Sunday, May 27, 2012

Richard Leakey is Optimistic

PhysOrg profiles Richard Leakey, who thinks that the debate over evolution will be over soon. They write:

"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color 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."

Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers and scientists from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils.

I have seen this unbridled optimism before, in scientists (including myself) who cannot possibly understand that, despite the amazing amount of evidence, there are still those who do not accept evolution and that the reasons they do so are not scientific. They continue:

"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, like many atheists, has little understanding of how tenacious religious belief is, and young earth creationism is wrapped in a particular understanding about how the universe was created that doesn't accord with modern science. Richard Leakey is optimistic.

Me, not so much.
----------------
Now playing: Michael W. Smith - Rocketown
via FoxyTunes

2 comments:

  1. I have heard the triumphalist statements from the Leakeys and this latest euphoria about his prized religion is simply the latest. The Bible says the fool has said in his HEART there is no God, so what does that day about a man showing it from the rooftops.

    I have been in Christ over 55 years and have followed the issue since childhood. I find the religious concept of evolution preposterous - I went to a prestigious scientific university (Rensselaer) and found I was not alone. Have been in architecture for over 40 years, nothing not designed works very well, and we were taught to design with nature. It works - just like adhering to Leonardo da Vinci's esthetic rules results in people liking certain building designs - all based upon God's proportions of the designed human body. Frankly, from design, mathematics, and physics, I find molecules to man evolution preposterous. I also see compromise of the scriptures by some Christians to seek to accommodate a religion irreconcilable with Christianity to be a losing effort. You know, an Orthodox Jewish professor at Rensselaer had posted a substantial award for anyone able to prove the earth was older than about 6,000 years. People scoffed and wondered how this wingnut managed to be a professor. Fact is, the award was never claimed. He was brilliant and the fact is that uniformitarian principles are THE key assumption in these arguments and they are unprovable. Peter spoke harshly about those who subscribe to this interpretation of history, and I am with him. I have always found it far easier to believe in the straightforward scriptural account than the fantasies of Richard Leakey and Big Science, who openly mock God and overstate the evidence for their case so consistently while being totally intolerant of other explanations.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The reason evolutionists cannot understand creationists, including but not exclusively young-earth creationist, is that, with few exceptions, they make not the slightest effort.
    I once pointed out to a university student that the origin of life by chance processes was 1 chanced in 10 to the power 100,000. His reply was,"...but it is not zero".
    This is nothing but atheist rationalization. It is not science.
    There is no respect or real debate. It's a catch-22. If a creationist speculates the interpretation of some evidence and it proves wrong then science triumphs over the Bible. When the shoe is on the other foot they say well this is a problem we are working on. Some of these problems are 150 years old e.g. Lady of Guadeloupe fossilized human skeleton.
    The creation/ evolution debate is so fake and loaded that we creationists has simply stopped taking evolutionists seriously.
    I have a friend with a U-tube channel and the evolutionists constantly throw ad hominem attacks at him while pretending they are just doing science. My dad was a university professor and he never used ad hominem arguments with any other scientist.

    ReplyDelete