Richard Leakey, son of world renown anthropologists Louis and Mary Leaky, tells us that fairly soon, the topic of evolution will be indisputable, even to its strongest critics. Discoveries in anthropology and science are progressing along at such a clip that soon sceptics will have no choice but to accept.
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 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.”
Leaky continued:
On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to The Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future.
“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.
“If we’re spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?” he asked.
“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 insists he has no animosity with the concept of God. However he warns us:
“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.”
The climate change everyone is squabbling about might just be a part of it. Every day our atmosphere is bombarded with debris from space. Most burns up in our atmosphere. However, what are the chances that one day, whatever is hurled our way is simply too large to burn up? What of dangerous hot spots on earth like the super-volcano, Yellowstone? We have friends there this weekend. I always wonder, what happens if that thing blows? Its ash and debris could quickly cover the earth. Talk about quick climate change.
Is additional evidence, the kind leakey predicts will be here in less than 15 years going to be what it takes to convince a self affirmed creationist that something other than the Lord had a hand in the creation of earth and mankind? I don’t think some folks will ever be convinced. The world will move on without them. Most people appear to believe that evolution, man’s arrival on earth etc are not incompatible with a supreme being. Let’s see where that goes.
If the evidence for evolution has not convinced people yet…..God will have to personally tell these people that evolution is happening.
My favorite…. Man goes to doctor for infection.
Doc: “Well, first I have to ask you… Are you an evolutionist or a creationist?”
Patient: “Why do you ask, doc?”
Doc: “If you are an evolutionist, I’ll give you the newly developed anti-biotic. If a creationist, I’ll have to give you the penicillin, since germs have NOT [edited by request] evolved a resistance to it….”
That’s one thing the Catholic Church does right. It teaches the most modern scientific theories in SCIENCE class.
@Cargo, I don’t disagree. Catholic education generally sticks to science being science, at least during modern times. Not so much during Galileo’s day but that was then and this is now.
since germs have evolved a resistance to it….”
AARRRRHH! Edit THEN submit.
since germs have NOT evolved a resistance to it….”
Did I fix it, Cargo?
I have a great deal of respect for the Leaky family, and I am all too aware that our collective knowledge of evolution has been accelerating for maybe two decades not, and I hope it continues to accelerate. The cool thing now is that geneticists, archealogists, linguists, and historians are collaborating on an unprecedented level, and together, our picture of the past is getting clearer by the month. There is one wierd thing about this, though. The notion of “changing” a creationists mind seems a little off. It is as if they are saying “we’re going to have the science to convince those who don’t believe in science to believe in science” It’s like saying “In 15 years, we will eradicate the mental disease of progressivism”. No…you won’t. And why bother trying to convince creationists in the first place? Who cares? Make you advances, regardless of how creationists see them.
Slowpoke, I rarely say this….and it hurts. The nausea I feel from the earth going backwards…I totally agree with you. No amount of evidence will convince those who reject science in favor of the Grand Canyon being caused by the great flood. Why try.
Ugh….forgive my typos….I’m only half-way through my coffee.
@Moon-howler
Hey, I work with a Perdue Ph.D. who told me last week that the moon was hollow. He’s a conspiracy theorist unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. He has told me that we were behind 9/11, Flouride in the water…etc, etc. I just avoid engaging…..some folks you just know you can’t reach.
Do you mean he worked for Perdue chicken? Well, what do you expect from a dumb cluck?
Ohhh bad moon…..
Here’s the cool part. There are folks who make their entire career becoming an expert on what happened one yoctosecond after the big bang. But how many people can tell you what happened one yoctosecond BEFORE the big bang? Zero…nobody. Do you realize that in man’s collective intelligence, as of this morning, we still only understand about 5% of what makes up our universe. Seems to me there is plenty of room for a God for those who want one.
I don’t disagree. One is not mutually exclusive of the other.
Is there really a yoctosecond or did you just make that up?
I think 5% might be being generous.
attoseconds, yoctoseconds, zeptoseconds.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/10/attoseconds-zeptoseconds-and.html
And there really is a whole book’s worth of “what happened one yoctosecond after the big bang”!
Now I know why I am not a scientist. I get a headache just thinking about rap like that. If I think time doesn’t matter when that small, imagine how someone feels who is obediently bound to literal word. Shudder.
I can’t explain why, but the work being done in Africa, the stories of how we came “out of Africa”, and the genetic proof is really what blows my skirt up. And the thing that blows my mind is how little of this stuff I got in school growing up. So much of this has just exploded over the last decade or two.
@SlowpokeRodriguez
You didn’t get any of it in school because 1. politics 2. undiscovered science 3. who really got any paleoanthropology in school?
I don’t think I got any of it until bio, siocio and psycho in college. I agree though….everyone should have more of this instruction.
My sister in law got my brother the DNA kit where you are traced either through your mother or your father. He chose our father and then gave us the password. It was sort of amazing to see it even though I didnt think it was all that specific.
It reminded me of being in clan of the cave bear on steroids or something.
@Moon-howler
That’s the DNA I’m referring to. I did 67 markers and a deep clade test. Most white Europeans are R1-something. I’m a G2a……, less than 3% of white men. I is interesting…descendants of Cro-Magnon….”old Europeans”. R….is associated with the spread of Indo-European languages.
It is the intersection of human genetics, linguistics, archealogy, and history that I spend most of my free time injecting directly into my veins.
@Moon-howler
Where can you get the tests? I’d love to do both of them.
I used FamilyTreeDNA. You can do Ancestry.com as well, and the National Geographic’s “Genealogical Project”. Some of these send their samples to FamilyTreeDNA’s labs for processing. There are also newer ones like 23andMe. A couple of links below. I am not a fan of the autosomnal testing. Standard Y-DNA and MtDNA are the way to go for now.
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html
http://www.familytreedna.com/
Sorry, Genographic project…..my goof-up
Ancestry.com is just a front for the Illumanati to get our DNA and put it into a central repository for some nefarious purpose later on. Mark my words they’ll create zombies one day because of it….
Ok, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system.
I think the research here is neat.
@marinm
Hey! I resemble that remark. I’ve got quite the family kudzu/time waster on Ancestry.
@SlowpokeRodriguez
Thanks.
Anyone here watch “through the wormhole” with morgan freeman? Love that show!