Tag: Darwin

  • No More Evolution Books in Turkey

    No More Evolution Books in Turkey

    Turkey, allegedly the most secular of all Muslim-majority countries in the world, is home to Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, a Muslim young earth creationist who has led a crusade against evolution. It appears that he has won a significant victory:

    The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported.

    The evolutionist books, previously available through TÜBİTAK’s Popular Science Publications’ List, will no longer be provided by the council…

    Books by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to the Turkish readers.

    I don’t know how things work in Turkey, of course, but I doubt this means that books about evolution are actually illegal to sell or own in that country. But it’s certainly not a good thing.

    via No More Evolution Books in Turkey » Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

  • What Turkey’s Ban on Darwin Means

    What Turkey’s Ban on Darwin Means

    Michael Rubin | @mrubin1971 01.16.2013 – 8:00 AM

    Far from being a model “Muslim democracy,” Turkey has grown progressively more illiberal under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamist government. A bit over a year ago, the Turkish government blocked a website discussing Darwin in an Internet children’s filter. At the time, the head of Turkey’s Scientific and Technological Research Council downplayed the incident, telling Hürriyet that the ban was not against the theory of evolution. “If that was the case,” he said, “every website that used to word would have been banned. This one may have been banned for containing harmful material to children.”

    Evidently, his downplaying of the incident was just nonsense for the gullible masses. Now, the Council is banning books which discuss Darwin. According to Hürriyet Daily News:

    The evolutionist books, previously available through TÜBİTAK’s Popular Science Publications’ List, will no longer be provided by the council. The books have long been listed as “out of stock” on TÜBİTAK’s website, but their further publication is now slated to be stopped permanently. Titles by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to Turkish readers.

    When Erdoğan, in a fit of pique, declared that his goal was “to raise a religious generation,” many Western diplomats pooh-poohed the incident as just one more example of Erdoğan’s rhetorical excess. Given Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s recently unearthed anti-Semitic diatribe declaring Jews to be descended from “apes and pigs,” perhaps it’s time not only to recognize that the Islamists might not only benefit from a little time studying Darwin, but also that it’s time that diplomats understand that what Islamists say to their own population is far more important than what they tell Western diplomats and agenda-driven journalists.

    via What Turkey’s Ban on Darwin Means « Commentary Magazine.

  • Turkish schoolbooks denounce Darwin, Einstein as ‘Jews’

    Turkish schoolbooks denounce Darwin, Einstein as ‘Jews’

    Turkish schoolbooks denounce Darwin, Einstein as ‘Jews’

    By JPOST.COM STAFF

    darwin

    Turkish schoolchildren in Istanbul received a series of books denouncing scientific figures, including one denying the theory of evolution and describing Charles Darwin as a big-nosed Jew, the Financial Times reported Friday.

    According to the paper, the books were distributed last week to hundreds of students in the Maltepe district of Turkey’s capital after the government-affiliated local education authority approved their content.

    The book on Darwin reportedly states that the evolutionary biologist “Had two problems: First he was a Jew; second, he hated his prominent forehead, big nose and misshapen teeth.”

    Darwin was not Jewish.

    A separate book on Albert Einstein reportedly describes the physicist as “filthy and slovenly” and accuses him of eating soap. “The sad part is during that time the Gestapo was putting Jews into ovens and making them into soap,” the book adds.

    Maltepe’s director of education, Faik Kaptan, told Turkey’s Radikal newspaper that he was unaware the books contained anti-Semitic references, saying, “It is not possible to check all the books distributed in the district.”

    via Jerusalem Post – Breaking News.

  • Turkey Blocks Web Pages Touting Darwin’s Evolution Theory

    Turkey Blocks Web Pages Touting Darwin’s Evolution Theory

    Dorian Jones | Istanbul, Turkey

    reuters turkey protests science 480 march2009

    Photo: Reuters

    Demonstrators protest against the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey [TUBITAK] over the exclusion of articles commemorating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday from a scientific journal published by TUBITAK, in Ankara, Turkey, March 2009. (file photo)

    The blocking by Turkish state authorities of Web pages advocating the theory of evolution has put the focus on wider concerns by teachers and academics that the ideas of Darwin increasingly are being undermined by the Islamic-rooted government.

    Numerous web pages advocating the theory of evolution recently were deemed unsafe for children by Turkey’s regulatory board controlling the Internet.

    Yaman Akdeniz of Istanbul’s Bilgi University is an expert on Internet freedom.

    “The authorities are trying to establish one view, one morality that the youngsters of our generation should subscribe to,” said Akdeniz.

    Undermining evolution

    The result was an outcry by the media and academics. Soon after, regulatory authorities re-instated the web pages, with the regulatory authority claiming the ban was a “clerical error.” Recent media reports, however, say the evolution sites still remain blocked in schools.

    The controversy is not only confined to the Internet. Professor Asli Tolon is a molecular biologist at Istanbul’s Bosphorus University. She has been tracking the changes in how evolution is taught in school text books.

    Tolon said the idea of evolution increasingly is undermined by creationists who argue the world was created by God.

    “Here, there is this, how life evolved. This part is quite scientific, but then right after that, it starts with the creation, the view of creation, which should really not be in a scientific book, because this is a religious view,” said Tolon.

    Tolon said the result of such changes are increasingly being felt by her students.

    “They sometimes get the idea, that I am trying to teach them my own views. But this is not mine, because evolution is one of the basic theories,” said Tolon.

    Balancing the teaching

    Mustafa Akyol, columnist and writer on religious affairs, said alternative theories to evolution have a place in education.

    “There are some scientific facts in nature that point to a design by some intelligent being which is not a part of nature, this being might be God. This cannot be a reason to reject data just simply because it’s compatible with religion. I think a fair and objective scientific education should allow Darwin evolution and also critics of Darwin evolution,” said Akyol.

    Turkey’s teachers are now increasingly being caught in the middle of the deepening dispute.

    The country’s main teaching trade union frequently complain that science teachers are facing increasing intimidation by the education ministry, local authorities controlled by the governing AK party and even religious parents.

    The government has dismissed such claims. But one teacher, who did not want to give her name, said teaching evolution is increasingly difficult.

    “In my school, three out of five science teachers now only teach creationism,” she said, adding that she faces daily pressure from fellow teachers who are religious, and from some families of children who complain about her teaching evolution.

    For teachers advocating evolution in Turkey’s schools, they seem destined to be on the frontline of this ongoing struggle for the minds of the nation’s young.

    via Turkey Blocks Web Pages Touting Darwin’s Evolution Theory | Europe | English.

  • Muslim creationists tour France denouncing Darwin

    Muslim creationists tour France denouncing Darwin

    By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

    AUBERVILLIERS, France | Mon May 16, 2011 9:54am EDT

    AUBERVILLIERS, France (Reuters) – Four years after they first frightened France, Muslim creationists are back touring the country preaching against evolution and claiming the Koran predicted many modern scientific discoveries.

    oktarFollowers of Harun Yahya, a well-financed Turkish publisher of popular Islamic books, held four conferences at Muslim centers in the Paris area at the weekend with more scheduled in six other cities.

    At a Muslim junior high school in this north Paris suburb, about 100 pupils — boys seated on the right, girls on the left — listened as two Turks from Harun Yahya’s headquarters in Istanbul denounced evolution as a theory Muslims should shun.

    “We didn’t descend from the apes,” lecturer Ali Sadun told the giggling youngsters. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, he said, was “the scientific basis to defend atheism.”

    Harun Yahya, one of the most prolific publishers in the Muslim world, gave proudly secularist France a scare in January 2007 by mass-mailing thousands of free copies of his “Atlas of Creation” to schools and libraries across the country.

    The Education Ministry quickly ordered headmasters to seize and hide copies of the large format book that, over 768 pages of glossy photographs and easy-to-read text, argues that all living things were created by God exactly as they are formed today.

    It followed up with a special seminar to train teachers how to counter a small but growing group of pupils who challenge evolution with creationist theories.

    In October 2007, with strong French support, the Council of Europe denounced the creationist views laid out in the “Atlas of Creation” as a religious assault on science and human rights.

    LIFE CREATED BY ALLAH

    Christian and Muslim creationists believe God created the world as described in the Bible and the Koran. Both books say God made the universe and all living things in six days. The Bible presents that as the exact time needed for creation but the Koran says “days” actually means long periods of time.

    Christian creationism enjoys popular support in some parts of the United States but courts have ruled it is a religious view that cannot be taught in state-run schools.

    Koran-based creationist views are traditional in the Muslim world. Advised by U.S. creationists, Harun Yahya has developed a series of books that have helped spread this view in recent years beyond the Middle East, including to France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe’s largest Islamic minority.

    “People who defend evolution can’t accept the existence of a Creator,” Sadun said at La Reussite (“Success”), one of the few Muslim-run private schools in France.

    “Life is not the result of chance, it’s the creation of a higher power, which of course is Allah,” he said in fluent French, adding that the confiscation of the “Atlas of Creation” was similar to book-burnings staged by the Nazis in the 1930s.

    Sadun’s lecture depended heavily on slides purporting to show ancient fossils of a fish, cricket, lizard and frog looking exactly like photographs of their modern day descendants. He claimed no fossils proving evolutionary transitions existed.

    Scientists in Turkey, Europe and North America argue the Atlas is riddled with errors, but this seems neither to bother Harun Yahya’s followers nor to crimp his books’ sales.

    SCIENCE PREDICTIONS IN THE KORAN?

    Harun Yahya is the pseudonym of Adnan Oktar, 55, a preacher who keeps secret the sources of the ample funds that allow him and a group of followers to produce hundreds of thousands of slick and simple books on Islam under his pen name.

    He told Reuters in 2008 that he was preparing the return of Jesus Christ, who he said would come back to Earth in about 25 years as a Muslim to help the Mahdi — Islam’s savior figure — to defeat evil and establish Islam around the world.

    After Sedun’s anti-evolution talk, a colleague from Istanbul spoke about “scientific miracles in the Koran,” another small but well-financed field of self-styled experts claiming the Muslim holy book predicted many modern scientific discoveries.

    Avni Karahisar cited Koran verses he said indicated hidden proof of phenomena such as the Big Bang, planetary orbits and the expansion of the universe. Pupils avidly took notes on scrap paper distributed by teachers before the talk.

    “Technology now shows these truths announced in the Koran 1,400 years ago,” Karahisar said. “This shows in a miraculous way that the Koran is the word of Allah the All Powerful.”

    “SECOND WAVE” OF CREATIONIST CAMPAIGN

    Nidhal Guessoum, an Algerian astrophysicist at the American University in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, dismisses these so-called miracles as “fanciful interpretations.”

    They have “exploded and expanded to quickly occupy large parts of the cultural landscape of the Islamic world (particularly the Arab part) over the last few decades,” he wrote in his new book “Islam’s Quantum Question.”

    Because the conferences are held on private premises, the Education Ministry has no authority over them and has not commented on what one Harun Yahya follower called their “second wave” of campaigning in France after the 2007 controversy.

    This “second wave” began with conferences in January in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and other cities. The group plans similar conferences this month in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.

    While these conferences may not attract much interest outside Muslim communities in Europe now, the organisers clearly hope the creationist ideas they spread will have an impact.

    A teacher at the La Reussite meeting said French educators called him an Islamic fundamentalist for his creationist views, but he thought they were actually secularist fundamentalists.

    “As a Muslim school, we’re lucky to have people who give us tools for this debate,” he said, nodding toward the lecturers.

    “This is very important for you and for your pride,” he told the pupils.

    (Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

  • Only 25% of Britons believe evolution

    Only 25% of Britons believe evolution

    EVOLUTION SURVEYS UNDER THE MONOPOLY OF THE DARWINIST DICTATORSHIP

    An opinion poll was conducted in Britain. But the result came as a shock to Darwinists. The level of belief in the theory of evolution, in Darwin’s homeland, Britain, where Richard Dawkins’ atheist and Darwinist propaganda is most intense, emerged at a mere 25%. Britain’s best-known dailies immediately carried the story. This important and major development came as a real shock to Darwinists. It was the loudest declaration of Darwinism’s defeat.

    The result of the survey, carried out nationwide on the Guardian website on 2 February, 2009, was announced as follows: “Only 25% of Britons believe Darwin’s theory of evolution”. This headline, which reflected the poll findings, was altered within a few hours.

    This defeat being carried in the headlines was unacceptable to the Darwinist dictatorship. For that reason, the headline to the report carried in the publications in question was swiftly changed in a matter of hours.  The new report did not repeat that the level of belief in Darwinism was very low. The poll findings were distorted. The genuine report, which was carried for a brief period of time, was suddenly changed. Once again, people had been deceived under the influence of the Darwinist dictatorship.

    The incident did not end there. The results of this poll in Britain must have been particularly unwelcome, for Darwinists lost no time in resorting to another method in order to cover them up. “We have conducted a new poll,” they said. They gave the result of the poll they claimed to have conducted among 2000 people to the press. Under the influence of the Darwinist dictatorship the captions in the British press were swiftly altered. The British people were announced to be “evolutionist” by this false poll based on the opinions of 2000 persons.

    The fact is that this was a dirty trick by the Darwinist dictatorship that has taken the whole world under its sway and deceived people for many years.

    These intrigues have long been an effective technique for this sinister dictatorship that strives to spread Darwinist propaganda. Formerly, Darwinists used to draw pictures of imaginary ape ancestors, discover perfectly complex fossils of extinct life forms and claim that these were transitional fossils and maintain that a whole country was evolutionist, and people would duly believe them. That was because Darwinists kept the real scientific evidence carefully hidden away and nobody knew that Darwinism was a lie. They imagined that the equine series they saw in museums and the peppered moths they read about in school books were true, and were duly convinced because they knew nothing more. Whatever the Darwinist dictatorship said, went.

    But then something happened that Darwinists never expected.

    THE DARWINIST DICTATORSHIP WAS DEALT A BODY BLOW: BY ATLAS OF CREATION.

    The fossils so carefully hidden away were suddenly revealed. THERE WERE 100 MILLION FOSSILS THAT PROVED CREATION.  These all belonged to perfect, flawless and complex life forms, and many were living fossils. People realized that a tiger is the same today as it was 50 million years ago. A squid is the same today as it was 100 million years ago. And people also realized THAT NOT A SINGLE TRANSITIONAL FORM FOSSIL EXISTED.  Most important of all, they realized THEY HAD BEEN DECEIVED. The scientific facts were before their eyes. There was now no way of deceiving people by holding back the scientific proofs. Unable to produce any scientific evidence, and thus forced to rely on propaganda alone, Darwinism was abandoned.

    Demagoguery and propaganda are old Darwinist techniques. But that age is now over. It has no more influence over people who are now aware and have seen the scientific evidence.  People are abandoning evolution in droves and turning to belief in Allah (God). This is now showing itself very clearly and with powerful evidence in all countries. That is why Darwinists are in such a panic and such despair.

    Darwinism has been totally routed. It has been demolished. The Darwinist system that regarded people as ignorant and insignificant has realized that it can no longer deceive them. Nobody falls into the traps of the Darwinist dictatorship any more. They can make as much propaganda as they like, but nobody in the world really believes in Darwinism any more.

    Mar 17, 2009

    Source:  www.harunyahya.com, Mar 17, 2009