From: Ted Davis (TDavis@messiah.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 18 2003 - 08:16:15 EST
Let's slow down here.
Yes, some YEC materials, esp those by Henry Morris, contain opinions that
many would regard as "racist." And yes, there is some hypocrisy here, since
it has long been a central plank of YEC that evolution leads to racism--as
it also leads allegedly to promiscuity, homosexuality, abortion, communism,
and Nazism. I probably forgot to mention a few other things.
But similar comments (to those of Morris) are not found in many younger YEC
authors. Let me quote from a little pamphlet I have from Answers in
Genesis, called "Where Did the 'Races' Come From?" by Ken Ham, Karl Wieland,
and Don Batten (1999). It is avowedly anti-racist, and does not repeat the
slop given by Morris. It even advises readers to discard the word "race"
itself, calling it an "evolutionized" term. The Bible does not use the
word, as it points out. The "so-called 'racial characteristics' are only
minor variations among the people groups," and "are absolutely trivial."
"There is really only one race--the human race." IT also even stresses that
"evolutionists would now agree that the various people groups did not have
separate origins," an interesting admission given earlier statements in the
same pamphlet that clearly blame evolution for racism. (Those statements
point to the long history of scientific racism--an absolutely fair
target--the problem here is that they continue to blame evolution today for
its sordid history on this very issue.)
"The belief that the skin color of black people is a result of a curse on
Ham and his descendents is taught nowhere in the Bible. ... False teaching
about Ham has been used to justify slavery and other non-Biblical, racist
attitudes."
"When Christians legalistically impose non-Biblical ideas such as 'no
inter-racial marriage' onto their culture, they are helping to perpetuate
prejudices that have often arisen from evolutionary influences."
Finally, what used to be called "inter-racial marriage" is expressly
endorsed, since all humans are of one "race." The only inter-marriage the
authors caution against, involves the believer and the unbeliever.
We would all probably endorse most of this pamphlet.
ted
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