"Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy"

[silverweb]

A very interesting take on what may really underly the insistence of evangelicals on opposing the teaching of evolution in public schools:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denial-of-evolution-is-a-form-of-white-supremacy/

[enough]

1. Many years ago a white Christian fundamentalist said to me (also white):

“Well, YOU may be descended from an ape, but I’m not.”

[Buckeye_Democrat]

5. Two coworkers from India, a married couple, argued...

... with me that THEIR ancestors never lived in Africa, but maybe mine did if that's what I insisted.

Coincidentally, they were both darker-skinned than the darkest African Americans at that company. Not that skin color really means jack-squat in the grand scheme of genetics, since there's more genetic diversity within Africa than among every other human on the planet regardless of some variation in the few genes that affect pigmentation.

[erronis]

12. You are absolutely right about the genetics and pigmentation. But all they want is some easy way to

identify "others".

Skin color, language, surname, height, religion, etc. Nothing really built-in, just easily identifiable.

The amazing thing about all these aryan lovers, is that most of their heroes weren't pure aryans (if anyone is.)

[Buckeye_Democrat]

19. When they were getting so upset, I just dropped it.

I walked away and thought, "Just more people clinging to their old myths."

It's a common disappointment for me, dealing with so many people who don't really want to learn more about the world. Their curiosity only goes so far, especially if new knowledge doesn't confirm their old perceptions of being "special" in various ways.

Heck, people in the past struggled to accept that the Earth wasn't in the special location at the center of the universe.

I view most religious people similarly, with their notions that a God is basically at their beck and call by prayers and rituals.

The Aryan race stuff was especially bizarre! Heinrich Himmler was desperate to prove it was true, the deluded maniac.

[raccoon]

38. Thanks for posting that! Nt

[lunatica]

53. All people outside of Africa have Neanderthal DNA

Each may only have 2% or 3% but all together Neanderthal DNA adds up to 50% if you take all the people on the planet.

I’ve been watching a lot of shows about the Neanderthals. They died out but there is evidence that there was mixture with Homo Sapiens simply by looking at our DNA. They lived at the end of the last ice age quite successfully, and they moved through the Near East and India and China.

[malaise]

41. Yep - same crap everywhere

I do laugh at the ignorance that abounds

[roamer65]

13. "No, you are descended from a jackal."

I used that once.

Winds them right up.

[Mr.Bill]

57. Ignorance on his part.

A nthropology doesn't claim we are descended from apes. Rather the apes and us have a common ancestor.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. Maybe now, for some people.

The opposition started out as outrage over the idea that humans could be related to other animals, though, since "God" supposedly created people as a special case.

The origin of all humanity from dark-skinned humans in Africa wasn't understood by science until later.

I saw some Native Americans arguing with a geneticist years ago that they originated in America, with no ancestral humans from elsewhere. Like many people around the world, they preferred their myths to evidence.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. It seems as though any number of Native American groups make that claim.

It's frustrating. And makes it very hard to respect any other claims they make when that one is firmly grounded in ignorance.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. The geneticist politely dropped the subject...

... with them, as I recall.

I can't even remember which science program I was watching. Maybe a PBS program or NatGeo, since I think the geneticist was Spencer Wells:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Wells

[wnylib]

51. "Any number of Native American groups"

makes me wonder if you recognize that there are individual variations within groups.

But, it's good to see that you recognize that Native Americans are like people anywhere. Like any other people, some Native Americans will reject DNA, science, and evolution based on feelings more than facts as much as any Bible Belt evangelicals in Appalachia. Others will accept science and even have careers in it.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

54. Oh, I do know there are various Native American groups.

And I also recognize that all too many of them reject DNA, science, evolution and persist on basing beliefs based on their version of "facts" or "beliefs". Honestly, I have no patience with rejection of actual science. Native Americans don't get any kind of special dispensation based on being Native American. No, they don't. Things like DNA, science, and evolution still matter. They don't get to claim some kind of special dispensation based on their ancestry.

If you don't accept science, well fuck you.

[wnylib]

58. Of course they don't get

"special dispensation" (a curiously judgmental Euro-Christian term in this context) for anything. That would be as ridiculous and racist as lumping all of "them" together, as if all Native societies and individuals, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego fit into a stereotype of one culture, let alone one religious perspective, and one mindset regarding science.

There are thousands (millions?) of people of white European descent who hold simplistic, literal beliefs about their cultural history and religions. Yet noone would lump all the people of all the nations on the entire European continent plus their descendents in Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and enclaves of Asia and Africa into one group regarding religious literalism and rejection of science. It would be grossly inaccurate and ill-informed to do so. Very lacking in logic and critical reasoning.

So it is with Native Americans, a diversity of cultures, religious views, economics, educational opportunities, and relationships with non-Native Americans. Religions among them vary, from priestly to experiential religions focused on social traditions and not on ideological beliefs. There is a difference between folklore and sacred beliefs in many Native societies. There is simplistic, literal thinking and superstition as well as abstract reasoning and metaphorical stories expressing philosophical views of life. There are some frequently shared themes and among some Native societies as well as great differences between them.

Usually, when Native people are resistant to anthropologists and archaeologists regarding studies of their cultures and physical remains, it is more related to their negative experiences of how those studies have been used against them than to science itself, not to mention a history of rather ghoulish grave robbing (recent graves, not ancient ones) by "scientists." But there is often also a cultural tradition of showing respect for ancestors, similar to what exists in eastern Asia, although Native American ancestors arrived in the Americas long before those traditions developed in Asia.

For more information on Native Americans and science, try Wikipedia's category called "Native American Scientists" It identifies the specialties of 29 noted scientists in their fields, from a variety of Native societies. The personal section on them identifies their tribal identities. There are many others who have not received their degree of notice, working in the physical and social sciences.

[cab67]

21. African origins aren't as new as many think.

Darwin himself argued that human roots are to be found in Africa, where our closest living relatives (chimps and gorillas) can be found. He wasn't the only one who thought that way.

It's true that this wasn't the only perception. In fact, it might not have even been the majority perception. But from the late 19th century, African origins had always been considered, if not fully adopted.

Failure to accept it probably does reflect racism. The American-Asiatic Expeditions to the Gobi in the 1920's are famous for having discovered the first nests of dinosaur eggs and some animals we now see as iconic, including Velociraptor. But for some who promoted or even directed the expeditions were really trying to trace human origins, which they thought were in Asia rather than Africa. But even here, its racist overtones are uneven; some of these people were hard-core white supremacists, but others (e.g. William Diller Matthew) thought all modern mammal groups arose in Asia, and that humans - being a mammal group - would logically be one of them. I don't think people like W.D. Matthew expected to find what we would now call hominins (humans and such), but rather primates along their stem lineage - so I don't know how hostile they'd have been to the concept of these purported Asian ancestors dispersing to Africa, becoming more human, and then infesting the rest of the planet.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

23. Darwin was definitely a very bright "big picture" guy.

There wasn't consensus about it, though, even among past people who had enough humility to seek truth over biased ideas that would make them feel more special or superior to others.

Thanks for your reply, by the way!

[cab67]

25. This last point has been central to ongoing legal disputes.

Anthropology has a long history of what can best be described as grave robbing, but modern anthropologists are aware of this and do whatever they can to avoid it.

The story of Kinnewick Man is a long one, and there are all kinds of books and such documenting it. My ex encountered a similar situation with "Leanne," the remains of a woman dating back many thousands of years from near the town of Leander, Texas. She (my ex) was actually studying the other mammals from the site and wasn't involved with the human material at all, but she still had to deal with the possibility that descendents of the tribes that lived in the area at the time of European contact might want to re-bury the material as quickly as possible.

Native American groups have been highly mobile since they first showed up in the Americas. The same is true, by the way, of European groups; consider that modern England is comprised of the descendents of Norse, Germanic, and Norman-French settlers who replaced the Celtic-speaking Britons, who themselves replaced earlier people during the Iron Age. So it would be hazardous to conclude that remains found in land occupied by one Native American community 500 years ago belonged to that group and not some other that later moved on.

We have yet to find the proper balance between conducting scientific research on ancient remains and fully respecting the beliefs of indigenous communities.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

30. Yeah, dealing with long-held beliefs in a respectful way...

... is a delicate task for anthropologists that I've seen several times in science documentaries.

I've never worked in that field myself, but I've been curious about a wide range of scientific endeavors for many years.

My own Y-DNA indicates a "J2" origin from around the Middle East long ago, centered around Lebanon. That was after their origin within Africa, of course.

So I was curious when National Geographic attempted to identify commonality among the Y-DNA of ancient Phoenicians.

It turned out that my SNP's and STR's exactly matched their statistical best fit for ancient Phoenicians, by the way, not that it's anything definite given the statistical nature of it -- i.e., it doesn't mean my particular ancient paternal ancestors partook in long sea voyages or anything.

With my ancestors living so long in NW Europe, I certainly don't look Middle Eastern at all.

Anyway, those National Geographic researchers likewise had to deal with several closed-minded people along the way.

[wnylib]

28. I agree that the original objection to evolution

for most people was religious, long before DNA studies and the Out of Africa origins of human beings was known. People literally believed that human beings (and all other beings) were created separately by a divine creator. To suggest otherwise was blasphemy. Darwin's wife was upset by the conflict between religion and evolution when he began developing his ideas.

When I was in 7th grade, having gone to Sunday School and church all my life, I objected to evolution when it was brought up in school and several of my peers did, too. But by the time I was in high school and understood DNA from biology classes, I had no problem with understanding and accepting evolution. By high school, teens are developing more mature logical reasoning.

Regarding Native Americans, evolution, and origins, I haven't noticed that they are that much different than people of other ethnic, cultural, and/or racial groups regarding evolution. Some oppose evolution on religious grounds. Some don't. Most Native religions are experientially based rather than ideologically. There are Native people in the sciences - medicine, botany, biology - who have no problem with evolutionary science.

As with most groups of human beings, there just isn't any one size fits all description for Native Americans.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

32. Oh, I agree!

I was just trying to share an anti-evolution anecdote that didn't involve white people from Europe in that reply.

There's curious and open-minded people all over the Earth, including many Native Americans.

[Chainfire]

3. Without their religion and their bibles these folks have nothing but fear.

Evolution flies in the face of their belief systems and if it is correct, they are in big trouble.

It is my humble opinion that the reason is a fear of death that makes them put their logic on hold. Some people just can't accept the fact that one day they will no longer exist; so they grasp at immortality through religion. My thoughts on mortality follow Mark Twain's, who said, "I was dead for millions of years before I was alive and seem to have suffered no ill effects from it."


Once a person has accepted the story that there is an immortal, all powerful, being, calling all of the shots in the universe, then they are subject to believe almost anything if it comes from a a white guy holding a bible. Thus the mega church business.

[erronis]

14. Well put. They ostensibly deny death but know it will obliterate them totally.

Just like everyone else.

[malaise]

43. Great post

Remember now they never die - they just fly up in the sky for milk and honey or 72 virgins.

[Hortensis]

7. And if evolution deniers were among the 84-91% of humans who are NOT white?

Would they indicate "white supremacy"? Or might religion or some other cultural traits have something to do with it.

To put those figures another way, only @11-16% of all humans are white, depending on how they define it. And the human race has been aware of the theory of evolution for a long time now.

Btw, Americans are something like 4+% of the world's population, white Americans something like 3+%.

[LifeLongDemocratic]

8. But...

Does that mean we can't blame white people for a bad stuff that happens in the world? It seems like all the bad stuff that happens in non-white societies always have a link to a white imperialist society.

[Hortensis]

10. Oh, not at ALL! This is the post-truth world. My guess is that

that title equating denial of evolution specifically with white supremacy delusions (American only of course!) was written by editors to generate clicks and quotes. Since it is SA, the agitprop at the top was immediately corrected for those who read even a few words further.

Not that there's anything the slightest bit new about racist denial of evolution, by whoever, wherever it's indulged. Lol, modern genetics is causing great anxiety, and rage, among those who imagined notions of racial supremacy -- and of racial distinctions -- could be proven genetically. Instead of being obliterated.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. The article is more or less about the USA, and mainly American education

since that's the specialty of the writer.

Here's the meat of it:

I want to unmask the lie that evolution denial is about religion and recognize that at its core, it is a form of white supremacy that perpetuates segregation and violence against Black bodies. Under the guise of “religious freedom,” the legalistic wing of creationists loudly insists that their point of view deserves equal time in the classroom. Science education in the U.S. is constantly on the defensive against antievolution activists who want biblical stories to be taught as fact. In fact, the first wave of legal fights against evolution was supported by the Klan in the 1920s. Ever since then, entrenched racism and the ban on teaching evolution in the schools have gone hand in hand. In his piece, What We Get Wrong About the Evolution Debate, Adam Shapiro argues that “the history of American controversies over evolution has long been entangled with the history of American educational racism.”

At the heart of white evangelical creationism is the mythology of an unbroken white lineage that stretches back to a light-skinned Adam and Eve. In literal interpretations of the Christian Bible, white skin was created in God's image. Dark skin has a different, more problematic origin. As the biblical story goes, the curse or mark of Cain for killing his brother was a darkening of his descendants' skin. Historically, many congregations in the U.S. pointed to this story of Cain as evidence that Black skin was created as a punishment.

The fantasy of a continuous line of white descendants segregates white heritage from Black bodies. In the real world, this mythology translates into lethal effects on people who are Black. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible are part of the “fake news” epidemic that feeds the racial divide in our country.

For too long, a vocal minority of creationists has hijacked children’s education, media and book publishing. Statistics on creationist beliefs in the US vary. Depending on the poll, up to 40 percent of percent of adults believe that humans have always existed in their present form (i.e., they believe in an unbroken human lineage stretching back to Adam and Eve).

But the USA is an outlier among developed countries for denial of evolution - see https://ncse.ngo/polling-creationism-and-evolution-around-world and https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Mun_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17 (which has a couple of graphs for the poll the first link refers to). It's worth asking what is the specific American reason for evolution denial.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

39. Poor science education is a big part of it.

I've had many coworkers over the years who used to shock me over their lack of knowledge about science, within any field of it.

Especially among the coworkers who attended rural public schools, from my observations. It honestly made me wonder if their schools offered any science courses at all!

They all knew about the Bible, though, to varying degrees.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

55. Far too often the biology teacher in a given high school

is also known as "coach". That's the problem.

Too many schools don't hire teachers for the specific courses they'll be teaching, but hire them for something else and then say something like, "Oh, by the way. You're going to need to teach biology." Or history, which is the other field often left to non history teachers.

When I was taking 10th grade history, about half way through the semester the teacher said that Mary Tudor left England and went to France to free persecution. I knew that absolutely was not true, and challenged him. He was astonished, but respected me enough to say he'd check on that. A few days later he acknowledged that I was right. I'm sure most reading this don't give a flying fuck about Mary Tudor, but my point is that as the age of 15 I honestly should not have known more history than my teacher. But I did. That was scary and unsettling. Fortunately, after that semester I was switched to a different history class. That teacher liked to give pop quizzes, which I was good at. A few weeks into the semester he told the class that [Poindexter Oglethorpe] was not included in the class average. Which made all of my classmates much more relieved, as I was doing enormously better than anyone else in the class.

Yeah, I was one of those.

[Dial H For Hero]

60. Reminds me of my teacher in 6th grade.

She made mistake after mistake when discussing science with the class, and I’d corrected her numerous times. Even at that age, I was really into the classics of science fiction (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke), and it soon became apparent that I knew considerably more than she concerning astronomy, geology, and physics.

It all came to a head after she started explaining to the class how the Apollo astronauts traveled at an eighth of the speed of light when they went to the Moon. It seems she thought the speed of light was 186,000 miles per was hour. After politely correct correcting her, she told me that I wasn’t to contradict her in the future.

My mother spoke to her at a parent teacher conference shortly thereafter, and she told my mom that I was showing her disrespect by correcting her. My mother simply asked if I was right and she was wrong in each case. When she said “yes”, mom told her that perhaps I should be in a class where the teacher actually knew what they were talking about. Not long after that, I had a new teacher.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

61. Impressive! (And disappointing about the teachers.)

I never knew more about the subject matters than the teachers, although I'd correct them sometimes and they'd thank me for spotting their occasional errors.

My teachers from junior high school and up seemed to be pretty sharp. The teachers at my elementary school, not so much! There was a 1st grade teacher who confiscated some New Zealand coins from me during recess, saying it was punishment for me "lying" to other kids about them. She declared they were fake coins, which I could have back at the end of the school year. I replied that they were coins from another country, not the USA. She repeated that they were fake!


There was also an elementary school teacher who told us that the sky was blue (after a student asked about it) because it was reflecting the bluish water covering most of the Earth. That answer didn't make sense to me at all! Yet I kept my mouth shut while never forgetting her confident answer.

Then I asked that question in junior high school, and the science teacher correctly explained that our particular atmosphere scatters blue wavelengths from sunlight in all directions, so the blue areas away from the Sun were just the bluish parts of the same sunlight finally scattered downward toward the planet's surface and our eyes. Now that answer fit with my various observations, from different times of the day and night. And I later confirmed that's the correct explanation, after the elementary school teacher had made me a little less trusting of teacher explanations in general.

Oh! My high school's football coach "taught" some kind of quarter-long specialized history class, and he indeed sucked! I never saw so many films for any other class! Coach would mostly lean back in a chair and take naps while they played.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

15. It's because of the technological advantage...

... that Europeans enjoyed after the printing press was invented and churned out books, and the later scientific and industrial revolutions there.

Toss in several psychopaths using those advantages to subjugate others around the world, and there's terrible outcomes.

If Arabic writing had been easier to mass-produce long ago, instead of effectively requiring writing by hand due to the more cursive nature of it, they might have more easily spread knowledge over the centuries with each other and become the most advanced. As Isaac Newton credited former book authors, he was "standing on the shoulders of giants". Then maybe some people from Arabia would've been the widespread subjugators instead?

Even today, we have people who'd have no clue how to create nuclear weapons themselves in control of them. So the expansion of knowledge and technology could still be used by psychopaths to cause destruction and misery.

[misanthrope]

9. Meh, essentially it is just irrationality.

It stems from superstition.

[roamer65]

11. Of course it is.

They cannot handle the fact that we all came from a common African ancestor.

[Duppers]

17. Bingo!!

And "Jesus wasn't a Jew" either.

[ShazzieB]

44. LOL!

I remember having a conversation with my mom about this years ago. I was a teenager, I think, just old enough to start questioning some of the things I'd been taught and begin to figure certain things out for myself. I can't remember how it came up, but I shared something I'd just figured out with my mom. It went something like this:

Me: Jesus was a Jew.

Mom: No, he wasn't. He was a Hebrew!

Me:

It kinda ended there, because I was still young enough that telling my mom flat out "Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong" was not really a viable option.

[TimeToGo]

16. I mean . . .

White supremacy is a definite, definite bad. But not everything bad is white supremacy.

I often despair at the lack of nuance in our world today.

[wnylib]

45. +1000

[D23MIURG23]

18. I've met AA creationists, and it's hard for me to count them "white supremacist".

There are also explicitly racist groups who embrace evolution (or a misunderstood version of it) that argue that white people are "more evolved" than other races.

IMO this is just a bad argument. White supremacy is compatible with either view point because it's independent of them. You can try to press most scientific (or anti-scientific) stances into the service of any ideology you want.

[wnylib]

46. Good points. Totally agree.

[cab67]

20. not sure I buy it.

I teach evolution in my classes. Depending on the class, I also include substantial information on the history of the theory and opposition to it.

From the beginning, the central point of opposition has been the perception that it relegates humans to a status no different from other animals. I can see how this would take on racial overtones in many circles, I don't think that's been at the core - or if it has, it's not been so consistently or universally.

One of the most vocal early opponents of Darwin was Bishop Wilberforce, who famously debated the subject with T.H. Huxley. But Wilberforce was also an ardent abolitionist who penned the hymn "Amazing Grace." It also faced early opposition from scientists who weren't ready to see humans as anything less than the image of God, and some of them were very progressive on many other issues, including race.

Simultaneously, many (though clearly not all) early evolutionists held appallingly racist beliefs. Alfred Russell Wallace, who independently discovered natural selection and is seen as the founder of the field of biogeography, was one of them.

Moreover, African-American evangelical churches tend to be just as rigorously opposed to evolution as their white counterparts.

I won't deny that race is involved, but given the complex history of the debate - both as it existed in the past and as it exists now - I wouldn't claim that it's the most important factor.

[wnylib]

47. Thank you for a clear, fact-based post.

[onetexan]

22. Well of course, we all come from mitochondrial Eve in Africa

Who is a Black woman. Way too much science for them to handle

[Buckeye_Democrat]

27. As a man, I'm offended!

Paternal (Y-DNA) migration maps indicate the same, though.


Like the maternal (mtDNA) migration maps.

[erronis]

52. Way back then there wasn't a distinction as Black or Caucasian or Oriental

Naturally.

But naturally, there was tribalism, racism, sexism, etc. These are part of our species and probably part of most living organisms.

[LiberatedUSA]

24. If we go by denial of evolution is white supremacy...

...then that means any religion which denies evolution is racist, as well as anyone who follows and believes in that religion as far as the denying the evolution is concerned.

[wnylib]

48. And that would be a myth, as unrelated

to logical reality as any religious myth.

[Harker]

26. Try mentioning the fossil record...

and you might be told that god put that there to test people's faith.

No argument will convince someone who is sure that they know the truth.

[Loki Liesmith]

29. Lol not every bad thing is white supremacy

Give people a hammer and somehow everything becomes a nail.

[LanternWaste]

36. I imagine the corollary is true as well...

as there seems a demographic who denies racism in all things.

Bit of a monkey-wrench on this one.

[cate94]

31. I did a DNA test.

Initially, they couldn’t really tell if my nearest ancestors came from England or Ireland. Which was pretty ironic given my ancestors were considered significantly below their English overlords.

Further, my matrilineal line starts in Africa, just like you would expect. I also have little Iberian. I have neon white skin, blue eyes and started with strawberry blond which turned brown over time. In the Irish tradition it turned gray by the time I was thirty. Why I mention all of this, is that I have a larger amount of Neanderthal blood than most. Again seems ironic to me that I meet the white superiority standard while being slightly less human than my POC brothers and sisters.

I also enjoyed the fact that my racist in-laws discovered they had a bit more recent African blood than might have been expected. Get a grip. We are all one family. And somehow evangelicals always miss the lesson about loving your neighbor as yourself. Oh, and they missed the part about Jesus being a Jew.

[wnylib]

49. I get so tired of seeing the classic

portrait of Jesus with light to medium brown, loosely hanging hair, blue eyes, and pale, pink-toned skin wearing a flowing white robe.

For his time period and geographical location in Jewish history, he probably had dark brown curly or wavy hair, brown eyes, and olive skin.

But people depict him in their own image, like the icons of Russian Orthodoxy, which looks nothing like the white, European-based image.

[cate94]

50. Exactly! N/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

56. Interesting.

All four of my grandparents came from Ireland
I did one of those DNA things and learned I have a small amount of ancestry from Italy. Small, but it's still there. For what it's worth I do have a reasonable amount of Neanderthal in my DNA.

I do like to keep in mind that at some point, a very long time ago, my distant ancestors came from Africa.

[cate94]

65. They recently sent an update

With the counties that my relatives were from. Of course I knew most of it, but was surprised they could pinpoint it!

[Warpy]

33. I can fully accept the development of the hilariously misnamed "creation science" as

an artifact of white supremacy, but not the initial rejection of Darwin's work. That rejection was rooted entirely in the bible and its inerrant description of a god who designed the whole place, us included, just a few thousand years ago. Contradicting that book is what got Christian zealot panties wadded up. That book was the only thing they had to cling to in dangerous, miserable and short lives.

Darwin wasn't the only one being attacked, early geologists also had shrieking mobs wishing they could still burn heretics at the stake.

As a matter of fact, the bigots accepted Darwin early on, pointing to the dark faces of great apes in Africa and the dark skin of many Africans as evidence of it, using to justify the continued oppression of African people whichever continent they were on, including their own. They'd only recently risen above the apes, you see, and weren't ready for rights and autonomy.

It's why early colonialists attributed Great Zimbabwe to either Romans or stray European monks, Africans couldn't possibly have built it, they simply had not evolved enough to do it.

So evolution's rejection by the godly and its relationship to racist exploitation and oppression is a little more complicated.

It was a good read, though.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

35. Lol, yeah... that happened too.

And it still happens, with some people interpreting new evidence far too quickly to help bolster their egos.

Along with some people who demand answers and certainty in their lives, as if that's going to happen.

[Dr. Strange]

37. Huh, that's funny.

Just last year, relying on the scientific method was white supremacy.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

40. That's a dangerous attitude too.

An extreme example of it:

[Sympthsical]

42. What on earth is this doing in *Scientific* American?

There's very little scientific about this. Outside of a few facts that most science-minded people don't deny (humans originating from Africa), what was the actual point here? It's just a bunch "White people bad, now let's get those clicks!"

As if white people are the only ones with science denial due to religion. (And, much more specifically, white Americans, since those are the only ones this "science" article seems concerned with).

Sometimes the whole, "Everything bad in the world is white people," stuff devolves into absolute self-parody.

This is one of those times. The whole article is a beautiful dumpster fire.

[muriel_volestrangler]

59. 'It's just a bunch "White people bad, now let's get those clicks!"' is a complete load of bollocks

It's in Scientific American because it's about science education.

Your claim that it says "white people bad" is a right-wing talking point. You may as well be calling it "critical race theory", because you're just as wrong as the Republicans pushing that bullshit.

The point, since it flew right over your head as you ducked to pick up shit to throw, is that the motivation for the organised resistance to educating people about evolution in the USA came, and still comes, from a bigoted point of view that the white evangelicals couldn't possibly have Black ancestors in Africa many thousands of years ago, where human culture developed.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

63. Except that was NOT the main complaint...

... about evolution even within the USA!

As I replied earlier in this thread, there might be some US citizens who oppose evolution for that reason NOW, but that's not the history of it at all! There was no widespread consensus in the past that all of humanity originated from dark-skinned Africans, so that wasn't really on the radar of evolution deniers back then.

Take the "Scopes Monkey Trial" from 1925 as an example:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/monkey-trial-begins

It's not like white people in this country constantly thought about black people whenever they did or thought anything, except among slave owners and their ilk. That's surely why the horrible activity persisted for so long, with most white people worried about their own lives and not thinking much at all about the terrible conditions of others.

[Sympthsical]

64. When one flings shit, expect it to be flung back

And this published during this CRT nonsense. Just wonderfully timed.

It's alienating nonsense. And I stopped pretending this sort of thing wasn't alienating nonsense a long time ago.

The fact that "God made man in his image" as a foundational aspect of Christian religion is shunted aside for this, "You know, it's really about white people sucking," is so hilariously ahistorical, it beggars belief it's being taken seriously. Creationism is a thing. Has been a thing. For as long as there has been religion, across almost all religions.

Some people truly do only have hammers. Hammer away. Fucking up the furniture though.

[raccoon]

62. Great article. I never thought it that but it makes a lot of sense. Nt