1: RACE AND THE ORIGINS DEBATE


getting drunk, and so shortly after his stunning preservation in the Flood. Not everything recorded in the Bible is approved by it.


I once had a discussion with a


45


fellow passenger flying out of Cairns in Australia’s tropical Far North. The well- groomed Aboriginal man was a community leader among his people, and a strong Bible-believer. When I asked him his views on the solution to the many social problems of his people (see p. 263 ff.), he said it was, ultimately, the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was surprised to find on talking further, though, that he had accepted the idea of the ‘curse on Ham’ as the explanation for his own and his people’s skin color. Hearing that this had no biblical foundation seemed liberating for him. This is not surprising, as the ‘curse’ theory readily implies an inferior status for darker skin.


“The Bible does not indicate that this curse had any divine imprimatur …”


*Some have claimed the name ‘Ham’ means ‘black’, but this is not so; it means ‘burnt’ as in ‘sunburnt’. And Ham’s descendants included the Egyptians (descended from Ham’s son Mizraim) who were neither black nor perpetual servants, but instead had a vast empire lasting centuries.


make oneself believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy: how much more reasonably the same question may be asked of these barbarians! At night … [they] sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals.”26


Prof. Bowler was referring to Darwin’s views on the Fuegians when he said, in the very next section of the transcript of the interview quoted a moment earlier (unedited, sic):


“So their way of life may offer us a so fossilised relic of what our own ancestors lived like in the distant prehistoric past. But now Darwin and many of his contemporaries are beginning to realise that what they


26. Darwin, C., The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of HMS Beagle Round the World, Under the Command of Captain FitzRoy, RN, (1845), Wordsworth Classics reprint, London, pp. 196, 203–204, 1997. See also creation.com/darwin-and- the-fuegians.


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