James Watson the co-discoverer, along with Francis Crick, of the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, is an atheistic Darwinian evolutionist. He has recently created a furor in England with his comments that black Africans are simply not as intelligent as Europeans. The Sunday Times in London writes:
[Watson] says that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really", and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because "there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level". He writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
Watson's remarks raise several interesting questions. Let's focus on just one for now: Which view of human origins is most likely to lead to genuine racism, the view that men have evolved the traits they have because those traits had survival value in the competition for resources, or the view that all men are created by God in His image and are loved equally by Him?
Ideas have consequences. The idea of materialistic Darwinism, what some scientists call "the greatest idea anyone has ever had," leads directly, as Richard Weikert has pointed out in his masterful book From Darwin to Hitler, to eugenics, racism, and final solutions. The Christian idea of equality before God, on the other hand, leads to the notion that all men have equal dignity, worth, and rights in the eyes of God.
The paradox and perversity of modern culture is that it wants desperately to condemn racism while at the same time embracing Darwinian assumptions that logically entail it. Moreover, modern culture, while professing its abhorrence of racism, is nevertheless eager to minimize, mock and reject the only worldview that is philosophically incompatible with racist ideology, Christian theism.
Very curious.
RLC