Full text of the speech is here. No actual mention of Darwin or evolution. The closest it comes is here:
Given that there were far more direct proponents of scientific racism already in this period, it seems to me more likely then not that he is not referring to Darwin.
Here are the statistics. In the Dallas metro area, only 40% believe in creationism and 56% accept evolution.
Oh good, you’re back.
Again: what on earth possessed you to ask such a ridiculous question?
Im not surprised that Utah was the third from the bottom. My high school biology teacher didn’t believe in evolution.
You’re providing cites to refute your own OP? This isn’t a first for the Dope, but it’s always a wonderful gift to those of us who have terrible opinions of humanity.
Dallas proper, sure. But it’s only maybe 20% of the Metroplex as a whole. And once you get outside of Dallas itself, the diversity, Democratic party affiliation, and religious reasonableness go WAY down fast. Collin County is a festering swamp of mindless reactionary political conservatism, religious right nuttery and white-bread intolerance, for example.
At any rate, the point I was making was more that Houston is NOT like Dallas, and that Dallas is pretty much square in the Bible Belt. 40% believe in creationism? That is a pretty poor argument that Dallas is somehow religiously progressive and diverse. It tells me that I’m right, and that nearly half of the people here are of the creationist, lunatic right-wing Baptist/Evangelical stripe.
EEK! According to those stats, my state, Tennessee, is near the bottom as far as acceptance of evolution is concerned. Yup, that’s the “Bible Belt” for you…
It’s easy to pigeonhole a region into a certain mindset. I always imagine Chicago as gangsters with machine guns, shooting holes in everything. All Texans wear cowboy hats and use Colt 45s and shoot holes in everything. All Floridians are displaced Yankees, because Florida broke off from New York, swam down, and attached itself to the bottom of Georgia. And they all own 22s and shoot holes in everything.
But remember, Fred Phelps came from Kansas, not the South. Thus, Midwesterners have absorbed the stereotype that long defined Southerners, and we can sweep our fringe hate groups under the rug without anybody noticing. But sometimes they creep back out, like the KKK troupe that marched in a parade in a small remote town in NC after Trump won (a NON southerner), and our beloved stereotype returns to smother us. The KKK has also marched in upstate New York and even in California, proving racial hatred is not unique to the South, but they haven’t done it enough!
Anyhoo, evolution is really more of a rural vs urban issue, and the South has plenty of big cities. Rural folks are more likely to have had a strong church influence, as there’s not much else to do besides go to church for social functions. Not ALL of them are that way of course, but the ones who opt to stay in the rural areas don’t want to alienate their more religious neighbors, so evolution is less likely to be discussed out in the open.
(This is a joke post, right?)
Yes, plenty of people in the American South accept evolution. Some of them are even college-educated professionals!
I will acknowledge this: Darwin was strongly opposed to slavery, and was horrified that people tried to use his theories to put a scientific gloss over an evil institution.
But the fact remains, many racists in the South were HAPPY to embrace Darwinism, or their own interpretation of Darwin, to justify racism and slavery.
Remember, many of the biggest slave owners in the South were educated men, men of the Enlightenment. These guys were not religious fundamentalists. Indeed, many weren’t religious at all. Many would have had no religious objections to Evolution.
And I’m betting that the acceptance of evolution in Austin is even higher!
The first African slaves arrived in the South in 1619. On the Origin of Species was first published in 1859. For the 240 year period in between, slave owners managed to come up with justifications for slavery and white supremacy without reference to Charles Darwin.
Do you have any actual examples of Southern slave owners referring to Darwin or evolution as justifications for their “peculiar institution”? (Of course it’s easy to find examples of Southern slave owners justifying slavery as being “the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations” and as a “providential trust” given to the Southern people by God.)
There wasn’t even much time for slave owners to use Darwin as a justification for slavery in the U.S., since On the Origin of Species was published just before the Civil War. There have been many cases of people using what they claimed were scientific reasons to justify racism. This Wikipedia article gives many of those cases:
Weisshund, you are being given a warning for “being a jerk”. Your post is insulting and over the top vitriolic for this forum. You can express your opinion at the OP’s question without crossing the line for this forum.
Thank you for letting me know, and I must confess that I placed this thread in the wrong category. I should of put it in General Questions.
Will your next question be, “Does anyone on earth like pineapple on pizza?”
Or what about, “Are there phone numbers that have a six as the third digit?”
Maybe, “Do any black people live in Vermont?”
I’m seriously wondering whether you meant to type the question you typed.
No I would never ask any of those kind of questions.
Perhaps what I should have asked is, “What possessed you to ask such a question?”
That said, if you don’t answer this time, I’ll figure you must not know. Being Southern, I’ll chalk it up to SATAN.
I would guess “no”, considering how few I saw when I recently lived in the northern suburbs of Boston for a year, and spent plenty of time in New Hampshire…
I was just curious. Relax.