Wow, one of the Duggar in-laws had a deep discussion about racism in America. The YouTube conversation between Jessa Duggar's husband Ben Seewald and Dante Berry got off to a thoughtful start. But then Seewald brought evolutionary theory into the mix.
Seewald asked Berry what he thinks about people declaring a race war, and Berry quoted Mark 3:25, "If a house is divided against itself it cannot stand." So racial division, according to Berry, makes it easier for the Devil to sneak in and "destroy what he's going to destroy."
"That's right," Seewald says. "There's no room for racism in Christianity." I concur! Racism runs counter to the teachings of Christ.
"That all comes from, like, this false religion out there, evolution, that stuff?" Seewald continued. "Teaching that, like, some people are more 'evolved'?"
Some of you who studied evolutionary theory at an accredited university may be thinking this right now.
Evolution is the scientific theory that all living organisms have arisen and developed through a process called natural selection. Natural selection is when a random genetic variation gives an organism an advantage in adapting to their environment and surviving to reproduce. When that organisms reproduces, that genetic variation gets passed on to subsequent generations. Through this incredibly slow, incremental process a population evolves -- not individuals, as is commonly thought.
Fun fact: Evolutionary theory is not a religion!
P.S. A scientific theory (as opposed to whatever B.S. pops into someone's head after two seconds' worth of thought) is a step in the scientific process. First there's a hypothesis, an unproven idea. Then, if enough evidence has been gathered to support that hypothesis, it becomes a theory. The scientific theory of evolution has been backed by copious amounts of evidence.
BUT ANYWAY! What Seewald is referring to is a quack interpretation of evolutionary theory used by members of the Nazi party (among others) to justify their prejudice. It is in fact a complete distortion of the scientific theory and is rejected by the contemporary scientific community. Go ahead, bring it up in your Biology 101 class and see how far your professor's eyeballs roll back into her head.
Now let's take a quick detour to logic class! Just because a group of individuals have distorted a scientific theory for their own nefarious purposes does not, in fact, discredit that theory by association. It just means those individuals are jerks and bad scientists to boot.
Just to be clear: Accepting the theory of evolution does not make you a racist.
But hey, if you don't "believe" in science that's your business. Just don't propagate misinformation about a major scientific theory in the name of fighting racism. We know you mean well, Ben Seewald. But you're using the wrong tools to build your argument.
What were we talking about again? Oh yes, the Duggars and racism. I'm so tired now. Where is my glass of rosé?
See this video on The Stir by CafeMom.
Image via Jessa Seewald/YouTube