Well I've read this and I don't really understand what it is about. Yes both men where Men of their times, while they did have some progressive ideas, they did have what we would consider to be Racist ideas. There has been a push form some creationist pundits to try and cast a shadow on evolution by casting a shadow on the man, maybe this is what this piece is trying to do?
The reality is the research into our origins has led to the modern understanding that race is a social construct and has no biological basis.

A thesis that falls at the first canard.

"Darwin is proclaimed in celebration events to be the greatest biologist ever and some say even the greatest scientist. Just as his proof of evolution displaced the religious conception of divine creation..."

Those whose apparent life's mission is to discredit Darwin's work often use this as a starting point.

The reality however is that Darwin's theories are resolutely silent on the topic of creation, divine or otherwise.

In fact, the first edition of "Origin" reads as follows:

"I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed"

This - as befits a great scientist - limits his conclusions to what he observed, and leaves the rest untouched.

So what we have here is yet another creationist, having a good solid tilt at a windmill from his own imagination.

It must suck to be so wrong.

This article perpetuates the common misunderstanding of Darwin's phrase "survival of the fittest", as meaning something along the lines of "the strong triumphing over the weak".

It is perhaps understandable, in that of its various meanings the word "fit" is today mostly understood as meaning "physically fit", or simply "strong", but what Darwin had in mind when he used the word "fit", was "best fitting" or "most apt".

This is explicitly clear from his statement that "the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." In other words, those who are the best adapted to their environment are most likely to survive.

(I'm prepared to be forgiving regarding such semantic misunderstandings - after all, it's not long ago that I got roasted for mistakenly using the word "evolution" when what I really meant was "natural selection".)

Pericles has hit it on the head.

The creationists are trying to play the man and not the ball.

Darwin having just developed one of the greatest tools for describing the evolution of life forms through survival of the fittest was simply using the tool to analyse the clashes between groups of humans.

In no point did he propose eugenics as the author said, which is the "purification" of a race by eliminating the undesirables, or that the elimination of other cultures was a good thing.

In fact seeing the plight of indigenous people through most of the world, and the extinction of many of their cultures, it would appear that he was not far off the mark

Hard to tell if this grand indictment on Lincoln's character allows for the difference between the personal and political.

But I'm presuming not.

As any undergraduate of Political Science knows, much of Lincoln's writings had to walk a fine line between espousing values he believed in personally, and that which would play politically among the general populace.

Simply put, to publicly suggest to Americans of that period that slavery of blacks should end because it was morally wrong for the white race to presume superiority over all others would be political suicide -- Lincoln would have been out on his ear having achieved nothing. Being the canny political mind he was, Lincoln understood well that couching his argument instead in economic terms was far more likely to gain wider support.

A comparison today would be the politican that tried to outlaw private cars because they are so blatantly bad for the environment. Regardless of how valid the belief may be, the average punters just ain't gonna buy it.

Clownfish - Good point. As I understand, it was the right-wing philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who popularised the term 'survival of the fittest' in response to Darwin's writing. Much of Spencer's philosophy was about dividing humanity into levels of importance and putting people most like himself at the top.

Darwin acknowledged Spencer's use of the term 'survival of the fittest' but preferred to use his own term 'natural selection'.