So here’s something a lot of people never talk about: the founders of modern evolutionary theory weren’t exactly paragons of moral clarity. Charles Darwin—yes, the Darwin everyone quotes in biology class—said some wild stuff about “civilized” and “uncivilized” races.
In an 1881 letter, Darwin wrote that the so-called “Caucasian races” had “beaten” others in the “struggle for existence,” and he predicted that “lower races” would eventually be wiped out by “higher civilized races.” Yikes.
And this wasn’t a one-off slip. In The Descent of Man, Darwin doubled down, predicting that “civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races.” It’s not hard to see how this mindset fed directly into later ideologies that treated whole groups of people as “less evolved.”
Even the subtitle of On the Origin of Species—“the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”—hits different once you realize how people of that era used the word “race.”
🤝 Not Just Darwin
Darwin’s inner circle wasn’t any better. Thomas Huxley, nicknamed “Darwin’s Bulldog,” openly claimed that the “average Black person” was inferior to the “average white person.” He also rejected Christianity, including the resurrection.
And while plenty of Christians throughout history have messed up—Crusades, anyone?—those actions actually contradicted Jesus’ teachings, not flowed from them. Christianity’s core message is radically equalizing:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” — Galatians 3:28
Imagine how different history would look if Christians had actually lived that out.
💀 When Bad Science Meets Bad Ideology
Here’s where things get really dark: people took evolutionary ideas about “survival of the fittest” and stretched them way beyond biology. That’s how Social Darwinism was born—a totally unscientific ideology claiming that entire races or classes were “more fit” and deserved power.
Hitler latched onto that. Marx latched onto it too (though for political and economic reasons, not racial ones). The result? Two of the most devastating human tragedies in history.
To be clear: modern evolutionary biology rejects Social Darwinism completely.
But historically? People absolutely weaponized Darwin’s ideas.
🌱 A Different Story About Humanity
The Bible tells a very different story. In the biblical worldview, death isn’t natural—it’s an intruder. Human value isn’t earned through fitness or power—it’s given by God. Every person is created equal, carries the image of God, and has infinite worth.
From that framework, racism and dehumanization aren’t just wrong—they’re fundamentally anti-creation, anti-Christ, and anti-reality.
🔚 TL;DR (Gen Z edition)
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Darwin and some early evolution supporters held racist beliefs.
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Social Darwinism twisted biology into a justification for oppression.
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Horrific movements in history used these distorted ideas.
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Christianity’s central message is the radical equality of all people.
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Death and domination aren’t “natural” in the biblical worldview—they’re the opposite of what we were made for.
