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August 12, 2006
Quick Hide the Evidence
If you haven't had your dose of anger for the day, drop by Dispatches from the Culture Wars and take a look at what Ed Brayton and the Telegraph report about Kenya's national museum. I'll give you a hint,
Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya's national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to man's evolution from ape to human.
This is arguably the most important collection of hominid fossils in the world. The people who want to relegate the remains of the most complete skeleton of Homo erectus, Turkana Boy, and literally hundreds of other hominid fossils including specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, the earliest known hominid to walk upright, to some back room are using the ostrich approach to both science and theology. This collection is the centerpiece of the museum and should remain so.
This quotation from Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, the head of Christ is the Answer Ministries show the range of his ignorance and the danger of his ideas.
"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory."
Evolution by natural selection with common decent is not "just one theory" it is the only theory. The remains of Homo erectus and Australopithecus anamensis and the others are facts. Hiding those facts will not make the only scientific theory of the origin of our species and all other species go away. But it may help to keep some people ignorant.
Posted by Duane Smith at August 12, 2006 9:04 AM | Read more on Paleoanthropology |
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Comments
The human genome project should have ended all doubt about biological evolution. Darwin didn't have access to genetics and had to develop his theories of random mutation and natural selection without that benefit--just using morphological similarities. The evidence was pretty strong then and got stronger over the years, since. But modern genetics should be the final proof for anyone. We now KNOW, for instance, that chimps and humans have only a 1.2% genetic difference--and recent studies show that cross-mating may have occurred in the ancient past. See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/humans-chimps.html . Yet the anti-evolutionists continue to deny the evidence--and now want to hide some it.
Posted by: Michael the Leveller at August 13, 2006 11:08 AM
I always get a giggle from this stuff. The Kenyan fossils date from the 1960's/70's, but evolution was proclaimed proven fact almost a century earlier - when biological understanding was barely more advanced than the time of Moses. I don't mind showing the Leakey's data, although I reserve the right to reject the spin on the data. I would like to suggest that the real ostriches here, however, are the theologians. The late 19th century and early 20th century saw purges of anyone who objected to Darwinism. Running out of targets in the cities, they went to the backwoods of Tennessee for the Scopes Trial. Looking back from our much more enlightened viewpoint, however, it seems clear to me that it was an academic Jihad based on smoke and mirrors.
Posted by: Looney at August 14, 2006 9:33 AM
For Michael, I am an engineer doing scientific programming. Looking at someone else's program, it is nearly impossible to state the order of how it was put together. To the extent that it is possible, it can only be done by an extremely experienced developer who knows the styles of those who worked on the program before.
When it comes to DNA programming, there are no expert programmers. Thus, when you say "The human genome project should have ended all doubt about biological evolution", you are confirming what I hinted at in the earlier post: No matter what the evidence is, Darwinism will be proclaimed as proven. This kind of science is worthless.
Posted by: Looney at August 14, 2006 10:43 AM
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