Charles Darwin, Racist

Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted with permission from Doug Kutilek’s free newsletter “As I See It,” a monthly electronic magazine, and appears here with some editing. AISI is sent free to all who request it by writing to the editor at dkutilek@juno.com.

Lastly, I could show fight [vigorously advocate] on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago, of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! 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, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.
—Charles Darwin (Darwin, Francis. The Life of Charles Darwin. 1902. Ed. John Murray. London: Senate, 1995., p. 64).

The volume from which this quotation is taken is essentially an abridgment by the author (one of Darwin’s sons) of his own longer 2-volume work (which contained considerable autobiographical material by Charles Darwin). It is not a hostile, fault-finding attack on Darwin, or a “Mommy Dearest” exposé by an alienated child, but a strongly pro-Darwin account. Its casual revealing of Darwin’s inner thoughts and attitudes regarding the races of mankind is therefore most telling.

“Natural selection”—the death and genetic elimination and extermination of “inferior” individuals and races in the mad scramble for survival—is viewed by Darwin, the founder and proponent of this view, as a great good, not merely among fishes and ferns and ferrets, but among people. Naturally, and arrogantly, assuming the superiority of his own “Caucasian” race (and of course himself, especially), he views with mirth the absurdity of the fear the white Europeans had in the 15th century of being overwhelmed by the Muslim Turks, which he viewed as a decidedly inferior race of people. And notice, it was not merely white hegemony that Darwin gloried in, but victory in “the struggle for existence” (emphasis added).

(A similar Muslim scare occurred in the 8th century, when the Saracens from North Africa invaded Europe via Spain, but were stopped in their bloody campaign of “peaceful” subjugation via the sword by Charles Martel at the battle of Tours, France in 732. Today, European civilization, and that “superior” white European race, faces once again the very real possibility of being overwhelmed by “inferior” non-white races, especially the Muslim immigrants from northern Africa [true for France, Holland, and most of Western Europe], but also once again the Turks [in Germany] and sub-Saharan blacks as well as South Asians [Britain]. In reality, it wasn’t race, but civilization—one founded in broad terms on Biblical Christianity—that gave European civilization its “edge.” Virtually the whole of Europe has now and long since cast away any pretense of Christianity in contempt of the God of Scripture, embracing instead atheistic materialism—a.k.a. Darwinism. And once again European civilization faces the real possibility of extermination, this time from without—following two unprecedentedly massive wars in the 20th century that nearly destroyed Europe from within. “The wicked will return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God,” Psalm 9:17. But I digress.)

Darwin looked forward with eager anticipation “at no very distant date” when an “endless number of lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world” (emphasis added). It was not enough in his mind that the European powers through their colonial empires ruled over and dominated these inferior races, but it was his hope and anticipation that they would be actually eliminated—exterminated (can you say “genocide” or “holocaust”?) by the superior whites, and sooner rather than later. Darwinism is not merely in harmony with Arian supremacy, Nietzscheism, Nazism, eugenics, and genocide; it is their foundation and justification. Indeed, there are demonstrable philosophical and intellectual links between Darwin’s hypothesis of “natural selection” and “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life” (to quote the subtitle of The Origin of Species) with all of these evils, and more.

In another revealing moment, Darwin wrote about one species of ant enslaving another species: “I have seen a migration from one nest to another of the slave-makers, carrying their slaves (who are house, and not field n_____s) in their mouths!” (Darwin, p. 191; emphasis in original). Such was his condescending contempt for non-whites.

Darwin was a malignant racist and Darwinism is inherently racist. I wonder if all those non-Caucasian individuals now residing in England consider these things—or are even aware of them—when they spend their ten-pound notes, which sport a portrait of Darwin. And what do the tourists who view his grave in an honored place in Westminster Abbey think about these things? Likely nothing at all.

Of course, when his theory became applicable to his own life or his own family, Darwin was decidedly “inconsistent.” There is the issue of his own incredibly poor health, which plagued him for the last forty years of his life. Its exact origin is unclear; psycho-somatic causes were probably a substantial factor. His various and severe gastro-intestinal problems began when he began his preliminary speculations on evolution, and continued until he had largely ceased his evolutionary writings:

Darwin’s illness has been the subject of extensive speculation. Some of the symptoms—painful flatulence, vomiting, insomnia, palpitations—appeared in force as soon as he began his first transmutation notebook in 1837…. [A] careful analysis of the attacks in the context of his activities points to psychogenic origins. Throughout the next decades Darwin’s maladies waxed and waned. But during the last decade of his life, when he concentrated on botanical research and no long speculated about evolution, he experienced the best health since his years at Cambridge. (Bettyann Kevles. “Darwin.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th ed. 1994.)

It may be that Darwin had stress-inducing inner turmoil generated by battling mentally against what his own mind told him was the truth, and that he was fighting against the knowledge of God. It is notable that Darwin admitted that there was overwhelming evidence of design (today we would say “intelligent design”) in the so-called “natural world.” Once the Duke of Argyll confronted Darwin about this matter. Noting features of orchids and earthworms (which Darwin had made special study of), the Duke of Argyll went on,

I said that it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect of the expression of mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin’s answer. He looked at me very hard and said, “Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times,” and he shook his head vaguely, adding, “it seems to go away” (Darwin, p. 64, note).

So Darwin, refusing to believe or acknowledge what his own observations often and overwhelmingly convinced him was true—that there was Divine design in nature—took refuge in his anti-supernatural speculations and presuppositions (having previously, by age thirty, rejected the possibility of Divine revelation or miracles, or the historical accuracy of Scripture; see Darwin, pp. 57, 58).

But one must further observe: so chronically ill a being (whether dog or cat or man) as Darwin was, must obviously be, from a Darwinian perspective, an “inferior” being. He must be unfit and unworthy of survival or procreation. In a letter written in 1852, Darwin expressed his fear that his own ill-health was hereditary: “How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children. My dread is hereditary ill-health. Even death is better for them” (Darwin, p. 161). So, had he the power to chose between his children alive but in a state of chronic illness, or dead, he would for them choose death. We here witness Darwinism giving birth to “euthanasia,” also bizarrely misnamed “mercy killing.”

But when one of his daughters, Anne, died at age 10, he was deeply grieved. Should he not rather have rejoiced that the omnipotent if cold hand of “natural selection” had eliminated one of the inferior members of the human species, even one of the superior Caucasian race, thereby improving the species and the race, helping drive mankind to higher and better and superior status in the present and future? By his own theory, the death of his daughter at 10, before she could reproduce, was first of all proof of her “unfitness” to live, and secondly a genuine benefit and blessing to the rest of mankind and all future generations. But of course the human heart is not designed to react with the sterile rationalism that consistent Darwinism demands.

Darwin also believed that men were more evolutionary advanced than women (making him a sexist as well as a racist; see the Encyclopedia Britannica article, p. 980).

The whole cult of Darwin, which praises him to the skies as the greatest scientific benefactor of mankind, is remarkably silent on his blatant Hitleresque racism and his chauvinistic sexism, to say nothing of his bad science and demonstrably false hypothesis. The motive for embracing Darwin and Darwinism is not one compelled by genuine science or a single-minded quest for truth. Upon reading Origin, Charles’ brother Erasmus wrote to him, “In fact, the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won’t fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling” (Darwin, p. 215). In short, “the hypothesis is so good, I accept it regardless of whether it conforms to the facts!”

Rather, for many, likely most, Darwinian “natural selection” (versus Divine creation or intelligent design) is favored consciously or unconsciously because it provides a convenient means for eliminating God from the human equation: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie” and “did not think it worthwhile to have God in their knowledge,” as the Apostle Paul describes it (Romans 1:25, 28). In rebellion against the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ as Lord of life and death, they say, “Let us tear off their chains, and free ourselves from their restraints,” (Psalm 2:3). Darwin and Darwinism are embraced, not because they are true, but because they are convenient means to an end. Twenty-first century man wishes to become the autonomous God that Satan promised in Eden. Darwinism is the easiest means to that self-destructive end.

Doug Kutilek is the editor of www.kjvonly.org, a website dedicated to exposing and refuting the many errors of KJVOism and has been researching and writing in the area of Bible texts and versions for more than 35 years. He has a B.A. in Bible from Baptist Bible College (Springfield, Mo.), an M.A. in Hebrew Bible from Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati; and completed all requirements for a Ph.D. except the dissertation); and a Th.M. in Bible exposition from Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, Minn.). His writings have appeared in numerous publications including The Biblical Evangelist, The Baptist Bible Tribune, The Baptist Preacher’s Journal, Frontline, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society and The Wichita Eagle. The father of four grown children and four granddaughters, he resides with his wife Naomi near Wichita, Kansas.