Darwin Taught Male Superiority

I so appreciate Answers In Genesis.  You can find the link to the original article HERE.
by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D.January 1, 2007

According to Charles Darwin, the central mechanism of evolution is survival of the fittest. In this concept, inferior animals are more likely to become extinct while the superior ones are more likely to thrive.1 The racism that this idea has produced has now been both well-documented and widely publicized.2 Less widely known is the fact that many evolutionists, including Darwin, taught that women were both biologically and intellectually inferior to men.


Reasons for Inferiority

According to Darwinian theory, women were less evolved than men, and because of their smaller brains, they were “eternally primitive,” childlike, less spiritual, more materialistic, and “a real danger to contemporary civilization.”3 The supposed intelligence gap that many leading Darwinists believed existed between human males and females was so large that some leading Darwinists classified them as two distinct species—males as Homo frontalis and females as Homo parietalis.4 The differences were so great that Darwin was amazed “such different beings belong to the same species.”5

Reasons for male superiority included the conclusion that war and hunting pruned the weaker men, allowing only the most fit to return home and reproduce. Women, in contrast, were not subject to these selection pressures but were protected by men, allowing the weak to survive.6

Darwin’s Writings and Opinions Regarding Women

Many Darwin biographers, including Peter Brent and Evelleen Richards, conclude that Darwin had a low opinion of women. Brent concluded, “It would be hard to conceive of a more self-indulgent, almost contemptuous, view of the subservience of women to men” than Darwin’s attitude.7 Richards writes that Darwin had “clearly defined opinions on women’s intellectual inferiority and her subservient status.”8

Darwin taught that women were both biologically and intellectually inferior to men.

Darwin’s writings and those of his disciples reveal that the belief of women inferiority was central to early evolutionary theory. In The Descent of Man Darwin argued that adult females of most species resembled the young of both sexes and that “males are more evolutionarily advanced than females.”9

Darwin’s Influence

This degrading view of women rapidly spread to Darwin’s scientific and academic contemporaries during the late Victorian period10 and heavily influenced many theorists who had a major role in shaping the following generation—from Sigmund Freud to Havelock Ellis.11 Evelleen Richards concludes that Darwin’s views about women logically followed from his theory, “thereby nourishing several generations of scientific sexism.”12 Importantly, as a result of Darwin’s ideas, scientists were inspired to use biology to build support for the position that women were “manifestly inferior and irreversibly subordinate” to men, thus impacting all of society.13 Darwinian thinking supported the idea that men were superior to women, which was already within many cultures. Darwin simply gave credence to this unbiblical teaching.

Contrasting Ideas

In contrast to this evolutionary teaching, the Scriptures teach that all humans descended from Adam and Eve, and all are brothers and sisters. Furthermore, in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28, NIV). Men and women, like Jews, Greeks, slaves, and free people, have equality of personhood before God. One is not superior to another, though their roles in life may differ.

Dr. Jerry Bergman has published over 700 articles and books and has earned nine degrees. He has served as a consultant for CBS News, ABC News, and Reader’s Digest. Dr. Bergman has also taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology at Northwest State College in Archbold, Ohio (USA) for 20 years.

Visit www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i1/females.asp for an in-depth look at what Darwin believed about women.

Oppenheimer Quote

"There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors."
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer(1904-1967)
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/J..Robert.Oppenheimer.Quote.DEE6

Oppenheimer was the physicist in charge of the Manhattan Project.

This quote reminds me of Ben Stein's movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed in which he shows that the ability to question, especially the theory of evolution, is not allowed.

Is It Time for a New Reformation ?

Take one look around our world. A need for a new reformation is evident, both for our culture and for the church. We must return to the Bible as our absolute authority.

Whether it’s liberalism, evolutionism, Gnosticism, Mormonism, Islam, New Age, moral issues (e.g., abortion and gay marriage), or the age of the earth, these are all ultimately battles over the same issue.

In 2 Corinthians 11:3, the Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, warns us about this ever-present danger: “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”

Paul in essence is warning Christians that Satan will continue to use the same method on us as he did on Eve: Satan will try to seduce people away from a simple devotion to Christ and His Word.
To understand this better, we need to go back to Genesis 3:1: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say . . . ?’ 

From the beginning, the battle was over the authority of the Word of God. The first woman, Eve, followed by her husband, Adam, gave in to the temptation not to take God at His Word. Instead, he relied on his human reason to determine truth.

Because Adam was the head of the human race, his rebellion plunged the entire human race into sin. All his descendants inherited a sin nature that refused to take God at His Word and instead made human reason their supreme authority.

This battle against God’s Word has manifested itself in every era of history.

Paul faced skeptics on every side, who questioned the clear proclamation of God’s Word. In its early centuries, Christianity fought several challenges to the authority of the Scriptures, including Gnosticism, which taught that man was his own god. Modern issues like the age of dinosaurs or carbon dating are merely new manifestations of age-old attacks on God’s Word.
Human reason has replaced God’s Word, and compromise has crept into the church. A reformation is needed again to call the church to take God at His Word.

In the sixteenth century, the sale of indulgences by the church, for forgiveness of sin and release from the pains of Purgatory, marked a climax in the elevation of human thinking above God’s Word. The monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, challenging indulgences. This act sparked a debate about the ultimate authority of the Bible above the church, and it essentially began the Reformation.

Others joined this reform movement. The Western world was dramatically changed, as Bibles and tracts were printed on the new presses and thus biblical truths were disseminated widely. In fact, until recent decades, much of the West was still heavily influenced by the Reformation and its call to take God at His Word.

The battle against God’s Word never ceased, however, as a series of men and events sought to undo the positive effects of the Reformation. Behind these attacks was an effort to make human reason supreme and steer people away from the authority of the Word of God. It was another manifestation of Genesis 3:1.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the attack against the Bible intensified. New speculation about the age of the earth and the evolution of life raised questions about the accuracy of the Bible. The core issues can be seen in the Scopes trial—said to be the most famous and culture-shaping trial in history (other than the trial of Jesus).

The Scopes trial of 1925 was not really about the teaching of evolution, as is commonly believed, but a deliberate ploy by the American Civil Liberties Union to put Christianity as a whole on trial. Even though the prosecution lawyer William Jennings Bryan was a great Christian statesman, he let the Christian faith down by not standing on God’s Word concerning the book of Genesis. For example, he was unable to give an answer about Cain’s wife, and he allowed the possibility that the earth is millions of years old.

The trial marked a symbolic turning point in Christendom and American society. The world’s media reported that Christians were not taking God at His Word (in Genesis), and also that they could not adequately defend it.

The failure of the church to stand on God’s Word has brought devastation to countless lives. Just one example is the once-prominent evangelist Charles Templeton. While in seminary, he was taught to believe in an evolutionary timetable, including millions of years, which eventually led him to reject God’s Word.

Compromise about biblical authority in Genesis 1–11 has made the church so weak that the Bible no longer impacts the culture as it once did. This has largely occurred because human reason was allowed to invade the church and push aside God’s Word.

A new reformation is needed. It’s time for a new generation of reformers to stand up and call the church back to trust in God’s Word where it is most under attack—the history of Genesis 1–11. Biblical creation ministries, such as the Creation Museum, have already issued the call to turn away from the opinions of fallible mankind and stand firmly on the entire Bible.

It’s time that believers made their voices heard, nailing Genesis 1–11 on church doors and secular buildings across the world! We need to take God at His Word and return to the “simplicity that is in Christ.” Then we can watch the power of God’s Word transform lives and influence the culture.

Ken Ham is the founder and president of Answers in Genesis-USA. He has authored or co-authored many books concerning the authority and accuracy of God’s Word and the effects of evolutionary thinking, including Genesis of a Legacy and The Lie: Evolution.

Darwinian Fairytales

From Christianworldviewnetwork.com January '07

Darwinian Fairytales
By David A. Noebel

Every so often I read a book that just blows me away. A book written by a non-Christian who happens to fall right into line with my way of thinking even though I try to line up my ideas with the motto “how would Jesus think about this.” A few years ago it was a book by Richard Milton entitled Shattering The Myths of Darwinism. Today it is a book by David Stove entitled Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution. When I say both books are a hilarious read and will split your sides that is an understatement! You will be rolling on the floor, trust me!

And both claim to be non-religious. Both claim they are merely students of Darwinian evolution and have found it wanting in truth and full of errors i.e., a false theory. Their case will make any intelligent creationist take note.

In fact, Richard Milton is so bold as to take on the age of the universe and finds the universe a lot younger than the stated 13.5 billion years. Milton says, “using Libby’s own data, the age of the atmosphere is around 10,000 years.”

But listen to this from Milton: “In one of the most recent cases of anomalous dating, rock paintings found in the South African bush in 1991 were analyzed by Oxford University’s radiocarbon accelerator unit which dated them as being around 1,200 years old. This finding was significant because it meant the paintings would have been the first bushman painting found in open country. However, publicity of the find attracted the attention of Joan Ahrens, a Capetown resident, who recognized the paintings as being produced by her in art classes and later stolen from her garden by vandals.”
The 1,200-year-old rock painting should have been dated closer to 1975 A.D., a minor difference of 1,170 years!

But Stove, a professional philosopher from Australia who died in 1994, takes on Charles Darwin and his Origin of Species point after point until even an honest Darwinianist would have to ponder the evidence once again for the theory of evolution.

Stove makes it clear that before Darwin could publish his theory he had to distance it from the French free thinkers who were parading evolution around and about the French Enlightenment and French Revolution period. Darwin could not afford to awaken the hostility of the “religious” elements in England and therefore had to make sure that French atheism was not tattooed to his theory. It reality the religious elements in England swallowed his theory before the scientific community.

With Darwin marrying his theory of survival of the fittest (“the battle for life”) and natural selection to the theories of Thomas Malthus in Essay on Population (1798) (population rises or falls according to the food source) Stove has a field day. None of Malthus’ theory survives today and in fact, the present falling population of Europe has nothing to do with the availability of food. Stove wants to know why Darwin’s theory still hangs around since Malthus’ theories have been deep-sixed.

Stove also wants to know why few are noting the relationship between Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest and the robber-baron capitalists who “scientifically” justified their ruthless acquisitiveness. He also wants to know why hardly anyone is pointing out the relationship between Darwin, Hitler and Stalin. Nazi and Communist crimes can all be traced directly to Darwin’s theory. In fact, Hitler criticized Christianity because it was in rebellion against nature! Nature being Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which works every hour of every day to bring about earth’s “favored races.”