Coretta King's death brings thoughts of racism to mind.

From whince came institutional racism such as that which the Kings faced? Would you be surprised to discover that it grew from a movement in the ninteeth century that we call 'evolution'? Would you give me a couple of minutes to speak to this issue and try to help get us out of the trap of thinking the debate over evolution is about whether creation happened in seven 24 hour periods vs. a more symbolic approach to the creation account? Could I please try to span the gap that has been manufactured to divide Xtns on this issue and thereby build walls of separation that should not exist? Please consider... The underlying problem with Darwin's 'evolutionary theory' is often misunderstood by very well meaning religious people on both sides of the debate...unfortunately. We could start with the actual title of his work:

Quote:

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin.html

If we could get out of the maddening mud slinging back and forth between 'literalists' and 'symbolists' (did I just coin a new word?) and take a look at what 'natural selection' actually was and is all about I think we would all be just a little sobered regarding the true issue at hand, that being natural selection is part and parcel bedfellows with ushering in the worst 150 years of institutional racism and genocide in recorded human history. Just take a look at Encarta's (not a literalist's text book) dealing with racism.

Quote:

The word “race” was introduced into European languages around the beginning of the 16th century. It came to be used in the sense of lineage, as in a reference to “the race and stocke of Abraham” in The Book of Martyrs (1563) by John Foxe. To account for the differences between themselves and Africans, Chinese, and others, Europeans turned to the Old Testament in the Bible, which provided genealogies showing how, by descent, people acquired membership of groups. When the morality of the Atlantic slave trade was debated at the end of the 18th century, both the pro- and anti-slavery parties assumed that blacks and whites shared a common humanity. The relative technological backwardness of Africans was attributed to their living in an unhealthy climate and their lacking the kinds of political and social institutions that encouraged economic development. The claim that they were permanently inferior came only later. Geologists and natural historians were at that time beginning to uncover processes of development in natural forms. Their evidence conflicted with the popular belief that God had created each species separately. Since children resembled their ancestors, it was difficult to explain how the differences between human groups could have appeared within the period of 6,000 years, which was all that seemed to be allowed by the Bible's chronology. The first version of so-called “scientific racism” was an attempt to solve this problem. According to the doctrine of permanent racial types, the world was divided into a series of natural provinces. Thus, it was only in Australia that kangaroos and other marsupials were found. Likewise, only in that region were there human beings with the distinctive features of Australian Aborigines. The theory held that the Aborigines corresponded to marsupials in being the sort of human beings suited to that environment. For as long as evidence had existed, each province had supported its own types of flora and fauna, including human beings. This doctrine taught that it was futile for human beings to attempt to colonize any region outside their own natural province. Those who advanced this doctrine usually equated “type” with species, maintaining that blacks and whites were separate species within the genus Homo sapiens. More reputable scholars sided with Christian orthodoxy in regarding blacks and whites as separate varieties (subpopulations) within that species. In the United States, those who defended the institution of black slavery relied primarily upon passages in the Bible that seemed to authorize it. After the American Civil War and the emancipation of slaves, black subordination was reinforced in new ways and more use was made of the doctrine of the inferiority of the black racial type. Racism After Darwin By showing that development occurred through natural selection, Charles Darwin in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) started a revolution in the understanding of human variability. Yet his theory inspired a second form of scientific racism, according to which racial prejudice served an evolutionary function. Prejudice was said to keep human groups distinct and enable them to develop special capacities (as in animal breeding). Thus, some groups would be superior to others in performing particular tasks or in particular environments. Some whites saw support for such interpretations in the decline of the indigenous populations in areas of the Pacific colonized by Europeans. In Australia, New Zealand, and the smaller islands it looked as if the indigenous peoples might be dying out. Whites in general neglected evidence of the spread of European diseases (sometimes deliberately spread) and concluded that nature intended the country for their occupation.

The whole article is here:

http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_781529466/Racism.html

When we actally start to look at the result of 'teaching' a theory that at its core is built on a denial that there was a "Supreme Intelligence" behind creation...that every part of creation has design and purpose...we all might get just a little uncomfortable with the 'educating' of our children with a theory that flatly states that the 'superior survive' and all others are destined to extinction. I could go on to give a few examples of social movements that grew out of the inspiration of 'evolution and natural selection' in the twentieth century but you would think I was being ugly and hateful and trying to attribute guilt by association, which would not be my desire. If we could just for one minute get over the '24 hour day' vs 'symbolic' view of what we think the issue is but isn't...quit labeling each other with our trite labels meant to degrade one another...

Maybe someday.

XtnYoda Shalomed