Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins

One of Charles Darwin’s major biographers reveals in a book that Darwin was a fervent abolitionist and believed in racial unity, and abhorred slavery.

I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England, if she is the first European nation which utterly abolish is it.

commondescent.net...

Today I listened to Pacifica radio, mesmerized by a very erudite gentleman named James Moore, who spoke about one of his biographies of Charles Darwin that details his sacred quest for racial justice in the world at a time when racism simmered in Western civilization.

Radio Link Go to Letters and Politics

Darwin's Sacred Cause restores Darwin's humanitarianism, tarnished by atheistic efforts to hijack his reputation and creationist attempts to smear him. Desmond and Moore argue that only by understanding Darwin's Christian abolitionist inheritance can we shed new light on the perplexing mix of personal drive, public hesitancy and scientific radicalism that led him finally in 1871 to publish The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The result is an epoch-making study of this eminent Victorian.

Link to Book

Sounds like a interesting read

What a burden of guilt people must have lived with back then, it was literally impossible to be someone with an alternate viewpoint without bringing down the scrutiny of the Church.

Blasphemer, Heretic, Contrarian, you'll burn…

a reply to: intrptr

This writer said that Darwin was terrified to write his books at hat time.

He claims some of what he wrote was a veiled refutation of the overt racism of the day.

Good old Pacifica Radio.
They learned long ago about the power of corporate owned media. How news and programing must meet the standard of what is good for the owning corporation. KPFA, the first Pacifica station shunned corporate backing.
Financed almost entirely by listeners it is commercial free. They raise operating money by bi-yearly on air fund raisers.

Started in 1947 I believe by anti war pacifists they were the first to make a mark on the newly opened FM frequencies. It was so early in the FM market that listeners didn't even have radios with an FM band, so that the earliest listeners and donators were given FM radios with their donations.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Yeah even in the “liberal” progressive New York area, WBAI, the Pacifica station there is about the only progressive listening around.


And they say where in the era of liberal media.

originally posted by: Willtell
a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Yeah even in the “liberal” progressive New York area, WBAI, the Pacifica station there is about the only progressive listening around.


And they say where in the era of liberal media.

Having been exposed to 'real' liberal media I am always dumbfounded at how they paint msm as liberal. To me it is conservative.

a reply to: Willtell

Cool stuff about Darwin. I didn't know this about him, though I've never really read much about him at all. Adding the book to my list. Thanks for bringing it to light!

And regarding Pacifica radio - an interesting story in and of itself I'm now interested in reading up on! Not to mention, giving it a listen. I don't have a local station, but it looks like there's live streams

Here's a link to one

a reply to: Willtell

Yes. Darwin first saw slavery in South America during his voyage round the world in the Beagle. He was horrified and revolted, and noted as much in his record of the voyage.

He was, as the first letter at your link shows, already an abolitionist by then. Mind you, he was from a rich, liberal Unitarian family, the kind of culture in which the proposition ‘all men are brothers’ was actually taken seriously.