05.13.09
The left’s disgrace on Darwinism
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17872
dated 16 May 2009 | issue 2151
Posted: 5.19pm Tuesday 12 May 2009
Human evolution and the African Eve
The left, along with most other secular groups, have been confused by the legacy of Darwinism, and this evidence of the evolution of man, despite its ambiguity, does not augur well for Darwin’s theory of natural selection. We can be glad that Marx and Engels eschewed creationism, but the Social Darwinist fiasco of Darwinism greatly harmed the left, although this has been suppresed, as has Marx’s clear suspicion of that grubby Whig, Charles Darwin.
The ideological classical liberalism of Darwinism should be a major source of theoretical activism for the left, instead…
A disgrace.
A new TV series shows that all humans are descended from African ancestors who walked the earth some 200,000 years ago, writes Neil Faulkner
The origin of the human species is still a subject of fierce political debate. The question of whether modern day humans evolved together or are in fact separate races has social as well as historical significance.
Frederick Engels and Karl Marx avidly read Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species when it was first published.
They praised the work as a major rejection of religious creationism – the belief that God created the world.
This influenced their own works on how humans evolved and their relationship to nature.
The fact that humans had the intelligence and ability to work together meant that they survived famine and catastrophe.
The debate about how humans evolved millions of years ago and how they came to leave Africa is still very much alive among archeologists.
All the evidence supports the theory that humans evolved from an ape species more than three million years ago. A 3.2 million year old fossil of an archaic ape found in Ethiopia, nicknamed Lucy, is accepted as being the oldest known human predecessor.
However, how this archaic ape evolved into modern human, and during what period those people first migrated around the world, is still controversial.