PZ Myers. 2004 Nov 17. William Gibson on creationism. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/william_gibson_on_creationism/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Wednesday, November 17, 2004
William Gibson on creationism
Gibson has a rarely mentioned take on creationism:
Re Creationism, I must point out an unfortunate subtext that's no longer quite so obvious. Having grown up in the previous iteration of the rural American south, I know that what *really* smarted about Darwin, down there, was the logical implication that blacks and whites are descended from a common ancestor. Butt-ugly, but there it is. That was the first objection to evolutionary theory that I ever heard, and it was a very common one, in fact the most common. That it was counter to Genesis seemed merely convenient, in the face of an anthropoid grand-uncle in the woodpile.
Like the man says: Look at those cavemen go.
Although, there is also a curious split in many creationist's minds when they talk about this. And, I should add, it's not just the rural South; I heard similar things when I was a kid, in suburban Seattle. I have a looney second cousin, a sweet guy to his family, but his brain spent most of it's time orbiting Pluto, I think. He was a John Bircher, took his kids out of public school to found his own militantly conservative Birch-affiliated school, and he had some amazing pamphlets. There were some that compared the anatomy of African-Americans to that of gorillas…and even when I was in grade school I could see that all of the comparisons were bogus. He tried to stammer out some weird explanation that black people were just mildly evolved apes, while we white people were "obviously" completely different, were created by God, and hadn't evolved at all.
He was completely nuts.
I was just a kid.
I kinda wish I could sit down with him now and tear him to pieces. Ah, family.
- Well, it's all a rich tapestry of conceit.
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Yes, exactly. Remember a couple of years ago when the
nearly-completed human genome project finally surfaced?
[bigot] "Huh? No substantial differences between us whites and those colored folk?" [/bigot]
Idiots.
Just wait. They'll find another lie to lean on.
And we'll be ready - with the truth at hand.#: Posted by on 11/17 at 10:33 PM - He's perfectly right. Believe me, you still hear that attitude around Kentucky all the time. They have this whole bizarre set of specific beliefs about Lilith and the mark of cain, yadda, yadda yadda.
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Would you believe me and a friend nearly got into a fight about this a while ago? (that is, we nearly got into a fight with another guy - he wouldn't be a friend if we argued about something like this).
There was a whole bunch of us in the pub after work and this one guy - who was clearly a bit of a fruitloop - was defending Michael Jackson on his abuse charges, saying that anyone who could write music like that could never do something so terrible. He went from there to applauding Jackson's change from black to white over the years, and then into a surreal racist rant. Drunkenly believing that reasoning with the guy was a better course of action than walking off for a game of pool, my friend and I took up the argument. His reaction when we told him about common ancestors was fantastic - he damn near exploded, jumped to his feet and started threatening us, shouting random racist drivel.
And then the barman chucked him out - which was very satisfying - and we went off for a game of pool. -
I believe it is a real factor among some benighted fellows.
But OTOH you often see exactly the reverse argument in some Creationist propaganda:
Haeckel used some racist analogies where some "races" would allegedly be less evolved than others, "therefore" scientific Evolutiona would be intrinsically racist, therefore it is false, whereas Adam would give a "firm" foundation for the unity of the Human Species.
Since they are not subtle, they often use a stupid equation like "Darwin=Hitler!". -
Does anyone recognize the reference Gibson ended with? "Like the man says: Look at those cavemen go."
I have heard it from another source, but the context seems weird, so I'm starting to think the original source is something else I've just never read... Any ideas?#: Posted by on 11/18 at 10:50 AM -
And wasn't that essentially the case before 1850 or so? IIRC almost all the fundamentalists back then believed that humans formed a single species on scriptural grounds--blacks being descended from Ham and so forth--while the polygenists, like Voltaire, consciously rejected the Bible and claimed a purely scientific basis for the theory of separate origins. It wasn't until Darwin's day that monogeny triumped in the scientific world and most of the remaining polygenists were fundamentalist. But of course modern-day Bible-bashers are not in the habit of closely examining the history of their beliefs.
Not that polygeny and monogeny ever corresponded neatly to "more" and "less" racism...plenty of monogenists thought that even if the different races came from the same stock, some had risen much more (or degenerated much less) than others.#: Posted by on 11/18 at 11:07 AM -
rrt: It's David Bowie, "Life On Mars."
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?#: Posted by on 11/18 at 11:30 AM -
Long before David Bowie there was the song "Alley Oop," about the "real" caveman of that name. It had "look at that caveman go" in about 1958. Anything earlier, anyone?
#: Posted by on 11/18 at 12:16 PM
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The "Alley Oop" song was actually released in 1960, and reached the charts for THREE different groups!
http://www.allbutforgottenoldies.net/alley-cat.html#: Posted by on 11/18 at 01:00 PM -
Thankfully the tenets of Darwinism have never been used to justify racsim.
#: Posted by on 11/18 at 10:30 PM
- Racists grasp at any excuse to justify their hate, which was the point of what I wrote: my relative was mangling two concepts, religious anti-evolution and a layman's idea of evolution, at the same time. Both the Curse of Ham and The Bell Curve damn their believer's bigotry, not Christianity or biology.
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Thanks guys... I'm quite a Bowie fan, so "Life on Mars" was the reference I was thinking of (it's one of my favorites), but I was wondering if it was in itself borrowed from something earlier. Mostly since, looking at the excerpt, I can't quite figure out how either song relates to the topic (except for the obvious common context of "cavemen." If anything, "Oh! You Pretty Things" would have a more direct evolutionary reference. Of course, to fully round out the reference by including religion, Bowie tells us much later that "The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell."
#: Posted by on 11/19 at 01:53 PM
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There were polygenist creationists, eg Louis Agassiz.
#: Posted by on 11/19 at 05:13 PM