Some families whisper of past relatives of dubious character whose names are well known but never mentioned in polite company (except when your uncle has a few too many at Christmas dinner). In Kenya, evangelical churches have taken this to an illogical extreme, putting pressure on Kenya’s national museum to relegate its display of hominid fossils to the backroom. The churches’ approach to what should be regarded as national treasures and indeed treasures for all humankind is disappointing but not unexpected these days.
The Kenyan churches have imported from the US the dismal idea that, to paraphrase Dilbert, ignorance is to be regarded as a point of view in matters of science.
Pharyngula also has an interesting table of the results of a survey in regards to attitude towards evolution from various countries. Last and second last positions are very interesting.
Shaun, leaving out that important comma makes it look as though you want to tar all churches with the same brush.
‘The churches approach to what..’ should be ‘The church’s approach to what…’
Likewise, ‘The Kenyan churches have imported from….’ should be something like ‘Some Kenyan churches have imported from…’
Shaun already qualified his later mention of “churches” by describing them earlier in the article as “evangelical churches”. It is a perverse reading to ascribe his later mention of churches as referring to churches of any type other than the evangelical churches already mentioned.
What tigtog said (thanks!). I’m only having a go at the Kenyan evangelical mob and that should be clear from the context of the article.
So now the US has almost the same level of disbelief in evolution as a Muslim country … fantastic …
So instead of refuting the theory the Churches intend to bury the evidence supporting it? Sounds like they want to “enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory”, doesn’t it?
You don’t hear scientists calling for the Book of Genesis to be removed from the Bible, do you?
My point originally was merely a grammatical one, but careful reading of the Telegraph article would have shown that at this point only one ‘church leader’ is jumping up and down about the museum’s displays.
But he hasn’t as yet got all the country’s churches onside.
This bishop is part of an organisation with seven centres and 15,000 members, a very minor representation when compared with eg the Anglican Church, which has 28 bishops and over 3million members. Now Anglicans in Kenya are more likely to be labelled ‘evangelical’ because of their historical roots, but that doesn’t mean they automatically subscribe to the ‘intelligent design’ theory.
The American Christian Organisations Formerly Known As Fundamentalists (TACOFKAF) have objected to being called ‘fundamentalists’ and now want to be called ‘evangelicals’. They have deliberately done this to coast on the political inoffensiveness of most churches that describe themselves as ‘evangelical’, and are thus both diluting and co-opting the term.
A literalist and thus Young Earth Creationist (YEC) view is axiomatic for these TACOFKAFs and their associated fellow travellers such as this Kenyan bishop you mention.
I agree that the co-option of ‘evangelical’ by the TACOFKAFs is problematic, but perhaps traditional evangelical Christians ought to take that up with them.
I’m with Lesley. It’s a slow news day grab. “Bishop” Adoyo (presumably self-appointed) represents 15,000 people in seven ministries according to his CITAM bio – interestingly, he was trained by a Pastor from the Canadian evangelical movement. The reference to the support of “the Kenyan envangelical movement of 6 million people” for Adoyo’s position is unsourced and anyway, Kenya’s population is around 34 million.
The header should have read: “Kenyan minister thinks that evolution is rubbish, says he has lots of support.”
A profile of Bishop Adoyo.
Leslie, if the Australian experience is anything to go by the Anglicans are divided over ID (as they seem to be about everythign else). But I have no idea how this plays out world-wide. But for now, the concern is with the evangelical or fundamentalist church or whatever euphimism they choose to call themselves.
You’re right about the slow news day Geoff but there is still the survey that pits Turkey and the US in a race to bottom regarding ignorance. Turkey has quite an effective Islamic creationist movement going. Harun Yahya seems to be the most prominent Islamic creationist.
The problem for
fundamentalistsEvangelicals is not so much that they evolved from Apes, it’s that they’re at risk of being conquered by them.Once again the evangalicals/fundamentalists – call them what you will – have demonstrated their deep profound ignorance of science. Evolution – including our descent from ape like ancestors – is well established a scientific fact that exists. In fact, evolution should no longer be termed a theory, so overwhelming is the evidence for it. And just because the religious right can drag out a few people with scientific qualifications to back an ideology like “intelligent design” doesn’t do anything to detract from the fact of evolution.
Cheers.
Sorry.
That second sentence should have read “Evolution – including our descent from ape like ancestors – is as well established as any scientific fact that exists.”
“The problem for fundamentalists Evangelicals is not so much that they evolved from Apes, it’s that they’re at risk of being conquered by them.”
They’re not orphans, there.
Evolution is both a fact and a theory. There is the observed phenomenon that lifeforms on earth have changed over aeons of time. Evolutionary theory is the explanation of the physical mechanisms for the observed changes.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are mistaught in school that there’s a hierarchy of observation -> hypothesis -> test -> confirmation -> theory -> fact or law. The unfortunate co-option of a term of the word “theory” as a common language term for “speculation”(which is exactly what the word does not mean in science) perpetuates the misunderstanding, and lots of people never realise that the last rung on that ladder is utterly wrong.
Theory is as high as science goes – it doesn’t establish facts, science establishes detailed explanations of observed phenomena supported by experimental confirmation and rigorous modelling of mechanisms, and these explanations are called theories.
Laws are not higher in rank than Theories, either. They just happen to be theoretical models which reduce down to elegantly simple equations, which is why they are confined to classical physics and chemistry, and why the term is obsolete for modern science.
If the Museum of Kenya replaces their hominids with a diorama of Adam and Eve in pre-serpent mode, what colour will they be?
… and will they have navels?
So, according Leakey’s understanding, this really is the planet of the apes! So much for Von Daniken’s theory. Thing is, provided you modern ape descendents don’t blow one another up in the next several million years or cause earth to overheat, what will you all evolve into?
Depends on what variations emerge, FaceLift, and how successful they are in the environment around them, so it also depends on changes in the environment.
If a variation is highly favourable in conferring a reproductive advantage, then our descendants who inherit that variation may look rather different. Or it may be an internal variation that doesn’t alter the phenotype, so they won’t look different at all even though they can survive in toxic atmospheres or high radiation environments that would kill you and me in short order.
They’ll know how they’ve changed if science survives the current anti-intellectual assaults.
There is some interesting studies on whether homo sapiens is still evolving. Which is a sort of strange questions as the answer is obviously yes. It is on my to do list as a post as the arguments are intresting.
As for the future FL, who knows? Evolution is contingent on many factors including not blowing ourselves up or hoping that Earth isn’t again smashed by an asteroid. Anway, the answer to that question is 30-40 thousand years away so how about we wait till then?
So you think you came from somewhere different FaceLift? Reverse Rapture maybe?
Well Biblically I came from the same elements (dust) of the earth that all natural, earthly things are derived from, but I haven’t bought into the ape ancestoral thing yet. One of blogger Pharangula’s problems, of course, is that he can’t envisage the miraculous or supernatural, which is OK by me, but it leaves out amazing possibilities, since he can only deal in the obvious, and misses the power of other dimensions. I don’t, however, see that the supernatural is discounted simply because science-bound bloggers like him can’t find it in the fossil record, which is, at best, limited, and not as precise as it should be in absolutely identifying intermediate species on the evolution tree, hence the lingering doubts. As for the rapture, well, it’s a far more interesting and encouraging thing to hope for than nothingness! What are you looking forward to as an after(this)life experience?
Afterlife? Why worry about that FL when there is more than enough to keep one occupied in this life.
There is a simple reason why the supernatural is ignored. Because there is no evidence. You can believe all you want that you are mystical formation of dust but the evidence of that humans and apes shared a common ancestor is overwhelming and one of the most elegant, well documented and affirming discoveries of science.
Well, I’m no mystical formation of dust, Shaun. My mum and dad got together and I was conceived. I think the reference to dust is Moses unscientific, ancient-understanding-of-stuff way of saying we are physically made of the same material as the earth – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Not having a grasp of microscience and the machinations of life that you do, dust was about as far as he could go in describing our beginnings, which he attributes to an act of God. Not bad really. Mocking scientists tend to want to bring him up to the level of Einstien, who was the product of advanced learning as well as immense intelligence, so they can ridicule the mosaic understanding of the universe, and justify their denial of God’s involvement. Finding man’s beginnings in the dust (miniscule, microscopic, cellular world perhaps) wasn’t really that far off, even from an evolutionists perspective. And even science has yet to find the beginning.
FaceLift,
How do you explain how humans share about 98% of our DNA with Chimps.
Yet as primates, monkeys, mammals, reptiles are proven to have an older more remote origin, we share less and less, but still some, DNA with the animal world.
Were all animals made from “dust”, but just older different “dust”?
I’m not a geneticist, so I can’t answer you, but I read that we also share 25% of DNA distinctiveness with daffodils, so maybe we’re all just a bunch of flowers!
Irrelevant demolition of his own straw man.
Those data simply mean that all life forms were related at some time and the closer the relationship the greater the correlation of DNA.
If one accepts the random thesis, then it is equally likely for a chimp to have 25% of human genes and a daffodil to have 98%. Now that would be a surprise. But unsurprisingly that never is the case.
And if humans were a different creation, why did God use exactly the same CAGTs as with daffodils? Did she do this to test the faith of 21st century evolution denialists?
And if that’s the case, what other tricks has God played? Maybe the whole of the universe has been dealt with marked cards and we are living in the midst of a con game of truly cosmic proportions, including for that matter all evidence of the existence of God and all human perceptive acuity for the numinous.
Now that’s the ultimate PoMo world.
FL,
I’m not sure what the link to a muddle headed piece of apologetics is supposed to show. How about reading some real scientific research on the sequencing of the chimpanzee genome and how it informs human evolution.
Katz sez:
“And if that’s the case, what other tricks has God played?”
That’s easy. God has buried fossils all over the planet of intermediate species, such as dinosaurs with feathers and whales with legs, to test the faith of his flock. Good sheep like FaceLift say “baaa” in the face of such temptation then imbibe more of the holy spirit.
This is egregiously, disastrously wrong.
Both human and plant cells are Eukaryotic. They have a nucleus, organelles and cytoskeleton. That’s why the DNA sequence is similar, and it is not any kind of argument against evolution that they are similar.
The person who produced this stuff is lying with statistics.
If you want to tie yourself to dishonesty like this, feel free. e.g. The “therefore” part is only true if DNA sequences in genomes are random sequences of nucleotides, but they are not. The sequences are non-random, constrained by function and ancestry so that the sequence similarities are strong indications of common ancestry, so strong that no other explanation is plausible.