Out of Africa Theory : A scientific theory or religious one

 Science as we know, is often seeped in and originates from religion. No matter how much the followers of scientists (or scientist-bhakts) claim and flaunt their secular credentials or portray the men of science as atni-thesis of the religious ones, the effect and influence of religion on the scientific work is hard to hide or ignore. We may attribute this to the cultural aspect of the religion or the upbringing or the surrounding in which the proponent scientist is has lived in and grown up. But nevertheless, we do not want to get into why this is so, but the fact that the influence is hard to ignore or dismiss. One such scientific 'belief' is what is being discussed in this article. This belief is the 'Out of Africa' theory of Human evolution.

For the uninitiated readers, here is a link wikipedia - out of africa theory that describes the theory. In short, the theory suggests that the humans or homo sapiens, as we know them,  first originated in what we know now as the horns of africa some 2-3 lakh years back. It is here that they attained a critical mass and then migrated from here to different parts of the world, either for wanderlust or food and climatic conditions or for any other reasons or idiosyncracies best known to them. Different groups settled in different parts of the world, had different tribal compositions and interacted with different forces of nature and evolved into different people as we know them today. This later evolution is in sync with the Darwinian thought process of the evolution of species as directed by the principle of survival of the fittest. 

The Darwinian thought suggests that the monkeys who were better than their brethren at certain tasks similar to humans or having better intelligence for some work, evolved into humans due to selective breeding and being better fit in the environment and their response to survive in such environment.

This takes us to the biblical belief that in the very beginning, there was nothing and the GOD created universe in 6 days and on the seventh a man in his own image. To help this man Adam tide over his loneliness, he took out a bone from Adam's ribcage and made Eve. The duo got influenced by an evil serpent, ended up getting kicked out of heaven, came to earth, procreated and ended up having so many of us all around. 

So if we take the Darwinian theory in isolation, all the monkeys in all part of world when facing a certain ecological situations must be trying to respond in a similar and near similar way and should have resulted in having humans in all parts of the world as we have monkeys in all parts of the world. There is no good reason for the Ethiopian, Eritrean or Djiboutian monkeys to transform to human while the Thai monkeys maintaining their status quo till their Eritrean cousins stumble upon them at the end of a long journey.

 The Out of Africa theory is where we accept the Darwinian theory but are unable to get the Biblical all men from a single individual. So the subconscious modifies the Darwinian thought to accommodate the biblical belief of on common ancestor. In this context we need to relook on the possible influence of the religious beliefs clouding and twisting the scientific study to suit the religious belief.