Oh really, O’Leary? Darwin was a…? Evolution promotes…?

Nothing gets me through the week better than a little somethin’-somethin’ from Denyse O’Leary, one of, in my opinion, the least productive (or most productive, depending on how you look at it) members of the squadron of bloggers over at Uncommon Descent. Sure, she can be persuasive to a person who already buys into the idea that teaching evolutionary biology in universities and high schools is a huge conspiracy perpetrated by Big Darwinism, but to everyone else… it’s true, she’s full of digital hot air.

One of O’Leary’s favourite topics to rant about is Charles Darwin’s “racism” and all the bad things that supposedly spewed forth into the world after On the Origin of Species was published, like they never existed before we learnt about the reality of the biosphere around us. She doesn’t like to rant though – she likes to rant. Incomprehensibly, too. It’s like her superpower.

Anyway, yes, you guessed it, she turned on the taps recently and this is what dribbled out:

Eugenics was not science; it was nonsense. Nonsense firmly founded in Darwin’s own beliefs. Remember, Darwin was a guy who thought that black people were closer to gorillas than white people.

Darwin has always been protected by professional Darwinists from the normal social consequences of such antisocial beliefs.

I am not letting the matter go because it cannot be let go until the belief is formally renounced.

I am not interested in what “whackjobs” or “dopes” think (who is?).  Can’t they just yell in the cell block or mental home?

The use of such terms is classically how Darwinists like yourself avoid facing up to the issue.

The reality is that Darwin’s racism is an open running sore, and will remain so until it is properly addressed by ceasing Darwin worship and saying that the Great Man was wrong on that point.

Hey, sure, Darwin was a little racist. His publications contain a few scattered phrases that would make any normal person from the last 20 years feel uncomfortable if they were used in everyday conversation. However, you have to put it in historical context – nearly everyone, save a few enlightened souls (so to speak), was like that in the mid-1800s. Darwin was a product of his time, and being one of the greatest scientists of all time didn’t automatically grant him the progressive views on race that we enjoy today. If only, if only.

Nobody has any problems with admitting this – Darwin was wrong about his views on race, as was everyone else at the time. But that doesn’t make his scientific discoveries any less valid or anything less than outstandingly correct.

And eugenics? Please.

Did you think I was going to let you off the hook without some really inane comments from O’Leary? You thought wrong:

Fun for the day:  Decades ago, one of my aunts, who had been in  the Canadian women’s auxiliary services in  World War II, somehow ended up sitting in a restaurant in Florida. Some African Americans were sitting at another booth, and some other patrons were raising heck about the fact that the African Americans were allowed there. My aunt got up and told the heck raisers: You do not have the right to tell those people they cannot sit there. The heck raisers immediately shut up, which was a really good idea, in my view. They should have shut up decades earlier.

But doesn’t Darwin’s view of human nature require us to assume that the African Americans are moving away from the heck raisers in some way?

No words. I have no words.

Okay, maybe I have a few: Denyse O’Leary is one of the best examples of why good science communication is so important. Did you know that she has grandchildren?

Nothing gets me through the week better than a little somethin’-somethin’ from Denyse O’Leary, one of, in my opinion, the least productive (or most productive, depending on how you look...