Creationist Museum founder links Darwinian theory with racism and genocide

A new book, "Darwin's Plantation : Evolution's Racist Roots", attempts to connect Darwinian theory with Nazi racial beliefs and the policies of Josef Stalin. The book was co-authored by Ken Ham, founder of the the Creationist Museum in Kentucky, in partnership with Charles Ware, president of Crossroads Bible College in Indianapolis.

The Creation Museum is an intellectual folly, an institution dedicated to ideas that have been discredited by science. It contends that the earth is only a few thousand years old and that dinosaurs co-existed with humans.

Ham's views don't instill confidence when it comes to his take on Darwin. His claim that Darwin did more than any other person to "popularize" racism is untrue. In fact Darwin wrote in negative terms about the slavery he encountered during his voyages. His views were egalitarian by the standards of the day. The use of the term "savage" was commonplace during his time, and has to be kept within its cultural context.

The attempt to link mass atrocities with the "influence of Darwinian naturalism" is a dicey one. Efforts to use evolutionary theory to justify racism, is a deliberate distortion of the theory for political ends. The book understates the role of historical forces and a class struggle that was mainly driven by the imperatives of power.

Throughout history Christian nations have sanctioned and promoted racism and genocide in the name of God. The former apartheid state of South Africa attempted to normalize racism. It was sanctioned by both the official church and the state.

Unlike Darwinian theory the link between Christian triumphalism and racism isn't a matter of debate. For example the Papal bull, Romanus Pontifex, issued by Pope Nicholas V, sanctioned slavery and the brutal oppression of captive peoples. The bull lent Papal authority to the activities of the Portuguese slavers as they plied the coast of West Africa.

The greater irony of course is that the God of the bible outdoes Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. The wars and killings he called for were arguably motivated by the view that the Israelites were a 'superior' people. They were instructed to execute the deity's homicidal designs - designs that played themselves out in an unending litany of atrocity from one book of the bible to the next.

Ham's cynical attempt to fuse Darwinian theory with racism and genocide, is part of an agenda that is attempting to get the theory of evolution out of school curriculum. Unable to discredit evolutionary theory on the basis of sound argument, Ham and like minded associates have resorted to a smear campaign. The fact that they have chosen this approach says more about their intellectual redundancy than it does about links between Darwinian theory and racism.