Hopper's Whoppers

An article by Allison Hopper at Scientific American is, or should be, embarrassing to both the author and her editor. Ms. Hopper's thesis is that what's called Creationism, a view based upon a literal interpretation of the Bible's Genesis account, actually promotes white supremacy.

How does she arrive at such a peculiar conclusion? She complains firstly, that children's books don't show "black-skinned early people who launched human civilization."

This is the first puzzler in her essay, but not the last. Almost every depiction of early hominids I've ever seen shows them to be either exceedingly swarthy or so hirsute as to be racially indecipherable.

She then adds that, "The global scientific community overwhelmingly accepts that all living humans are of African descent....We are all descended genetically, and also culturally, from dark-skinned ancestors."

Even if "the global scientific community" is correct that all humans descended from African ancestors, how does it follow that they were therefore dark-skinned? The fact that Africans throughout recorded history, as far as we know, have had dark skin certainly doesn't necessitate the conclusion that those who inhabited the African savannah in prehistoric times were dark-skinned.

But set that aside. Hopper hasn't yet gotten to the core of her complaint. What she wants to do is, "unmask the lie that evolution denial is about religion and recognize that at its core, it is a form of white supremacy that perpetuates segregation and violence against Black bodies."

So if you're skeptical of the "just so" stories of modern evolutionists it's because you're a white supremacist wishing to "perpetuate segregation and violence against Black bodies." Does she adduce any evidence for this claim? Yes, she does:

[T]he first wave of legal fights against evolution was supported by the Klan in the 1920s. Ever since then, entrenched racism and the ban on teaching evolution in the schools have gone hand in hand.

This is odd logic: The Klan opposed teaching evolution and the Klan is racist, so opposition to teaching evolution is racist.

It's an interesting instance of guilt by association, I suppose, but very poor reasoning. It's somewhat like arguing that the Pope is opposed to abortion and the Pope is Catholic, so those who oppose abortion are Catholic.

In any case, having warmed up with this pseudo-argument Ms. Hopper then delivers herself of some extraordinary theological exegesis:

At the heart of white evangelical creationism is the mythology of an unbroken white lineage that stretches back to a light-skinned Adam and Eve. In literal interpretations of the Christian Bible, white skin was created in God's image.

This is a head scratcher. I challenge Ms. Hopper or anyone else to show where in the Bible it says anything about the color of Adam and Eve's skin, or God's, for that matter. But Hopper's biggest whopper is this:

Dark skin has a different, more problematic origin. As the biblical story goes, the curse or mark of Cain for killing his brother was a darkening of his descendants' skin. Historically, many congregations in the U.S. pointed to this story of Cain as evidence that Black skin was created as a punishment.

Hopper manages to reinforce in this short passage the already strong suspicion that she never took the trouble to read the relevant passage. The Genesis account is completely silent about the nature of the mark, nor is the mark a punishment. Here's what the Bible says (Genesis 4:13-15, NIV):

Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.

It's clear that whatever the "mark of Cain" was it was designed to protect him from those who would kill him. The "mark" was not a curse; the curse was being driven from the presence of God.

If anyone interpreted this passage as being somehow a justification for racism they're only showing themselves to be just as ignorant of the Bible as Ms Hopper.

The irony of this article, though, is that if anything bears responsibility for modern racism it is evolutionary theory and the belief, promoted by Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man as well Herbert Spencer, that some races are inferior to, and more primitive than, others.

Darwin believed that Africans were less evolutionarily advanced than white Europeans and that they were inevitably doomed to extinction in the struggle for survival. He wrote in The Descent of Man:

The Western nations of Europe...now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors [that they] stand at the summit of civilization. The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races through the world.

If Ms. Hopper wants to draw our attention to the wellsprings of white supremacy she'd do well to point us to her beloved theory of evolution and its author.

The idea of a struggle for survival in which the most fit would prevail together with the Darwinian notion that some races are inferior to others provided white southerners during the Jim Crow era with all the justification they needed for relegating blacks to second class status.

It has also supplied the Nazis and every racist, bigot and antisemite of the twentieth century with the intellectual ammunition to justify their belief in their own racial and ethnic superiority.

If Ms. Hopper had done just a modicum of research before sending her silly piece off to Scientific American she would've known this and saved herself, and them, no little professional embarrassment.