Hybridity and Darwin

Conventional wisdom tends to be that Charles Darwin was a clearsighted scientist who overcame the superstitious prejudices of Fundamentalist Creationists. But there were some pretty good reasons why many Christians disliked Darwin and his theories, and history has shown that some bad things have come from Darwinism. But more on that later.

In this post I gave some history of hybridity and European approaches to the idea of human race and how that relates to the definition species.

The central issue between polygenists, who argued that human races were in fact different species with different origins and monogenists, who argued that human races were all a single species with a single origin, became the definition of species. The traditional definition of a species was a group that produced fertile offspring.

Charles Darwin changed that, and one of the results of his theories was to eventually end the polgenist/monogenist debate. Darwin argued that the definition of species was a permiable and mutable. He gave examples of plants and animals traditionally classified as different species which nevertheless produced fertile offspring. It is crucial to Darwin's theory that animals can in fact, through generations, produce a new species. Darwin argued that the polygenist/monogenist argument was insoluble, but essentially irrelevant, since whether different ethnic human groups were classified as species or varieties or races, there was no essential difference between them.

Darwin did, however, beleive that eventually the "lower" forms of man would become extinct, saying that "when civilised nations come into contact wiht barbarians the struggle is short".

Through all this time, the strongest opponant to a polygenist theory of human origins was a Biblical one, the Biblical account of the creation of man (ie Adam and Eve) was (and is) clearly monogenist, and in undermining a Biblical account of creation, Darwinism also undermined a thoery of human racial and ethnic differences that asserted a single origin of human races.

After Darwin, many people chose one of two positions to support their racism: either Darwin's own position that humans shared a common ancestor, and whites were the furthest evolved, while blacks were least removed from apes, or the position that despite their ability to produce fertile offspring this was not sufficient to prove a specific unity (and there was no particular reason under Darwinism why all human being should necessarily gave a common ancestry). Darwin's theories lent scientific credibilty to both of these perspectives.

Darwin did effectively end the debate of poly/monogenists, but only by sidestepping the issue. Eugenics and Nazi race policies were a direct result of Darwinism, and a logical extension of his ideas.

A literal Biblical worldview, carried out with integrity to its completion leaves no room for racism, while Darwinism carried out with integrity to its completion necessitates an idea of racial superiority, as well as all the other evils of eugenics.