Letter misrepresents Darwin’s intent

The March 30 Fence Post letter by Charles Madden (“Evolution is not scientific”) claiming that Darwin’s work on evolution espouses racism, and therefore must be rejected by public schools, may be the most disingenuous argument I have ever encountered on any subject this side of the letter writer who tells us how safe nuclear power plants are.

Mr. Madden bases his argument on the fact that the full title of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” contains the phrase “Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” as if it were dealing with contemporary sociological phenomena rather than the biological descendance of the various competing races (or species), including the human race. The reality is that old Chuck Darwin simply, as a matter of stylistics, did not want to repeat the word “species” only four nouns apart in his elongated title.

Either Mr. Madden is in serious need of a refresher course on Darwin, or else he is purposely trying to get away with a rather nasty bit of rhetorical deceit to make his prefabricated point.

Thorn Randall Libertyville