Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Bishop Adoyo and the Kenyan Fossils

This story keeps getting discussed on a blogs and I’m glad. Bishop Adoyo, chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya continues to demand that hominid fossils in the Kenyan National Museum not be interpreted as evidence for evolution. In other reports he specifically requested removal of human fossil exhibits altogether or at least moving them to obscure corners of the museum. Of course, Bishop Adoyo is really an evangelical fruitcake who wanted the Kenyan national motto "Harambee" stricken because it originated from Hindu laborers (it simply means let's work together), identified devil worship at every level of society in Kenya (but mostly among the political opponents of Daniel Arap Moi, Kenya's corrupt president - why do evangelicals alwasy seem to support corruption?), claimed golfing clubs lead to the occult, and campaigned to have The Da Vinci Code banned in Kenya. The fact that he wants Kenya to relegate its wonderful human fossil collection (which is largely responsible for putting Kenya on the world map of recognition) to a closet at the back of the National Museum because it personally offends him shows just how culturally backwords this dipstick really is. I was also interested in the large number of Christians in Kenya he supposedly claims to represent. Interestingly, I could find no data on just which churches comprise membership in the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya. Most accounts suggest that this organization represents 13 million people (although the Wired story cited above suggests 9 million). Interesting, according to current stats for the Kenyan populations, Protestants comprise 45% of the 34 million Kenyans (approximately 15 million people). So, therefore Adoyo is claiming that a) almost all Protestants in Kenya are evangelicals, and b) they all follow Adoyo as chairman of the Evangelical Alliance. I find that incredibly hard to believe, especially since a large proportion of Protestant sects have no issue with evolution (but apparently none of these have representation in Kenya!). Fortunately, news reports largely indicate that the National Museum has not received phone calls requesting the removal of the human fossil exhibit, further suggesting that the actual number of people who closely follow Bishop Adoyo is more like...10.

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