Interestingly two recent reports juxtapose the extreme dichotomy related to the issue of “evolution” (whatever that may mean). Now, in this case the faithful assuredness is on the part of the evolutionist and the skeptical disbelief the part of the creationist.
What “evolution” means is a theme which will recur herein. This is stated because evolution can be defined as simply as change over time. It can mean change within a species (evidenced and scientific micro-evolution) and/or change from one species into another (un-evidenced and unscientific macro-evolution). Also, for some for whom Darwinian evolution has become a worldview, evolution means that God does not exist.
The report is titled Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history (Frank Eltman, AP, May 26, 2012 AD) and subtitled, “Discoveries will accelerate to the point that ‘even the skeptics can accept it.’”
Richard Leakey [son of the late Louis and Mary Leakey] predicts skepticism 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.”
But what is the “it” that all will accept? This is one of the problems with the evolution debate, terms are generally not defined: what does he mean by evolution.
Yet, we do get a glimpse of both his definition and his motivation:
“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.”
So now, evolution is the savior of humanity which will bring about peace on Earth and goodwill towards man. Well, the Judeo-Christian worldview has affirmed for millennia that we are all African or thereabouts as we all come from Adam and Eve, that color is superficial for the same reason and that stages of development of culture are all interactive at least since the Tower of Babel. Meanwhile, people such as President Barack Obama are still suffering attacks from Darwinian racism in likening him to apes, monkeys, chimps, etc.
Follow the money since, of course, science, even one as soft as paleoanthropology functions only by being funded. Thus, Leakey is preaching the pseudo-gospel of evolution as savior of humanity whilst spending “several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time.”
And of course, what is a good pseudo-gospel without a good Armageddon prediction?
“If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you’ve got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena,” Leakey says. “Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one.”
Any hope for mankind’s future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past…We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive.
From the above reference to us all being African he affirms the “out of Africa” theory and thus some form of common ancestor concept. So, what does he mean by “evolution”?:
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.
Okay so now, we are dealing with the simple definition of evolution as “change.” Well, this is tantamount to the evolution, pun intended, of “global warming” into “climate change.” You see, “global warming” means, you got it, the warming of the globe and thus is a very specific term and concept. Thus, by changing to “climate change” you can make whatever claim you want because mere change in the climate—in which ever directions—is generalized and generic enough to include anything and everything.
So, evolution is “change” and so whatever change you want to claim is evidence for evolution. Indeed, “life has changed” and no one, not even the wackiest, backwoods, Bible thumping YECist denies this. This is because mere change is the actual scientific portion of evolution or, actually, is biology.
But can you really “lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that” mind you, “even a fool could work up.”
Understand that a science as soft as the one in Richard Leakey is involved is rip, or rotting, with personal interpretations based on schools of thought, professional rivalries, support of ones preferred theory, gaining funds, pleasing ones funders, etc., etc., etc.
Consider one example in which who played a role but Leakey himself:
One point of uncertainty was the angle at which the face attached to the cranium. Alan Walker remembers an occasion when he, Michael Day, and Richard Leakey were studying the two sections of the skull. “You could hold the maxilla forward, and give it a long face, or you could tuck it in, making the fact short,”* he recalls.
“How you held it really depended on your preconceptions. It was very interesting watching what people did with it.’ Leakey remembers the incident too: ‘Yes. If you held it one way, it looked like one thing; if you held it another, it looked like something else. But there was never any doubt that it was different. The question was, was it sufficiently different from everything else to warrant being called something new?’”**
For very many more similar examples, see: Scientific Cenobites.
So, we have gone from the blessed assuredness of “evolution” to the salvation of humanity and now, to the inevitable of the besmirching of…well, let us see. But before that, which we will cover in the next segment, let us offer one such example of the blessed assuredness of “evolution” by none other than Richard Dawkins himself. Mind you, the following quote is from one single article:
Evolution is a fact…evolution is a fact…the fact of evolution…Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact…It is the plain truth…It didn’t have to be true, but it is…Evolution is a fact…Evolution is a fact…some theories are beyond sensible doubt, and we call them facts…Evolution is an inescapable fact…the fact of evolution.***
Of course, from here Dawkins demonstrates why he won the Reductio Ad Hitlerum Awards award by stating that if you doubt, even so much as doubt, that humans are related to “bananas and turnips” you are to be likened to a Holocaust denier.
In the next and final segment we will consider that “evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense.”
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* Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 160 citing an interview with the author, Potomac, Maryland, 5 Aug. 1984
** Lewin, p. 160 citing an interview with the author, Nairobi, 21 Jan. 1985
*** Richard Dawkins, “Creationists, Now They’re Coming For Your Children,” Times Online, August 24, 2009 AD
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