Where Did the Races Come From?

Acts 17:26
“And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”

Evolutionary anthropologists like to divide human beings into different racial groups. These so-called races are defined by distinctives such as eye shape or skin color.

Charles Darwin commented on such racial groups in his works. More to the point, he considered some racial groups to be more highly evolved than others. It will probably not be a surprise to listeners to learn that Darwin, being a white Englishman, considered white Europeans as the most highly evolved peoples. Indeed, he was wont to refer to certain other people groups as “savages” – a clear indication that he thought them to be lower in the evolutionary scale than himself.

Contemporary evolutionists mostly (though not exclusively) adhere to the “out of Africa” model of human evolution. They suppose that all human beings evolved from a bottleneck in East Africa. This enables them to bypass racially motivated ideas. Yet, the idea that human evolution occurred in just one place is not easy to justify in an evolutionary worldview.

A biblical worldview maintains that humanity consists of only one race – Adam’s race, the human race. Genesis 11 shows us that during the Tower of Babel incident, God confused the languages of the people working on the city so that they could not understand each other. Therefore, they had to scatter over the Earth. This is the origin of all the different people groups of the world. The so-called races are not different at all; they merely took different routes as they sought to abandon their location at Babel. Correctly read, the Bible is always opposed to racism because we are all descended from the same Adam and Eve.

Thank You, Father, for all my brothers and sisters in people groups all over the world. Thank You, therefore, that all gatherings of all people are really family gatherings. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: Mitchell, T. (2014), How Many Races Did God Create?, < https://answersingenesis.org/tower-of-babel/how-many-races-did-god-create/ >, accessed 11/26/2017. Image: Adobe Stock Images, licensed to author.