Don’t worry, this video from the Institute from Creation Research – Origin of Races – isn’t even going to try to explain its title statement. Instead, the video sets out to prove the internal common descent of extant humanity, as if that were under dispute:
Doesn’t seem to be working, for the usual reason.
We begin:
Each year, Americans celebrate Black History month, which was started by historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926 and eventually sparked similar observances, like Asian-Pacific American Heritage month, and Hispanic Heritage month.
The picture here may be what a puritanical facebook commenter was complaining about when they said “What is with the pic of the physical beautiful young lady with no clothes on her shoulders? That in a e-mail is your idea of Godly?” I can’t actually tell, but this isn’t the first time somebody has complained about the ICR’s stock images for this reason.
America is known for its great diversity of people from all over the world, and it makes you wonder where all the races originally came from.
Is America still known for that? Given that this is now the 21st century and not the 19th, and melting-pot nations are much more common, I’m not so sure that it is. But that is irrelevant to the subject of this video.
But whether we are tall, large, or small, or light, or dark human beings are all genetically related, descended from the first human couple, Adam and Eve.
Because size is completely genetic, and is totally relevant to the discussion.
For example, the molecular composition of our skin demonstrates the marvellous diversity of the human race. Skin colour is caused by a substance called melanin, and the more melanin a person has the darker the skin appears. Skin that has little or no melanin is termed albino. Light skinned people sunburn more easily than dark skinned people, and have to be careful of too much exposure to the ultraviolet rays of the Sun. But too sun can damage any skin type, and the American Academy of Dermatology says that anyone can get skin cancer, no matter the type of skin.
We seem to be rather off topic. What were we talking about? I’m fairly certain this video wasn’t called ‘you too can get skin cancer’.
Skin colour, blood types, DNA, and much more, all point to the genetic similarity and uniqueness of human beings, created by God.
And… that’s it. There is nothing in this video, as I am sure you can tell, that actually explains races. It is stated, but never elaborated upon, that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve – they could have condensed it down to that point and saved themselves the trouble. As it stands, much of the video is a collection of non sequiturs, i.e. statements that do not logically follow from each other. Which is really par for the course for these videos.
On a related note, here’s an interesting article from Talk.Origins: Is the ICR’s Henry Morris racist?, an interesting discussion of some of the late Morris’ comments on the subject of the Curse of Ham. The answer seems to be something like “no, but he could have phrased that a lot better”. Well worth a read anyway.
Eye on the ICR 
As this video is about races in America and specifically asks the question, ‘Where did all these races come from?’ I will start the ball rolling by telling you about just one of them. The black ones were mostly shipped from Africa as slaves.
“Skin colour, blood types, DNA, and much more, all point to the genetic similarity and uniqueness of human beings, created by God.”
True, so why did you not allow the black ones into your churches?
When it comes to science, ICR has now overtaken AIG in the race to the bottom. But what really annoys me is the way these folk deny their history. They talk as if segregation never existed and that the churches played a central part in maintaining it. Some of us are old enough to remember these things, and we will not forget.