@ Thucy

There is a huge influence they had on his existance, but as I said in my reply to Draugnar there is a huge influence of countless non relations on his existance as well. The time of my uncle's conception, for example, was influenced hugely by the end of world war II. If the war had ended at any other time, my grandad's celebrations would have certainly occured using a different set of sperm cells that would most likely have met a different egg, and I would have a different uncle. In a very real sense the uncle I have now only exists because of the actions of Churchill, Hitler (does anyone else think that he gets so many mentions partly because his name is easy to spell?), Stalin, and countless other less well known individuals.

I don't think a distant relative can claim much in the way of special status on the whole existance front.

@thucy - you may be right, our forefathers are important. Be honest can you give me the first names of your eight great grandparents?

@draugnar - you are of course correct that people would still be irish even if they were ruled by the english. I suspect nationality is what you consider yourself to be even if the authorities say you are something else.

no but thats because we didnt know them all. only four

all im saying is that there is nothing wrong with appreciating where you came from. i'll be damned if i'm never going to visit the town in england my surname comes from.

Darwinian ideas destroyed scientific racism and Biblical based racism. Darwin was an anti-racist at a time when slavery, imperialism, and anti-miscegenation sentiment was popular and propagated by religious fundamentalists. The idea that racism only came into existence after Darwin is a disgusting smear on Darwin's good name. It's been going on for a while now, and every few years some fundie tries to put the brownshirt on Darwin.

"But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having inter-crossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke.This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them."
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871

"My wife has just finished reading aloud your 'Life with a Black Regiment,' and you must allow me to thank you heartily for the very great pleasure which it has in many ways given us. I always thought well of the negroes, from the little which I have seen of them; and I have been delighted to have my vague impressions confirmed, and their character and mental powers so ably discussed. When you were here I did not know of the noble position which you had filled. I had formerly read about the black regiments, but failed to connect your name with your admirable undertaking. Although we enjoyed greatly your visit to Down, my wife and myself have over and over again regretted that we did not know about the black regiment, as we should have greatly liked to have heard a little about the South from your own lips." - Letter to Thomas Higginson, organizer of the first black regiment

"It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children -- those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own -- being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty:"
Voyage of the Beagle, 1839.

"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871, arguing against eugenics

And wait, is Fulham arguing that different races are proto-species? Somehow I'm not surprised.

Here we go, time for the master race card to be played... :-)

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes… will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

Fulham, I don't get the point of you bringing up this statement. He's saying that the gap between humans and species most like humans is going to become ever greater as humans become more civilized. What does this have to do with speciation? He's writing at a time when we did not have an extensive fossil record showing the links between humans and their ancestors in the ape family. He was trying to explain why gaps occur in the organic chain during evolution.

And wait, is Fulham arguing that different races are proto-species? Somehow I'm not surprised.

can anyone here sit for my live game please? sorry to interrupt i've PM most of you though...

@Putin: I thought I was clear that the efforts to use Darwin as a basis for claiming white supremacy were a perversion of his work. If I wasn't, then allow me to clarify now: using Darwin to say "yay white supremacy" is a perversion of his work.

@Thucy: Draug's interpretation of what I was saying is correct. People in America, for whatever reason, want to claim Irish and Native American ancestry. It's the fashionable thing to be descended from. I don't know why, it just is.

and what do we base the "breed" characteristics on draugnar?

What makes the Irish "breed" different from the English "breed" different from the Kenyan "breed." Several pseudo scientists believed this in the 20s and thirties before these adherents to Eugenics were branded quacks.

and by the way, Obama didnt claim to be irish until an ancestry.com revealed he was during the campaign, and btw, if anyone thinks that Obama is fooling himself by calling himself part irish, you might want to see how the irish greeted him

I misinterpreted your point then, SacredDigits. Sorry.

Putin writes:
And wait, is Fulham arguing that different races are proto-species? Somehow I'm not surprised.

Using only the explanatory tools of the hypothesis of Survival of the Fittest (Darwin's favoured term for Natural Selection ref.Herbert Spencer), this statement must be correct; however unpalatable you may find it. Unless of course you maintain that evolution has an intrinsic end point. Maybe you could clarify whether this is what you mean?

As to whether Darwin was a racist or not I think that you will find that on occasion he was and at other times he wasn't. Given the implications of his hypothesis I am afraid that I do not find this ambiguity surprising. Moreover, proposing that the ''''weak'''' should not marry is to my mind a form of eugenics. Furthermore, placing the human races on a vertically stratified categorisation with the ''''savage'''' races closer to the apes and the ''''civilised'''' races at the apex is first degree racism. Indeed, you would certainly declare it so were these particular words written by anybody else but Darwin.

Breeds are determined by bloodlines and traits. That's why most of America are mutts.

HERP DERP HERITAGE.

i'm a white American. Represent?

But, when I do get the option on the little ethnicity things I put "German, English, Scottish, and irish" just to screw with them, since there's all these options but I only get "white" lol.

This is the kind of dishonesty that is really infuriating. Darwin *does not propose* that there be any regulation on whether poor people should marry. He's arguing very forcefully that nothing should be done to prevent the poor and the weak from propagating. What he is saying is that the reproduction of the weak will likely not affect the survival prospects of the species because the weak will not, *of their own volition* marry and propagate as much as the healthy and strong. He also argues that medical professionals *should help save the lives of the weak*. That the evil of refusing their care would overwhelm any possible "natural selection" benefit.

He's specifically arguing against the eugenics proposals of his own cousin, and you interpret that to be support for eugenics. Typical smear tactics on the part of the anti-Darwinians.

"Using only the explanatory tools of the hypothesis of Survival of the Fittest (Darwin's favoured term for Natural Selection ref.Herbert Spencer), this statement must be correct; however unpalatable you may find it. Unless of course you maintain that evolution has an intrinsic end point. Maybe you could clarify whether this is what you mean?"

Have you read the Descent of Man? He talks at great length about the similarities of the races and how they are not 'separate species' (specifically the chapter beginning on page 145 - the Races of Man). That's one the revolutionary insights of his work, which demolishes scientific and Bible-based racism, which had always claimed that because the different races are different species, miscegenation would lead to ill effects. They also had exaggerated the differences between the races, while Darwin's entire body of works talk about how races are far more similar than they are different. That, despite our apparent racial differences, we are all part of the same species and come from the same place.

You of course interpret that to be *racism*. Of course you do. Up is down. Night is day.

"Using only the explanatory tools of the hypothesis of Survival of the Fittest (Darwin's favoured term for Natural Selection ref.Herbert Spencer), this statement must be correct;"

How does this follow? You're setting up a false dichotomy of intrinsic end point vs future change. There's nothing intrinsic about the end point, but if the mechanisms which cause genetic mutations no longer exist for humans, then future evolution in humans will not occur. The mechanisms do not exist because populations are not isolated enough and the population of humans is large and widely distributed.

Putin +33

Any evolutionary changes that mankind goes through at this point will be A) in isolated regions where "racial purity" still exists to handle the environment thrust upon them or B) across the entire span of homo sapiens to account for a global disaster that would reqauire these changes for mankind to survive. The only way evolution would have a different step than this was if the global disaster caused manking to separate into small distinct factions again and each of those factions had to deal with distinctly different environmental influences, but then those factions would be new races totally irrespective of our old racial stereotypes. Instead, the reace would be "the people of the region of Yakyak" or whatever and they would have *zero* communication or interation with any other "race" on this newly segregated (by nature, not man) world.

While I agree with the logic of the last few posts... I'm pretty sure we're not the same species with Putin.

The only conclusion is that Putin is in Yakyak? :)

"Furthermore, placing the human races on a vertically stratified categorisation with the ''''savage'''' races closer to the apes and the ''''civilised'''' races at the apex is first degree racism."

Yes well he fails to meet the anti-racist criteria of sanctimonious webdippers who live in 2011, yet his work has done more to destroy the foundations of racism than anything Christianity ever did. If Darwin knew what we now know about genetics, he would not have said what he did about some races being closer to others to apes. He based his conclusions on observation alone. It is remarkable how progressive these conclusions were. Can you name a single Christian or anyone else who was making the case that the races of human beings were far more similar than they are different at the time Darwin was writing?

^^Oh, hell no. Most organized religions of that time (Christianity, Judaism, etc) made man out as something outside of the realm of nature and to say we were related to the birds of the air or the beasts of the fields was heresy.

^^
Religious scholars agreed with Aristotle that man was on a "great chain of being" that stretched from god to rocks. Man was part of nature indeed, just higher on the chain. and within Man some races were considered just higher versions of apes

so Draugnar you are wrong

Did I say all, Santa? I'll even redact the most. But the Catholic Church and the Church of England viewed Charles Darwin as a heretic.

The catholic Church viewed Galileo as a heretic even though most religious scholars were sure the earth was round.

Christians believed in the great chain of being, I dont know what their specific problem with darwyn was, but it surely wasnt that some men were closer to beasts than others. This was understood as the truth.

The problem was that they viewed other races as being close to beasts but that the "white man" was created by God in his image and therefore unrelated to the beasts, ala the first chapter of Genesis. Darwin said "no, we are *all* related to the beasts, not just the 'savages' or the 'negros'."

So we now have reached the consensus that evolutionary change/speciation has halted because of international travel and migration. Imagine a world under pressure of extreme climate change, malaria becomes rampant at higher latitudes and our means of treatment become redundant. Maybe those individuals with sickle cell anaemia and the resistance to malaria it confers have a significant genetic-based advantage. maybe those better equipped to living at very high latitudes prosper as this is the one area where malaria is not endemic. One can imagine isolated populations and breeding groups, the hunter gatherers of the African Savanah are metaphorically reincarnated and individuals only owe allegiance to their own group/RACE and speciation of Home sapiens results.
Are you all too anthropocentric to embrace this possibility?

It's sort of odd for a Christian to run around saying Darwinists, the people believe humans are descended from a common ancestor with apes and chimps are anthropocentric, but apparently Christians, who believe humans are a special species deliberately created by God in "His" image to have dominion over the earth, are not...

Yes you can imagine all sorts of hypotheticals where the mechanisms of evolution would once again come into play for humans, but that still doesn't mean that races are proto-species. I do not reject out of the hand the possibility of further evolution occurring in humans, but very drastic environmental and demographic changes would need to take place, and these changes would have to be sustained over a long period of time.