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Thursday, October 20, 2005

Indonesian Islamic-Muslim crypto-creationism hinders science abt Flores "Hobbit"

Taipei News: In a news item on its Web site, Nature said Indonesia had refused to renew the researchers' access to the cave. The country's anthropological establishment, which has close ties to the government, bitterly opposes the theory that the Hobbits were a separate species, it quoted them as saying. "My guess is that we will not work at Liang Bua agin, this year or any other year," Morwood reportedly said.

For an alternative non-Muslim view on the "Hobbit" Flores WoMan based on reason and science see: Out of Africa: How a wrinkled African "Pygmy"*1) brain became "human"/"Mongoloid"* in cold Asia

Peter Klevius' comment: The Islamic government in Indonesia, desperately trying to cover up its unscientific Islamic crypto-creationism*, has since long had at least one (the so called "scientist" Teuku Jacob**) of its long arms deeply embedded in the Liang Bua cave. Now, after having tried 1) to explain the Hobbit as a "diseased human"; 2) theft and destruction of the bones; and 3) flirting with multiregionalists and people disliking Peter Brown. they ended up just blocking the cave!

* Islamic crypto-creationism means that there's only one species which (given of course that its members first submits to the Arabic Allah), can be considered fully human. In other words, god created a very special creature with a potential to become human. Those who didn't submit under this Arabic Allah were/are considered "infidels" and hence no real humans, i.e. no real Muslims. In this picture the "Hobbit" WoMan from Flores is disturbing and would benefit the Islamic world by not showing up or, if she really has to, be pathologized (Compare Peter Klevius paper on how healthy kinship ties are pathologized in "hoax psychodynamic child protection". Also see Klevius Interdisciplinary News + offered links for more on the topic.

** Teuku Jacob has been a studious guy, well familiar with physical anthropology and its terminology and methods. Furthermore he seems to have had a tremendous personal success within the Indonesian academic world (Indonesia's Mr Anthropolgy in person). One can only guess how he earned this reputation because traces of ground-breaking thinking are scant, to say the least. Yes, Teuku Jacob calls himself an "evolutionist" but unfortunately that probably doesn't include humans! Hence I call him a crypto-creationist. And in an extension it seems not too far-fetched to hypothise that he may have been muzzled by Islam. The other, and less flattering, option being that he himself believes in what he is doing...