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Debate Over Evolution Will Soon Be History, Says Leakey
Hugh Pickens writes "According to noted paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, sometime in the next 15 to 30 years scientific discoveries about evolution will have accelerated to the point that 'even the skeptics can accept it.' 'If you don't like the word evolution, I don't care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God.' Leakey began his work searching for fossils in the mid-1960s and his team unearthed a nearly complete 1.6-million-year-old skeleton in 1984 that became known as 'Turkana Boy,' the first known early human with long legs, short arms and a tall stature. At 67, Leakey conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise, and the family claims to have unearthed 'much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution.' Leakey, an atheist, insists he has no animosity toward religion."
Never underestimate the stubbornness of sheer ignorance.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
His fatal mistake is to assume that creationists care about evidence.
Gamertag: WyleType
There is a group of people who do not care about the evidence - the Bible says so, so there it is. That's not going to change just because you amass more evidence.
On the other hand, there are a group of people who believe in God who also believe evolution was the method God used to create all of the different kinds of life we see. That is not something you can prove or disprove, therefore it's not in the realm of science. In other words, you want people to keep their religions hands off science, great. Keep your scientific hands off God. They don't have to be mortal enemies.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Where some people still believe in the literal truth of Genesis
The debate over evolution should've been history a century ago.
When a segment of the population refuses to accept scientific evidence, how is more of such evidence going to convince them?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Let's be honest here. Even if we got our hands on Rick Berman's time machine and collected video evidence of every stage of human evolution from single-celled sludge to the "Alien Nation Reject" John Crichton, you'd STILL have the noisy nutcases "debating" it, because some 400-year-old book says it was a magic man in the sky.
There is a group of people who do not care about the evidence - the Bible says so, so there it is.
But what the Bible teaches is not at all inconsistent with a multibillion-year-old universe. God created the universe in six ages, figuratively called "days" in Genesis 1. Notice that nowhere does the story of creation in Genesis mention an "evening and morning" for the seventh "day", which makes the 24-hour interpretation less likely. This and other mentions of God's rest (e.g. in Hebrews) indicate that the seventh age is ongoing.
I am a Christian. However, the overwhelming evidence is that the Earth is 4.6 Billion years old, life on Earth is Billions of years old and yes, my great^50000 grandfather was an ape. Yet, not matter what the evidence, there is a contigent who will ignore it. It is human nature to look at facts through the lens you wish to view it. One intelligent person I was disucssing fusion with denies that fusion was the power of the stars, saying instead that it is gravity that produces the energy of the Sun. I was dumbfounded. Even after asking why we see millions of stars with different colors and asked him how his model accounted for this, he could not answer. After asking why the Sun isn't shrinking rapidly as the equations would indicate they would have to to produce the amount of energy output of the Sun, he couldn't answer. Did his opinion change? Nope. Facts don't often change opinions.
So, no, new evidence won't change anything. From my perspective, the debate was over about 150 years ago. Now we just have yelling.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The debate about evolution was history a century ago. I'm sure you've heard of the Scopes trial, but the public opinion shifted away from creationism towards science, and went even further with the national focus on and trust in science after Sputnik.
We've regressed. That's all there is to it.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Logic and faith don't really co-mingle well.
Well that's logical, so I can't believe it.
Creationists are old hands at doing all of the above but the technique is common to denialists of all shades - moon hoaxers, 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, global warming deniers. The same tactics every time.
Growing up very religious in a small town, I really thought that I knew what evolution was, and why it was wrong. It seemed so silly to me that 'scientists' could believe in this conjecture,er 'theory' full of 'missing links'. Clearly it was a conspiracy by godless atheists (where I now seem to comfortably fit in) to drown out the 'Truth'.
Then at age 18 I got the internet and began to discover that I never, in fact, had ever been taught what Evolution really was. I had been taught a fantasy, an imaginary concoction that nobody actually believed in. As we all have seen, Creationists create a straw man simplification of evolutionary theory and then attack the straw man, rather than attacking the real thing.
So I set out with my newly acquired knowledge. Surely, I though, now that I know that we've only been taught a mistaken notion of what evolutionary theory is, I can convince some people. Boy oh boy was I ever wrong. The first responses I got was, quite literally, "how dare you accuse our religion of LYING to us. They wouldn't lie to us". And so forth. I learned a lot about logical fallacies. The straw man. The fallacious appeal to false authority (look, this 'scientist' says evolution is fake, therefore it is). The argument from ridicule ("Man was made from monkeys, what kind of nitwit believes that"). It was a fascinating and revealing time in my life, and the clear intellectual dishonesty I saw compelled me to change my life. Within a couple years I went from being a homophobic creationist to going out to queer parties, not because I was gay, but because I discovered many of my friends were queer, and hadn't told me for obvious reasons.
I am reminded of this Salon article talking about how social conservatives basically assign a lot of emotion and identity to their belief. They think it is rude if others challenge their beliefs, yet they desire to push their beliefs on everyone else. http://www.salon.com/2012/02/24/the_ugly_delusions_of_the_educated_conservative/
In the end, you cannot convince people who do not want to challenge their presuppositions and assertions. What will happen in the future, is that we will continue to move on and embrace exciting new advances, technologies, medicines that stem from biology, while those who do not understand it will simply be left behind.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Interesting article I read on that this morning (written by a climate denialist, but on the topic of a legitimate study):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/29/science_and_maths_knowledge_makes_you_sceptical/
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This universe is God's experiment in free will. Some people will show that they give a smurf about overcoming temptation to break from God's purpose. Those who do will be rewarded when the earth is rebuilt; those who do not will be destroyed.
Or, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman were right, and it's just a sign that God has a sense of humor:
The whole first chapter* of Good Omens is on the Harper Collins website: http://www.harpercollins.com/features/pratchettBooks/excerpt.aspx?isbn=9780060853969
* I *think* that it's the intro + first chapter, as I believe the first chapter started 'It wasn't a dark and stormy night.'
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
It is flawed to believe that MORE evidence will bring about change in a group that is ignoring evidence.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
FIRST?
Having started involvement with FIRST over a decade ago, I would like to thank you for the OT advertising.
Some people still believe that humans rode dinosaurs to work. No amount of fossil evidence can change that kind of stupid.
Captcha: detest
Nobody believes that. They believe that people *used* dinosaurs at work.
It's well known that ancient people actually rode to work in foot-powered log cars mounted on stone rollers.
...and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof." - John Kenneth Galbraith
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Very few (and let's face it, wacky) sects out there actually refuse to accept Darwin's theories of evolution these days, so I'm not really seeing the story here.
Let me make that clearer still: Most Christian sects have no problems with Darwin or evolution, and the largest/original sect has never formally condemned it, even back when it was new and untested. That link also is an example of it being embraced by Christianity.
Certainly, again, there are nuts who take the Bible waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too literally. But really... how many of them actually read Slashdot again? I mean, it's cool that Leakey is thinking that things will be easier to understand for the kids and all, but it's not like there's nothing really new you will ever dig up in the lineage of Homo Sapiens Sapiens that going to convince anyone not otherwise convinced by now.
So, err, what was the point of this again? Outside of allowing posters to post various bigotries in a socially acceptable manner, I'm not seeing why the story should be given anything more than just a 'oh, okay - cool.' attitude. Mod me down all you like, because I know it'll come, but seriously - Evolution is a non-issue these days.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What? Did you miss the whole "evolution" part of the theory of evolution?
If sexual reproduction didn't help organisms to survive (it does, by decreasing the propagation of malformed genes while promoting the propagation and intermingling of superior genes), then we sexual reproducers would be overwhelmed and be out-competed by non-sexual reproducers as a matter of course.
As for light sensitive cells, those could have evolved a billion times before they were hooked up to a pain receptor. The previous billion imparted no advantage (and if there was no disadvantage, then they would perpetuate linearly until they were hooked up to a pain receptor), but the billion and first did, and that created an advantage.
This is not rocket science. Saying evolution isn't the whole picture is like saying that thermodynamics isn't the whole picture of physics. So what? Evolution is real, it has been observed countless times with controlled experiments by thousands of investigators around the world, it fits with all of out past observations. Evolution is the thermodynamics of biology. Creationist "theory" is nothing but handwaving trying to tell us that the sky is purple polka-dotted (because they read it in a Dr. Suess book, and he's a DOCTOR!), even after a century of continuous observation that it is in fact never that color.
The Bible (the Hebrew version) basically says that the Tree was the Tree of Knowledge: all knowledge other than basic gardening was a falling away from perfection. It's part of a quite general myth that everything was better in the past when things were simpler. But if the people who pursue knowledge are damned, God has a very funny way of showing it. To the pursuers of knowledge (S)he gives long life, worldly goods, a pleasant environment and an interesting existence. To the ones who claim to be obedient to her purpose she gives funny robes and membership in the Hassidic Jewish movement, the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Taliban. The day to day evidence is that Blake was right, and the God they claim to be obeying is actually Satan.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Actually, it was my understanding that the Hebrew word that is translated into English as "day" in Genesis 1 is
...the word yôm (Strong's H3117).
the same word that is used to refer to the period of time from sunset until the following sunset.
Among other meanings. It can also refer to an indefinite period, much as English day can. Compare English "one of these days", "back in the day", etc. It has similar metaphorical meaning in Hebrew, and what is described as happening on some creative "days" cannot happen in 24 hours. See also Genesis 2:4, where Moses refers to the six creative "days" as one "day", and 2 Peter 3:8, where Peter compares God's concept of a "day" to a millennium to indicate that God operates on a different timescale from humans.
https://xkcd.com/258/
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Not everybody calling himself a Christian is actually following Christ. (Matthew 7:21) Jesus never told anybody to spread the message of the Kingdom of God by the sword, to my knowledge. The first-century church didn't use force either.
Sometimes people cannot accept we don't live in a world of their design
And other people choose to accept the world that is fed to them by the mainstream media, the government, and popular opinion. It requires no effort, and does not upset their existence. Otherwise, of course, there'd be a responsibility to do something about it.
Whether they overcome the temptations of not is entirely dependent on the circumstances of the person's life, which is all planned by God.
God doesn't cause the evil even if he allows Satan to cause the evil. See the book of Job.
You know, I've heard that argument before. The premise being that god placed all this evidence here to test our faith. And you know what? It's a load of crap.
I agree with you. I agree with you that a loving God would not plant a false fossil record to test us. In fact, the fossil record is entirely consistent with a day-age interpretation of Genesis 1. I was referring to temptation in the sense of the opportunity to choose to sin, that is, to choose to be inconsiderate to each other.
Why would he build this entire universe just for us when we probably have no hope of ever reaching even the nearest star? It makes no sense!
Yeah, it would be an awful waste of space, like in the film Contact. I haven't seen anything in the Bible that rules out God creating man on multiple class M planets but spacing them far enough apart that they couldn't reach another civilization's space. I wrote more about that hypothesis here.
Why would he need to constantly test our faith?
Why would automated test suites need to constantly test code that we know works?
There is already so much evidence that the people who don't accept evolution should not be called skeptics. They are deniers.
I generally tow the Slashdot line, but this is one of the topics where I definitely disagree with the Slashdot norm. Since those siding with Leakey are well represented, I thought I would provide some perspective from the other side: those who believe in a literal seven day creation account. I'll also preface this by saying that I do not, of course, speak for anyone but myself.
I agree that there is mounting evidence in favor of evolution. And I know faith is not popular around here, but I maintain a faith that there is an alternative explanation for why this evidence seems to be pointing towards evolution (I won't bore you with repeating ideas you've surely heard before). I strongly believe that science can account for everything natural in the world, but I also believe that any attempts to explain things in a manner contrary to the Bible will eventually be demonstrated to be incorrect. In the case of evolution, I believe that science itself will eventually provide an alternative explanation. It's a simple faith in that idea, nothing more, nothing less.
To draw a quick comparison, I find this topic rather similar to when historians doubted the existence or scale of the Hittites. While frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, no archaeological evidence for their allegedly vast empire seemed to exist. It wasn't until the late 19th century that a series of discoveries eventually demonstrated that their empire did in fact cover most of Asia Minor at one time. While evolution is the prevailing belief today, I have faith that it will be disproved in time, just as the skeptical historians were disproved.
I also agree with those of you saying that the evidence will do little to convince people such as myself. There will certainly be many who are persuaded. As you may have seen in some of the comments here, there are a growing number of people who believe that the Genesis account of creation can be reconciled with evolution (typically this involves accepting that each of the seven "days" actually meant something longer than a 24 hour day). I cordially disagree with them, but I cannot deny that the idea is gaining traction in many circles. For those such as myself, while I rely on science regularly and enjoy it immensely, there are certain areas where I simply take it on faith that the current prevailing ideas incorrect. There aren't many of those areas, but evolution as the origin of life is one of them.
Anyway, all I sought to do here was represent the other side so you could see how someone who likes to think of themselves as rational can possibly disagree. I'm not interested in getting drawn into a debate or lengthy discussion, and I fully anticipate either being downmodded as a troll or else swamped with more comments in disagreement with me than I can manage. That said, I will take the time to read through any responses, whether critical or not.
Too bad 90% of the criticism expressed here in these comments are all fluff and biased anger. When you say evolution is already proven please give a reference to such evidence. I'm ready and willing to listen. If you don't have undeniable scientific proof of evolution then stop putting down those who scientifically doubt your claims. I don't believe what I believe because I refuse to see any evidence. I believe what I do about evolution because I see EVIDENCE that no evolution-supporting fossil record exists.
"everything relates to cause and effect" Go study quantum mechanics for awhile and say that. And many theories of the multiverse posit no beginning and no end. "Logic", then, fails to always take you to a creator. You are merely following the usual G-d of the Gaps argument: how come that gap exists? Ans: you cannot prove G-d does not fill it. The Q and A are a non-sequiteur. So go ahead and invent as many straw-gaps as you like and then use your reason to knock them down.
For fun exercise in logic, look at quantum logic sometime and come back and tell us what is a proposition.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.
Your naive trust in the power of the human mind to overcome ignorance with nothing but evidence is rather cute.
Wrong. But cute.
The evidence of history does not support your conclusion.
Logic really does not always take you to a creator. A timeless, unchanging state of existence (in which the perceived passage of time, and other physical phenomena, emerges via forced perspective of internal structures) not only does not logically need a creator but renders the concept absurd and meaningless.
Any logic that takes you to a creator doesn't know what to do once it gets you there, except shuffle its feet awkwardly and hope you don't want to go any further.
Would you like a slice of toast?
Who is God's most valuable employee?
Satan.
Obviously still in the old man's employ, otherwise he would have setup a paradise to reward those who turned against the Big Beard, not inflict endless agony on (only!) those who didn't tow the party line.
There is plenty of silliness in the Abrahamic religions (just like all the rest), but this flaw shows up before you can even utter 'In the beginning...'
I care. Because people who don't even believe the Earth is as old as the Cambrian explosion (or Mesopotamia for that matter) control my state legislature and try to influence what gets taught to my daughter in schools.
If one is pursuing a scientific course, who cares what everyone ranging from Fundamentalist Christians to the Hare Krishnas believe or say on the subject?
Because they vote. They vote early, often, and in unified groups, and thus they affect government, which then directly affects scientific funding and the operation of universities and other places of research and indirectly affect them via earlier learning.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The reason the Cambrian stands out is that it's the first period that saw widespread hard body parts that actually had a decent chance of fossilizing. And we even have some good reasons for the morphological variation seen.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Most Christians I know don't accept a 6000 year old Earth.
Long Day Theory.
When you're looking at a point where science and Christianity disagree, most likely it is bad theology on the part of the Christian. God loves you. Jesus is LORD. I know.
God spoke to me
And leave the theology to the theologians?
The notion of Young Earth Creationism wasn't popular in the early church, and in fact the Six Ages of the World theory is just another wacky idea from the supreme Wackadoodle of Western Christianity, Augustine. In contrast, listen to what Origen (3rd century) said:
I'm minded of a legendary, possibly apocryphal quote from Karl Barth (pronounced "bart") when he was confronted by a woman who couldn't believe in a talking snake in Genesis 3. "It is not so very important whether the snake spoke. It is much more important what the snake said." Most serious theologians think that the purpose of Genesis 1-11 was not to give literal history, but to setup the basic propositions that:
You don't have to agree with this; but I wish that those opposed to Christianity (neo-atheists, gay rights activists, and the like) would stop telling the church that we are not permitted to interpret our own sacred texts in ways that we have used for thousands of years.
(Note: I have a Ph.D. in "Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity: Textual and Historical Studies" from the University of Virginia -- basically, New Testament as I focused it -- so feel qualified to speak with some authority on this subject.)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Most scientists experience first hand that science was built by all the previous scientists and that their purpose in life, as a scientist, is to continue building the culture of humanity.
All scientific papers acknowledge some of the previous papers upon wich they build.
Humanity's culture has given you so much, why not give something back ? And you may even live long enough to see what you gave being improved by others, which is one of the greatest satisfaction.
You can get much more than what you give. This is like a relationship with someone who has a very big potential, namely humanity.
So if you think it's ok to eat bacon? You are not following Jesus
That's the Judaizer fallacy. The first hint that one need not follow Jewish dietary laws to do God's will was given in Peter's vision in Acts 10. Later, it was determined at the Council of Jerusalem that even though many early Christians were recruited from Judaism, one need not become Jewish to become a Christian.
Clarification for anyone who may be interested ... ...
In Hindu scripture the supreme god is an embodiment of energy; not a human.
Very interestingly, Vishnu (the preserver of the universe) is supposed to take different forms or Avatars to help keep the universe running (and that's the origin of the term Avatar). The first form was a fish, the second a turtle, the third a lion (more specifically half line / half man). Amazing how that parallels evolution
The rest were humans, but with increasingly subtle differentiations of what is right and what is wrong. Krishna (the Krishna in Hare Krishna) is the 7th or 8th avatar based on who is counting, and is a God for our times if you will.
Just like nearly every other religion, hinduism has "populist" stuff, which the more politically minded (who get to run temples and run their own sects or cults) use to control the population. Thats how most folks in India see the Hare Krishna movement. In India, as education has spread, the hold of these folks has got weaker, and you can see that in the changing norms and standards in India. 10 years ago you could be spat on for wearing a bikini. Today Bollywood heroines can't make it big without at least one swim suite scene in their movies.
Hinduism is about 5,000 to 7,000 years old depending on whose reckoning you follow. If you want to see the future of Christianity and Islam, and to understand how the Church and State use religion to control folks - go study Indian history. You will see parallels everywhere. Institutionalized ignorance to control the populace. The aggregation of wealth into the hands of the a few claiming to control the gates to the Gods and heaven. Extreme factions united by a single extreme belief pushing their agenda over that of the majority. The use of religious fanatism to win wars.
Been there; done that.
2. Computers have shown that the neat evolutionary trees that get drawn up are in fact based on imaginary relations of similarity and difference that owe more to the human mind's tendency to perceive patterns than to the raw biological data.
...and physics is the study of frictionless elephants whose mass can be ignored. Are those "neat evolutionary trees" trees actually used by biologists or are they simplifed examples given in popular accounts?
4. ...the evolution of present-day organisms from their supposed ancestors are in fact highly conjectural if not downright false. ... And even the emergence of one species from another has never been directly observed by science.
Not so.
5. ...(Evolution) remains incapable of explaining how anything could evolve that doesn't make biological sense when incomplete. The wings of birds are the classic example: what good is half of one?
Well, at least you didn't dredge up the eye here.... Presumably you don't mean "half of one", you mean "something halfway towards one", well, then....
7. The data used to support evolution are neither experiments nor repeatable, nor can they be, since the origin of species on earth was a unique event.
"The origin of species on earth" is a process, not an event. Yes, evolutionary biology, like geology, is a "historical" science, so it makes "retrodictions", but....
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "
Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service; in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal