(July 8, 2014 at 3:49 pm)Baqal Wrote: 4. Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, was a racist and believed that there were higher and lower races of people. The whole theory of evolution is based on this racially discriminative principle.
Several problems with this.
Almost every European was racist at the time. Darwin was actually quite a bit less so than most.
He had a famous ongoing debate with the Christian captain (Robert FitzRoy) of the Beagle, where Darwin vehemently condemned slavery, which was supported by Fitzroy based on the Bible.
Creationists are notorious for misunderstanding (or more likely lying about) the full tittle of his book, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". They mistake the use of the word 'Race' as pertaining to the races of humans, but in reality, 19th century naturalists simply meant distinct populations within a specific species.
Darwin talks about 'races of cabbages' in "Origin of the Species". Humans aren't even mentioned until that close to the end of the book.
Even if Darwin was a racist, that does not negate the facts of his theory. The inventor of the transistor, William Shockly, was a racist. Doesn't negate his work. Just makes him an asshole.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
