Apes or Angels?: Darwin Dover Human Nature and Race Book

APES or ANGELS?: A Summary

For many readers this book will be a mind-altering experience. It has a thesis that is a challenge to the conventional thinking of most Christians and their counterparts, the secular humanists. It offends both for very good reasons. It speaks the truth about Darwin's views on human origins and race.

Contrary to the beliefs of most academicians and educated readers, Darwin had two dangerous ideas instead of one. Daniel Dennett was perfectly right about the first, which was the notion that natural selection operated in a way that precluded explanatory intrusions from outside the natural world. In other words, metaphysics has no place in biological explanation. Things spiritual, like vitalism and finalism, are simply inapplicable to evolutionary biology. The second idea is rarely mentioned in politically correct America- that the human races are different in sometimes significant ways. Indeed, inequality is a normal condition of nature.

Darwin's clash with Christianity is winding down because modern science is a foundation of western culture and it fully accepts the truth of natural selection and the evolution of life(including man). It is ironic that as the struggle with Christianity declines, a new struggle emerges- the battle over racial differences. Liberalism evolved into radical egalitarianism as it swept over America, creating an authoritarian political correctness that contradicts our Constitution. Modern genetics now threatens the liberal myth of human equality.

These Darwinian conflicts are playing out amidst our culture wars, a battle that could transform us into another Brazil. Radical egalitarianism andmulticulturalism are ideologies aimed at dismantling our great Anglo-European tradition. Forces of erosion are at work which may make our nation's greatness a faint memory.

The battle with creationism is essentially over in Europe and it is winding down in the U.S. Science always wins fights over the facts of nature! Eddies of ignorance will persist in American society where fundamentalism exists, but educated elites have long since agreed with Darwin.

Liberal relativism erodes our standards of excellence and even undermines our Christian morality, a morality that seems closely connected to our moral instinct. With their power in academia liberals will submit to "white guilt" as they treat blacks as eternal victims, distorting reality to make outcomes equal. Darwin, however, may be vindicated on the matter of real racial differences, causing agony among idealistic liberals who must relinquish their lofty dreams.

Scientific humanism has always touted critical thinking as a supreme goal of education, but it is threatened by the irrational side of liberalism that savors post-modern subjectivism. Today we see "diversity training" imposed on young people in a Stalinist manner. Propaganda and groupthink are current weapons of the PC martinets. In reading this survey of how Darwin came to his dangerous ideas, you may appreciate how important science and critical thinking are in a society gripped by wayward versions of liberalism.

Both evolution by natural selection and racial differences are discussed in this book in order to illumine Darwin's two "dangerous" ideas-one that threatened Christianity and one that now threatens liberal humanism's egalitarian dream. Social scientists will be exposed as propagandists for radical egalitarianism rather than as true scientists. The movement to eliminate the word "race" is evidence of political motivation rather than scientific honesty. To examine the conflicts related to Darwinism the book includes a brief treatment of Darwin's life and works, the battle against creationism, the case against supernaturalism, a brief survey of human evolution, and a review of current issues bearing upon human nature and race.