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 False
beliefs about the origin of races have led to widespread problems worldwide.
The effects are far-reaching and include some of the following results:
- Racism
One of the biggest justifications for racial discrimination
in modern times is the belief that people groups have evolved separately.
Thus, different groups are at allegedly different stages of evolution,
and so some people groups are more backward than others. 
Therefore, the other person may not be as fully human as you. This
sort of thinking inspired Hitler in his quest to eliminate Jews
and Gypsies and to establish the "master race." 2
Sadly, some Christians have been infected with racist
thinking through evolutionary indoctrination that people of a different
"color" are inferior because they are supposedly closer to the animals.
Such attitudes are completely unbiblical (e.g., Acts 17:26, Colossians
3:11), although out-of-context Bible verses are often conscripted
in attempts to justify racist views.
- Rejection of the Gospel
The accuracy of the historical details of Genesis
is crucial to the trustworthiness of the Bible and to the whole gospel
message. 1 So the popular belief that
people groups evolved their different features and could not all have
come from Noah's family (contrary to the Bible) has eroded belief
in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
- Bad influence on missionary outreach
Historically, the spread of evolutionary belief was
associated with a slackening of fervor to reach the lost in faraway
countries. The idea of savage, half-evolved inferior peoples somehow
does not evoke the same missionary urgency as the notion that our
"cousins," closely linked to us in time and heredity, have yet to
hear the gospel.3 Even many of the finest
of today's missionary organizations have been influenced, often unconsciously,
by this deeply ingrained evolutionary belief of how other people and
their religions came about.
All Tribes and Nations Are Descendants of Noah's Family!
The Bible makes it clear that any newly "discovered" tribe ultimately
goes back to Noah. They are not a group of people who have never had
superior technology or knowledge of God in their culture. Rather, their
culture (going back to Noah) began with (a) a knowledge of God, and
(b) technology at least sufficient to build a boat of ocean-liner size.
Romans chapter 1 suggests the major reason for this technological loss
and cultural degeneration. It is linked to the deliberate rejection
by their ancestors of the worship of the living God.
Therefore, the first priority in helping a "backward"
people group should not be secular education and technical aid, but first
and foremost the gospel.
 In
fact, most "primitive" tribes still have a memory, in their folklore
and religion, of the fact that their ancestors turned away from the
living God, the Creator. Don Richardson, missionary of Peace Child
fame, has shown that a missionary approach, unblinded by evolutionary
bias, and thus looking for this link and utilizing it, has borne a bountiful
and blessed harvest on many occasions. 4
Jesus Christ, God's reconciliation in the face of man's
rejection of the Creator, is the only truth that can set men and women
of every culture, technology, people group, or color truly free
(John 8:32; 14:6).
Learn more
about these and related issues...
Footnotes
- Ken Ham, The Lie: Evolution (Green Forest, AR: Master Books,
1987).
- J. Bergman, "Darwinism and the Nazi Race Holocaust," CEN Technical
Journal, 1999, 13(2):101-111.
- For example, R. Grigg, "Darwin's Quisling," Creation, 1999,
22(1):50-51.
- D. Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts, (Ventura, CA: Regal
Books, Division of Gospel Light, 1986).
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