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ORIGINAL: Jhud
This is all fine and good, but do you understand, that logically, this does not deny the premise that evolution can be used as a basis to rationalize racism?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Don't forget that those with a lower intellectual capacity because of retardation factors also used to suffer a great deal of discrimination. It is not retardation and African that is being compared, but the treatment of those really (mentally retarded) and allegedly judged to have a lower intellect.

What does lower intellect compel in the way of social policy? We have learned in the cases of those really affected that positive attention to their special needs allows many to live independent lives of human dignity. And even those who cannot live independently, can still be treated as humans.

Remembering that in connection with race, nothing has been demonstrated yet, why would any information on differing intellectual abilities dictate a specific social policy?

Well, in the case of those who are significantly mentally retarded, like Down’s kids, we simply eliminate the problem. We do that specifically because we make a direct link between their mental capacity and how much burden they would place on individual lives and society.

If, as Watson surmises, the African people are on the whole less intelligent, then wouldn’t it make the world an easier place if they, like the other less intelligent people we eliminate, simply didn’t exist?

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I think you are erroneously assuming that any finding would show all those of one race less capable than all those of another. The fact that many people of African descent have done well in higher education indicates this is not the case. The most that any measure could give us is a difference in average capacity. And that tells us nothing about individual capacities.

You don’t have to convince me because I don’t reduce human capabilities to genetics; but this ignores the argument made by Watson that we should adjust social policy to compensate for the lower intelligence of Africans.

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So you have not answered the question. As essentialsaltes has said, men and women also differ, on average, in various capacities. This was once used to justify excluding women from certain professions (e.g. police work). Today, we operate on the basis of individual ability, not gender-based averages. Why would the same not apply for alleged racial differences in intellectual capacity?

Well, I think women would escape elimination by evolutionists for two reasons; they are necessary for procreation, and no substantive argument could be made that on the whole they have inferior cognitive capabilities. Though interestingly, in China and India they are being systematically eliminated because men are seen as less burdensome.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

Well, in the case of those who are significantly mentally retarded, like Down’s kids, we simply eliminate the problem. We do that specifically because we make a direct link between their mental capacity and how much burden they would place on individual lives and society.

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So you would argue Watson is simply a racist abusing evolutionary theory?

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This has been explained so many times, it’s hard for me to understand why you still aren’t getting it.

1: By the definition of racism used by almost everyone, Watson is not a racist. He doesn’t believe that one race is actually “inferior” to another, and certainly doesn’t believe that this justifies mistreating them. What he does believe, as a result of psychometric and genetic data, is that Africans have a lower average intelligence than Caucasians. As Essentialsaltes pointed out in post #139, studying a difference that exists between two groups is not the same as discrimination or racism / sexism.

2: Even if Watson’s views on this actually were racist, he still would not be abusing evolution in order to have them. I suppose if he actually were a racist, you could argue that he was abusing psychology and genetics, since those are the fields that produced the data his viewpoints are based on. But as I pointed out before, they were not based on evolution. The only way evolution is relevant to this is that having the data about this difference in intelligence, which is the same regardless of one’s views on evolution, he has tried to come up with an evolutionary explanation of why it exists.

Get it now?

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Who's this 'we'?

As far as I know, 'we' don't force mothers to abort their children, or force infanticide on them after they're born.

The parents make these decisions, based on their own personal ethics and the advice of their doctors, and the decision is obviously not always elimination.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
So in light of that, when we allow by law Down's syndrome children to be systematically eliminated with the full consent of the institutions concerned, we are guilty of those actions in so much as we ignore them or consent to them.

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So Watson says (according to the Independent) that:

...there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

And you don't consider that racist?

I have to conclude you either don't know what racism is, or you simply intend to defend racists you happen to otherwise admire.

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To those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief...

The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity....

To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers.

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This is why when it comes to politically charged topics like this, you have to be careful where you get your news.

I’ve read all of Watson’s comments about this, and he was talking about intelligence and nothing but intelligence. However, what news agencies reported about it is another matter. I

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Before, you said that we eliminate them "because we make a direct link between their mental capacity and how much burden they would place on individual lives and society."

But abortion is legal not just for cases of mental incapacity. Inasmuch as 'we' made all* abortions legal (*subject to the relevant laws), this link of yours is imaginary.

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I want to know if you think the statement that I posted is racist? Enough evasion.

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ORIGINAL: Agahnim

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I want to know if you think the statement that I posted is racist? Enough evasion.

The statement would be racist if Watson had actually said what the article is implying that he said. However, as I just pointed out, he didn’t.

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I was under the impression that Watson actually *did* say make the statement Jack quoted, but subsequently retracted it.

Yes it's racist. It's the ramblings of a quite old man who should have known better, and he got a bollocking for it from his supporters and critics alike. Probably disproportionately so, when you consider it garnered very wide publication.

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Maybe he is racist. Maybe he isn't. Whatever. His statements have been disregarded by virtually everyone. Rolling with the popular but not necessarily correct contention on these forums that most evolutionists are atheist, I'd have thought this was a rather positive argument for atheism. A bunch of atheists with no moral foundation except their own good judgement, barrelled an old man for making racist comments. That's quite good isn't it?

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The statement would be racist if Watson had actually said what the article is implying that he said. However, as I just pointed out, he didn’t.

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Well, as you weren't there, and there is little reason to doubt the Guardian's reporting in this respect, and as Watson has a history of such statements, I will leave it to others to decide what he did and didn't say; I am just trying to figure out what the baseline is for evolutionists when it comes to what is and isn't racist - and I'm not encouraged.

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I just told you that I had read the rest of what Watson said about this, and that it’s clear from the context that he was talking only about intelligence, not about universal equality or inequality. Did you completely ignore what I was saying, again? The original interview with Watson, which did not receive much reaction when it first appeared, is here. Nobody made a big deal about what Watson had to say about this until the Independent published their own article about it, selectively quoting him. I see that now you’re bringing up what the Guardian had to say about him, without even linking to it or quoting it.

The only thing it takes to determine what Watson said is to read the original interview with him. But it seems you’d rather pretend that nobody can tell what he said or didn’t say, while ignoring the source of information about it that all of these newspapers used.

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I have another question about your attitude. It’s clear from your last post that you think people who accept evolution are more likely to make “racist” assumptions than people who don’t, and that James Watson is an example. So in other words, you apparently think people could draw a more reasonable conclusion about this line of data if they didn’t accept evolution. So in that case, using a non-evolutionist viewpoint, what conclusion do you think people ought to draw from the discovery that the average IQ of people of African ancestry is between 70 and 85; that this has been determined using several independent methods of testing that do not involve any cultural bias; that this difference is never less than 15 points when socio-economic conditions between the two groups are equal; that IQ has been shown to correlate with ability to perform most real-world skills that depend on intelligence; and that several of the genes that contribute to intelligence have recently been shown to be more common in Caucasians than in Africans? And more importantly, how is this “more reasonable conclusion” that you think could be drawn the result of not accepting evolution?

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Well, it's not as if the statement was isolated or unique. There are a number of people who have known Watson over the years who testify to his racist and sexist views; you seem to ignore all of that evidence in the light of a few after the fact self-defenses by Watson, and I have no idea why.

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Well, first off, I would separate data from what are obviously the racist conclusions of Watson. And I think what happens with defenders of evolution and scientism is because they tend to deify science and scientists, they have a very hard time criticizing even the most egregious abuses of science provided those commiting the abuses generally agree with consensus science. That is my primary concern in the matter.

As far as IQ disparities, I would say that culture and opportunity are much stronger factors in explaining such disparities than some vague notions of genetics for which we have no certain link at all. Whatever one thinks of Obama's politics, he is obviously a very bright guy, and I would say that has much more to do with his life experiences and opportunities than the fact that his father happens to be African.

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You seem to think I’m not familiar with Watson in this respect. Although there’s been some controversy around his comments in the past, there haven’t been any widespread accusations of racism or sexism before his most recent one. You can bring up one of his other comments about this if you like, but for the reason I mentioned, I think you’ll find that the case for him being racist or sexist that can be made from any of the others is even weaker than it is for this one.

As for the most recent comment, what I just linked to is not a self-defense by him—it is the original interview in which he made this comment. When you’re presenting an argument based on what someone has said, do you no longer consider it worthwhile to be shown that quote in its proper context?

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First of all, all of the data I’ve described only applies to the average for each race—every group of people will have both people who are exceptionally intelligent and exceptionally dumb. If you want to make a conclusion based on what can be seen in society, a more relevant thing to observe is what percentage of the most famous mathematicians and physicists of the past 30 years have been black, and whether that’s less than the percentage of the U.S. population which is black. Based on studies of interracial adoption, in which the IQ of children is more consistent with the race of their biological parents than it is with the cultural environment in which they’re raised, I favor the genetic hypothesis. But in any case, for the purpose of this discussion it doesn’t really matter whether it’s caused by genes or environment; the only thing that matters is whether the idea that this difference is due to genetic factors is a valid explanation of the data that exists. Within the relevant field (psychometrics), there is no question that it at least deserves consideration.

So this is the data, and even if you think genetics isn’t the only possible explanation for it, it’s at least an explanation that’s supported well enough to be considered. The genetic explanation is Watson’s position, and there’s no more to his position than that, as has been demonstrated both by the original interview with him and his clarification afterwards. So what “racist conclusion” do you think he’s drawn that needs to be “separated” from the data?

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It's not like the interview was the only comment of it's sort he ever made; and if his comments were prefectly acceptable, why did he apologize, retract, and resign?

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Well, yes, you have provided a substantive defense of racism here; ignoring the many factors which would effect ones ability to become "famous mathematicians and physicists" like culture and opportunity; but I don't think there is any solid evidence that reduces practical intelligence simply down to a few genes, and I don't think we should allow evolutionary thinking, which reduces all of humanity down to genetics, to be the final say in the matter.

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In response to the media reaction to Watson’s comments, Cold Spring Harbor suspended him from his post as its chancellor. In order to try and prevent additional harm, he made the statement clarifying his comments that I quoted. He did not retract them, his apology was only apologizing to people who misinterpreted his comments to mean he thought Africans were inferior overall, and this is obvious to anyone who cares to spend a few minutes reading what he actually said when he “apologized”.

However, as I pointed out, what the media reported of the statement I quoted was just that he “retracted” his comments. In response, various organizations he was affiliated with demanded that he resign, and he eventually gave in.

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Are you implying that anyone who holds the opinion that genetic factors contribute to this difference in IQ is, by definition, a racist? So when Arthur Jensen and J. Philippe Rushton analyzed this data in the peer-reviewed paper I linked to earlier in this thread, and came to the conclusion that genetic factors were are more likely explanation for it than any other, this automatically made them racists also even though they attempting to do nothing more than find the conclusion that was best-supported by the data? By the definition you seem to be using, the only way for anyone to not be a racist is if they literally deny the existence of discoveries that have already been made, because some of the genes responsible for intelligence have already been identified and shown to be distributed unequally between races. This is explained in further detail here.

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You also have yet to answer my question about how evolution is responsible for this conclusion, when the conclusion is based on nothing but psychometrics and genetics, and is the same whether you approach it from an evolutionary perspective or not. I asked you this question before, and instead of trying to answer it, you changed the subject for a little while before repeating same claim again. This is what you have been doing for the past four pages of this thread: bringing up a red herring whenever I make a point you don’t like, and then after a little while make the same claim again, without attempting to address what I’ve already said to refute it. You’re going all over the place here, even moreso than the way you used to complain about in my case. Is this the only thing you know how to do when you’re in a situation where most people would just admit they were wrong?

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Well, it's your opinion against a host of sources, and those who knew him. I think his actions are sufficiently telling.

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I think anyone who attributes to people of a certain color and geographical origin less intelligence than others is a racist, yes. In fact, I would suggest that is the essence of racism.

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Well, as you hold that certain races have lower IQ than other races, what processes do you attribute these differences to?

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When it’s possible to access the information itself that the “host of sources” is reporting, whether they’re right or not is not a matter of authority. All you have to do is look at the data itself—in this case, what Watson actually said—and then when the people reporting what he said contradict Watson’s own words, that means they’re wrong. None of the authors of the newspaper articles you’re talking about actually knew Watson, so nothing about the opinion of “those who knew him” supports your argument.

I really don’t understand why I should have to explain this to an ID proponent. If you think “a host of sources” is any kind of authority, why do you disagree with the host of sources that say the theory of evolution is true? You can’t have it both ways. If you think the majority of scientists and news sources are wrong to support evolution, then they’re capable of being wrong about Watson also.

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The essence of racism is believing that one race is inherently superior to another. I don’t believe this, and neither does Watson, Rushton, Jensen, or (as far as I know) any of the people posting in this thread who are aware of this line of data. If you want to call all of us racists, I can’t stop you, but you should be aware that by doing so you’ll be using a definition of racism that almost nobody else does.

I guess I’m curious: if in your opinion it qualifies as racism to think that one race has slightly greater ability than another in a specific area like this, what other abilities does this apply to? Do you also consider it racist to believe that Africans have slightly greater athletic potential than Caucasians, so in other words the only way to avoid being racist is to believe socio-economic factors are the reason why black athletes almost always win the gold medal in Olympic sprint races, and why almost all NBA players are black? How about differences between genders; do you consider it sexist to say that men tend to have greater physical strength than women?

If you always consider it racism or sexism to believe that one group has greater average ability in a certain area than another, you’ll have a hard time finding anyone who doesn’t meet your definition of a racist or sexist. If this standard only applies to some abilities and not others, though, how do you choose which of them we are or aren’t allowed to believe some groups are better at than others?

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As an evolutionist, I attribute it to the effects of natural selection. Creationists, on the other hand, attribute it to the difference in intelligence between Noah’s sons. The evidence and the conclusion it points to are the same regardless of our worldviews, but when we try to explain why the world happens to be this particular way, our worldviews cause us to come up with different reasons why this difference in intelligence exists.

I explained this in more detail in post #131. In response, instead of trying to address what I was saying, you changed the subject and asked me whether evolution could be misinterpreted in order to rationalize racism. Are you going to answer my question and/or address my point from 40 posts ago, or just keep skipping from topic to topic?

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We live in the information age, where success can depend largely on one’s intellectual prowess. In modern culture, to simply classify an entire race as being less intelligent is to consign them to an inferior position in our society by virtue of association with certain inherent abilities, and I think you better have more than the likes of Watson on your side before you start stratifying our society like that again.

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Well, then you have affirmed that evolution can indeed justify racism.

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but the fact is truly seeing people as equal requires some notion of ‘creationism’,

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Even if it was shown conclusively that Africans had on average less intelligence than other races, it would not be racist. The way people use this information to make their own personal judgements is the important thing. If Africans (or Caucasians, or Jews, or Asians, or Pacific Islanders) were on average less intelligent than other peoples, that would just be a fact, like the sky is blue. This alone wouldn't consign them to an inferior position in society, unless someone uses this hypothetical information and consigns them there.

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Could you define racism?

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I see everyone as equal, but that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge physical differences between peoples. Equality means equal worth. A moral concept by the way, entirely separate from evolution because scientific theories do not make moral judgements.

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We live in the information age, where success can depend largely on one’s intellectual prowess. In modern culture, to simply classify an entire race as being less intelligent is to consign them to an inferior position in our society by virtue of association with certain inherent abilities, and I think you better have more than the likes of Watson on your side before you start stratifying our society like that again.

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Well, then you have affirmed that evolution can indeed justify racism. It may be that there are ‘creationists’ who make such claims, but the fact is truly seeing people as equal requires some notion of ‘creationism’, meaning we would have to draw from a notion that humans have been created equal, endowed with certain worth, and as you have demonstrated evolution and naturalism could provide no such basis for equality.