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By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi
(Filed: 12/08/2006)

Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya's national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to man's evolution from ape to human.

Leaders of the country's six-million-strong Pentecostal congregation want Dr Richard Leakey's ground-breaking finds relegated to a back room instead of being given their usual prime billing.

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There's still that pesky 18% who are holdouts.

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Originally posted by Snuckles:
Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya's national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to

Read it here.

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putz's they want dark ages to return, how can so many be so whacked?

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Given that there are over 6 billion humus beans on the planet the numbers of aberrant, marginalized and far-out attitudes and personalities are going to be far more noticable than they might have been, say, one hundred years ago.

One percent of 6 billion = 60 million [60,000,000] potentially provocative individuals using the u.s. billion. A staggering number considered in this context.

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Church leaders aim to hijack that process. "The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, the head of Christ is the Answer Ministries, the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya.

"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory."

Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after 18 months of renovations in June next year.

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This Adoyo guy is a real piece of work, according to Bartholomew's notes on religion. In 1994 he was involved in the Kenyan government's "Inquiry into Devil Worship", which found (surprise surprise!) that President Daniel Arap Moi's political opponents were Satanists. And there's a Canadian connection:

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Adoyo’s “Christ is the Answer” ministry is based at the Nairobi Pentecostal Church, Valley Road, which was founded by Canadian Pentecostals in the 1960s.

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"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes...

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Description
WHERE DID WE COME FROM? Drawing upon a wealth of research into archeology, genetics, reincarnation memories, out-of-body experiences, parapsychology, cross cultural cosmology, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Cremo provides a refreshing perspective on human origins according to the ancient philosophy of India. In their controversial bestseller Forbidden Archeology, Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson documented evidence showing that humans have existed on earth for hundreds of millions of years. Such anomalous evidence, contradicting Darwinian evolution, catalyzed a global inquiry: If we did not evolve from apes then where did we come from? Human Devolution is Michael A. Cremo's definitive answer to that question: We did not evolve up from matter; instead we devolved, or came down, from the real of pure consciousness, spirit. Basing his response on modern science and the world's great wisdom traditions, including the Vedic philosophy of ancient India, Cremo proposes that before we ask the question, Where did human beings come from? we should first contemplate, What is a human being? For much of the twentieth century, most scientists assumed that a human being is simply a combination of ordinary physical elements. In Human Devolution, Cremo says it is more reasonable to assume that a human being is a combination of three distinct substances: mind, matter, and consciousness (or spirit). He shows how solid scientific evidence for a subtle mind element and a conscious self that can exist apart from the body have been systematically eliminated from mainstream science by a process of knowledge filtration. Asserting that humans are a combination of matter, mind, and consciousness, Cremo pilots a cosmic tour through incredible enigmas of time and space, ranging from Precambrian microfossils to black holes to superhuman beings, thus revealing the cosmos itself to be divided into corresponding regions dominated by ordinary matter, the subtle mind element, and pure consciousness. Human Devolution illustrates how the self originally exists on the level of pure consciousness, in harmony with the personal source of all conscious beings. When a conscious self relinquishes its connection with the source of all conscious beings, it becomes covered by the lower energies of mind and matter. Cremo calls this devolution. But devolution can be reversed, and consciousness can be restored to its original pure state by a process of spiritual evolution. The Controversy Continues: The highly anticipated sequel to the controversial best-seller Forbidden Archeology has arrived. Darwin Debunked by best-selling author of Forbidden Archeology (20,000 copies sold) Thoroughly researched work (includes an extensive 36 page bibliography and 28 page index). For the first time the ancient Vedic or Hindu version of the origins of man are presented.

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Human Devolution illustrates how the self originally exists on the level of pure consciousness, in harmony with the personal source of all conscious beings. When a conscious self relinquishes its connection with the source of all conscious beings, it becomes covered by the lower energies of mind and matter.

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Cremo may think this has something to do with Buddhism, but it is actually not very far from Christian Neoplatonism. I have read something very close to this in the works of St. Augustine, who channeled Plotinus on these topics.

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If we did not evolve from apes then where did we come from? Human Devolution is Michael A. Cremo's definitive answer to that question: We did not evolve up from matter; instead we devolved, or came down, from the real of pure consciousness, spirit.

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As for conflict betweeen science and religion, it undeniably exists, since the vast majority of religious claims about the world and its origins do not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

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I suspect that finding examples of such claims is harder than you think. Most Christian churches do not insist on literal interpretation of the Bible. Thus, they can readily accept that the Earth was not created in 7 days, people aren't made out of clay., etc.

Many religions (whether a majority or minority, who knows) claim full compatibility between their faith and science, including the Catholic Church. They do this by not making scientific claims at all. Since they are not scientific organizations, they have no need to do this. Instead, they only make claims about the supernatural (the nature of God, human souls, etc), which science can neither confirm nor deny.

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Do most "religious" people accept the scientific theory of evolution? I'm not aware of the statistics on this, outside of the US, where most of the population (religious or not) does not accept Darwinism.

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I found this. It doesn't have Canadian numbers, presumably because we're not as important as countries like Belgium and Iceland.

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Originally posted by Proaxiom:
Many religions (whether a majority or minority, who knows) claim full compatibility between their faith and science, including the Catholic Church. They do this by not making scientific claims at all.

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I do know that religions make all sorts of claims about the objective reality of the universe and how it functions that are amenable to scientific scrutiny and testing. And they always fail such scrutiny and testing.

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More generally it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.
There is something dishonestly self-serving in the tactic of claiming that all religious beliefs are outside the domain of science. On the one hand, miracle stories and the promise of life after death are used to impress simple people, win converts, and swell congregations. It is precisely their scientific power that gives these stories their popular appeal. But at the same time it is considered below the belt to subject the same stories to the ordinary rigors of scientific criticism: these are religious matters and therefore outside the domain of science. But you cannot have it both ways. At least, religious theorists and apologists should not be allowed to get away with having it both ways. Unfortunately all too many of us, including nonreligious people, are unaccountably ready to let them.
- Richard Dawkins

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There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if he did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientist to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system.

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I do know that religions make all sorts of claims about the objective reality of the universe and how it functions that are amenable to scientific scrutiny and testing. And they always fail such scrutiny and testing.

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At one time it was universally believed that the creation story from Genesis should be taken literally. Now, there are few other than the evangelicals who hold that position. Religion, as Dawkins points out in your quote, tried to fill in gaps in scientific understanding. The conflict between religion and science has existed only insofar as some religions have been reluctant to vacate its scientific assertions. But most of them have. The Catholic Church did so officially in the 19th century.

More importantly, religions can exist with making claims about the natural world. They do this by making supernatural claims only. Dawkins' claim, that the difference is scientific, is wrong. The existence of a divine authority is an untestable claim. Thus it's not a scientific one. The existence of a human soul is similarly untestable.

Implicit in Dawkins' argument is that nothing exists that can't be proven to exist. This in itself is not a scientific claim. It is philosophical.

Relevant is a great quotation, due to John Barrow:

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If a "religion" is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel has taught us that, not only is mathematics a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one.

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