Seif
18-09-06, 10:53
Evolution Attack Goes Global
By Lakshmi Sandhana
02:00 AM Sep, 18, 2006
Religious critics of evolution have trained their sights on one of the world's pre-eminent fossil exhibits -- Louis and Richard Leakey's extensive skeletal collections illuminating the origins of man.
Evangelical Christians in Kenya are demanding that the exhibit at Nairobi's National Museum edit out references to human evolution in order to prevent young African Christians from being taught falsehoods.
"We are objecting to the message that the fossil exhibits represent the scientific evidence of human evolution," said Bishop Boniface Adoyo, chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, which claims to represents churches of 35 denominations with 9 million members. "They do not. Human evolution is still a theory and this cannot be called as evidence.”
The Evangelical Alliance's attack targets a giant in the world of evolutionary and primate studies. The Nairobi museum's fossils include the famous Turkana Boy, an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile who lived about 1.6 million years ago that was unearthed by Richard Leakey's team of paleontologists in 1984. It also includes bones of early hominids that are believed to have made and used stone tools.
"The fossil collection in Kenya provides an important set of pieces to the picture of human evolution," says Sean Carroll, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Extinct hominids give us a picture of how human forms have changed, when, at what pace, and what changes were independent and which may be linked."
The museum is currently closed for renovations, and museum officials said they have not yet received any official complaints by local evangelical churches. But they plan to prominently house the collection as "scientific evidence" of evolution when it re-opens in 2007, a representative said.
It's not the exhibit itself the alliance opposes, Adoyo told Wired News, but rather its interpretation. A satisfactory solution, he said, would be to remove the words that would classify the fossils as "scientific evidence," displaying them instead as a history of other creatures, without connecting them to human beings.
"When you use evolution as God's tool in creating man in his image, you have to reckon with the fact at what stage in the evolution process does man attain to that image?" he said. "The conclusion is either God's image is evolving or God Himself is evolving or every creature has God's image. God could be anything and I'm afraid I cannot put my faith in a 'changing God' or an 'anything God'.”
The alliance's protest is the latest wrinkle in escalating religious-inspired attacks on evolution, considered among secular experts as one of the best confirmed theories of contemporary biological science. The issue has erupted most visibly in the United States, where evangelicals opposed to teaching evolution in public schools wield substantial political power, and have sought to push an alternative theory known as intelligent design into the classroom.
More recently, the debate has expanded to embrace not only evangelicals, but also the Catholic Church, which has become much more visibly active on the issue.
Last week, the Pope slammed evolution, calling it unreasonable. The very next day, a retiring Vatican astronomer was moved to deny rumors that he was sacked over his views on the subject. Earlier this month, meanwhile, the Vatican convened a private seminar to discuss the church's stance on evolution. It plans to publish the results later this year in a move that's sure to add fuel to debate.
The strength of evolution's place in the scientific establishment is reflected in the political strategies of its opponents. Rather than confront evolution directly, evangelicals in the United States have instead begun to advocate accommodation of competing theories in classroom studies. If evolution is taught in schools, they argue, it should be taught alongside intelligent design, which postulates complex organisms could not be created by blind interactions, but only through purposefully imposed order.
Adoyo and the Kenyan evangelicals are also in this camp.
Efforts in the United States to introduce intelligent design in public schools have attracted key support, including a public statement last year from President Bush endorsing the concept. Last year, the Kansas State Board of Education drafted a new science standard that required a critical analysis of evolutionary theory while also providing a definition of science that did not rule out supernatural explanations.
Intelligent design efforts have also stumbled, most notably in a Pennsylvania state court case seeking to force ID onto a school’s curriculum. The suit, brought by parents against a local school board, was shot down by the judge late last year. Intelligent design organizers said they do not plan to appeal the decision.
Bron: Wired News (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,71795-0.html?tw=wn_index_2)
By Lakshmi Sandhana
02:00 AM Sep, 18, 2006
Religious critics of evolution have trained their sights on one of the world's pre-eminent fossil exhibits -- Louis and Richard Leakey's extensive skeletal collections illuminating the origins of man.
Evangelical Christians in Kenya are demanding that the exhibit at Nairobi's National Museum edit out references to human evolution in order to prevent young African Christians from being taught falsehoods.
"We are objecting to the message that the fossil exhibits represent the scientific evidence of human evolution," said Bishop Boniface Adoyo, chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, which claims to represents churches of 35 denominations with 9 million members. "They do not. Human evolution is still a theory and this cannot be called as evidence.”
The Evangelical Alliance's attack targets a giant in the world of evolutionary and primate studies. The Nairobi museum's fossils include the famous Turkana Boy, an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile who lived about 1.6 million years ago that was unearthed by Richard Leakey's team of paleontologists in 1984. It also includes bones of early hominids that are believed to have made and used stone tools.
"The fossil collection in Kenya provides an important set of pieces to the picture of human evolution," says Sean Carroll, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Extinct hominids give us a picture of how human forms have changed, when, at what pace, and what changes were independent and which may be linked."
The museum is currently closed for renovations, and museum officials said they have not yet received any official complaints by local evangelical churches. But they plan to prominently house the collection as "scientific evidence" of evolution when it re-opens in 2007, a representative said.
It's not the exhibit itself the alliance opposes, Adoyo told Wired News, but rather its interpretation. A satisfactory solution, he said, would be to remove the words that would classify the fossils as "scientific evidence," displaying them instead as a history of other creatures, without connecting them to human beings.
"When you use evolution as God's tool in creating man in his image, you have to reckon with the fact at what stage in the evolution process does man attain to that image?" he said. "The conclusion is either God's image is evolving or God Himself is evolving or every creature has God's image. God could be anything and I'm afraid I cannot put my faith in a 'changing God' or an 'anything God'.”
The alliance's protest is the latest wrinkle in escalating religious-inspired attacks on evolution, considered among secular experts as one of the best confirmed theories of contemporary biological science. The issue has erupted most visibly in the United States, where evangelicals opposed to teaching evolution in public schools wield substantial political power, and have sought to push an alternative theory known as intelligent design into the classroom.
More recently, the debate has expanded to embrace not only evangelicals, but also the Catholic Church, which has become much more visibly active on the issue.
Last week, the Pope slammed evolution, calling it unreasonable. The very next day, a retiring Vatican astronomer was moved to deny rumors that he was sacked over his views on the subject. Earlier this month, meanwhile, the Vatican convened a private seminar to discuss the church's stance on evolution. It plans to publish the results later this year in a move that's sure to add fuel to debate.
The strength of evolution's place in the scientific establishment is reflected in the political strategies of its opponents. Rather than confront evolution directly, evangelicals in the United States have instead begun to advocate accommodation of competing theories in classroom studies. If evolution is taught in schools, they argue, it should be taught alongside intelligent design, which postulates complex organisms could not be created by blind interactions, but only through purposefully imposed order.
Adoyo and the Kenyan evangelicals are also in this camp.
Efforts in the United States to introduce intelligent design in public schools have attracted key support, including a public statement last year from President Bush endorsing the concept. Last year, the Kansas State Board of Education drafted a new science standard that required a critical analysis of evolutionary theory while also providing a definition of science that did not rule out supernatural explanations.
Intelligent design efforts have also stumbled, most notably in a Pennsylvania state court case seeking to force ID onto a school’s curriculum. The suit, brought by parents against a local school board, was shot down by the judge late last year. Intelligent design organizers said they do not plan to appeal the decision.
Bron: Wired News (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,71795-0.html?tw=wn_index_2)