The following article reminds me of my undergraduate petrology professor, the late Richard Hay, who worked with the Leakeys during their 1960s and 70s expeditions in and around Olduvai Gorge. This includes the discovery of the 3.7-million-year-old Laetoli line of hominid fossil footprints preserved in volcanic ash. I wonder what Dr. Hay would have to say about this move by some Kenyan fundamentalist Christians. With enough other problems, this developing African nation cannot afford such an intellectual step back.
Scientist Fights Kenyan Church Effort to Hide Museum’s Pre-Human Fossils
… Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya’s national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans’ early ancestors.
“The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact,” said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries. “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,” the bishop said.
Gee, Toto, we’re not merely in Kansas anymore. The things people say and do in the name of Christ – poor man. Methinks we ought to educate ourselves and enlighten others on the Nature of Science and the Scientific Method. Print it out and pass it on.
Science does not prove nor disprove religious or spiritual beliefs, nor does it replace either. Science provides a method of understanding the natural world only.
the last paragraph says it all for me. except i also say this: the museum does not come into your church to express its views, so do not go into the museum to express yours. if something there makes you uncomfortable, then either expand your horizons, or don’t go.
thanks for the article…
mike
Walking through the Field Museum’s Evolving World exhibit recently, we wondered if there was a little room available for fundamentalist religious types, where they could go and allow their heads to explode, without it being alarming to small children with open minds and an acceptance of scientific principles.
Well, why don’t they just ban evolution then?
tee hee
The sad part is that this sort of person has no idea why that article is so funny.