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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
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
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.
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?
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."
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."
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
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.