WHEN TALKING TO A LOCAL WAIHEKE IDENTITY IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, I was asked, “Arnold, I hope those articles you write in ‘The Waihekean’ are tongue and cheek”. “Well”, I replied, “they are designed to make people think but they are not all tongue in cheek”. This produced a reply on the value of racial mixing and the equality of all races together with an alleged lack of meaningful genetic differences between them. In reply I pointed out two things. Firstly a November article in the N.Z. Herald “Genes Carry Indelible Imprint Of Social Rank” where research showed there are distinctive genetic profiles between the Hindu castes in India.
Secondly I pointed out the matter of race-specific diseases and how racial intermarriage could cause offspring to be liable to a greater range of diseases. This was not received; it seemed as if he was saying that science offended his religion, although I do not think he would class himself as being a religious person. Perhaps he was confusing values with facts, values being a religious non-scientific activity. But what he probably had in mind were matters of worth in the good sense that people in one restricted gene pool should not be treated differently than another, and this made him blind to biological differences, even if everyone who thinks about it knows visible features such as eye shape are because of biological differences.
What bothers me is the attitude of some people who will not believe something regardless of the evidence, and this is what I want to talk about. In the Western world values are considered matters of personal choice and things we should keep an open mind about. But values cannot rightly over-ride facts, and those who promote the idea that values should over-ride facts arrogantly seek to impose their beliefs upon others in a religious manner. People today tend to place facts within the scope of science whereas they say beliefs belong to the realm of religion. A person who will not accept scientific fact is essentially religious.