Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya's national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors.
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The museum's collections include the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Leakey's team in 1984 near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artifacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.
Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.
"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.
- Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils
Well, Martin Luther is on your side at least: "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spritual things, but--more frequently than not --struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." Definitely... hiding the evidence in a back room is the way to go. (nods) Wouldn't want anyone to use that nasty reason stuff.
