Famed fossil hunter Richard Leakey thinks the evidence for evolution will become so strong in the next few decades that skeptics will be forced to accept it:
(Stuuf.NZ) — 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 colour 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”.
Oh contraire Mr Leakey, contraire. If the evolution vs creationism issue was only about the science, it would be over already. But science is just a part of it. Like most political issues this one is really about money. Specifically, tax cuts for the super rich. In the US, evo is a wedge issue intended to piss off middle woking parents — who depend on public schools for their kids’ education — just like sex ed or health classes. The idea is to tick off regular people and flip an emotional/religious switch in their heads, causing them to behave irrationally, act agianst their own interests, vote against K-12 schools or funding for same, cause simmering resentment towards teachers and administrators and government in general, and to even cause some of them to think about homeschooling their kids.
This is all in pursuit of one ugly, greedy, selfish goal: to save a handful of super rich people property taxes on their real estate portfolio andMcMansions. Mo’ better science ain’t gonna change that.
Are you serious, Stephen?
Always remember that only the insane Right-wing psych-jobs are capable of fulminating schizoid conspiracy theories based only upon ridiculously tenous threads of disparate vapors of evidence.
The progressive left is far too smugly superior, advanced, and “evolved” for such primitive backwardness.
It would be like me saying that some radical communist America- haters had mind-fucked a kid decades ago and programmed him into a sycophant Marxist Manchurian-candidate to assume the office of president, aided and abetted by an owned press and a traitorous 5th column socialist Left-wing party, in order to rot and destroy the country from within for the new Great Leap Forward into a “1984”-type future hellhole. Or something.
Get it? That would just be crazy, right?
@alexmartin… Uh yeah, that would be (and is) crazy. Is there a joke there I’m missing?
I don’t know if Steven is correct or not but I am certain that evolution in schools is seen as something political by the Christian right. To the Christian right it is not just about science or just about religion. To the Christian right there’s a sinister agenda behind it.
Hate to come accros as either ignorant or pedantic but shouldn’t this be ‘Au contraire, Mr. Leakey, au contraire’?
To paraphrase,
optimism…evolution…
Hatred of science.
Money.
Tax cuts.
Tax cuts for the super rich.
Wedge issue. Working parents.
Tick off regular people.
Behave irrationally.
Vote against funding of (public) school K-12 funding
(Attack on unions).
…Leads to the disease of home schooling.
Super-rich people property taxes McMansions.
AND the kitchen sink.
The typical disjointed mind of an average liberal.
There are certainly people who buy into the fake pseudoscience of creationism, but the old timey creationists of the 1980s have been replaced by the think tanks opf the 90s … the monied interests that support the DI mostly know better and mostly just don’t give a shit, they’re in it for the dough. At least that’s the speil the DI grifters lay out for them.
It’s kinda of a con all the way around when it comes to evo these days. The grifters con the rich to supoprt their cause celeb, aka cushy jobs, the griftrs then work to con schoolboards and the public at large with the money the rich fork over.
Are there really people in the US skeptic community who don’t understand this anti edu motive? I apologize if that’s the case, I just figured everyone already knew about it.
So, alexmartin, what is your explanation for the fact that the Republican Party has been captured by creationists, AGW denialists, birthers, misogynists, and similar fruitcakes, as clearly shown both by the antics of this year’s Presidential candidates, and the rash of attempts to push through creationist and misogynist laws at state level?
-KG–
Please,give me solid examples of recent creationist and misogynist laws, if you would.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/24/lord-monckton-wins-global-warming-debate-at-oxford-union/
–Oh, and the anti- AGW denialist crowd? Add also the lord Monckton set and the Oxford Union as well.
I will tell you right now that, yes, I believe in climate change. The climate IS change. Get it?
Do I believe that a trace gas that feeds plants iz goan kill us all?
What do you think?
Oh, “lord” Monckton won the debate? Nice to know that the science is finally settled now.