May 29, 2012
GIVEN ITS PERSISTENCE, THE CONFLATION HAS TO BE INTENTIONAL (via Bart Rhodes):
Evolution - scepticism is dead (FRANK ELTMAN, 28/05/2012, AP)
Richard Leakey predicts scepticism over evolution will soon be history - not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it"."If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that colour is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges". [...]"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."
There are precious few people who argue that life hasn't changed, particularly given that the Creation story told in Genesis is evolutionary, including, of course, descent from a common ancestor.
But note that the caption accompanying a picture of Charles Darwin in the story states that "A leading paleoanthropologist believes there will soon be no sceptics of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution."
Except that Mr. Leakey makes no claim in the story that evolution proceeded according to the Darwinian scheme, nor does he scientifically refute the theory that evolution has been intelligently guided. Rather, he says--quite fittingly--that he doesn't care what it's all called, nor does he have any apparent theory about why it has, he just knows the description in Genesis isn't as detailed as the fossil record. It is because this is all that they have after 150 years that scepticism about Darwinism is nearly universal now. Even putative Darwinists don't defend the theory any more.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 29, 2012 8:04 PM
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