Darwin was a Racist?

Last Monday, Bob had Ken Ham* on to pimp his new book in which accuses Charles Darwin of being racist. Bob and Ken want to imply that Darwin was a racist, so we dismiss Evolution through Natural Selection. Bob and Ken may have a point. After all, just look at this quote:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position to the white race.

Wait a second! That isn't from Charles Darwin! It's Abraham Lincoln.**

Should we discount the accomplishments of Lincoln because of his not-so-enlightened beliefs?

Should we knock down the Lincoln Memorial?

Should we strip his face off of Mt. Rushmore and replace it with Jimmy Carter?

Should we collect and melt down all the pennies that bear his image?

Of course not.

We revere and honor Lincoln because he refused to allow the Christian practice of slavery to tear the United States apart. Was he as enlightened in his view of the "races" as we are today? Obviously not. The same goes for Darwin. We should not discount his positive contributions to our understanding of the development of life on Earth merely because we don't share his 19th Century political viewpoints. Evolution and Natural Selection are judged on their merits, not based on any "racist" tendencies that Darwin had.

Pitifully, this is a further attempt by Bob to discredit a scientific fact withstood the test scrutiny.

The ironic thing is that this is coming from a man who claims "intellectual honesty."

Pathetic.

*I guess there's no hard feelings about Bob's scathing review of the Creation Museum. I guess they're letting bygones be bygones. After all, Ken's got books to $ell and Bob's gotta fill-up four hours per day to keep the advertisers happy!

** Interestingly, Darwin and Lincoln were born on the very same day: February 12, 1809. Who knew?

Bob Lies About Lucy

For those who missed it, last week Bob talked about his Christmas vacation trip to the Creation Museum.

That's right, Bob packed up the wife and kids in the Family Truckster and headed down to Kentucky for some old fashioned fake science at the bargain price of $20/head. But a funny thing happened on the path to reinforced ignorance. It turned out that...Bob hated the museum!

Apparently, there simply wasn't enough made-up Creation Science for Bob. He complained that only the Biblical explanations for Creation were presented and not the pseudo-science that Bob is used to from Ken Ham.

At one point in his rant he got off on a tangent about Lucy, the fossilized Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in 1974. Apparently, they had a recreation of the skeleton at the museum with no explanation as to why it was there. So, Bob decided to tell his family the standard creationist lie about Lucy. Specifically, Bob said:

"Do you know why evolutionists say this Lucy skeleton is proof of evolution? Because a knee joint; the knee joint in this Lucy skeleton is supposedly at an angle that is closer to human leg angles than most monkeys. And so therefore, they say that this monkey was actually evolving into a man merely because of the angle of the knee joint, that's it. And then I point out to them that the rest of the information is that first of all the angle of this knee is no different than spider monkeys and orangutans walking the Earth today. And then secondly, the knee joint itself wasn't even found with the rest of the bones, it was found two hundred feet deeper and one and a half miles away. It was just assumed to be part of this monkey's skeleton."

Let's take this mess of misinformation one falsehood at a time.

1. No "evolutionist", i.e., the vast majority of biologists, would ever say that the Lucy skeleton is "proof" of evolution. Instead, they would argue that the skeleton is merely one piece of evidence, among thousands of other pieces of evidence, that shows that evolutionary biology is correct. Science doesn't deal in proofs. "Proof" is for mathematicians and Dutko.
2. The Lucy skeleton was not found with an intact knee. It's true that a knee joint was found some distance away from the Lucy skeleton. But the knee was never represented as part of Lucy. Therefore, Bob's statement that the knee joint was the important part of Lucy is just wrong. It's a flat out creationist falsehood that has been debunked long ago, yet Bob continues to repeat it because it fits his narrative that evolutionary scientists are somehow conspiring to falsify the facts.
3. The knee joint, that is not part of Lucy, therefore, is not evidence that Lucy walked upright. Instead, the length ratio of her humerous to femur, along with the presence of a lumbar curve, provides evidence that Lucy was bipedal.

So basically, everything that Bob told his family, and his listeners, was demonstrably false. Is it any wonder that the museum would not want to print these lies on a sign by the Lucy replica?

Someone let me know when Bob retracts this latest falsehood on the show. I, of course, won't hold my breath.