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In an interview with the Associated Press (AP), Richard Leakey, a 67-year-old, Kenyan-born Stony Brook University professor, paleoanthropologist, and avowed atheist, said that he believed scientific discoveries over the next 15 to 30 years will have reached the point that "even the skeptics" will be able to accept the theory put forth by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book Origin of Species.
"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive, then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges," he said.
"If we're spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?" Leakey continued.
"If you don't like the word evolution, I don't care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up," he added. "So the question is why, how does this happen? It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God."
According to the AP story, Leakey began hunting for fossils in the 1960s. In 1984, he and a team of colleagues discovered "Turkana Boy," a nearly 1.6 million year old skeleton in 1984 that became "the first known early human with long legs, short arms and a tall stature."
He was appointed the head of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department (WMCD) - later the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) - in 1989, where he helped establish anti-poaching teams to protect elephants and other animals.
Despite his own personal views on both religion and evolution, Leakey emphasized to the AP that he was not anti religious, saying, "If you tell me, well, people really need a faith ... I understand that... I see no reason why you shouldn't go through your life thinking if you're a good citizen, you'll get a better future in the afterlife."
I know a lot of people who will never accept Darwinism as our finest effort in learning the truth about life. And I am one of them; I will NEVER accept it.
It has NOTHING to do with atheism. I was a atheist most of my life.
It has to do with evidence that "science" steadfastly ignores. And that evidence will never go away, because it is part of human experience.