An A to Z of Creationist Fallacies: E is for Eugenics and Racism

Eugenics clinic, USA, 1920s

If creationists cannot convince people with spurious claims about a 6000 year old earth, designed and created by their god in six days, they will often attempt an emotional response. Amongst these are the claims that the Theory of Evolution leads to eugenics, that those who accept evolution support eugenics, and that Charles Darwin and all other “evolutionists” (their word, not mine) have been and are racists.

This claim appears to be based yet again, whether it be mistaken or are intentional lie, a complete misunderstanding of Darwin's explanation of biological evolution. A common creationist misconception about evolution is that it is an ever-upwards struggle towards 'better', when it most certainly is not, and that 'natural selection' means that only the strongest survive. The picture of evolution as an upwards spiral actually has more in common with Lamarckism, which sees evolution as a progression. Charles Darwin, whose understanding of evolution fits the standard accepted – and proven – model never said any such thing, but rather explained that with all life evolving from common ancestors, it branched out into varying species. Darwin's own drawing of his 'tree of life' in his notes, when he himself was struggling to understand this process, illustrates this beautifully, it does not show evolution as a progression, and Darwin never once claimed that.

Some creationists will quote a common phrase used in reference to evolution, “survival of the fittest”, and will even go as far as to claim that it was Charles Darwin who first said this. He did not in fact, it was stated by the naturalist, philosopher, and economist, Herbert Spencer. What is more, Spencer, who had indeed read On the Origin of Species, stated that when trying to apply Darwin's ideas to economics. Like the creationists, Spencer had completely misunderstood Darwin, and came out with the phrase to suggest a 'weakest to the wall' economic philosophy. However, 'survival of the fittest' in reference to biological evolution may not mean that only the strongest survive, but merely those best adapted.

When Patrick Matthew was hybridising and growing trees on his land in the Carse of Gowrie in Scotland, he noticed how some species would thrive in a given environment, but perish in another. Yet the same species which perished would thrive in an environment better suited to them, which would be unsuited to the flourishing trees. When he wrote these observations down in his 1829 paper On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, he had unwittingly stumbled upon and explained the process of natural selection, which many today recognise him as the father of. Patrick Matthew later read On the Origin of Species and wrote to Charles Darwin, accusing him of plagiarism. In fact, Darwin had never read Matthew's paper, but once he did he was fascinated and started a correspondence with Matthew in which both men realised they had too much in common for personal rivalries to get in the way of. Two men had observed natural selection in nature, and their observations both matched exactly; that species only thrive in environments suitable to them. That is what 'survival of the fittest' truly means; nothing more.

There are liars, there are damned liars, and then there is John Morris Pendleton. John Morris Pendleton is a car mechanic and a creationist lecturer, who because he managed to gain a minor degree in chemistry, claims to be a scientist. In one of his “Hello I'm a Scientist” lectures, working on subtitle for Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Pendleton openly states “Darwin's book was actually a justification, a thesis, trying to support racism.” So, John Morris Pendleton got all that purely from the book's subtitle. I would assume that he worked only from the title and has not actually read the actual book. If he had, he would have noticed that nowhere, not once, in On the Origin of Species does Charles Darwin make any reference to human evolution. The term “favoured races” in the title refers only to those species best able to adapt to their environments by natural selection, and has nothing to do with human racial ethnicity. Sorry (not sorry) to burst your little Darwin-hating bubble John, and all other creationists who make this claim, but On the Origin of Species deals only with the biological evolution of flora and fauna and at no point makes any reference to the human race. If any creationist doubts this, or wants to refute me upon it, I challenge them right here and now to provide the proof that On the Origin of Species was a thesis supporting human racism.

Nonetheless, the crazier creationists (and the most dishonest ones – not always the same people) will insist that Charles Darwin supported Eugenics, and that his Theory of Evolution led to all sorts of racial discrimination, experiments, and even the Nazi holocaust. Some even claim that Darwin invented eugenics. Unfortunately for these liars and shysters, their claims not only do not hold up to the slightest scrutiny, but throw up some very inconvenient truths about just who it was who supported Eugenics and other theories of racial superiority.

Eugenics is a philosophy of race based upon 'superior' and 'inferior' genetics, which seeks to improve the human race by selective breeding. Taking it's name from the Greek,Eugene, meaning "well-born", the idea has been around ever since the philosopher Plato suggested suggested selective breeding to produce and protect a superior Guardian Class. It was not until the 19^th century however that such notions started to be taken seriously. Gynaecologist William Goodell (1829-1894) suggested the castration and spaying of the insane to prevent them breeding. Of course, this idea was taken up to include the sterilisation of the mentally disabled and special needs adults, which alarmingly was still a common practice in many countries until relatively recently, certainly within the lifetimes of most reading this. Although officially banned in the UK, it is suspected and there have been claims that many such sterilisations were carried out on special needs people right up to the 1980s. In an alarming move in February 2015, a judge in England ruled that health authorities could forcibly enter the home of a mother of six who has severe learning difficulties, and carry out a compulsory sterilisation upon her, as they believe a further pregnancy could kill her.

The first person to properly promote eugenics and coin the word in modern parlance however was Francis Galton (1822-1911). Galton was in fact a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, and his reading of On the Origin of Species led him to conclude that there were desirable hereditary traits which could be achieved by selective breeding. It is due to Galton's misreading of Darwin's work that some creationists blame Darwin for eugenics, and some go even further and claim that Darwin was personally responsible for Galton's twisted ideas. It seems that some Christians think we are nor merely our brother's keepers, but our half-cousin's. Charles Darwin in fact strongly disagreed with his half-cousin, and in fact it was not until 1883, one year after Darwin's death, that Francis Galton officially gave his ideas the name Eugenics, and published his work Inquiries into Human Faculty and Development.

Eugenics as an idea took off from there, and had a good few notable followers, including psychologist Sigmund Freud, writer and philosopher George Bernard Shaw, writer and socialist H.G. Wells, and family planning pioneer Marie Stopes. Again, because these people were advocates of eugenics and swayed from the dictates of the Bible, creationists today are very quick to point to them and the 'evil' which they spread. Edinburgh lass Marie Stopes comes in for considerable criticism from some creationists, not least because the family planning clinics which carry her name today advise and offer abortions, and some even claim that she was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In fact, when Marie Stopes set up her first clinics they were to educate people, particularly the poor, about contraception, sparing them the expense of extra mouths to feed, and she also was a pioneer in teaching women that there was no guilt in them enjoying sex. In her time, not only was abortion still illegal in the UK, but Stopes was firmly against it. As for the Nazi accusation, Marie Stopes in 1933 sent a collection of poems to Adolf Hitler, long before the world was to learn of his true nature. Do not forget this was at the same time that Winston Churchill was praising Hitler.

As eugenics grew as an idea it grew as an academic discipline in many universities, and there were eugenics societies, notably in the UK and the USA. Whilst the USA is officially a secular country, we all know that it is culturally very religious. So how could this state of affairs occurred in what were then the two strongest countries in the world, where the Christian churches held so much sway and dictated much of people's lives? Quite simply because it was actually Christians and many church leaders supporting eugenics. Galton himself stated that eugenics needed to emphasise “the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution”. One enthusiastic contributor to the Eugenics Review, journal of the Eugenics Educational Society, was Reverend W.R. Inge DD, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, and Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Championing eugenics as a spiritual quest, Inge once wrote;

"It is the paradox of the spiritual life that if we could take to ourselves ‘the wings of a dove’ and escape from this world of mingled good and evil, we should not reach the rest which we desire. For one at least of the Divine values, Goodness, cannot be realised by flight, but only by struggle."

Another leading Church of England clergyman, Reverend J. H. F. Peile, was also a contributor to the Eugenics Review, who stated that eugenics and church endorsement of it was “a principle to which the Church is already committed”.

Meanwhile, in the USA, the American Eugenics Society had sought, and won endorsement from at least one leading clergyman, and a Roman Catholic one to boot, Archbishop Hayes of the Diocese of New York. And although the UK had been the birthplace of eugenics, it was actually in the United States it was to become a “science”, endorsed in law, where the first experiments would be carried out, and from whence the Nazis would take their ideas.

David Starr Jordan came from a strict Baptist family. He gained his PhD at Northwestern Christian University (later Butler University), in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he also was Professor of Natural History. A Unitarian, although he stood aloof from organised religion, he once said “Religion, like love, can be suppressed and perverted, but religion is the foundation upon which all rest," Founder of Stanford University, he is to this day lauded by many Christians in the USA, including the Christian Scientists. He was also the man who in 1902 published his work on race, Blood of a Nation, in which he theorised that qualities such as talent and poverty were passed on through blood.

Eugenics movements in the USA won funding from some charitable organisations, who were at the least based in the best of Christian motives, no matter how misguided their ideas. The Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation poured money into 'betterment' programmes. In 1908, John Harvey Kellogg MD, a fervent Seventh Day Adventist who declared a “War on passion” and who in his invention of corn flakes hoped such a bland food would prevent masturbation (I kid you not), funded the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. Biologist Charles B Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Spring Harbor, New York, in 1911 with funding from the Carnegie Institution and the Harriman Railroad Fortune. The ERO went on to research and keep records upon thousands of US families, concluding that those who were unfit came from economically and socially poor backgrounds, and favoured immigration restrictions and sterilisation. Some members of the ERO, such as Madison Grant, favoured extermination. Davenport, himself a home-schooled puritan Protestant, also founded the American Breeders Association, dedicated to purity in marriage, of which David Starr Jordan and Madison Grant were also members.

Michigan attempted to introduce a sterilisation bill in 1897, which failed to gain support from sufficient legislators. Pennsylvania passed such a bill eight years later, which was vetoed by the Governor of the state. In Indiana in 1907 a bill was passed and the first compulsory sterilisation of individuals for “imbecilism”, “feeble mindedness” and epilepsy proceeded. Washington and California followed suit in 1909, and while levels remained low, California was the exception which was to be the vanguard of sterilisations under the teachings of eugenics, performing some 20,000 enforced sterilisations from 1909 up to the 1960s. Of the 32 US states which adopted sterilisation under eugenics programmes, North Carolina was the most aggressive. It was in NC that an IQ of 70 or lower was deemed suitable for enforced sterilisation. The North Carolina Eugenics Board almost always approved proposals brought before them by local welfare boards, and NC social workers were allowed to propose individuals for sterilisation. "Here, at last, was a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies by an acceptable, practical, and inexpensive method," wrote Wallace Kuralt in the March 1967 journal of the N.C. Board of Public Welfare. "The poor readily adopted the new techniques for birth control." This deeply religious state, some of whose boundary signs claim “When Jesus returns, he's coming here” ran a eugenics-based sterilisation programme from 1933 to as late as 1977.

Where compulsory sterilisation was carried out in the USA, those it was carried out upon were not always told, most came from the poorest backgrounds, many more women were sterilised than men and as they were seen as inferior, many more people of colour were sterilised than men. Native Americans and African Americans, again mostly women, were the main targets for compulsory sterilisation, sometimes without their knowledge but otherwise bullied into it, or not properly informed. The Native American women's organisation, Woman of All Red Nations (WARN), publicised the fact that Native American women were being threatened with removal of benefits if they had large families and did not agree to sterilisation, while the Indian Health Service (IHS) repeatedly refused to deliver the children of Native American women unless they agreed to sterilisation whilst in labour. In many cases the women had not had the circumstances correctly explained, or because they were given in English rather than the women's languages, they did not understand what was happening. The US General Accounting Office was later to estimate that the IHS had carried out 3,406 sterilisations under these circumstances.

It was the US eugenics programmes which attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and it was the eugenicists in California who were responsible for drawing their attention to it. Californian eugenicists sent literature to German scientists and medical professionals. The newly-elected Nazi government were all too interested and embarked upon their own compulsory sterilisation programme, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, based largely upon a proposed 'model American law' by Californian eugenicist, and superintendent of the US Eugenics Records Office, Harry H Laughlin. Californian eugenicists were invited to Germany, and one of them, C.M. Goethe, told a colleague upon his return;

“You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought... ...I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.”

The Rockefeller Foundation went on to fund German eugenics programmes, including one overseen by Nazi scientist Joseph Mengele, before he was transferred to Auschwitz, where he carried out genetic experiments on concentration camp inmates.

Of particular note among these US geneticists for their influence over Nazi ideology was Madison Grant (1876-1937). Grant was a conservationist, a lawyer and a writer. He is best remembered for his 1916 work The Passing of the Great Race, in which he became the greatest promoter or 'Nordic Theory', under which Grant postulated that tall, white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed northern Europeans were racially superior to all others;

“The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers, and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant character of the Alpines. Chivalry and knighthood, and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts, are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north.”

Were this not enough, it was Grant who suggested the rounding-up, separation, and ultimately the elimination of all other races;

“A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words social failures—would solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.”

Madison Grant was undoubtedly barking mad, as well as an out-and-out xenophobe. He considered the white peoples of the Mediterranean to be the same 'Negroid' race as Africans, and his views of the Scots was completely loony. In his 1933 work, The Conquest of a Continent, Grant stated,

“The aborigines were called Picts in Scotland. These Mediterranean Picts spoke a language related to Hamitic or Egyptian, and many place names of this origin are still to be found... ...Curiously enough these Mediterraneans [Scottish Picts] contributed their dark eyes and hair color, but not their short stature. The population of West Scotland has the greatest height of all the people's of Europe.”

Firstly, Grant was alluding to an ancient Scots legend, that the Scots were descended from Scota, daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and Gaythelus, a Greek slave who was her lover, and they fled to Spain, then their descendants invaded Ireland, then their descendants invaded Caledonia, founding Scotland. Secondly, the Picts and the Scots were genetically different peoples. Thirdly, west coast Scots are not renowned for their height even today, and in 1933 when this work was written, poverty was rife as was disease, particularly rickets, and west coast Scots, particularly Glaswegians, had stunted height as a result.

Madison Grant was also a staunch Christian, and showed contempt for all other religions and their followers, whom he included among his 'unworthy' races. Also from Conquest of a Continent;

“The settlers of New England may be regarded as essentially rebels against established religion and established authority when the religion and authority were not of their own choosing. This non-conformist spirit persisted in the successive new frontiers as they were settlers of western New York and the old Northwest Territory gave birth to an astonishing number of new sects, religions, 'isms,' and communities, ranging all the way from Mormonism to Shakers and the Oneida Community.

“...the South has remained characteristically American...One of the strange results of the Civil War has been that while the victorious North sold its birthright of culture, religion, and racial purity for a mess of industrial pottage, the South, thought defeated, retained its racial inheritance unimpaired.

“...With its two million Jews, its million and a half Italians, its million Germans, and its three quarters of a million each of Poles and Irish, together with substantial contingencies from almost every other country on the map, the Empire State is scarcely able to meet the requirements of the Founders of the Republic, who, like Thomas Jefferson, feared above everything else the formation of an alien, urban proletariat as creating a condition under which a democratic form of government could not function successfully.”

As barmy as he was an out-and-out liar concerning European and American history and migration, Madison Grant's works were nonetheless extremely popular. The Passing of the Great Race was particularly popular, so much so that by 1937 it had sold 16,000 copies in the USA alone. Consider that was at a time when a great many Americans were still fully or semi illiterate. It was also published in many other languages, notably German in 1925. With it's fantasies about a superior white-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed race of warriors, soldiers, scientists, nobles and knights (yep, Grant originated that silly notion too), and his arguments for the separation and elimination of 'inferior' races, we need not look too far for where Adolf Hitler and the Nazis got both their ideology – and their inspiration for the death camps from. It was the first non-German book to be ordered reprinted and distributed by the Nazis, and Adolf Hitler actually wrote to Madison Grant in which he stated “This book is my bible”.

We therefore see that far from eugenics, ideas of racial purity, and the inspiration for the Nazi holocaust coming from Charles Darwin and the proponents of the Theory of Evolution, they came instead from the USA, pioneered and spread by mostly Christian people, who carried out a 'holocaust' of their own, and who were responsible for promulgating ideas of racial purity and the eradication of other 'inferior' races.

Today of course we look upon these things with 21^st century eyes, where most decent people are absolutely horrified by the bigotry and prejudice of the past. When Charles Darwin was alive, it was in fact quite a common belief among white, Christian, Europeans that were superior to all other races, who ranged from “murderous savages” to “painted heathens”; the entire British Empire, which was to colour one quarter of the globe pink, was based deeply in such ideas. You would be hard pushed to find one white person in those days who did not consider those of other races, even of other religions, to be at the most inferior, and at the least, beneath them.

Thankfully there were a few exceptions who did indeed believe all races were equal. One was a man in Victorian England, who as a Methodist Christian had been a strong campaigner for the abolition of slavery. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh, he learned taxidermy from a man employed to carry out such, a freed slave named John Edmonstone. The two became firm friends and would speak for hours about animal specimens. So who was this fine fellow who not only hated slavery but treated a black man as his equal and his friend? Charles Darwin, that's who.

Racism and proponents of eugenics still persist to this day, both among some theists. Whilst researching this article, I came across some truly odious 'Christian' websites, from Roman Catholic anti-abortionists continuing to pour their bile upon Marie Stopes, to hardline Protestant white supremacists championing the lies and utter fantasies of Madison Grant. I am sure there are equally some twisted atheists who also support eugenics. Those who promote eugenics today however, are roundly condemned and disregarded by the majority of both communities; it is one thing both the faithful and atheists can agree upon. Yes, all of those 'good Christians' who backed the US eugenics programmes were all in the wrong, every bit as much as the atheists among them. The vast majority of Christians today are good, well-meaning people, and I'm sure there will be some reading this will be as equally horrified at the shameful eugenics record of the USA as atheists are. Please, such Christians, I am not for one moment trying to lay the blame for those programmes at your door, nor would I ever try to suggest that all Christians support eugenics. I merely use the example to hammer home just how much creationists lie (which decent Christians should be very concerned about), or are mistaken, on this matter. By equal measure, to accuse those atheists who accept the fact of evolution of supporting eugenics and racism is an outright slur upon a great many decent human beings.

At the end of the day however, even if Charles Darwin had been a racist, even if he had supported eugenics, even if the USA had not embarked upon eugenics programmes, even if all those who did had all been atheists, it matters not one jot to the truth of biological evolution. What the creationists are attempting in making such claims is an appeal to the heart, not the head. Well, even if that appeal were in any way attractive, and because it is based in lies, it is not, it cannot change the truth one iota. Biological evolution is a fact, and has been roundly proven to be so on it's own merit, and by several other sciences which support it, and it in turn supports. It is often very beautiful, and by equal merit, it can appear extremely cruel. Again, neither of these positions matter to it's ultimate truth. John Keats once wrote “Truth is beauty, beauty truth”, but in life we often have to suck up the fact that not all which is true is beautiful, and that which is beautiful is all too often not true.