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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
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
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
The voices in your head told you that?
Why would a "God" need to perform an experiment, when He already knows the outcome? It is all irrational nonsense, fabricated stories no more substantial than children's fairy tales.
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?
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."
There is a group of people who do not care about the evidence - the Bible says so, so there it is.
Strawman. Right in the summary Leakey is quoted as saying "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." Saying that the bible doesn't cover the topic of evolution is very different from saying that the bible denies or precludes it. There may be people who make that claim, but I don't see any in this discussion, and you certainly haven't directly addressed any here.
Leakey says the bible doesn't explain creation, and many believers in the bible say that the bible's purpose has never been to explain the science of all things. Why are some folks, particularly here on /., bent on construing this as some sort of Empire versus Rebel Alliance dichotomy?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
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.
even worse: to say that you have so much 'riding on it' and yet there's not a scrap of evidence to support these wacky notions.
what gives? a choice you supposedly make now that affects you, *forever*; and the guy who is ruling in court is nowhere to be found and never, credibly, has been?
yeah, I'll believe that. sure. foreverness depends on a guy we've never seen, can't contact and who 'hides' because, well, he's shy or something.
but foreverness depends on how you bet. yup. makes perfect sense to me. seems just and totally fair. yup.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Agreed. But I also imagine that there are people who could have seen Jesus perform miracles, and then seen him dead on a cross, and then seen him arise 3 days later. And they still wouldn't believe.
As someone else in this conversation stated, you can find dogmatism on any side of a debate.
That's why it's important that each of us consider all the facts carefully, when it really matters what we believe. Both sides tend to have smart people, average people, and crack-pots advocating for their position.
fact: people are mostly scared and mostly can't relate to things beyond storybook levels.
fact: there is a LOT of fear in this world and it is mysterious to most. people need comforting. anyone who can sell a convincing story will be warmly accepted in their hearts.
its a set of human needs that religion 'fills', even if it does so via false information. having *some* answer, being stated with confidence, is mostly what people want. its very sad but its a true statement about humanity (regardless of time and place and culture).
you and I know its all fairy stories. but you and I are not typical 'scared human beings'. we have taken control of our fear and don't need fake answers. in that way, you and I are a percent of a percent. not even close to a majority. this is why we have the problems we have today: because most people are at the level of scared children and never, even in old age, will they progress beyond that.
most people *want* to be ruled. they *want* to be spoon fed info. "thinking is hard!"
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
I'm 100% certain that killing your own child for backtalking (Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 10:9) is not "the best thing for yourself".
The sooner the entire world can bury all their holy books in the trash heap of history, the better.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Maybe it's different where you live but I don't perceive most religious people as scared. Most of them just want some sort of direction or purpose in life, something that gives meaning beyond eat, sleep, fuck and die. Someone to praise for the good things, pray for help with the bad things, that God has some sort of mission for them here on Earth not just an afterlife. And I don't mean that you have to go out and convert people, but to try living a life without sin and asking for forgiveness for your sins is a mission in itself. It's not that unlike sports, nobody tell me that in the greater meaning of things football "makes sense" - it's just an arbitrary set of rules we've turned into a game. But then we can play by those rules, we have some sort of measuring stick that says this was a good play and this was a bad play. Religion does that for your whole life, my life is now not just different than yours but it's now better than yours.
Science is great but it's also empty, there's nothing in physics or chemistry or biology that give any sort of purpose to life. There's no values, no ethics, it can perfectly describe what a bullet will do if you pull the trigger but there's nothing telling you if you should or shouldn't do it. Okay you can say evolution "wants" you to reproduce but that's not really true, it doesn't care if you don't. Why should it or how could it, it's only a game of numbers. There's humanism but it really only covers your interaction with other human beings and it mostly boils down to reciprocity because nobody wants to be treated as less than average but there's really no penalty for taking advantage of others if you can. Religion tends to be divine both in matters of fact and matters of law, there's no "getting away with murder" with an omniscient God. Seeing human courts sometimes failing miserably, I can see the appeal I just can't buy into the fantasy.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Religion was great for values and ethics for early man because it was hard to get anyone to listen to one guy saying "Hey, don't do that" - much easier to listen to one guy saying "Hey, there's an ever-present, all-knowing being up there in the clouds that will totally not like it if you kill each other." These days, we should be able to get past this whole notion of "if you don't have religion, where do you get your morals?" This argument is plain ignorant in this day and age; morals/ethics/values/et al aren't something we need referenced from a book written by people who were spoken to by heavenly voices thousands of years ago - they are plain and simple guidelines that even children can understand: don't hurt others, don't kill, don't steal, don't etc. If a kid asks "why not?" we don't have to say "because God said not to" anymore, we can easily explain that those actions hurt others, and we wouldn't want someone doing that to us now would we?
congrats on not respecting other people's beliefs
Any who came up with the idiotic idea that beliefs are inherently entitled to any respect?
If your neighbor has a belief that he's being anal probed by gay alien government agents, are you seriously suggesting that belief warrants any respect whatsoever? Does it warrant any more respect if someone believes in walking talking snakes? Does it warrant any more respect when someone believes God wrote, or divinely inspired, a book which (in part) orders parents to murder disrespectful children?
I respect people's freedom to believe stupid stuff. But that does not mean I have to respect the belief itself, nor does it mean I have to respect a person who believes stupid stuff.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Consider the two possibilities: The first is that you're right (there's no God, no heaven, no hell, no eternal life), and there's no need to worry about Christians' beliefs because they're wrong anyway. Disagree with them. Vote against them. Ignore them. Politely tell them "no." The second possibility is that you're wrong and there is God. I suspect that God would be disappointed.
You forgot at least one other possibility - there is a God, but not a "Christian" one, and He is mad as hell that you guys are worshiping the wrong one, and takes it out on all of us, including those of us he would have spared for no worship at all. Also, there is the possibility of many Gods. See, it's not just two cases.