Charles Darwin lived in an era in which most scientists agreed that the different races of humans possessed distinct moral and intellectual capabilities, with white Europeans at the top and sub-Saharan Africans, Australian Aboriginals, and certain Native American groups at the bottom. Darwin explicitly used those supposed facts as evidence for his theory. As far as Darwin was concerned, differences in psychological, as well as physical, traits between different human populations were exactly what a theory of descent with modification from a common ancestor by random variation and natural selection would predict. 

That was well and fine… until the mid 20th century, when scientists concluded that the cognitive differences between the races were probably illusory. In the intervening decades, Darwinists have come up with a variety of arguments for why Darwinian evolutionary theory doesn’t predict racial IQ disparities after all. 

This is sort thing is pretty common in science, and it might be one of the main weaknesses in the scientific method. A scientific hypothesis is supposed to make testable predictions, but those predictions are often altered after the fact if they didn’t come true — effectively “retconning” the new evidence into the old hypothesis. Sadly, there are no Science Police to prevent this intellectual malfeasance. And it is especially difficult to detect when it occurs over many decades or centuries. 

In this case, there is certainly an a priori implausibility to the claim that Darwinism doesn’t predict racial disparities, since Darwin and Darwinists claimed racial disparities as evidence for their theory … until the evidence showed that no such disparities exist. 

The Racialist Holdouts 

It’s not surprising, then, that some stubborn Darwinists are sticking with the racial implications of Darwinism, come hell or high water. 

In 2020, a group of Darwinist academics published a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Personality and Individual Differences. The article was titled “Dodging Darwin: Race, evolution, and the hereditarian hypothesis,” and it amounted to a broadside attack on the dominant viewpoint that there are no innate racial differences in IQ. The authors argue that unfortunately “modern Darwinism in practice is severely limited when applied to humans.” They urge scholars to “overcome their understandable squeamishness and discomfort with hereditarianism to discuss it honestly and judiciously, so that researchers can fulfill the promise of the Darwinian revolution in psychology.”

Interestingly, most of the article is not taken up with presenting actual evidence of an innate racial IQ gap, but rather with the theoretical argument that Darwinism says it must be so. They address several theoretical “dodges” made to avoid this conclusion: 

• To the popular argument that there is no clear or immutable line between any racial categories, they reply that (a) this is a strawman, because most prominent racialist thinkers did not really claim that, and (b) it is a red herring, because categories do not need to be discrete or immutable to have analytical value. They point to human age as an obvious example of non-discrete categories with somewhat arbitrary delineation, which nevertheless has immense analytical value. 
• To the argument that no single characteristic is universally present in any so-called race, they reply that this is also true of the individual differences in men and women’s facial features — but it is nevertheless usually easy to distinguish between males and females by considering the features in aggregate. A detectable pattern does not depend on a single consistent factor. 
• To the argument that human lineages diverged too recently to produce major differences in the brain, they point out that they are not arguing for large differences, but for small differences that can have significant effects. 

The bottom line for the authors is that even if you can come up with various arguments to exclude mental properties from evolutionary analysis, they all seem like special pleading. After all, most scholars agree that evolution has caused various physical differences in human populations. And most scholars agree that the brain is a physical organ. Yet mental differences are somehow exempt from evolutionary analysis. “This position appears intellectually indefensible,” they write, “because the brain is not somehow impervious to selective forces. Rather, it is an organ like any other and therefore is just as susceptible to evolutionary pressures as is the skin, lungs, or digestive system.” 

Modern Darwinists Are… Creationists and Dualists? 

Thus, they write, the modern consensus is really akin to creationism or mind-body dualism, “because it relies upon the implausible assumption that human psychological propensities were not selected for by different environments, niches, and climates in the past 50,000 years.”

I think the authors are just using “creationism” and “dualism” as swear words. But I would argue that this is true in a more technical sense as well: if you believe human brains were created according to a plan, or if you believe that there is more to the human mind than just the brain, you need not necessarily predict that the human mind will differ according to race or ethnicity. 

Needless to say, this article inspired backlash after it came out, and one of the professors was even fired from his university. But one has to feel that they were put in an impossible position. It wasn’t their fault that Darwinism has nasty implications. Modern academia demanded they accept Darwinism, but it also demanded they accept that racism had been disproven. The only two options were intellectual compartmentalization, or admitting the awkward implications of the theory and accepting the career consequences.

Well, those aren’t the only two options. They could have considered a different theory of origins, and accepted those career consequences.

The Real Dilemma  

I need to be clear that I am not trying to present a false dilemma. I am not saying that you must either accept 19th century racism or believe that God created humans ex nihilo in His image. 

The trouble is actually not even with evolution, per se, so much as the mechanism of evolution. After all, everyone from the staunchest Biblical creationist to the most dogmatic neo-Darwinist agrees that all humans, at least, share a common ancestor. And that means that the variations which exist between different human population groups are the result of evolution — presumably through random variation and natural selection. 

The question then is — what kind of changes is that sort of unguided process capable of producing? Any kind, or only some kinds? Few people would have a problem with the idea that unguided evolution can result in changes in skin pigmentation. But what about complex structures? If you believe that brains were built by unguided evolutionary processes, just like simpler features were, then you ought to expect the brains of different populations to develop differences, just like simpler features did. But if you believe that some form of intelligent design is needed to guide the construction of complex structures, you need not assume that brains would vary significantly according to lineage; the design goal would determine the quality of the brain, regardless of time and circumstances. 

To some readers, the idea that brains can’t evolve like simpler features may seem peculiar…because, don’t all of our brains evolve dramatically throughout our lives? As J. B. S. Haldane put it: 

The strangest thing about the origin of consciousness from unconsciousness is not that it has happened once in the remote past, but that it happens in the life of every one of us. An early human embryo without nervous system or sense organs, and no occupation but growth, has no more claim to consciousness than a plant — far less than a jelly-fish. A new-born baby may be conscious, but has less title to rationality than a dog or ape. The evolutionist makes the very modest claim that an increase in rationality such as every normal child shows in its lifetime has occurred in the ancestors of the human race in the last few million years.

This is a false equivalence, stemming from the failure to recognize that the power of an individual brain (or body) to complexify and evolve is itself a remarkable design feature in need of explanation. Darwinian evolution might be invoked to explain that feature, but if so, the feature cannot then be invoked to explain Darwinian evolution! That explanation is circular. 

Unstomachable or False… Or Both?

If science leads us to conclusions that we cannot stomach, there must be something wrong with either our stomachs or our science. In this instance, I would like to suggest that the problem is with our science. I am not saying that simply because I cannot stomach racism, but because the evidence seems to have failed the racialist hypothesis. I’m sure someone can point to studies that seem to show racial differences. But when you consider how the evidence concerning racial intelligence has developed over the last few centuries, the trendline is clear. 

When deciding what conclusions to draw from an investigation, it is important to remember that the results could have been different. This is obvious, but it is easy to forget, especially when the results come in over a long period of time. In the last few centuries, as means of transportations improved and different groups of humans increasingly interacted with each other, we could have discovered vast, immutable differences in intelligence and moral character between different groups of people. That was a possibility once. It was certainly expected in the 18th century, when people believed that savages with tails inhabited the Nicobar Islands. It was still the expectation when Darwin’s theory was formed, and it was what Darwin’s theory predicted. 

But it is not what we found. We found, to our surprise, the opposite. We found that we weren’t so different after all.

When the predictions of a theory turn out to be false, the theory should be reconsidered accordingly. So before anyone chokes down the racialist implications of Darwinism, it might be good to explore some other options.