The larger point

Ed Driscoll points to this piece by Tony Campolo:  The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism.  I'll forego a look at Campolo's background as it's irrelevant to this - read the Wikipedia entry if you're interested.

Campolo ends his piece with something that begins to get at the most salient point:

Regardless of how we got here, we should recognize that there is an infinite qualitative difference between the most highly developed ape and each and every human being. Darwin never recognized this disjuncture.

Darwin's failure to "recognize this disjuncture" isn't what makes Darwin dangerous.  What makes Darwin dangerous - the same thing that makes anything dangerous - is how people choose to use Darwin.  The fact that Darwin chose to use his findings to promote "the elimination of 'the negro and Australian peoples,' which he considered savage races whose continued survival was hindering the progress of civilization" does not make the idea of evolution intrinsically racist, and it certainly does not make the theory of evolution wrong.  It makes Darwin's application of the theory absurd.

In other words:  "Guns don't kill people.  People kill people."

Posted by: Jason at 03:39 PM in System | No Comments | Add Comment
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