Hide the Bones

Christian missionaries have petitioned the government of Kenya to remove the bones of human ancestors from the national museum in Nairobi.

Bishop Adoyo, leader of the “Christ is the Answer” Ministry, insists that his community is “very uncomfortable” with the idea of evolution. The Bishop wants the museum to hide the bones in the back room.

A better solution might just be for the Pentecostal Bishop to simply stick his head in the sands of the Nairobi desert and save everyone a lot of trouble.

The church has a long history of making the wrong call on this sort of thing, which is why science operates outside the restraints of religious doctrine. In 1633, the Inquisition summoned Galileo to Rome to stand trial for claiming the earth went around the sun. Pope Urban’s philosophers refused to look through the astronomer’s telescope, and under threat of torture, Galileo apologized for his “errors and heresies.”

Today, George Johnson at the Catholic Education Resource Centre, points out that times have changed. “Biblical fundamentalists,” he writes about the Galileo affair, “do not understand this simple point: the bible is not a scientific treatise.”

In 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s trial, Pope John Paul II officially declared the scientist innocent. Scientific theory changes with the data, not because someone is uncomfortable with implications. Bishop Adoyo should focus on minding his flock, and let the bones fall where they will.

This was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Spiritualism . Feel free to respond, or trackback.