
immigration.
America enacted into law the Chinese exclusion acts of 1882 and 1902,
and
various immigration and naturalization acts directed against Eastern
and
Southern Europeans and other groups. Riots and systematic
discrimination
were extremely common in the United States during this time. Directed
against
a wide variety of groups, such discrimination was often quite vicious
in
its extent and effects. At the 1923 immigration hearings
'many
witnesses argued that "biology"
demanded the exclusion of most members of the Eastern and Southern
European
"races"... On both sides of Capitol Hill biological and racial
arguments
figured prominently in the floor debate on the bill. Congressman Robert
Allen, Democrat of West Virginia, declared: "The primary reason for the
restriction of the alien stream...is the necessity for purifying
and keeping pure the blood of America."' 99
The result of
the
arguments was that in April
of 1924 the act was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the house
and senate. President Calvin Coolidge supported the law, stating that,
'America must
be kept American. Biological
laws show…that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.'
This belief was
translated
into behavior
not only in the whites' mistreatment of blacks and immigration laws,
but
has been used to justify social policies ranging from slavery to
segregated
schools. The assumption that blacks are innately inferior and less
intelligent
compared to whites was an important, if not the prominent factor, in
the
racist policies that dominated America and Europe for over 100
years.100,
101 Reviews of early literature written by whites about blacks
found
that this conclusion was prominent in most discussions of race until
relatively
recently.'102
Current research into the
characteristics
of blacks has overturned the once commonly held conclusion that
blacks
as a whole are biologically and in other ways inferior to whites.
Much
of the research supports the contention that those differences that
still
exist are predominantly the effects of accumulated discrimination,
poverty
and cultural deprivation.103, 104 It is now widely accepted
that, given equality of background and similarity of experiences,
blacks
as a whole closely equal whites in across-the-board performance. This
situation
confirms Benedict's105 early conclusion that 'the most
careful
investigation' shows there is no significant difference between
the
scores of blacks and whites, even though it is difficult to control for
the accumulative effects of deprivation.
Recent I.Q. tests of
people throughout the
world have found that, with allowance for cultural differences, the
I.Q.
ranges of all extant identified races is extremely close.
The pygmy population of
Africa, supposedly
the most backward race extant today, test close to average when
acclimated
to Western life. Few differences are found between the second and third
generation pygmies living in large Australian cities who are acclimated
to the established European population. And this comparison is between
the supposedly most backward group of people today (aside from the
Tasaday,
which have now been shown to be a hoax) with the supposedly most
advanced,
the white Anglo-Saxons.
On the average, blacks
have achieved lower
I.Q. and achievement scores than whites, but they are also typically
raised
in very different social and cultural environments than non-blacks.
Their
world is still different, even if their parents had the same occupation
and incomes as whites. Impressive research has demonstrated that
black-white
cultural differences could easily explain much of the observed
performance
difference, which is now estimated at about a standard deviation. White
school children in eastern Tennessee were able to improve their average
I.Q. score by almost this much between 1930 and 1940, apparently as a
result
of the introduction of schools in their area, increased outside
stimulation
from innovations such as radios, and more parental support in
education.'106
Most studies also find
that Orientals and
Jews score about ten points higher than Europeans. Reasons other than
innate
differences are often found to account for this difference, and few
scientists
now accept the view that genetic differences can account for the level
found.107 The exceptions, such as Carleton Coon,108
Hans Eysenck109 and Arthur Jensen110 are
few.111
The common conclusion that the differences are caused by early
environment
deprivation was behind the development of such programs as Sesame
Street
and the Electric Company, and even Head Start. Some
persons
have even concluded that the tests themselves are not valid, a view
which
has prompted the legal banning of I.Q. tests for certain uses in a
number
of States.
The conclusion that
whites
and blacks as
a group are innately equal for most traits (viz., the biological
organism
is equal) is supported by comparisons of northern blacks with southern
whites. A southern white from Mississippi, according to the median
scores
of the Army AEF Intelligence Test, scored 41.25 compared to 49.50 for
blacks
from Ohio.112-114 Since the majority of blacks suffer
from
monetary,
educational and cultural disadvantages, according to this evidence much
of the difference would be not because of organism inferiority, but
largely
as a result of environmental differences. And many of these differences
have often developed because of racial prejudice in the first place.115
The prominent
anthropologist, Ruth Benedict,
and Weltfish stated under the topic 'One Human Race' that 'the
peoples
of earth are a single family and have a common origin.' Elaborating
on this view, they continued:
'Science
describes the intricate make-up
of the human body: all its different organs cooperating in keeping us
alive,
its curious anatomy that couldn't possibly have "just happened" to be
the
same in all men if they did not have a common origin. Take the
structure
of the human foot, for instance. When you list all of the little bones
and muscles and the joints of the toes, it is impossible to imagine
that
it would all have happened twice. Or take out teeth: so many front
teeth,
so many canines, so many molars. Who can imagine finding the same
arrangements
in two human species if they weren't one family? The fact of the unity
of the human race is proved, therefore, in its anatomy… no difference
among
human races has affected limbs and teeth and relative strength so that
one race is biologically outfitted like a lion and another biologically
outfitted like a lamb is. All the racial differences among them are in
non-essentials such as texture of head hair, amount of body hair, shape
of the nose or head, or color of the eyes and the skin.'116
The few differences that
exist do not
confer a survival advantage of one race over another – all of the
differences
Benedict classifies as 'non-essentials'. And the non-essentials by
definition
do not affect fitness, and thus are irrelevant to survival. Hair
texture,
for example, does not relate to survival but at the most will affect
personal
comfort in adjusting to certain types of climates, an advantage which
is
today largely offset by technology – clothes, houses and such. Since
these
innovations have been part of culture since earliest recorded history,
these traits would never have had a significant selection
advantage.
The most obvious
difference between blacks
and whites is skin colour (thus the terms 'blacks' and 'whites'). Dark
skin gives blacks some protection against strong sunlight, especially
in
the tropics, but whites can easily protect themselves by utilizing sun
helmets, special clothes, and sun-screen suntan oil. This enables them
to survive quite well in very warm areas. Black skin serves more to aid
individual comfort than survival.118 Skin colour
variations
do not represent a difference of quality, only quantity.
All humans have about
the
same concentrations
of melanocytes in their skin.119 The variations are due
largely
to the amount of melanin these cells produce – the darker the skin, the
greater the amount of melanin secreted in the lower layers of the skin.120
Except albinos, who totally lack colouring substances (and albinos
appear
in all races) every person, however dark or light, is affected by the
sun
in much the same way.121, 122 All of these qualities have
little
to do with survival during and before child-bearing years, and
consequently
cannot be accounted for by evolution. These differences seem to exist
primarily
to increase the variety so evident in the natural world – a variety
which
not only makes our sojourn on earth more enjoyable, but also helps us
to
differentiate the scores of people alive today.123
Other racial differences
alleged include
substances in the blood, thus the expression 'blood relations' and the
classifications 'Aryan blood', 'Chinese blood', or 'Negroid blood'. Of
the dozens of blood groups, most are found in every race. The major
types,
A, B, AB, and O, are present in all races, although in slightly
different
percentages. Consequently, blood transfusions can be administered
without
regard to race – only a blood type match is necessary.
Scholarly works are
increasingly supporting
what is now the prevailing opinion among scientists: allowing for
environment,
no significant innate overall difference of consequence exists between
blacks and whites. Richard Leakey, the son of the famous
anthropologist,
Louis Leakey, noted that his father's
'…life work in
fact, has made him impatient
with those narrow ethnic and national perspectives… furthermore, he
notes
that racial differences, as they are commonly perceived, are a
superficial
and recent development having arisen only about 15,000 years ago. Says
Leakey, "l am aghast that people think they are different from each
other.
We all share a tremendous heritage, an exciting bond. We are all the
same."' 124
For this reason, Benedict125concluded,
'The
races
of
mankind are what the Bible
says they are – brothers. In their body is the record of their
brotherhood.'
Evolution, though,
teaches
that differences
even within a very small group of people would confer to that group of
people a survival advantage. Thus that group would become larger and
larger
and, as selection continues, would become more and more discernible
from
the outside population. This, though, is not now happening with humans
because separate populations do not seem to be developing from the main
populations. This state of affairs means that without any clear
differences,
there is nothing to select from. And without selection, evolution
cannot
occur.
Studies of other creatures
have found the
same problem with natural selection:
'The discovery
of the randomness of
species extinctions in 1973 by Leigh Van Valen, professor of biology at
the University of Chicago, surprised the scientific world. Working with
data tabulated from the books and scientific papers of many
paleontologists,
Van Valen counted species and calculated their life spans over many
millions
of years. According to standard Darwinian theory, the better-adapted
species
should last a long time and those not as well adapted should die out
quickly.
Theory would also have predicted that the longer a species survived the
lower the probability of its extinction in the next time interval.
However,
Van Valen's statistical analysis of species' lifetimes indicate that
there
is no such difference. His research implies that the process of
extinction
does not distinguish between species.'126, 127
RESPONSES
TO THE IMPLICATIONS
OF THIS PAPER
Of the scores of
references consulted relative
to this problem (see references), not one adequately deals with the
issue
that this paper raises.
Some assume that selection
was important
in the past, but because of the structure of our present society,
'natural
selection' no longer occurs. Even Charles Darwin concluded that
evolution
had now stopped among humans. Alfred Russel Wallace reported in 1890:
'in one of my
last conversations with
Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on
the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no
play,
and the fittest did not survive… and it is notorious that our
population
is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the
upper and middle classes' 128
Many researchers have
recognized that the
implications of the information outlined above apply not only to
animals,
but to humans as well.129 For this reason, several leading
scientists
have proposed that, for humans at least, classical evolution has
presently
stopped. The well-known French biologist, Pierre P. Grasse, stated:
'Biologists
find it hard to admit that…present
living beings differ at all from those of the past... But facts are
facts;
no new broad organizational plan has appeared for several hundred
million
years, and for an equally long time numerous species, animal as well as
plant, have ceased evolving. We have said that evolution in the present
is difficult, if not extremely difficult, to observe. Some biologists
maintain
that they can not only observe it but also describe it in action; the
facts
that they describe, however, either have nothing to do with evolution
or
are insignificant. At best, present evolutionary phenomena are simply
slight
changes of genotypes within populations, or substitutions of an allele
by a new one.' 130
And Haller concluded that:
'Believing that
failures in early stages
of evolution had limited brain size and quality of the lower races,
these
scientists…suggested that the environment no longer operated in the
present
as strongly as it once had in the past. Evolution had already come to
an
end among the lower races, making them unfit for future race
development…
the lower races broke into the modern world as mere "survivals" from
the
past, mentally incapable of shouldering the burden of complex
civilization
and slowly deteriorating structurally to a point when at some time in
the
future, they would become extinct, thus ultimately solving the problem.'131
Another argument is that
selection works
at the individual level, not at the species or subspecies
level.
This does not deal with the concern, because a process that is central
to evolution is for superior individuals to eventually become superior
groups. The Neanderthals and other groups were said to not have
survived
as
a group because they were supposedly inferior to other existing
humanoid
groups, and thus were eliminated in the competition for survival.132
Three competing hypotheses
exist on why humans
are one primary race. The first and most accepted is Noah's Ark
theory, the view that all of our close relatives became extinct and
only
one, Homo sapiens, has survived. Most of the many fossil finds
support
this view.133 The second, the candelabra theory, postulates
that the different races all evolved independently into the 'same
race',
a view that is usually regarded as highly unlikely. The last, the
modified
candelabra, claims parallel development occurred due to world-wide
intermarrying,
resulting in much back and forth gene flow – a position not supported
by
recorded history.
Burt,134
in
defending the latter
view, hypothesizes that after pre-humans spread over a wide area, some
individuals became highly successful and eventually evolved into
several
distinct species. He hypothesizes this 'race-making period' was caused
by Homo sapiens scattering far and wide, forming
geographically
isolated groups and 'as a result of natural selection, became
adapted
to the different conditions', primarily differences in climate.135
To explain why only one surviving species of humans now exists, Burt
postulates
that they later spread out again, this time intermixing and
interbreeding.
The 'ensuing recombination of different sets of genes produced
still
greater variations and therefore still greater adaptability.'
136 He
concludes that most of the differences that existed at one time were
later
obliterated through massive interbreeding, thus few exist today. Two
pages
later, he argues for the view that
'there has
been no appreciable change
in man's innate constitution or in the general quality of his brain
throughout
the last 20,000 years.'137
Thus, biological
evolution
has stopped but,
Burt claims, cultural evolution continues.
These attempts to
explain
the failure to
find clear innate survival differences, such as in intelligence between
races (although Burt was not arguing here that all races are equal),
prompt
questions such as:
(1) Specifically, why
has
evolution evidently
stopped for Homo sapiens in the last 20,000 or so years, a
view
with which the doctrine of uniformitarianism is not in accord?
(2) What evidence is
there
for factors which
would first disperse a race, then much later cause the many separate
races
that separately developed to interbreed – in essence, uniting all of
the
different groups?
(3) What factors would
cause humans to leave
the homeland they were biologically adapted to, and venture into other
geographical areas, then return to marry their 'long lost kin' (who now
have evolved into something distinctly different)?
SUMMARY
Differences must exist
both between and within
races for evolution to occur, specifically differences that provide one
race or group a survival advantage over the others. The race with
traits
that confer on it the greatest survival advantage presumably will in
time
become numerically dominant compared to those without this advantage.
As
Morris concluded:
'As the 19th
century scientists were
converted to evolution, they were thus also convinced of racism. They
were
certain that the white race was superior to other races, and the reason
for this superiority was to be found in Darwinian theory. The white
race
had advanced farther up the evolutionary ladder and therefore, was
destined
either to eliminate the other races in the struggle for existence or
else
to have to assume the "white man's burden" and to care for those
inferior
races that were incompetent to survive otherwise.'138
That elements of this view
arc still held
by some biologists today is evident from the words of a leading modern
evolutionist, George Gaylord Simpson, who stated that:
'Races of men
have, or perhaps one should
say "had", exactly the same biological significance as the sub-species
of other species of mammals.' 139
As late as 1962, Harvard
anthropologist Carleton
Coon140 concluded that modern human races did not
suddenly
appear 'fully formed as from the brow of Zeus', but that the
differences
between living races could be explained only in terms of their
different
evolutionary history, and that each major race followed its own
evolution
pathway.
Coon even wrote that
African civilizations
were less advanced because black people were the last to evolve into
modern
humans. The first hominids may have arisen in Africa, he concluded, but
the evolution of modem humans occurred in Europe and Asia:
'If Africa was the
cradle of mankind,
it was only an indifferent kindergarten.' 141
The raw materials of
evolution are physical
differences – differences that natural selection can 'select' from,
causing
them to spread throughout the population. These differences are the key
to evolution, and without them it cannot occur. In the case of Homo
sapiens, research has supported the view that few significant
differences
exist between the various groups (commonly called races) of humans
living
today. If the few differences that do exist do not confer any
significant
survival advantages, contemporary evidence for human evolution would be
completely lacking.
Most importantly, this
evidence argues against
a cornerstone of the evolutionary theory, the 'survival of the fittest'
hypothesis. It is possible that discernible differences at one
time
existed among the different groups of humans, and for some reason they
were all either eradicated or never existed, but the fact is they have
never been observed. Our environment was often much more uniform
throughout
much of history than it has been in the past hundred to two hundred
years.
At one time more differences existed between, for example, a
man
who lived in a cave and one who lived in a castle; and historical study
has found that the man in the cave was in some ways better off, at
least
regarding certain health factors.
A great difference exists
between the life
of Indians in the Philippines and scientists living in a university
town;
but more genetic differences exist between the members of each
community
than between these two groups. In other words, biological evolution
should
now be proceeding more rapidly than ever before, but we do not observe
it proceeding at all. Clear biological differences which could
conceivably
confer a definite survival advantage to one race of humans over another
do not exist.142-144
The finding that more
differences exist within
the races than between them does not support what we would expect to
find
if evolution by natural selection was currently operative upon humans.
Even the few fairly clear differences between the races (those which
enable
researchers to group in terms of races) are only in degree.145 And
these trait differences are all clearly in non-essentials, unimportant
to survival. It is also difficult to argue for many branches in our
evolutionary
tree when only one branch exists today. Evolution must explain why a
state
of affairs exists in this period of history which is in great contrast
to that which they argue has existed for most of humankind's
hypothesized
evolutionary history.146
REFERENCES
1. Dunn, L. C., 1959.
Heredity and Evolution
in Human Populations, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
2. Adler, Montimer,
1967. The Differences
of Man and the Difference It Makes, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New
York.
3. Strickberger,
Monroe W., 1990. Evolution,
Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston,
4. Moore, Ruth, 1962.
Evolution, Time Inc.,
New York, p. 166.
5. Einerl, Samuel and
DeVore, Erven, 1965.
The Primates, Time Inc., New York, p. 183,
6. White, Edmund and
Brown, Dale, 1973.
The First Men, Time-Life Books, New York
7. Birdsell, J. B.,
1972. Human Evolution,
Rand McNally and Co., Chicago.
8. Strickberger, Ref.
3.
9. Darwin, Charles,
1896. The Descent of
Man and Selection in Relation to Sex; The Works of Charles Darwin, D.
Appleton
and Company, New York (Pint edition by AMS Press, 1972).
10. Jacquerd, Albert,
1985. Endangered By
Science, Columbia University Press, New York.
11. Pilbeam, David,
1979. The Unanswered
question: how did we get so smart. Interim Evidence, 1(3) September: 4
-5.
12. Smith, John
Maynard, 1972. John Maynard
Smith on Evolution: Eugenics and Utopia. Edinburgh University Press, p.
76.
13. Downs, James F.
and Bleibtreu, Hermann
K., 1969. Human Variation; An Introduction to Physical Anthropolgy,
Glencoe
Press, Beverley Hills, California.
14. Chase, Allan,
1980. The Legacy of Malthus:
The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism, Alfred Knopf, New York.
15. Haller, Mark H.,
1984. Eugenics: Hereditarian
Attitudes in American Thought, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick,
New Jersey.
16. Garn, Stanley M.,
1961. Human Race,
Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois.
17. George, Wesley C.,
1956. Human Progress
and the Race Problem, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.
18. Gayre, Robert and
Putnam, Carleton,
1874. Race and Reason: A Yankee View, published by the authors, New
York.
19. deGobineau,
Arthur, 1986. The Inequality
of the Races, The Noontide Press, Los Angeles, California (Original
1854).
20. Stein, George,
1988. Biological science
and the totes of Nazism. American Scientist, 76(1) January-February.
21. Winchell,
Alexander, 1890. Proof of
Negro Inferiority, Harper and Son, New York.
22. Gould, Stephen
Jay, 1981. The Mismeasure
of Man, W, W. Norton Co., New York.
23. Schleunes, Karl,
A., 1970. The Twisted
Road to Auschwitz, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, pp.
147-149.
24. King, James 1981.
The Biology of Race,
University of California Press, Berkeley, California, Second edition.
25. Eisley, Loren,
1958. Darwin's Century,
Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, New York, p. 261.
26. Eisley, Ref. 25,
p. 261.
27. Klaatsch, Hermann,
1923. The Evolution
and Progress of Mankind, Frederick A. Stokes Cc, New York, translated
from
the German by Joseph McCabe, p. 105.
28. Crookshank, F.
G,1924. The Mongrel In
Our Midst: A Study of Man and HI. Three Faces, E.P. Dutton and Company,
New York.
29. Hooton, Earnest
Albert, 1941. Why Men
Behave Like Apes and Vice Versa or Body Behavior, Princeton University
Press, Princeton.
30. Klaatsch, Ref. 27,
p. 106.
31. Hooton, Ref. 29,
p.25.
32. Tobach, Ethel,
Gianusos, John, Topoff
Howard R. and Gross, Charles G., 1974. The Four Horsemen: Racism,
Sexism,
Militarism, and Social Darwinian, Behavioral Publication, New York.
33. Davidheiser,
Bolton, 1969. Social Darwinism.
Creation Research Society Quarterly, 5(4):151.
34. Gallon, Francis.
1880. Inquiries into
Human Faculty and Its Development, Second edition, B. P. Dutton Inc,
New
York.
35. Cohen, Daniel,
1974. Intelligence – What
Is It?, M. Evans and Company Inc., New York, p. 115.
36. Haycraft, John
Barry, 1895. Darwinism
and Race Progress, Swan Sonnenschein and Company.
37. Stanton, William,
1960. The Leopard's
Spots: Scientific Attitudes Towards Race In America, 1815-1859,
University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.
38. Haller, John S.,
Jr., 1971. Outcasts
From Evolution: Scientific Attitudes to Racial Inferiority, 1559-1900,
University of Illinois Press, Urban, Illinois, p. x.
39. Haller, Ref. 38,
pp. x-xi,
40. Stein, Ref. 20.
41. Kevles, Daniel 3.,
1985. In the Name
of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, Alfred A. Knopf
Company,
New York.
42. Hofstadter,
Richard, 1955. Social Darwinian
in American Thought, Bacon Press, Boston.
43. Keith, Arthur,
1946. Evolution and Ethics,
0. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, p. 230.
44. Koster, John.
1988. The Atheist Syndrome.
Wolgemuth and Hyatt Publishers, Brentwood, Tennessee, p. 50.
45. Haller, Ref. 38,
p. 132.
46. Darwin, Ref. 9,
pp. 241-242.
47. de Laubenfels, M.
W., 1949. Pageant
of Life Science, Prentice-Hall, New York.
48. Brooks, John
Langdon, 1984. Just Before
the Origin, Columbia University Press, New York.
49. Ward, Henshaw,
1927. Charles Darwin:
The Man and His Warfare, The Bobbs Merill Co., New York, p. 298.
50. Poliakov, Leon,
1974. The Aryan Myth,
Basic Books, New York. p. 284
51. Darwin, Ref. 9,
chapter 7.
52. Kevles., Ref.41,
p. 20.
53. Barzum, Jacques,
1958. Darwin, Marx,
Wagner, Doubleday Anchor Books, Garden City, New York, p. xi.
54. Crookshank, Ref.
28, p.1.
55. Crookshank, Ref.
28, p.2.
56. Hawtin, George R.,
1962. flying Creature:
Origin of the Negro, published by the author, Battleford, Sascatuwa,
Canada.
57. Hasskari, G. H.,
1898. The Missing Link;
or the Negroes Ethnological Status, The Democratic News, Chambersburg.
Pennsylvania.
58. Hall, Marshall and
Hall, Sandra, 1977.
The Connection Between Evolution, Theory and Racism, P/R Publishers,
Lakeland,
Florida.
59. Isherwood, H. B.,
1980. Man's Racial
Nature, Sons of Liberty, Metairie, Los Angeles.
60. Evola, Julius,
1970. Race As a Revolutionary
Idea, Western Unity Research Institute, Arab, Los Angeles.
61. Proctor, Robert N.
1988. Racial Hygiene:
Medicine Under the Nazis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts,
p. 14.
62. Gould, Stephen
Jay. 1980. Wallace's
fatal flaw. Natural History, 89(1) Januay:43.
63. Walbank, T. Walter
and Taylor, Alastalr
M., 1961. Civilization Past and Present, Fourth edition, Scott,
Foresman
and Co. New York, p. 361.
64. Keith, Ref. 43,
p.72.
65. Kevles., Ref. 41,
pp. 46-47.
66. Howell, F. Clark.
1965. Early Man, Time-Life
Books, New York, pp. 157-158.
67. Constable, George
et al, 1973. The Neanderthals,
Time-Life Inc., New York, pp. 8, 21-31.
68. White and Brown,
Ref. 6, pp. 90-99.
69. Hunter, George
William, 1914. A Civic
Biology American Book Co., New York.
70. Hunter, Ref. 69,
p.196.
71. Hunter, Ref .69,
p. 312.
72. Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1898, The
Werner Co., New York, Vol. 17, pp. 316-318.
73. Moser, M. L, 1974.
The Case Against
Integration, The Challenge Press, Little Rock, Arkansas, p. 51.
74. Huxley, Thomas,
1871. Lay Sermons, Addresses
and Review, Appleton, New York. p. 20.
75. Mintz,
Sidney W., 1972. (Book
review of) Outcasts From Evolution. American Scientist, 60(3): 387.
76. Burnham, John C,
1972. (Book review
of) Outcasts From Evolution. Science, 175(4021): 506-507.
77. Darwin, Ref. 9, p.
343.
78. Morris, Henry,
1973. Evolution and modern
racism. Impact Series No. 7, Institute for Creation Research, San
Diego.
California, p. 158.
79. Funk, Willard,
1929. New theory of man
in the making. In: Literary Digest, February 16, 100(7):27-28.
80. Funk. Ref. 79, p.
28.
81. Gould, Ref. 22, p.
35
82. Gould, Ref. 22, p.
34.
83. Gould, Ref.23, p.
34.
84. Proctor, Ref. 61.
85. Weinding, Paul,
1989. Health, Race and
German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism 1570-1945,
Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
86. Stein, Ref. 20.
87. Hilebrand, Klaus,
1969. The Foreign
Policy of the Third Reich, University of California Press, Berkley.
88. Himmelfarb,
Gertrude, 1962. Social Darwinism
in American Thought, W. W. Norton Co., New York, pp. 416-417.
89. Crook, D. P.,
1984. Benjamin Kidd: Portrait
of a Social Darwinist, Cambridge, London.
90. Kevles, Ref.41,
p.75.
91. Hofstadter, Ref.
42.
92. Brigham, Carl C.
and Yerkes, Robert
M., 1923. A Study of American Intelligence, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, p. 210.
93. Campbell, Byram,
1955. American Race
Theorists: A Critique of Their Thoughts and Methods, The Truth Seeker,
San Diego, California.
94. Campbell, Byram,
1958 Race and Social
Revolution: Twenty-One Essays on Race and Social Problems, The Truth
Seeker
Company, New York.
95. Terman, L. M.
(ed.), 1926. Genetic Studies
of Genius: Vol. I Mental and Physical Traits of a Thousand Gifted
Children,
Second edition Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
96. Smith, J. David,
1985. Minds
Made Feeble: The Myth and Legacy of the Kallikaks, Aspen Systems
Communication,
Rockville Maryland.
97. Jones, Greta.
1980. Social Darwinian.
and English Thought: The Interaction Between Biological and Social
Theory,
The Humanities Press, New Jersey.
98. Kevles, Ref. 41,
pp. 82-83.
99. Kevles, Ref. 41,
p. 97.
100. Chase, Ref.
14.
101. Haller, Ref. 15.
102. Haller, Ref. 38.
193. Block, N. J. and
Dworkin, Gerald (eds)
1978. The IQ Controversy, Random House, New York.
104. Gartner, Allen,
Greer, Colin and Reissman,
Frank, 1974. The New Assault on Equality: IQ and Social Stratification,
Harper and Row, New York.
105. Benedict,
Ruth, 1957. Race;
Science and Politics, The Viking Press, New York, p.182.
106. Haller, Ref 15.
107. Loehlin, John C.,
Lindsey, Gardner
and Spuhlar, J. N., 1975. Race Differences in Intelligence, W. H.
Freeman
and Company, San Francisco, California.
108. Coon, Carleton,
1962. The Origin of
Races, Alfred Knopf, New York.
109. Eysenck, H. J.
and Kamin, Leon, 1981.
The Intelligence Controversy: Environment or Heredity?, John Wiley and
Sons, New York, New York.
110. Jensen, Arthur,
1979. Bias in Mental
Testing, The Free Press, New York.
111. Milton, Joyce,
1980. Controversy: Science
In Conflict, Julian Messner, New York.
112. Benedict, Ruthand
Weltfish, Gene, 1951.
The races of mankind. The Public Affairs Pamphlet, New York, No. 85,
pp.
17-18.
113. Benedict, Ref.
105.
114. Garn. Ref 16, pp.
156-157.
115. Chase, Ref. 14.
116. Benedict and
Weltfish, Ref. 112, pp.
3-5.
117. Haller, Ref. 38.
118. Downs, and
Beibtreu, Ref. 13.
119. Hole, John W.,
1990. Human Anatomy
and Physiology, Wm. Brown Publishing. Debuque, Iowa, p. 168.
120. Garn, Ref. 16.
121. King, Ref. 24.
122. Prichard, James
Cowles, 1873. Researches
into the Physical History of Man, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
123. Dunn, L C and
Dobzhansky, Theodosius,
1946. Heredity, Race and Society: Scientific Explanation of Human.
Differences,
The New American Library, New York, New York.
124. Leakey, Richard
and Lewin, Roger, 1978.
Origins, E. P. Putnam, New York, p.78.
125. Benedict, Ref.
105, p. 171.
126. Raup, David M.,
1979. The revolution
in evolution. In: Science Year: The World Book Science Annual,
World
Book – Childcraft International Inc., Chicago, p. 208.
127. Raup. David M.,
1991. Extinction: Bad
Genes or Bad Luck?, W. W. Norton & Company, New York.
128. Wallace, Alfred
Russel, 1890. Human
selection. Popular Science Monthly, 33 (November): 93.
129. Lewontin, Richard
C. et al.,
1977. Biology as a Social Weapon, Burgess Publishing Company,
Minneapolis.
Minnesota.
130. Grasse,
Pierre-P., 1977. Evolution
of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, p. 84.
131. Haller Ref. 15,
p. IX.
132. Darlington, C.
D., 1958. The Control
of Evolution in Man, International Association for the Advancement of
Ethnology
and Eugenics New York, New York.
133. Leakey, Ref. 124.
134. Burt, Cyril,
1975. The Gifted Child,
Hodder and Stoughton, London, Chapter 8.
135. Burt, Ref. 134,
p. 74.
136. Burt, Ref. 134,
p. 74.
137. Burt, Ref. 134,
p. 76.
138. Morris, Ref. 78,
p. 159.
139. Simpson, George
Gaylord, 1966. The
biological nature of man. Science, 152 (3721):472-478.
140. Coon, Ref. 108.
141. Coon, Ref. 108,
p. 724.
142.
Grasse, Ref. 130.
143. Dunn and
Dobzhasky, Ref. 123.
144. Goldsby,
Richard
A., 1971. Race and
Races, Macmillan Company, New York.
145. Comas Juan,
1951.
Racial Myths, Greenwood
Press Publishers Westport, Connecticut. Reprinted in 1976 by Greenwood
Press.
146. Cravens,
Hamilton, 1978. The Triumph
of Evolution: American Scientists and the Heredity-Evironment
Controversy
1900-1941, University of Pennsylvania Press, Pennsylvania.
BERGMAN,
EVOLUTION AND RACE
THEORY
Reply to: Evolution
and the Origins of
the Biological Race Theory
Bob Potter
(Investigator 54, 1997 May)
Like Jerry Bergman
(Investigator 52) I choose
not to become involved in a detailed discussion of the many theories of
the 'structure of intelligence' and will assume that, however it is
defined,
one can meaningfully associate it with a measurable IQ.
Bergman's essay meanders
over a vast field
that rarely focuses on its main objective, as stated in the Abstract.
My
response will concern itself with the writer's declared central aim
that
"The lack of major differences between races, especially in
intelligence,
the factor most crucial for the major contrast between Homo sapiens and
'lower' forms of life, creates a major difficulty for current evolution
theory".
Ironically, in the same
paragraph, Bergman admits that the IQ
disparity between blacks and whites is in the region of one standard
deviation,
which, translated into blunter English, represents over 34% of the
population!!
Bergman's claim is simply
not true. No evolutionary
biologist is concerned about this matter and, indeed, Bergman himself
admits
as much when he says:
"Of the scores of
references consulted
relative to this problem (see references), not one adequately deals
with
the issue that this paper raises…" (p52).
No fewer than 146
references are appended
to Bergman's piece, none of them is used as an academic citation,
'authorities'
most frequently quoted are, like Ruth Benedict, persons who died
half-a-century
ago or more and, apart from the occasional anecdotal reference to
Darwin
and his contemporaries, are overwhelmingly journalists commenting upon
a scientific discipline that is not their own.
Sources
that should have
been used as a base
line for a discussion of modern evolutionary theory would have
included:
The Theory of
Evolution – J Maynard Smith
The
Selfish Gene
– Richard Dawkins
Climbing
Mount
Improbable – Richard Dawkins
The
Language
Instinct – Steven Pinker
Darwin's
Dangerous
Idea – Daniel Dennett
Evolutionary theory,
Bergman
correctly argues,
postulates that genetic copying errors ('mutations') generate variation
and that this, on very rare occasions, aids survival of modified
organisms.
The mutation as an advantage is a very rare occurrence. Bergman
seriously misrepresents this when he, so frequently, claims
"differences…would
confer…a survival advantage" (p 51). The consequential 'advantages' of
these 'variations' leads to their survival in preference to their less
fortunate 'peers'.
The paragraphs that deal
with the 'evolution'
(?) of the human brain (p 27) are a mixture of wild assertions that do
not conform with today's evolutionary theory. "The most significant
difference
between humans and animals is the brain… Intelligence is the quality
which
blesses humans with their major survival advantage…and (quoting a
journalist)
The selective pressure for better brains must have been very
intense."
I hope the reader will ponder on each of these remarks.
Firstly, Bergman appears
to equate 'intelligence'
with 'the brain'. He is, of course, entitled to this opinion, but will
find few 'colleagues' in the world of science. No less a person than
Charles
Darwin filled notebooks concerned with 'plant intelligence'. He devoted
many years to the intelligence of the climbing vine, for example. Work
in machine or 'artificial' intelligence has transformed today's world;
but we certainly need to be careful how we define ‘brains' when we
venture
into these disciplines.
If success in an
evolutionary sense is measured
in terms of survival, then both the bee and the scorpion have
'survived',
virtually unchanged for millions of years…humanity has only 'just
arrived'.
Popular folklore dismisses the dinosaurs as singularly 'unintelligent'
creatures (and this may well have been the case) but if survival is to
be the measure of evolutionary success, we have many millions of years
to go before we can claim that humans have equalled their stay on earth.
It is when he
approvingly
quotes Ruth Moore
about selective pressure for better brains that Bergman slips into
teleology,
putting a view of evolution that fits with Christian theology but
which
has nothing in common with current theories of evolution. There has
never been any 'external pressure' (supernatural or other) urging
existence
to develop 'better brains'. Rather, as Bergman earlier explained,
evolution
is the result of chance mutations, the overwhelming majority of which
have
resulted in immediate extinction, the tiny few of which have provided
the
variation from which new species have germinated.
Yet another example of
Bergman's teleological
thought comes later when he discusses 'skin colour':
"All of these qualities
have little to
do with survival during and before child-bearing years, and
consequently
cannot
be accounted for by evolution. These differences seem to exist
primarily
to increase the variety so evident in the natural world – a variety
which
not only makes our sojourn on earth more enjoyable, but also helps us
to
differentiate the scores of people alive today."
The text is reminiscent
of
a Jehovah's Witness
tract!
In the following
paragraph, Bergman moves
into 'category error', of the kind which inspired Ryle's Concept of
Mind:
"Intelligence also enables an animal to more effectively learn survival
methods and tricks from its life experiences so as to both successfully
escape and avoid possible predators in the future", he claims. This is
a 'circular argument', saying nothing. ‘Intelligence' does
nothing!
Rather, it is the acquired behaviours that we label 'intelligence'.
That
Bergman has failed to transcend 'category errors' of this kind is again
demonstrated when he talks of the 'cornerstone of evolutionary theory'
as the 'survival of the fittest' hypothesis (p 55). A similar 'circular
argument' is: 'Who survives?', the 'fittest', 'Who's the fittest'?, the
one that 'survives'!
Considerable effort has
been expended by
psychologists/biologists/statisticians (interestingly, almost all the
big
names we associate with the origins of statistical science developed
their
techniques in order to test the degree of 'innateness' of
‘intelligence'!)
into the within groups/between groups parameters. This is essential
work
with which Bergman should familiarize himself.
"Also, within each
group
would exist discernible
differences which would confer upon them a survival advantage compared
to the population which was not part of the 'better' group", he writes.
He is referring specifically to 'intelligence'.... "By this
process…would
be another group having an even higher mean intelligence" (p 28).
But this is precisely not
what happens,
nor is it argued, in this way, by evolutionary theory. In fact, it is
quite
unrelated to that theory, which is to do with 'mutations'.
Never-the-less,
a comment on 'within group' development is called for, since Bergman
raises
the question.
What actually happens in
the conditions posed
by Bergman is the phenomenon known as regression to the mean. It can be
seen in any organism that reproduces sexually and is simply the
tendency
for parents with extremes of a characteristic to produce offspring with
less extreme characteristics. Very tall parents tend to have tall
children,
but not as tall as the parents. Short parents have short children, but
not as short as they are. Precisely because intelligence is largely
inherited,
one would expect to find a regression to the mean, and that is indeed
the
case.
Regression is connected
with social mobility
and in Western societies, only a third of children retain the social
class
of their parents. Incidentally, this is very important because
regression
to the mean is something that cannot be explained by those who argue
that 'intelligence' is largely determined by environmental factors –
but I
shall
come to that, later.
To return
to the main
theme of Bergman's
argument:
'Most structural
differences which affect
the intelligence that blesses us with survival advantage and which are
genetically transmittable, even if they first developed in a single
organism,
would likely eventually spread into future generations. The net effect
is they would produce a defined group that is superior to the original
group, resulting in a new race'.
Rarely can so many woolly
and tautological
ideas have appeared in a single sentence. I ask the reader to study
this
passage carefully. 'Structural differences' are assumed and we are then
told that if they are genetically transmittable' they will spread into
future generations – even if they originated in a single organism. Is
there
some other way in which the 'mutation' might occur? Perhaps the most
serious
flaw in Bergman's argument is his implicit assumption that organisms
determine
who to mate with on the basis of 'intellectual equality'. This
assumption
would have to be made for Bergman's hypothesis to 'work out'.
But,
of course, as we all know from our everyday experience, the
body
chemistries that determine sexual lust have little to do with
intelligence!
It is quite a jump from
the differences within
the species that Darwin found on the Galapagos Islands and correctly
identified
as a source of structural evolution and the differences in
'intelligence'
that Bergman tries to equate with them.
Bergman may find some
consolation in quoting
from the discredited Burt that 'there has been no appreciable change in
man's innate constitution or in the general quality of his brain
throughout
the last 20,000 years'. If there is one field of research that has
undercut
that argument, it is the work done in teaching language to primates.
The
‘leap' in intellectual development was recognized in the early 1970s by
Premack who showed impressively that just the learning to manipulate
linguistic
symbols dramatically enhanced the more general cognitive abilities of
his
primate subjects and, of course, his work fades into insignificance
compared
with that of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and her chimp Kanzi who learned
language
by observation alone without human tuition.
Schools of psychology from
Chomsky to Pinker
may argue about the innate ability of our close relatives, but the
theories
of 'no progress' for 20,000 years belong to the dustbin of science.
Next, Bergman tells us
that empirical support
was found for 'the concept of racial breeding' by the ‘success in
breeding
cattle, dogs and other animals with certain desired characteristics'.
These
ideas were not afterthoughts', Dr Bergmnan. Rather the first chapter of
Darwin's On The Origin of Species is devoted entirely to 'Variation
Under
Domestication'.
'Politically incorrect' as
it may be, the
research evidence overwhelmingly supports the view that 'intelligence'
is largely determined by hereditary. A glance at a recent tabulation of
familial correlations for IQ (Bouchard and McGue 1981) speaks for
itself:
Identical twins reared
together .86
Identical
twins reared
apart .72
Unidentical
twins
reared together .60
Siblings
reared
together.42
Siblings
reared' apart
.24
The 'racial' evidence is
equally clear-cut.
Jerry Bergman may claim that reasons other than innate differences are
often found to account for this difference, and few scientists now
accept
the view that genetic differences can account for the level found", but
his argument is grounded on 'wishful thinking'. On the contrary, blacks
in the United States, where most research has been done, score, on
average,
about one standard deviation below whites on most tests of
intelligence.
A standard deviation is either 15 or 16 points on the scale. Nobody
disputes these findings – but many do argue about the inferences
that
can be drawn therefrom.
For example, it is
argued
that the IQ tests
are not 'culture-fair'; that they are easier for white, middle-class,
Anglo-Saxons
than for poor, unprivileged blacks. But, before leaping onto the
‘politically
correct' bandwagon, consider the following findings:
a) Blacks perform
relatively better on the
more culture-loaded (i.e. 'verbal') tests than they do on the
culture-fair
type.
b) Immigrants to the USA
from China, Formosa
and Hong Kong, knowing little or no English, and having parents of low
socioeconomic occupations, score well above whites on these
same
tests.
c) On practically all the
socioeconomic,
educational, nutritional and other health factors that sociologists
identify
as causing black-white differences in IQ and scholastic achievement,
the
native American Indian population ranks about as far below black
standards
as blacks do below those of whites. But nationwide studies have shown
that
Indians score higher on all these tests from the first to the twelfth
grade.
d) Similar findings occur
with Mexican-Americans,
who rate below blacks on socioeconomic and other environmental indices,
but score considerably higher on IQ tests, especially on the non-verbal
type.
e) Tragically, these
findings do provide
comfort for the fascist elements that linger and fester in our society,
but they will take no comfort from the equally widely established
findings,
in both the UK and the USA, that Jews score higher on these tests than
any other 'racial' grouping!
In thirty pages Bergman
has failed to support
his central argument. Contrary to his assertions, there is good
evidence
that there are considerable racial differences in intelligence as
measured
by the IQ tests that have been developed, but this does not present a
problem
for current evolutionary theory.
Bergman has not helped his
argument by confusing
Darwinian theory with teleological (religious) logic. He has ignored
almost
all of the most recent research in the area under discussion and has
failed
to appreciate that the time-scale required by evolutionary theory is of
a different dimension than the 20,000 years postulated (inaccurately)
by
the arch-scientific charlatan, Cyril Burt. To claim that ‘evolution has
stopped taking place' in the modern world is as sensible as discounting
'Big Bang' theories of the origins of the Universe on the grounds that
sunrise continues to take place at roughly the same time every morning.
Factors
Involved in Determining
the
Validity of a Worldview
A Response
to what I Perceive
as the Hidden Agenda
in Bob
Potter's Critique of
My Paper on Racism
By Jerry Bergman Ph.D.
(Investigator 64, 1999
January)
In my experience, most
critiques of creationists'
writings involve much name-calling and psychological put-downs that are
at times intermixed with some valid but narrow concerns about their
work
and conclusions. For example, some claim that creationists tend not to
do original science but largely utilize the work of evolutionists in
their
critiques of evolutionary naturalism.
One reason for this
tendency is because it
is almost impossible for creationists to gain funding to support a
project
which has implications for the creationist world view, regardless of
the
project merits. Furthermore, many of the criticisms that evolutionists
use to argue against a creation world view have already been thoroughly
answered by evolutionists themselves.
One of the best examples
of this fact is
the vestigial organ argument. Some evolutionists once claimed that a
total
of 180 organs and structures in humans were vestigial including the
appendix
and the pineal gland. Vestigial organs are structures that bad a
putative
function in our evolutionary past but no longer do in modem humans.
Medical
research has adequately confirmed that all of these 180 organs
and
structures have a clear function, although we can survive without some
of these structures (Bergman and Hone 1990). The vestigial organ
argument,
once one of the major guns in the evolutionist' arsenal, is now often
not
even mentioned in textbooks that cover evolution. If it is, usually
much
ignorance is displayed.
For this reason
creationists do not need
to do research on the function of, for example, the thymus gland
because
its function has already been adequately demonstrated. Of course, to further
elucidate
its function would make a useful contribution to science, but this
would
not add much support to the creationist worldview because the thymus
has
already been proven to be critically important in the development of
the
immune system. The same is true of almost all the other formerly 180
putative
vestigial organs.
Much creationist
research
is also not as
good as it could be because their research tends to be reviewed
only by other creationists who share the same world view and thus may
uncritically
expound ideas which are less than well thought out or even flawed. A
clear
need exists for the critics of creationism to constructively
evaluate
their work before it is published, as is common by
evolutionists.
Given this, the critique by Bob Potter shows my paper is on solid
ground.
Furthermore, in my
experience most evolutionists
tend to respond emotionally, not rationally, to creationists and are
generally
unwilling to appropriately critique their arguments. Further,
evolutionists
often respond against the person, not the person's ideas. This was also
the case with Bob Potter's response to my paper, such as when he
repeatedly
suggested I was ignorant and to remedy this I should familiarize myself
with certain works, most of which I was in fact already very familiar
with.
Most of his concerns I was also very aware of, and they tended to add
to
my brief review, not contradict it.
A common assumption by
many is that scientists
are largely rational and non-scientists are often irrational. I have
met
many professors in my academic career who were brilliant in some area
but
uncritically accepted non-scientific beliefs such as UFOs have visited
the Earth from other planets. astrology, etc. A recent study of Indian
scientists found that the vast majority – especially those occupying
high
positions in science – believe in astrology, miracles, and other
non-scientific
ideas (Bhargava 1998 p. 233).
There exist few
relationships in science
as well documented as that between smoking and major health problems
including
heart disease, lung cancer, blindness, and many others (You and Bergman
1998). Yet, I have known many otherwise intelligent professors who
smoked
– and many of them including my own dean have died at a young age of
lung
cancer, heart disease or other smoking related illnesses. When trying
to
convey to them the results of the extensive empirical research in this
area. I found most were not interested. Researchers in this area have
not
only clear epidemiological and clinical data which shows a strong
relationship
between smoking and many diseases, but they are also beginning to
understand
many of the biological and genetic mechanisms involved. The simple fact
is, if you smoke it will eventually kill you unless something else such
as a jealous lover or a drunk kills you first.
When a smoking colleague
of mine was relating
his plans to retire last week, my thought was, although he may live to
be 85, this is unlikely – the average male smoker in America dies at
age
59. According to one study lifelong smoking reduces the smoker's life
span
by 18 years. When he told me his plans, my thought was "where is your
mind – do
you really think you will beat the odds and live many years into
retirement?"
It is amazing to me how intelligent people can develop long, plausible
arguments to justify their clearly destructive behavior that will
eventually
kill them. Thus, in the end these intellectualizations are
counterproductive
and could be lethal.
The same is true with
creationism. Many evolutionists
respond emotionally and are not willing to acknowledge the many valid
arguments
of creationism but instead are anxious to trounce on creationists' weak
points (of which there are many). Although some creationists' work is
sloppy
and much is a result of the common true believerism, many evolutionists
are inflicted with a far worse case of true believerism.
The fact is, a certain
reality exists and
it behoves us to endeavor to find what that reality is and live our
lives
according to it. It does not do a driver any good and does do much harm
to firmly believe that his car brakes arc in great shape when they are
not. In the long run, it likewise does not do any good to endlessly
fashion
arguments in support of a false world view, however compelling the
arguments
may sound. My attitude is, we must try the best we can to find out what
is true, and go where the facts lead us, whether pleasant or unpleasant.
My conclusions about
origins are well thought
out, and although they may well change as I continue studying and
learning,
it is clear that much of what I have read about creationists written by
evolutionists is absolutely wrong. Few creation critics have a good
knowledge
about creationism but in contrast most creation scientists are fairly
knowledgeable
about evolution. My father was an agnostic/atheist, and I well
understand
the thinking of those who are coming from this viewpoint. My father was
very active in the humanist organization (former U.S. presidential
candidate
Walter Mondale's brother married my father and stepmother), thus I have
more than a passing experience with this worldview. Further, most all
my
friends are evolutionists, so I am consequently used to being a
minority
associating primarily with the majority. I have found some
evolutionists
can be absolutely vicious against creationists on this topic. Why they
are so nasty and angry has always intrigued me.
One concern is evolutionists
have
the power today in the West, and in Professor Johnson's words they also
have the microphone, which insures that only approved words
are
spoken therefrom. Thank God we have magazines like the Investigator
that
are willing to look at both sides!
Hopefully readers will
take this short missive
in the spirit in which it is intended. I could easily pen a 35-page
article
in response to Mr. Potter's response, but unfortunately I now have many
more pressing research commitments I must fulfil first. In short, I
don't
think he even began to respond to my concerns but talked around them,
mostly
not contradicting but adding to what I said. I at least want to note
that
controversy still exists in this area, even about some of the
conclusions
widely thought to be settled long ago which Potter assumed in his
article.
Dr. Dewdney, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of
Western Ontario, Canada, claims that:
As chapter 2 made clear,
the theory of
the intelligence quotient fails to be science. Any conclusions based on
it, such as blacks being "smarter" than whites... excuse me, whites
being
"smarter" than blacks, are automatically undermined as science…. The
storm
of controversy created by Jensen's ideas lasted well into the 1970s.
Among
all the criticisms of Jensen's theories, twas that of Richard C.
Lewontin,
a well known (Harvard] geneticist... The problem, according to
Lewontin,
was IQ itself. Besides failing to have a scientific foundation, one
cannot
escape the fact that IQ tests have been devised by whites and cannot
help
but favor, in subtle ways, white children and adults who take the
tests.
Very little cultural bias is needed to account for the small
differences
that develop between the IQ scores of blacks versus those of whites. In
fact what might be called "black IQ tests" have been devised. In these,
blacks tend to outscore whites. Enough said (1997 pp. 150-151).
Further, a recent study
by
University of
Illinois anthropologist Dr. Ambrose illustrates the concern that I
raised
in my paper which still exists among evolutionists and has not been
answered. Writing in the current Journal of Human Evolution, Dr.
Ambrose concluded humans are one family with more differences within
the
races than between the races because we historically went through a
genetic
bottleneck, causing the extinction of most or all human-family tree
branches.
As a result the wide
diversity of humans
that evolution requires which I discussed in my paper was lost and a
single
species resulted which looked like they were all descendants of a
recent
common ancestor. This bottle neck theory which sorely lacks all but
indirect
circumstantial evidence appears to be designed to explain what exists
by
evolution even though what exists is predicted and better explained by
creationism, not evolution.
References
Bergman, Jerry and George
Howe. 1990. Vestigial
Organs Are Fully Functional. Terre Haute IN: CRS Books.
Bhargava, Pushpa. 1998.
"Nonsense in Indian
Science." Nature, 395: 233-234, September.
Dewdney, A. K. 1997. Yes
We have no Neutrons.
New
York: John Wiley & Sons.
Johnson, Philip. Defeating
Darwinism by
Opening Minds. 1997. Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press.
________ 1998. Objections
Sustained. Subversive
Essays on Evolution, Law, and Culture. Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity
Press.
Potter, Bob. "Bergman,
Evolution and Race
Theory." Investigator May 1997, 54: 30-34.
You, Ming. and Bergman,
Gerald. 1998. Preclinical
and Clinical Models of Lung Cancer Chemoprevention. Hematology/Oncology
Clinics of North America, 12(5): 8 1-87, October.
CREATIVE
SCIENCE:
A
RESPONSE TO JERRY BERGMAN
John H Williams BSc (Hons)
(Investigator 66, 1999 May)
It's always interesting
dealing with creationists,
who are unfailingly creative in their 'explanations' of the
universe,
time, the fossil record; plate tectonics and human diversity.
They, like
the-non-belief
driven, vary in
their education, degree of sophistication and capacity to argue their
views,
and I would presume that Dr Jerry Bergman (Investigator No.
64)
is not the kind who would write entertaining letters to The
Advertiser
of
Charles Darwin recanting on his death-bed (thereby apparently
invalidating
evolutionary theory), or two-by-twos "hibernating" (thus not needing to
be fed) during Noah's watery odyssey in 2345 BCE.
However, I am
dismissively
contemptuous,
without being overly "emotional" of creationism and scientific
creationism
when the level of argument is based on the miraculous (‘god of the
gaps'),
and when ignorance (why read when a literal acceptance of The Bible is
all that is needed?) is profound. Worse, the behaviour of leading
creationists
in pushing their agenda, has been reprehensible, ‘the end justifies the
means', and very unscientific.
I'm sure that Jerry
would
want to distance
himself from the weird writings of a creationist icon like Duane Gish (Evolution:
The Fossils Say No 1986), whose work has been thoroughly
discredited,
for example; in debating Geology Professor Ian Plimer, or from the
ingenious
but completely false ‘calculations' of Australian Barry Setterfield who
'showed' that there's been "speed of light decay", hence ‘explaining'
why
such an awful lot has happened in the last 6000 years or so; or from
the
silly but superficially plausible articles in the glossy Ex
NihiloTechnical
Journal.
One Australian academic
(Michael Archer),
said on having spent two years reading "everything available in
creationist literature", he "risked a self-inflicted frontal lobotomy"!
I wonder, does Jerry
believe that evolution
is the work of the devil, and that choosing the devil means going to
hell
(we'd first have to debate the existence of the devil and hell), and
that
a belief in evolution and a belief in god are incompatible? From the
tone
of his article I would think that he's unlikely to be dogmatic about
two
supposed beings and one supposed place, since there's not one iota of
evidence
to support their existence.
I assume he'd be
embarrassed by theology
masquerading as wonky science since he's apparently rational, well-read
and even-handed in his approach. Yet he has difficulty coming to terms
with the immense ill-feeling generated by creationists (has he really
no
idea why?); the lack of funding for creationist research and why
evolutionary
ideas "hold the power and "the microphone" in our culture.
If Jerry, who comes over
as someone who appears
to have read everything worth reading, should browse through The Creation
Science Controversy, by Brian Price he'll discover why so
many
creationists are reviled by those "emotional" evolutionists. His
'colleagues'
are inclined to lie, cook the figures, say they'll withdraw discredited
ideas then don't, practice fraud and deception and promulgate false
scientific
ideas. Some indoctrinate young minds, force-feeding medieval nonsense,
backed up with the threat of damnation/hell-fire for those who resist.
So far I'm prepared to respect Jerry's position because he didn't
submit
a "35 page article" in response to Bob Potter's critique (thanks!). His
comments were mostly reasonable and sane, although his final sentence,
"…even though what exists is predicted and better explained by
creationism,
not evolution", was ominously sweeping.
I have some statistical
quibbles about Jerry's
comments on his tobacco-smoking colleague, as well as concerns about
his
views on vestigialism, but won't comment until I've checked the
literature,
especially the work of Paul Davies, Stephen Jay Gould and critics of
conventional
neo-Darwinian theory, such as Richard Milton (The Facts of
Life:Shattering
the Myth of Darwinism).
Some creationists have
made valid criticisms
too, while some never miss an opportunity to indulge in the amusing
'sport'
of knocking Darwinism, just as scientists like to send up 'Arkeology',
and films showing fossils of dinosaur and human footprints together.
Good scientists ought to
question the evidence
to see how well it matches the theory and many do, even the ones Jerry
may think behave irrationally with regard to their biochemical
addictions.
The Darwinian paradigm is widely accepted but clearly has problem
areas.
I'm open to a creationists' criticism of it, as long as god isn't
invoked
to 'explain' the 'gaps' and it's clear his/her religious beliefs are
not
involved.
I've spent several years
studying geology,
hammering and chipping away in the geological playground that is Wales
(Cambrian means Wales and the Silurian and Ordovician periods were
named
from ancient, non-mythical, Welsh tribes). I spent almost as much time
in quarries as I did in the classroom in my late teens, and I have a
distinct
practical ‘feel' for things paleontological. I also studied Zoology for
A-level and at university, so I don't take kindly to scientific
illiterates
who dismiss fossils as "scratchings" (palaeograffiti?).
How can someone who's
dug
up thousands of
fossils covering half a billion years over nine geological periods
convince
the scientifically challenged who swallow wholesale the mindless pap
put
out by Duane Gish et al, and who will not see beyond their beliefs?
"Ah, those grooves in this (glacier-planed and-striated) surface (at
Black
Rock, Hallett Cove, 270 million years old) can't be so, because
everything
is less than 6000 years old and when you come back to my place I'll
show
you some books which will prove me right": It once happened to me and
it
shocked me to the core, since the speaker was a university-educated
former
lawyer. I challenge Jerry, or anyone else, to demonstrate, using
verifiable
evidence, that this person was right.
To summarise my
position:
I don't believe
in any supernatural forces. I view our species as one of 10 million or
so. We live, then cease to be, en route thinking up an amazing variety
of beliefs to help 'explain' what is and what was. A healthy skepticism
is de rigeur when dealing with ideas for which there is no body of substantiated
evidence. Although the mechanisms of evolutionary processes are not
known
precisely, it does not invalidate evolution. It is not hard to take the
words of respected scientists on evolution and quote them out of
context
to bolster creationist agenda.
I agree with the
near-unanimous opinion of
72 US Nobel Prize winners, The US National Academy of Science and the
Australian
Academy of Science, that creation science is "utter nonsense". There
are
some creationists with whom one can have an informed and intelligent
debate;
it's futile to debate evolutionary ideas with fundamentalists,
literalists
and believers in the supernatural.
Creation science has,
since about I980, infiltrated
classrooms in some Australian states, courtesy of the Christian Science
Foundation Ltd, which is supported by the Institute for Creation
Research
in California. These organisations are slick, well funded and effective
in achieving their goals, so much so that at one time approximately 20%
of first-year undergraduates entering the universities of Newcastle and
New South Wales believed the universe was created 6000 years ago.
I'll conclude with
quotations from academics
at these universities:
Creationism…thrives
on lies, false logic,
misquotes, distortions, double standards… is unscientific, is
un-Christian,
is intolerant, is…political,…is against truth and is unnecessary. It
is analogous to a fundamentalist…Muslim flat earth society forcing its
views onto our education system.
Professor Ian Plimer,
Head of Geology, Newcastle
University
To teach what
"scientific" creationists
want taught will mean telling students…that...all dinosaurs, lions,
snakes
and venus fly traps ate plants until Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden
(prior to which time there was no death);…that…continental drift took
place
in the last 4,000 years; that dinosaurs survived the flood…and became
the
legendary fire-breathing dragons…in story books; that when the flood
receded
3999 years ago, all kinds of organisms landed on a volcano and walked
(slithered
or whatever) from there to every continent without stopping along the
way
in any inappropriate places; that the vast majority of the fossil
record
formed in one year…
Professor Michael
Archer, University of
New South Wales
Source: The creation
Science Controversy
(ibid) pp 6-7
REFERENCES
Alderman A. R. Southern
Aspect, An Introductory
View of SA Geology. The SA Museum, Adelaide 1973
Bergman, Jerry: Factors
Involved in Determining
the Validity of a Worldview, The Investigator 64:48-52, January
1999
Miiton, R The Facts of
Life: Shattering
The Myth Darwinism. Fourth Estate. London 1992
Price, Barry. The
Creation Science Controversy.
Millennium Books, 1990
Gish D. T. Evolution?
The Fossils Say
No (San Diego Creation-Life). 1986
Setterfield, B. "Carbon-14
Dating, Tree-Ring
Dating and Speed of Light Decay", Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol
2, pp. 169-188
WAITING
FOR GODOT/BERGMAN
Bob Potter
(Investigator 66, 1999 May)
I'm sure regular readers
of the Investigator
magazine
will understand my disappointment that Jerry Bergman "unfortunately
(has)
many more pressing research commitments" which still prevent him from
penning
"a 35-page article" answering my critique of his 'Paper on Racism' –
even
though a proper reply of that length(!) would, he says, he an "easy"
thing
for him to do.
I have obviously been
mistaken in believing
that my critique raised important points, each of which I had spelled
out
and documented in considerable detail. But rather than face this "easy"
task, Bergman chooses to search for a "hidden agenda"; this he
concludes
is a covert attack upon "creationism".
I must admit to being
quite stunned by this
absurd claim. I have never found it necessary to keep my
agendas 'hidden' – nor have I ever felt inclined to 'attack'
creationism. If Bergman,
or anybody else, chooses to believe in a 'creator', good luck to him.
It's
not the hypothesis I'd choose – but wouldn't it be a boring world if we
all thought the same?
Having 'ducked the issue'
in this neat way,
Bergman proceeds to launch into the 'vestigial organ argument'. This
question,
proposed, he says, by old-fashioned evolutionists, has now been
"demolished"
– and as evidence supporting his claim, he refers us to a powerful
authority;
himself (1990)!!
However, as no less a
person than Charles
Darwin had much to say about rudimentary and vestigial matters. We can
only hope that the 'so busy' Bergman will eventually find the time to
share
his expertise on this topic with the readers of Investigator magazine
— hopefully, in the form of an article which will explain how "medical
research has adequately confirmed" the functions of the humanoid 'third
eyelid', the 'shell of the ear', the ‘toenails and fingernails' and so
on.
I was so pleased to learn
that Bergman is
familiar with the authorities I suggested – but I still do not
understand
why he chooses, therefore not to use them. Instead, he cites no less
than
146 references none of whom were academics in the subject area; rather
they are, almost exclusively, journalists.
To an ordinary individual
such as myself,
this seems a very strange way for an academic with Bergman's impressive
qualifications to go about his business! And I continue to he amazed.
In
his most recent little note (Investigator 6) he continues in
like
fashion, this time citing a mathematics professor (!) who tells us that
the differences in IQ between American whites and blacks are "small" –
while still endorsing that the difference is one standard deviation. In
statistical terms this is a very large difference,
representing
34% of the scores!
Bergman adds to this
confusion by introducing
additional anecdotal evidence about his colleagues who smoke and
develop
"long plausible arguments to justify their self-destructive behaviour".
Personally, I never met a smoker who didn't accept the evidence; they
just
hoped that they, as an individual, would escape the consequences of
their
habit. But what on earth has all this to do with Bergman's 'Paper on
Racism'?
Of course, I cannot
compete with Jerry Bergman's
numerous PhDs (I only managed to achieve one of them), nor with his
scores
of other accredited qualifications. Perhaps the disparity between us,
in
this respect, is explained in terms of finance?! For example, whereas
Bergman
is a member of the 'Academy of Sciences', I chose not to send
the
requested $42, when my unsolicited 'accreditation' duly arrived. So I
never
did get the offered 'embossed', 'frameable' certificate, with the
advertised
pink ribbon attached!
These remarks are not
intended to denigrate
American academia. Certainly in disciplines that interest me
the
most, their publications are, in my view, superior to their English
equivalents.
But, alongside this, in the United States, especially now in
conjunction
with the widespread 'dumbing down' process, degrees and qualifications
are sold like cornflakes in supermarkets.
All the more reason,
therefore, that the
topics raised in my critique should be addressed in an academic
fashion
– and not as an exercise in 'name collecting', or anecdotal tales of
fellow
professors (in America, any teacher/lecturer in an academic institution
becomes a 'professor'!). An Investigator article hardly
warrants
147 references, even if they were proper academic references.
Hopefully, Jerry Bergman
will find time to
let us have his "conclusions about origins". We know they are "well
thought
out", because he has told us so. Share them with us, Jerry – don't
waste
time looking for and inventing 'hidden agendas'.
https://ed5015.tripod.com/