The East African Standard carries an update on the war against science in Kenya:
The priceless National Museums of Kenya (NMK) fossils pointing to man’s evolution risk being relegated to the abyss as a section of the Church renews its war on science insisting that the evolution theory contradicts the biblical story of creation.
Bishop Boniface Adoyo of Nairobi Pentecostal Church (NPC), Christ is the Answer Ministries, is championing the ‘hide-the-fossils’ campaign, which has left scientists and historians perplexed.
I blogged on this a few months ago. Adoyo stated then that churches would “force” the museum to comply. The Standard now carries a number of quotes from the bishop, which I will collate:
I’m worried that children will believe we evolved from monkeys. Yet this is not the truth that’s killing our faith…These are just speculations yet we believe in them…Man is uniquely created; there is nothing concrete about the evolution theory and that is why we as Christians are uncomfortable with the museum’s plans to display the hominids and narrate the story of evolution as if it is the truth…These people should know that palaeontology is an old science. Richard Leakey and his group are afraid that their only source of survival and fame is rightly being put into question…These are the people who want to believe that life ends at death so that they can’t be held accountable in the end…Even Darwin on his death bed expressed surprise that people believed his theory…The advent of DNA testing has helped us to trace the origin of man to Adam and Eve…
Thus speaks the Chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, which has six million members.
Adoyo’s campaign against evolution is just his latest venture: in the 1990s he claimed there was widespread Satanism in Kenya among the “elites” (meaning those opposed to President Daniel arap Moi). In 1999 he demanded that Kenya should change its motto on the grounds that it has Hindu origins, and claimed that this was the reason why Asians dominated the Kenyan economy.
The Standard also carries one particularly interesting detail:
Saturday Standard has learnt that the alliance has enlisted a number of Western institutions to raise funds for anti-hominid campaigns in the media and through religious sermons.
Unfortunately, no names are given. Answers in Genesis is perhaps not involved; according to their website (links in original):
…we agree with Bishop Adoyo that evolutionary indoctrination—which comes through both public schools and museums—is a danger to children and can result in a fatalistic mindset (and the consequences of such a mindset) when students accept that life is just an accident. But while we oppose evolutionary indoctrination, we do not believe students should be prevented from hearing the sad story of evolution…
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Surely Bishop Adoyo must realize that hiding the fossil evidence does not invalidate it: his attempts to do so only tend to invalidate his position.
Besides, the good Bishop’s objection to the teaching of Evolution is needless. The questions he raises (assuming that they are, in fact, the actual substance of his concerns and not a diversion from a separate ulterior agenda), are ones with which many have already wrestled, and the question of the reconciliation between Creation and Evolution has been answered in an eminently satisfactory manner. Evolution does not contradict Creation; it complements it.
The Time Scale: The “Day” in Genesis is a day in God’s time, not time as measured by man. (Indeed, how could such be measured before the sun and moon were created?). The explanation that a “day is a thousand years” must be understood in the sense that “a thousand years” is also not to be taken literally, (again, how could such be measured?) but rather as a metaphor for “an immeasurably huge, indefinite amount of time”. Thus, the account in Genesis covers a vast amount of time — millions, even billions of years — divided into the phases of Creation, the “Days” being each a unit of God’s activity in a time-scale nearly “immeasurable to man”. The fossil record shows the “footprints” of the Fifth and Sixth “Days”; the Theory of Evolution merely fills in some more of the details.
Creation versus Evolution: Was Man created all at once? Or was the process more gradual? Is Life just an accident? Or was there a Plan? The Theory of Evolution does not address the question of how Life came into being; it merely describes the process, the mechanism, the instrumentality, by which God’s aims at the formation of his Partners in Creation — humankind — were achieved. Far from suggesting that “life is just an accident”, Evolution is the evidence of a methodical, skilled Creator, working patiently and with magnificent subtlety toward a goal.
Does life end at death? Can we be held accountable in the end? Evolution does not begin to attempt to discuss these matters. There are clear limitations to the scope of questions that the Theory of Evolution can attempt to address. Although Science can shed some light on the wonderful workings by which God formed the world, it cannot — and does not attempt to — address the important questions about the value of life, its origin and its goal, and from where it derives its basis for morality. Those are implicitly — and rightly — recognized as belonging squarely in the realm of Faith.