Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution tapped into the eugenic mindset of his age. Now, we are seeing the pendulum swing to the opposite extreme in a misguided, unfair attempt to atone for the terrible errors of the past. This will neither solve the issues nor heal the trauma faced by indigenous Australians. We must all turn to the Gospel.

Evolution and Eugenics

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes… will no doubt be exterminated.

The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or [Aboriginal] Australian and the gorilla.”

That sounds awfully racist! And it is! However, those aren’t my words. Those are the words of Charles Darwin, as quoted from The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (2^nd edition, 1887, p156). Darwin saw an evolutionary progression from lesser apes to gorillas to Aboriginal Australians to Negros to Caucasians to an-even-more-advanced-but-yet-to-evolve form of humans.

Now, to be fair, such racism did not originate with Charles Darwin. It is characteristic of humans to think of themselves and their own people group as superior, stronger, and more worthy than other peoples. That explains why human history is a story of war, conquest, and oppression. That’s human sinfulness.

But Darwin’s concept of evolutionary progression provided a supposedly scientific framework in which to fit a rank of ‘races’.  The language of ‘survival of the fittest’ easily suggested connotations of rank, with one ‘race’ proving ‘fitter’ than another due to its cultural or technological dominance.

Herein was the pseudo-scientific justification for the ‘inherent superiority’ of some races over others, and the foundation for official government policies of the late 1800s and early 1900s that sought to ‘manage’ the extermination and replacement of the “savage races”. After all, it was just “following the science”!

For decades, Australia has struggled to come to terms with our Aboriginal peoples. From policies that once viewed Aboriginal Australia as “savage races” destined to disappear, to a policy that now seeks to grant Aboriginal Australia special race-based privileges in influencing our national parliament, our nation has stumbled from one erroneous plan to another. It hasn’t worked and it’s not going to work!

Right From the Start

We need to go back to the beginning… not the beginning of January 1788, and not the supposed beginning of 60,000 years ago.  We need to go back to view history through the Biblical lens, which tells us that all human beings are descendants of one God-created human couple. In the first man and the first woman were the origins of every group of human peoples. There are not many ‘races’, but one race!  It’s the human race!

Yes, there are differences in the appearance of human groups, and there are differences in cultural beliefs and behaviours. These differences can be understood in the dispersal and subsequent isolation of the various human groups following God’s judgment on humanity at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11).  It is not that some groups are more ‘evolved’ than others. We are all human beings.

So, why the differences? The Biblical perspective is that all human beings, and the cultures that they form, are fallen. Those people groups across the globe that had access to God’s special revelation of Himself in the unfolding written Word and then in the Person of Jesus Christ have had the opportunity to shape their lives and cultures on the Truth.

In contrast, those people groups that had access only to the general revelation of God in the created order could know that the supernatural existed but not how to relate to the true God, to gain forgiveness of their sin, and to shape their cultures in accordance with the Truth.

Aboriginal Australia does not need a Voice to Parliament. Aboriginal Australia needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And the more that Australia as a whole forgets about God and His truth, the more broken and dysfunctional our culture becomes. We all need the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

___

Photo by Eugene Zhyvchik.