Early coptic translation and John1:1

 

John 1:1 and the Coptic Versions

ϨΝ ΤЄϨΟΥЄΙΤЄ ΝЄϤϢΟΟΠ ΝϬΙ ΠϢΑϪЄ ΑΥШ ΠϢΑϪЄ ΝЄϤϢΟΟΠ ΝΝΑϨΡΜ ΠΝΟΥΤЄ ΑΥШ ΝЄΥΝΟΥΤЄ ΠЄ ΠϢΑϪЄ -- John 1:1, Sahidic Coptic text. --- "In the beginning existed the Word, and the Word existed with the God, and a god was the word." -- Literal English translation

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Coptic John 1:1c: What Conclusions Can Be Drawn?

Relative to Coptic John 1:1c, what conclusions can be drawn from a multi-year study of the Sahidic Coptic language, including a detailed study of the entire Sahidic Coptic New Testament?

1- That the translation of Coptic neunoute pe pSaje into standard English as "the Word was a god" is literal, accurate, and unassailable. It is simple, but not simplistic. It is what the Coptic text actually says and literally conveys. Any other translation of it amounts to interpretation or paraphrase.

2- That rendering a Sahidic Coptic common ("count") noun, like noute, god, when bound to the Coptic indefinite article, ou, into English as "a" + noun is so prevalent, as for example in Coptic scholar George Horner's 1911 English translation of the Sahidic Coptic New Testament, that this is beyond dispute.

As just the nearest example of this, after John 1:1c itself, is John 1:6. Here we have the Coptic indefinite article, ou, bound to the Coptic common noun rwme, man: aFSwpe nCi ourwme eautnnoouF ebol Hitm pnoute . In Horner's English translation we read: "There was a man having been sent from God." That is the simple, literal, and accurate translation. Likewise, "a god" is the simple, literal, and accurate translation of ou.noute at John 1:1c, the same Coptic indefinite article + common noun construction as found in John 1:6 and elsewhere. Only with respect to Coptic "mass" or abstract nouns is there no need to translate the indefinite article into English, but this is not the situation at Coptic John 1:1c, because noute, god, is a Coptic common or "count" noun.

3 - That, whereas some Coptic grammarians hold that ou.noute may also be translated into English adjectivally as "divine," they give no examples favoring this usage in the Sahidic Coptic New Testament itself. Coptic ou.noute is not used adjectivally or "qualitatively" in the Sahidic Coptic New Testament. The published works of these scholars have been heavily invested in the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Coptic "gospels" like Thomas, Philip, and Judas. Perhaps translating ou.noute as "divine" fits the esoteric or philosophical context of the Gnostic "gospels." But there are no examples in the canonical Coptic New Testament that justify an adjectival translation of ou.noute as "divine," whereas a literal translation of ou.noute as "a god" works just fine. Although "divine" is not altogether objectionable, since a god is divine by definition, a paraphrase is unnecessary when an adequate, understandable literal translation is available.

4- That all the primarily Trinitarian-based objections to translating ou.noute as "a god" at Coptic John 1:1c amount to little more than presupposition or special pleading. Though such faulty, superficial objections have been cut and pasted frequently on the Internet, they are poorly researched and often misleading.

In one such apologetic, promising full disclosure of what some Coptic scholars "really said," the conclusion about ou.noute at John 1:1 remains the same, i.e., "it might mean was a god, was divine, was an instance of 'god', was one god (not two, three, etc.)"; "In Coptic, "ounoute" can mean "a god" or "one with divine nature"; "So literally, the Sahidic and Bohairic texts say "a god" in the extant mss. ... A rather clumsy reading might be: The Logos was in the beginning. The Logos was with God. The Logos was like God (or godlike, or divine) with the emphasis on his nature; not his person."

Not ONE of the scholars appealed to by Trinitarian apologists said that Coptic John 1:1 should be translated to say "The Word was God." Not one. Not one said that "a god" was incorrect. In fact, the interlinear reading for Sahidic Coptic John 1:1c in scholar Bentley Layton's Coptic in 20 Lessons specifically reads "a-god is the-Word."

The Coptic text of John 1:1c was made prior to the adoption of the Trinity doctrine by Egyptian and other churches, and it is poor scholarship to attempt to "read back" a translation such as "the Word was God" into any exegesis of the Coptic text. Such a rendering is foreign to Coptic John 1:1c, which clearly and literally says, "the Word was a god."

5- That, stated succinctly, translating Sahidic Coptic's neunoute pe pSaje literally into standard English as "the Word was a god" stands on solid grammatical and contextual ground.

Can we talk about this?

 In the Controversy over Intelligent Design, Seeking Genuine Dialogue

John G. West

Imagine you know someone who tells your friends you are his “hero.” In fact, this person lavishes praise on you for bravery and sincerity. He emphasizes how much he admires you. He stresses that you and he share many of the same beliefs, even though you differ on some things.

A couple of days later, you discover that this same person has sent your co-workers an article he has co-authored denouncing you. His article claims you “ignore evidence,” “misrepresent” the state of your field, and are even engaged in a “quixotic” quest. Reading through the article, you learn that it actually misstates your position, makes misleading claims, and ignores your responses. Still later, this same person tells others that he had an obligation to critique you because your views are tantamount to believing that “1+1=3.”

The same person starts issuing public challenges to you to engage in “dialogue,” pledging that he wants you “to get a fair hearing” — all the while insisting to others that you don’t respond to your critics (even though you have done so extensively).

Is this person’s approach likely to produce genuine dialogue? If not, what might be a more constructive way forward?

“A Fair Hearing”

I’ve been pondering those questions since reading the recent post “I Agree with Behe” by biologist Joshua Swamidass. An evangelical Christian, Swamidass is a sharp critic of intelligent design and a defender of evolution — not that those two concepts need to be mutually exclusive (see Jay Richards’s introduction to God and Evolution). In his post, Swamidass talks about how much he admires biochemist Michael Behe for his bravery and for helping him eventually embrace Darwin’s idea of common ancestry. He calls Behe his “hero” (or did: he has now cut that sentence). Swamidass acknowledges disagreements with Behe, but stresses how much they agree. 

Swamidass ends his article with a plea for Behe to engage him on his online discussion site. He says: “I want him to get a fair hearing.” What could be more reasonable than that? 

And yet… just a few days earlier, to a different audience — this time Michael Behe’s scientific peers — Swamidass co-authored another article. That article bore the blistering headline: “A biochemist’s crusade to overturn evolution misrepresents theory and ignores evidence.” I agree with Swamidass that you can admire someone and still disagree with him. But typically if you admire someone, you strive to treat that person with respect, accurately describe his position, make sure any critiques are fair and accurate, and avoid cheap shots. Is this how Swamidass and his co-authors critiqued Behe in Science? 

The review in Science claims that Behe “misrepresents theory and avoids evidence.” It calls his effort to critique Darwinian evolution “quixotic.” Indeed, there is little in the review to suggest that any of its co-authors admire Behe or share common ground with him at all. Instead, they warn readers (cue the scary music) that Behe’s work has “excited creationists,” and tell them that Behe’s ideas were refuted by a world-renowned scientific authority — a federal judge in Harrisburg, PA! (The judge, by the way, cut and pasted his critique of intelligent design virtually verbatim from lawyers working with the ACLU — and ended up misquoting and misrepresenting Behe as a result.)

Misrepresenting Michael Behe

The Science review misrepresents Behe right from the start: “In 1996, biochemist Michael Behe introduced the notion of ‘irreducible complexity,’ arguing that some biomolecular structures could not have evolved because their functionality requires interacting parts, the removal of any one of which renders the entire apparatus defective.” (emphasis added)

Well, no. Behe doesn’t claim that irreducibly complex systems can’t evolve. He claims they are extremely unlikely to evolve by unguided natural selection and random mutations. There is a difference. A more accurate statement would be: “Although Behe accepts much of modern evolutionary theory (such as common descent), he thinks it highly improbable that irreducibly complex systems can be produced by an unguided Darwinian process of natural selection acting on random mutations.” Stated that way, Behe’s position might appear reasonable even to some readers of Science. And if your goal is to give Behe “a fair hearing,” surely you would want to state his position as accurately as possible, right?

The Science review also repeatedly charges Behe with not responding to his critics. As I have already described elsewhere, Behe has responded to most of the critics cited in Science. When confronted with this fact, Swamidass has stressed that they were reviewing Behe’s new book, Darwin Devolves, not what he said elsewhere. But as I pointed out earlier:

    [T]he tenor of Swamidass and company’s claim is that Behe doesn’t respond to contrary evidence. They don’t say, “Behe has responded to this evidence, but we fault him because he didn’t reprint his responses yet again in this new book” — likely because they know that such an admission would make their overall claim look silly.

     There’s more. The review in Science claims: “Missing from Behe’s discussion is any mention of exaptation, the process by which nature retools structures for new function and possibly the most common mechanism that leads to the false impression of irreducible complexity.” Well, technically true. The exact word “exaptation” doesn’t appear in Behe’s book. But as Behe points out, the argument represented by the term does. Swamidass et al. ignore what Behe said in the book on the topic — all the while criticizing Behe for not responding to his critics.

What Real Dialogue Means

Does this kind of review demonstrate a commitment to give Behe “a fair hearing”? You can decide for yourself.

For me, real dialogue isn’t achieved by saying you admire someone, but by responding seriously and fairly to his arguments. After the Science review appeared, Behe and others began to respond in detail to the various criticisms that had been leveled in the review. Like the Science review itself (which, remember, charged that Behe was on a “crusade” that “misrepresents theory and ignores evidence”), some of these responses were pointed. But they also were substantive, highlighting Behe’s extensive previous replies on many of the issues raised in the review.Now that Swamidass knows Behe has responded previously to most of the very points raised in Science, has Swamidass taken the time to go through Behe’s extensive responses and lay out why he thinks Behe’s responses are unpersuasive?

“A Great Honor”

Alas, for the most part, no. Instead, Swamidass has defended his Science review by suggesting that Behe’s errors are so illogical that they are on the same level as someone who can’t do the simplest form of math: “I just don’t think that 1+1=3, and I think I have a right and obligation to say this.” He has claimed that his Science review is like “kryptonite” to Discovery Institute, and “we are watching them melt before our eyes.” (Does this mean that Swamidass views himself as Lex Luthor?) At the same time, Swamidass seems to suggest that Behe should be grateful to him for his blistering review: “[I]t is a great honor to be reviewed in the prestigious journal Science. I’m humbled to bestow this honor on Behe….” 

Swamidass even faults Behe and others for not consulting him and his co-authors before responding to their critical review: “We offered to clarify any questions they had about the review. They… declined, and instead fired the PR machine up.”

The odd thing about these responses is that they themselves seem to represent PR: Rather than actually respond to someone’s critique, you dismiss it without dealing with it.

When pressed to respond to the fact that Behe has responded to many, many scientific critics over the years, Swamidass finally concedes that Behe “has responded to many other refutations.” But this “does NOT mean,” says Swamidass, that:

   1,He has responded effectively.

2,He has responded to the strongest refutations.

3,He has responded to all legitimate refutations.

This is progress — an explicit acknowledgment that Behe has in fact engaged with his scientific critics “many” times. Swamidass’s first two points raise legitimate questions for discussion, although they require more than mere assertions to establish. His third point is potentially so broad as to be unserious. In principle, of course, you should respond to “all legitimate refutations.” In reality, it depends on what one classifies as “legitimate.” There are not enough hours in the day to respond to every troll or every rehashed argument — or to reviewers who studiously ignore your previous responses. 

The Case of Chloroquine Resistance

Let’s apply Swamidass’s first two concerns to a specific case he himself has raised: chloroquine resistance. Behe’s new book briefly mentions this topic from his previous book The Edge of Evolution. The review in Science, however, treats chloroquine resistance as major topic of Behe’s new book (it isn’t) and faults Behe for not responding in his new book to a 2008 journal article by Durrett and Schmidt and a 2014 journal article by Summers. Presumably Swamidass thought these articles were the “strongest refutations” of Behe’s position on the subject, since they were the ones Swamidass and his co-authors cited in their Science review. 

So did Behe fail to respond to these two articles? 

Not at all. In fact, Behe not only responded, he wrote extensive responses. Of course, this fact was left unmentioned in the Science review. No matter. After the review came out and Behe’s previous responses were pointed out, did Swamidass seriously engage them? As near as I can tell, no. Swamidass’s treatment of the 2014 Summers paper is instructive. Instead of responding to what Behe has written about that paper, Swamidass first points people to a blog post by biologist Larry Moran — known for regularly berating intelligent design proponents as “IDiots” (including in the very post Swamidass recommends!).

But did Behe ignore Moran’s article? Nope. Indeed, Behe engaged in an extensive online debate with Moran. So does Swamidass explain why he thinks Moran is right and Behe is wrong? Nope again. He simply states: “Yes, I know that Behe responded (unconvincingly) to Moran.” 

An Assertion Isn’t a Demonstration

In other words, Swamidass simply asserts that Behe’s responses to Moran weren’t convincing. But an assertion isn’t a demonstration, and it certainly isn’t a constructive example of dialogue. 

Perhaps recognizing that this kind of non-engagement isn’t sufficient, Swamidass reaches back to a 2009 blog post by Arthur Hunt and cites it as another refutation of Behe. Here he actually quotes from Hunt’s post and tries to offer an actual criticism, even glancingly mentioning one of our responses to him. Now I don’t know if Behe ever responded to this particular blog post by Hunt — or if he even needs to. Given that Behe has written lots of responses on the topic (responses to which Swamidass has not replied), perhaps there is nothing new to say or perhaps his other responses were sufficient. Regardless, I don’t think citing yet another article removes the responsibility of engaging with Behe’s many prior responses. It certainly doesn’t establish that Behe hasn’t responded to the “strongest refutations” against him on this topic. 

Recall that in Science, Behe was originally faulted for not responding to two specific articles about chloroquine resistance — but then it turned out, he did respond to them. Next Swamidass pointed to a blog post by Larry Moran. For myself, I’m not convinced Moran is a great example of someone Behe needed to respond to (perhaps I’m just put off by Moran’s habit of calling people “IDiots”). Regardless, Behe responded to Moran as well. Swamidass apparently doesn’t think Behe’s responses to all these people are convincing — but he doesn’t explain why. Finally, Swamidass finds another blog post from a decade ago and faults Behe for not responding to THAT. I have to admit I’m not especially impressed by this mode of interaction.

If dialogue simply means raising as many new objections against someone as you can, but never having to respond to their previous replies, then that doesn’t seem very constructive.

An Invitation with a Barb

However, if dialogue means a genuine exchange of ideas, where each party responds seriously to the other’s best arguments — then that is definitely worth pursuing. That’s why ID proponents have engaged extensively with their scientific critics over the years. This has already been established with regard to Behe. But it’s true of others as well. For example, Discovery Institute published two entire books devoted to engaging scientific critics of the ideas raised by Stephen Meyer: Signature of Controversy and Debating Darwin’s Doubt. 

  Swamidass would like Behe to come to his online discussion site to debate his book with commenters on the site. That’s admirable, but I’m concerned that his invite seems to come attached with a barb: The intimation that if Behe (or others) choose not to participate in Swamidass’s comment board, then they are not really engaging with their critics or the scientific community. That is of course false. Comment boards are one way to engage your critics, and Behe can certainly decide for himself whether he wants to participate in them. But given that there is often more heat than light in online forums, he may well decide that it isn’t the most productive way to have a serious exchange of ideas about his book. If Behe decides to respond to critics in other ways, I hope Swamidass will respect that decision without trying to weaponize it (i.e., falsely claim that Behe doesn’t engage with critics just because he doesn’t participate in Swamidass’s discussion board). 

Behe has written a book, now others are critiquing it (even before it is out!), and Behe and others are responding to the critiques. Regardless of whatever else Behe chooses to do, he is definitely engaging his critics and will continue to do so. To me, this kind of back and forth is more amenable to serious discussion and reflection than quick volleys on a discussion board.

The way to extend this kind of dialogue is to enter into it by writing a thoughtful article. To his credit, noted biologist Richard Lenski has begun to engage Behe’s arguments in Darwin Devolves. Good for him! I’d encourage Swamidass to do the same. If serious points are raised, I’m sure that Behe — and others — will respond in coming months, just as they have already done with regard to the Sciencereview. 

Assuming that Behe’s critics don’t ignore these responses (or dismiss them as part of Behe’s “PR machine”), this will result in a genuine — and stimulating — exchange of ideas. 

If you want to enter into the larger discussion and see what all the fuss is about, I’d encourage you to pre-order Behe’s book, which is finally out next week.

Historians on Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany.

 What Historians Say About the Stand of Jehovah's Witnesses during the Nazi Period (1933 - 1945)

Professor Dr. Wolfgang Benz, Research Center for Antisemitism, Technical University Berlin:
"Jehovah's Witnesses. The religious community numbering 25,000 souls in Germany was banned in 1933. About half of them continued their 'preaching work' underground. Jehovah's Witnesses refused to give the Hitler salute and especially refused military service. They were persecuted mercilessly. About 10,000 were arrested. The resistance of this group, which also tried to inform the population about the criminal character of the Nazi state by distributing leaflets in the years 1936/37 and thus acted against the regime of injustice beyond their own interests, cost them about 1,200 lives." - Informationen zur politischen Bildung, no. 243, (1994): Deutscher Widerstand 1933-1945, page 21. Published by the Center for Political Education of the Federal Government of Germany.

Dr. Gabriele Yonan, Religious Scientist, Free University, Berlin:
"When the entire text of the June 25, 1933 'Declaration of Facts,' along with the letter to Hitler is, in retrospect, put into the context of the history of Jehovah's Witnesses during the Nazi regime, their resistance, and the Holocaust, it consequently has nothing to do with 'antisemitic statements and currying favor with Hitler.' These accusations made by today's church circles are deliberate manipulations and historical misrepresentations, and their obvious motivation is the discomfort of a moral inferiority. At the time of the convention [of Jehovah's Witnesses in Berlin, on June 25, 1933], as well as later, governments, statesmen, and diplomats from all countries negotiated with Hitler and demonstrated their respect and reverence for him. In 1936, even when thousands had already been imprisoned in concentration camps-among the first of whom were Jehovah's Witnesses-the international Olympic Games took place in Berlin under the swastika." - "Am mutigsten waren immer wieder die Zeugen Jehovas." Verfolgung und Widerstand der Zeugen Jehovas im Nationalsozialismus, published by historian Hans Hesse, Bremen, 1998, page 395.

Hans Hesse, historian:
"The first thing we can learn from the attitude of Jehovah's Witnesses under the 'Third Reich' is that a small group of people in Germany, relying on their faith and the solid unity among them succeeded in drawing away from the Nazi regime's totalitarian reach, even if at a heavy price . . . Second, it should be an obligation for us, the [later] generations ... to ensure that people will never again have to die in order to remain true to their conscience." - Historian Dr. Hubert Roser, Karlsruhe University. In: "Am mutigsten waren immer wieder die Zeugen Jehovas." Verfolgung und Widerstand der Zeugen Jehovas im Nationalsozialismus, published by historian Hans Hesse, Bremen, 1998, page 253.

Historian Hartmut Mehringer:
"As early as in the Weimar Republic, Jehovah's Witnesses were exposed to the hostilities of racial-nationalistic forces, of the church, and to the first legal measures from the state. ... Although in 1933 the IBV [International Bible Students Association] tried to adapt to the new situation and declared their strictly nonpolitical and anti-communist nature, harsh conflicts with the government agencies soon followed. Already the spring 1933 saw heavy persecution, confiscations, and bans of publishing, preaching, and organizing." - Widerstand und Emigration. Das NS-Regime und seine Gegner, by Historian Hartmut Mehringer, Munich, 1997, paperback edition, 1998, page 103.

Detlef Garbe:
"Being a 'total state' claiming the entire person, taking God's place, and demanding the whole 'Volkskorper' [entire population] to be concordant with their 'Fuehrer,' the Nazi regime left no room at all for people who lived according to the commandments of the Bible Students' doctrine. Thus, 'resisting' had to become a requirement for keeping the self-esteem and identity of the religious community." - Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium. Die Zeugen Jehovas im "Dritten Reich," by Detlef Garbe, Munich, 1993, page 529. (The 4th edition was published in 1999.)

Dr. Elke Imberger, State Archivist:
"The distribution of the 'Resolution' [on December 12, 1936] and of the 'Open Letter' [on June 20, 1937] were not only a very spectacular, but also were a new way of public preaching ...[These were] campaigns throughout the 'Reich' which were so well coordinated that they could take place all over Germany on the same day and at the same time.... Throughout the whole Nazi era in Germany, there was no other resistance organization that took comparable initiatives." - Widerstand "von unten." Widerstand und Dissens aus den Reihen der Arbeiterbewegung und der Zeugen Jehovas in Lubeck und Schleswig-Holstein 1933-1945, by State Archivist Dr. Elke Imberger, Neumunster, 1991, page 345.

Michael H. Kater, Historian:
"It is striking that no other religious sect suffered as much under National Socialism as did the Earnest Bible Students [Jehovah's Witnesses]." - "Die Ernsten Bibelforscher im Dritten Reich," by Historian Michael H. Kater, published in Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, April 1969, Stuttgart, 1969, page 183.

Dr. Friedrich Zipfel, Historian:

"The extent of loyalty towards the state was the criterion for initiating persecution. ... The 'International Association of Earnest Bible Students,' the 'Watchtower Bible and Tract Society,' were the first religious association to be hit by the Nazis, and they were hit the hardest. Hardly an analysis has been made, or any memoirs written about the concentration camps, which do not include a description of the strong faith, the diligence, the helpfulness, and the fanatical martyrdom of the Earnest Bible Students." - Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933-1945, by Historian Dr. Friedrich Zipfel, Berlin, 1965, page 175.

The tiny house movement:an overview.

 The tiny-house movement (also known as the "small house movement") is an architectural and social movement that advocates for downsizing living spaces, simplifying, and essentially "living with less." According to the 2018 International Residential Code, Appendix Q Tiny Houses, a tiny house is a "dwelling unit with a maximum of 37 square metres (400 sq ft) of floor area, excluding lofts." While tiny housing primarily represents a return to simpler living, the movement was also regarded as a potential eco-friendly solution to the existing housing industry, as well as a feasible transitional option for individuals experiencing a lack of shelter.

This distinction is important as many people look to place tiny houses on empty lots, however if a tiny house lacks any one of the necessary amenities required for a dwelling unit then it is an accessory structure and must be placed on the same lot as a primary structure per the 2018 International Residential Code. There are a variety of reasons for living in a tiny house. Many people who enter this lifestyle rethink what they value in life and decide to put more effort into strengthening their communities, healing the environment, spending time with their families, or saving money. Tiny homes can also provide affordable, transitional housing for those who have experienced a lack of shelter.

Aristotle: on the soul.

 On the Soul (Greek: Περὶ Ψυχῆς, Peri Psychēs; Latin: De Anima) is a major treatise written by Aristotle c. 350 BC. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism. Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humans have all these as well as intellect.

Aristotle holds that the soul (psyche, ψυχή) is the form, or essence of any living thing; it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in. It is the possession of a soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He argues that some parts of the soul — the intellect — can exist without the body, but most cannot.)

In 1855, Charles Collier published a translation titled On the Vital Principle. George Henry Lewes, however, found this description also wanting.

And still yet more on the patron saint of the master race.

 

The Casual Racism of Charles Darwin

Robert F. Shedinger

Much ink has been spilled over the issue of Darwin’s views on race. Was he a racist or wasn’t he? Given the mythological status enjoyed by Darwin in the modern world, it is understandable that proponents of his work would try to distance him from any taint of racism. Adrian Desmond and James Moore make such an attempt in Darwin’s Sacred Cause by focusing on Darwin’s anti-slavery views and his relationship to a former slave who taught him how to skin birds during Darwin’s time in Edinburgh. Desmond and Moore fail to realize that being anti-slavery (which Darwin was) has little to do with being anti-racist (which Darwin wasn’t). Even the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, believed that freed slaves could not integrate effectively into white society and he explored possibilities for repatriation to Africa. In addition, by focusing on Darwin’s relationship with a freed slave, Desmond and Moore commit the common “I can’t be racist because I have a black friend” fallacy.

Most recently, Allison Hopper weighed in on this subject in the pages of Scientific American, outrageously accusing critics of evolutionary theory of being motivated by white supremacy. Her startlingly vacuous opinion piece simply ignores the long legacy of both racism and anti-racism attached to adherents of both monogenist and polygenist views of human origins. One does not become racist because of the view one holds on human origins. One becomes racist for other complex reasons and then reads that racism back into whatever view on human origins you hold.

Letters from Darwin

That Darwin held racist views is well documented in the Descent of Man. This has been much discussed and I will not rehearse it here. But I do want to add to the discussion two of Darwin’s letters that document a kind of casual racism that should close the door on this question. 

By casual racism, I mean the use of racialized language in a non-racist context. Such language betrays a wanton disregard for the ugliness embedded in the racialized language and therefore a callous lack of interest in how such language serves to perpetuate racist systems. If, according to the great rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, then Darwin’s indifference to the history behind racialized terminology may say as much about his views on race as the overtly racist things he says in Descent. So, what kind of language did Darwin use?

In November of 1836, just a month after returning from the Beagle voyage, Darwin wrote to his sister Caroline about the plight of their brother Erasmus. Darwin was in London visiting Erasmus, giving him the opportunity to meet Harriet Martineau, a well-known British socialite and author who had become Erasmus’s constant companion. Darwin complains to Caroline about the nature of this relationship and says:

Our only protection from so admirable a sister-in-law is in her working him too hard. He begins to perceive (to use his own expression) he shall be not much better than her “nigger.” Imagine poor Erasmus a nigger to so philosophical & energetic a lady. How pale and woe he will look….We must pray for our poor “nigger.” 

It is certainly startling to see the N-word cropping up in Darwin’s letters, but this is not the only place. In 1848 Darwin signed a letter to his wife, “Your old nigger — C.D.” It appears the N-word served as a playful term that Charles and Emma both used to refer to themselves in order to denote how they were each other’s slaves in the marriage relationship.

A Possible Objection

Some might object that since Darwin is not using the N-word here in reference to black people, using the word in this context is not racist. But nothing could be further from the truth. By trivializing the racialized history of this word in so cavalier a way, Darwin is demonstrating a callous indifference to the horrifying experiences endured by real slaves. Darwin may have been against slavery in theory, but his casual use of racialized language betrays a man very much ensconced in the ideology of white British imperial supremacy, not someone truly grappling with the ugly facts of slavery and racism.

Trying to remake Darwin into a champion of racial equality is a fruitless exercise. As an upper class Victorian gentleman, Darwin was fully socialized into the ideology of British imperial supremacy and to pretend otherwise is simply to refuse to accept the obvious. The father of modern evolutionary theory was a racist who gave birth to a theory unfortunately used by many others to advance their own racist agendas. Any fair assessment of the role of Darwinian evolution in history must wrestle with these basic facts.

Yet more on the patron saint of the master race.

 

Distancing Darwin from Racism Is a Fool’s Errand

Michael Flannery

Editor’s note: Last week, Scientific American viciously smeared all critics of Darwinian theory with an article titled, “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy,” by Allison Hopper. As promised, we are presenting some of our extensive past coverage of the tight links between racism and evolution. This article was originally published on November 23, 2020.

A recent article by Livia Gershon examines so-called “Bizarre Theories of the American School of Evolution.” She tries to implicitly distance Darwin from racism by suggesting that his outspoken critic, famed paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897), opposed women’s suffrage and equality for African Americans as “two perils of the Indo-European.” These racist and misogynistic views, insists Gershon, were shared by the “American School” of evolutionary anthropology, a group that had morphed from the polygenism of a previous generation led by men like Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), and Josiah Clark Nott (1804-1873) into a new brand of neo-Lamarckian theory. According to the article, “They [Cope and his colleagues] rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Instead, they built on the work of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). Unlike Darwin, Lamarck believed that acquired characteristics like strong muscles could be passed on to descendants.” Gershon continues, “In humans, Lamarck argued, sentiment — emotional responses to physical sensations — gradually made physical changes in the body.” 

It is this “sentimental” view that allegedly permitted the kind of racial and gender-biased calculus to permeate the thinking of the “American School” in contrast supposedly to Darwin, whose “random, amoral process” of blind evolution simply allowed the chips to fall where they might without such judgmental prejudices. Actually, Gershon is merely highlighting an article by Rutgers University Women’s and Gender Studies professor Kyla Schuller, “Taxonomies of Feeling: The Epistemology of Sentimentalism in Late-Nineteenth-Century Racial and Sexual Science,” written in a dense, anfractuous academese. It is best not to wander too deeply into Schuller’s intellectual weeds except to say that it only adds tortuous detail to the summary errors of Gershon’s briefer piece. So in the interest of keeping this simple, let’s just say that the most “bizarre” aspect of this is not neo-Lamarckism, but rather the strange bifurcated equation that neo-Lamarckism = racial and gender bias while Darwinism = objective “science” shorn of all prejudicial baggage. This is demonstrably wrong historically and scientifically.

Darwin’s Bulldog Was No Better

Historically, Darwin and his cohorts were just as racist and gender biased as Cope or anyone else of their era. As I have pointed out, Darwin was certainly as racist as the notorious species fixist Louis Agassiz. And Darwin’s Bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), was no better, arguing shortly after the American Civil War that blacks were doomed now that they were cut free from the purported protective influences of their owners. Huxley stated boldly that “no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man.” In fact, one man did, the Darwinists’ arch enemy Richard Owen (1804-1892). A fascinating examination of this important point is presented in Christopher E. Cosans’ Owen’s Ape & Darwin’s Bulldog. 

As for women, Darwin was no champion of gender equality. As he stated in the Descent of Man, “Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius.” With their male counterparts having a brain that is “absolutely larger,” Darwin doubted that women could possibly surmount their biological limitations. Nevertheless, social class could create, for Darwin, a state of general improvement for women. But according to Darwin it was male selection mediated by social class that made the difference. Again in the Descent he writes, 

It appears to me with justice, that the members of our aristocracy, including under this term all wealthy families in which primogeniture has long prevailed, from having chosen during many generations from all classes the more beautiful women as their wives, have become handsomer, according to the European standard of beauty, than the middle classes; yet the middle classes are placed under equally favourable conditions of life for the perfect development of the body. 

There is, of course, no mention of this by the gender studies expert Schuller. 

“A Millennial Ascent into Perfection”

Gershon and Schuller seem to imply that part of Cope’s problem was that “Many Anglo-Saxons looked forward not just to ongoing biosocial evolution but also to a millennial ascent into perfection.” Perhaps, but so did Darwin! Writing to the Rev. Charles Kingsley (1819-1879) on February 6, 1862, he stated, “It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing & clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-Saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.” He voiced the same sentiment years later in a letter to Irish philosopher and political economist William Graham (1839-1911) on July 3, 1881, “Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.” 

For Darwin, racial superiority was “survival of the fittest” put into terms of national expansion and even of human progress. Moreover, that progress was defined in explicitly racial terms. Darwin believed this was confirmed in the “science” of craniotomy, the idea that races could be ranked by measuring the cranial capacities of their respective skulls. If Cope could be a racist by “sentiment,” Darwin could confirm his racism in the cold, hard “facts” of his racialized science.

Darwin the Neo-Lamarckian

It is inaccurate to divide 19th-century evolutionary racial theory on the basis of a Lamarckian litmus test in any case. The reason is that although Cope was a neo-Lamarckian, so was Darwin. Neither Gershon nor Schuller mentions Darwin’s pangenesis theory of inheritance, which was Lamarckian. As evolutionary historian Peter Bowler has point out in Evolution: The History of an Idea, “Darwin’s lifelong commitment to a limited amount of Lamarckism and to what was later called blending inheritance (the mixture of parental characters) were integral parts of his worldview.” Biologist Rupert Sheldrake in Science Set Freeagrees:

In Darwin’s day, most people assumed that acquired characteristics could indeed be inherited. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had taken this for granted in his theory of evolution published more than fifty years before Darwin’s, and the inheritance of acquired characteristics was often referred to as “Lamarckian inheritance.” Darwin shared this belief and cited many examples to support it. In this respect Darwin was a Lamarckian, not so much because of Lamarck’s influence but because he and Lamarck both accepted the inheritance of acquired characteristics as a matter of common sense.

Such a historical context makes Lamarckian distinctions — racial or otherwise — meaningless. 

Simply Scientifically Wrong

Of course Lamarckism need not be expressed as benighted racial and gender prejudice. Gershon’s characterization of Lamarckian evolution as “bizarre” is simply scientifically wrong. For example, geneticist Eva Jablonka is presently arguing for a more Lamarckian approach, as is bioengineer Raju Pookottil, cell biologist Mariusz Nowacki, and biophysicist Yoav Soen. Again, Rupert Sheldrake sheds some light:

The taboo against the inheritance of acquired characteristics began to dissolve around the turn of the millennium. There is a growing recognition that some acquired characteristics can indeed be inherited. This kind of inheritance is now called “epigenetic inheritance.” In this context, the word “epigenetic” signifies “over and above genetics.” Some kinds of epigenetic inheritance depend on chemical attachments to genes, particularly of methyl groups. Genes can be “switched off” by the methylation of the DNA itself or of the proteins that bind to it.

Schuller’s blinkered views are only magnified by Gershon’s repeating them. It is astonishing that such stunning ignorance of history and science can be displayed in an academic publication, only to be repeated by way of summation. But this is what happens when an article — peer-reviewed or not — says the “right” things. Clearly, historical and scientific accuracy takes a back seat to providing cover for Darwin’s own views on race and gender. Details and facts are easily swept under the rug when sanitizing Darwin. But finger-pointing at “bizarre theories” and one-sided race-baiting are thin disguises for a worldview that lives in a glass house. 

What Schuller and Gershon are trying to protect Darwinism from are the social applications to which it has been so prone. Indeed, Darwin was as much committed to a racialized and misogynistic ethos as any of his generation. What Adrian Desmond and James Moore wrote nearly thirty years ago in Darwin remains as true as ever: 

Did he [Darwin] see society, like nature, progress by culling its unfit members? “Social Darwinism” is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin’s image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start — “Darwinism” was always intended to explain human society.

Historian of science and social anthropologist Henrika Kuklik (1942-2013) was even more emphatic, stating that “scholars have wasted their time trying to exonerate Darwin of responsibility for Social Darwinism, for he was a Social Darwinist.”

What a shame that Schuller sent Gershon on such a fool’s errand. Both returned empty-handed and ended up looking either deceitful or ignorant. I’ll assume the latter; it seems the more charitable conclusion.

Editor’s note: For more on Darwinism’s enduring legacy of racism, watch the award-winning documentary Human Zoos: