1: RACE AND THE ORIGINS DEBATE


uncomfortable with the theological implications of Darwin’s theory and horrified at what he saw as a threat to the biblical claim that all humanity was formed of ‘one blood.’”


Cruickshank goes on to say that when legislation was passed


“enshrining the ‘White Australia’ policy and effectively denying Aboriginal people the vote, few voices were raised in protest. Progressives and conservatives alike saw the preservation of the more evolved white race as central to national identity.


“Those few protests against the policy came from unlikely quarters. The fledgling New South Wales Aborigines Mission, a small evangelical organization, pointed out that while most politicians claimed ‘to be ultra- democratic, they are sadly conservative in democratic practice, and unChristian both in theory and in practice when they say that a native born Australian is not a man and a brother because his skin happens to be a few shades darker than their own.’


Finally, and very significantly for our purposes here, this secular historian states:


“In earlier periods, one of the few persistent barriers to social Darwinist theory in Australia was the Christian doctrine that all human beings were of ‘one blood.’”


A gruesome trade


The body parts of Australian Aboriginal folk were keenly sought after. Following Darwin and his contemporaries, they were regarded by scientists and other evolutionary enthusiasts as ‘living missing links’. The remains of some 10,000 dead Aboriginal people in all were shipped to British museums over the course of this frenzy to provide specimens for this ‘new science’.44


David Monaghan, an Australian journalist, extensively


44. Darwin’s bodysnatchers, Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 1990, cited in Creation 12(3):21, 1990. The original apparently stated that only 3,000 sets of remains were left after the bombing raids of World War II.


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