A disbelief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes and support of discriminatory behavior against Blacks, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community in the U.S., according to University of Massachusetts Amherst research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.1
This article echoes a Scientific American opinion piece published last year that claimed that denial of evolution is a form of “white supremacy.”3
Like last year’s Scientific American opinion piece, this sounds suspiciously like a politically-motivated “hit job” on creationists. Yes, skeptics of human evolution are much more likely to believe the Bible’s account of creation and to share its disapproval of homosexual behavior, but this study simplistically refuses to acknowledge what should be obvious to any parent or even to anyone with a sense of nuance: it is possible to love someone while disapproving of his conduct. Moreover, the study equates biblical creationists’ affirmation of the Bible’s sexual morality with ethnic hatred.
Second, these results contradict a wealth of historical evidence that shows the opposite: a belief in human evolution has long been closely linked to racism. Senior author Bernhard Leidner acknowledged as much when he said their results contradicted “theoretical accounts that predict the opposite of what we found, so it was exciting for us to show that this actually is not the case, that the opposite is true and that belief in evolution seems to have pretty positive effects.”1
However, there is nothing at all “theoretical” about the link between a belief in human evolution and racism. Evolutionists make the rosy claim that “belief in evolution would tend to increase people’s identification with all humanity, due to the common ancestry, and would lead to fewer prejudicial attitudes.”1 However, this prejudicial link has been thoroughly documented, as has evolutionism’s influence on ideological movements like Nazism and Communism, which led to the deaths of tens of millions of people in the last century.4-8 Attempts to absolve evolution from its baleful influence on twentieth-century politics is sheer historical revisionism.
Nor is it hard to see why a belief in evolution would naturally lead to racist thinking. If evolution is true, then it is entirely possible that one people group, through chance mutations and sheer dumb luck, might now be “more highly evolved”—and therefore superior—to other people groups. And what if this “superior” group decides it has a right to mistreat other “less evolved” groups? If we have no Creator and are just the results of a cosmic accident, then there is no objective basis for morality and “might makes right” is the only rule. In a universe in which evolution is true, what basis is there for saying that such mistreatment is wrong?
How much better to realize that we are not evolving to higher states of perfection. Rather, we’re going downhill. We are all descendants of a man and woman with perfect genomes, but who forfeited immortality—not to mention fellowship with their Maker—when they disobeyed the Creator’s command. Because of their sin and ours, we are subject to death. But praise God that the Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ, become one of us, died in our place, and rose again to redeem us from this bondage to death! If more people realized this, would relationships between different people groups be better or worse?
One can’t help but suspect that some proponents of evolutionary theory are getting rather desperate. For many years, they tried to simply ignore creationists. It was considered uncouth even to mention creationists in “polite” scientific conversation. That tactic didn’t seem to work, so now they are suggesting that we are psychologically defective and/or crazy.9 The one thing they aren’t doing is presenting convincing evidence for the evolutionary story. Perhaps that’s because such evidence is nowhere to be found.
References
1. Staff Writer. Disbelief in human evolution linked to greater prejudice and racism. Phys.org. Posted on phys.org April 4, 2022, accessed April 5, 2022.
2. Syropoulos, S. et al. 2022. Bigotry and the human-animal divide: (Dis)belief in human evolution and bigoted attitudes across different cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000391
3. Hopper, A. Denial of Evolution is a Form of White Supremacy. Scientific American. Posted on scientificamerican.com July 5, 2021, accessed April 6, 2022.
4. Humber, P. G. 1987. Stalin’s Brutal Faith. Acts & Facts. 16 (10).
5. Humber, P. G. 1987. The Ascent of Racism. Acts & Facts. 16 (2).
6. Bergman, J. 2012. Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview. Ontario, Canada: Joshua Press, Kitchener.
7. Guliuzza, R. J. 2015. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Survival of the Fittest, Eugenics, and Abortion. Acts & Facts. 45 (1).
8. Weikart, R. Darwinian Racism: How Evolutionary Theory Shaped Nazi Thinking. Evolution News & Science Today. Posted at evolutionnews.org February 2, 2022, accessed April 6, 2022.
9. Hebert, J. Are Creationists Conspiracy Theorists? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org February 25, 2021, accessed April 6, 2022.
* Dr. Hebert is Research Scientist at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.
