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To: warpcorebreach
I love the way Darwin wrote that blacks were very closely related to their ape ancestors, but there was a group that was even closer- the Irish. And the group that was the most highly evolved-- the Scot. (of course Darwin was a Scot- so that works out nicely.) And since I am too, I'll side with him a bit. :)

You're a liar. Darwin did not say this.

377 posted on 01/24/2006 9:25:31 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor; warpcorebreach

Good catch. I missed that, in trying to catch up on all those posts.

Well, warpcorebreach, where's the evidence to support such a bold statement of supposed fact?


378 posted on 01/24/2006 9:32:43 AM PST by highball ("I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson)
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To: Right Wing Professor

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 the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and 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


379 posted on 01/24/2006 9:33:50 AM PST by warpcorebreach
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To: Right Wing Professor
For the lurkers, this is what Darwin actually wrote, in a generation when most educated people regarded the races of man as different species:

The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin: Chapter 7 - On the Races of Man:

We will first consider the arguments which may be advanced in favour of classing the races of man as distinct species, and then the arguments on the other side.
[snip]
Our supposed naturalist having proceeded thus far in his investigation, would next enquire whether the races of men, when crossed, were in any degree sterile.
[snip]
We have now seen that a naturalist might feel himself fully justified in ranking the races of man as distinct species; for he has found that they are distinguished by many differences in structure and constitution, some being of importance. These differences have, also, remained nearly constant for very long periods of time.
[snip]
On the other side of the question, if our supposed naturalist were to enquire whether the forms of man keep distinct like ordinary species, when mingled together in large numbers in the same country, he would immediately discover that this was by no means the case.
[snip]
But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter) ... or as sixty-three, according to Burke.* This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them.
[snip]
Some naturalists have lately employed the term "sub-species" to designate forms which possess many of the characteristics of true species, but which hardly deserve so high a rank. Now if we reflect on the weighty arguments above given, for raising the races of man to the dignity of species, and the insuperable difficulties on the other side in defining them, it seems that the term "sub-species" might here be used with propriety. But from long habit the term "race" will perhaps always be employed. The choice of terms is only so far important in that it is desirable to use, as far as possible, the same terms for the same degrees of difference.
[snip]
Those naturalists, on the other hand, who admit the principle of evolution, and this is now admitted by the majority of rising men, will feel no doubt that all the races of man are descended from a single primitive stock; whether or not they may think fit to designate the races as distinct species, for the sake of expressing their amount of difference.
[snip]
Now when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes, and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly-allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that they are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and consequently that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.

The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin: Chapter 21 - General Summary and Conclusion:

Through the means just specified, aided perhaps by others as yet undiscovered, man has been raised to his present state. But since he attained to the rank of manhood, he has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more fitly called, sub-species. Some of these, such as the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species. Nevertheless all the races agree in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities that these can be accounted for only by inheritance from a common progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterised would probably deserve to rank as man.

380 posted on 01/24/2006 9:45:40 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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