The Human Question

When Sam Harris debated Bill Craig, he ignored BC's arguments and talked on and on about the Old Testament. A theist could do something similar in a debate... just point to the racist things that Charles Darwin said in the Descent of Man and ask on what basis one would disavow CD.

Darwin he believes that different races have different levels of intellectual ability and that for this reason he expects the better adapted races to replace others. He repeatedly contrasts the "civilized" with the "savage" races, and suggests that the former are more evolved. For example, he points out that those from the African continent have a better developed sense of smell and that this characteristic is even more robust in dogs and chimps. More strikingly, he quotes an expert who compares the jaws of various races, and finds that the shorter jaw and late developed molars in Europeans (in comparison with those of Africans) are evidence that they have been less needed as the former have been eating cooked food longer. He also approvingly quotes at length another scientists who contrasts the impulsive Irish with the frugal Scot, noting with regret how the former are more likely to reproduce. In other words, Darwin is a racist... and a Victorian bigot. W...

Benjamin Wiker (author of The Darwin Myth ) points out (while being interviewed by Ian Maxfield for the Podcast "The Catholic Laboratory") that Darwin's states in his Descent of Man that humanity consists of different races and (adds approvingly) that certain races will eventually wipe out other races (I may have overstated Wiker's own paraphrase). This is interesting because , first of all, Dawkins fails to mention this in The Greatest Show , as does Pinker in The Blank Slate. The latter criticizes the feminist rejection of evolutionary psychology, saying that they commit the (so-called) naturalistic fallacy (roughly, basing ought on is), and recommends both that we embrace both evo/psych and promote liberal social and political norms . But if we reject the basing of morals on insights into the way our emotions/values have developed, then what would be the basis upon which we would justify our notions of equality and the like? If Pinker encountered a very well...