As John West writes in his new book, Endowed by Our Creator, the science behind the statement that “all men are created equal” was not known to the Founders 250 years ago, at the time of the Declaration of Independence, as it is to us. West writes, “Recent science has undermined the idea that races or other groupings of humans are fundamentally different from each other at the genetic level. In truth, humans are more than 99 percent the same genetically speaking.”
At this year’s Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, Dr. West interviewed neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson on the theme. Dr. Carson added his own unusual perspective gained in the operating room. What do you see when you open a human skull?
Whatever differences in outward appearance there may be between humans, brains do not have skin color or other evidence of racial or ethnic origins. Says Dr. Carson,
As a neurosurgeon, when I would take someone to the operating room and open their skull and open the dura, I’d be looking at the brain. All the brains look the same from people from all over the world. That is the thing that makes you who you are. It’s not the shape of your nose or the color of your eyes. Those are superficial characteristics that have very little to do with who you are as a person.
You could, I think, draw a comparison to looking under the hood of your car, versus looking under the hood of mine. Unless we have same year, make, and model, and have kept our cars in the same condition, even someone knowing little about auto engineering could likely tell the difference.
Automobiles are not created equal, but from the evidence of looking under our skulls, says Ben Carson, human beings are. Watch: