The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has strongly denied reports that it has stopped printing books on evolution, saying the claims were “black propaganda” against their institution.
“If we aim to censor Evolution Theory we would discontinue publishing any books containing evolutionist approaches, but on the contrary we are publishing the books that are not being published by other publishing houses,” an official from TÜBİTAK told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday in a phone interview.
A number of reports in daily Sözcü claimed Jan. 14 that TÜBİTAK had put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution.
The evolutionist books, previously available through TÜBİTAK’s Popular Science Publications’ List, will no longer be provided by the council, the daily had claimed.
Titles from prominent writers including Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson were listed as being among those which would no longer be available to Turkish readers.
However, the official refuted the claims. “There are two books already in our 2012 catalogue regarding evolution, Richard Dawkins’ ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ is one of them … Dawkins’ ‘The Selfish Gene’ is not being published because of a publication rights issue, but this is being manipulated,” the official said.
He claimed that “some circles” had kicked off a “black propaganda” campaign against TÜBİTAK to “shadow its success,” following the successful mission of Turkey’s first Earth observation satellite, Göktürk-2.
Göktürk-2 was launched Dec. 18 in China, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan followed the launch at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) campus, which witnessed huge numbers of students protesting the prime minister’s visit.
Erdoğan had called on the academics who supported the students to resign, but the police’s heavy-handed intervention in the protests also stirred a debate among Turkish universities, with some backing the police and Erdoğan and some opposing.
TÜBİTAK had previously been the target of evolutionist circles for alleged censorship practices.
In early 2009 a huge uproar occurred when the cover story of a TÜBİTAK publication was pulled, reportedly because it focused on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The incident led to intense criticism and finger-pointing from various representatives of the publication and its parent institute.
A few months later, the article in question appeared as the publication’s cover story.
January/15/2013
via SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY – Turkish state science council denies ‘evolution censor’.
Note to myself: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don’t hire people from Turkey, Kansas,…
Re:Note to myself: (Score:5, Funny)
Really. Have you ever been to that town?
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Never heard of that place. How far is it from Topeka?
This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, feel free to reapply in a few centuries.
Actually, don’t.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:4, Informative)
Islam has been growing there, this is not unusual thing for Islamic countries.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Funny)
Islam has been growing there, this is not unusual thing for Islamic countries.
Science flies you to the moon.
Religion flies you into buildings.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
Science has provided us everything that religion has historically promised, including the chance of a firey holocaust which destroys humanity Go science!.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Funny)
Science has provided us everything that religion has historically promised,
Are my 72 virgins still growing in the lab or something?
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:4, Funny)
“Actually, the theory of evolution doesn’t fly you anywhere.”
I’m an Archaeopteryx, you insensitive clod
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:4, Interesting)
It’s not unusual in religious countries. How long has the US tried to do the same?
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Wrong. Like any religion, they lay claim to the “higher” truth. What you are talking about is tolerance of a “lower” scientific truth as long as it doesn’t usurp the more important higher truth being claimed by the religion. And even that was paid in blood.
To put it bluntly, scientific knowledge is incompatible with gods. We know it, they know it. To preserve face and influence, christian religions will ac
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
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That’s because they never managed to separate religion from politics.
I’m not sayin religion is bad, but when you lead the country, you can’t have two agendas. In this case, it’s pretty obvious which won.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Interesting)
I’m not sayin religion is bad
Why not?
Yow!
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How might you feel about a religion that held discovery of God’s creation through science to be it’s highest sacrament?
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I would think it was pointless.
Gilding the lilly. Why tarnish science with make believe?
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
From the standpoint of social structure, there is a scientific basis for religion. Children who are told some being is watching are more likely to leave a plate of cookies alone when asked even if they don’t believe that the being will do anything but watch.
In general, people are more likely to behave in an ethical manner when they believe someone will see what they do, even if they don’t expect any consequences for being seen.
I would prefer that we let a benevolent sky being do the watching rather than the guys back at the precinct.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t a long history of organized religion abusing the power of belief for their own ends, of course. That is what I personally object to. Perhaps if the abusers had actually believed someone was watching…
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I think you are right. I’ve been told several times over the years by religious people that I can’t be a moral person because I don’t believe in God. My response is that if it requires fear of God to make you act morally then you really aren’t very moral but just reacting to the threat of punishment. If you do the right thing even though no one’s looking (including God) then you can really call yourself a moral person.
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So your statement isn’t categorical, but is confined to current religions you are aware of? That is an important distinction.
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This one [bahai.org] doesn’t quite hold science to be a sacrement, but DOES hold that
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
they never managed to separate religion from politics
Did they even try?
I’m not sayin religion is bad
Then I will. Religion exists because lights in the sky go boom and it doesn’t rain when you want it to and things happen you can’t understand.
Guess what, today we can understand those things and so religion is quite literally at odds with modern life. Sure we dress it up and ignore the ugly parts ‘we’ don’t like but then somebody else decides, hey smiting neighbors is a good thing and justifies it with the Bible or whatever your religious source is.
If it ain’t based on cold hard facts it has no business governing anyone other than the individual who believes it.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:4, Interesting)
I think GP’s point was that Turkey did have a separation between religion and state, and it actually did wonders – it transformed the country from a rump of the “sick man of Europe” into a rapidly developing country with steadily growing standard of living.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a grassroots movement, but came from above. So once the leader who pushed it through died, his followers’ resolve grew steadily weaker with each passing generation – and now they have surrendered the country to Islamists.
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Yes. Very hard indeed for a nation so closely tied with religion – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk’s_Reforms [wikipedia.org]
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
Some religions are, some aren’t. Most of the incompatibility comes from dogma, which varies over time and among sects. It may surprise you to know that several major religious sects support teaching evolution and actively oppose teaching creation.
As if there were never another pretext for war besides the Bible, and all atheists were pacifists. People who want to smite their neighbors will make up a reason to do it, religion or no.
I wholeheartedly agree that other people’s religion should not govern me, and by the Golden Rule that also means my religion should not govern anyone else. However, I would point out that the separation of church and state, which you elegantly and passionately summarize here, is itself not based on “cold hard facts.” It’s ideology. Not all ideology is bad.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” – Isaac Asimov
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:4, Informative)
Have you paid ANY attention to Turkish politics? (Score:4, Informative)
Turkey’s government was radically secular for close to a century, since Kemal Ataturk’s nationalists kicked out the Allies, Sultanate, and Caliphate after the WW I fall of the Ottoman Empire. They were fairly aggressive about it – requiring western-style clothing, banning fezzes, and suppressing non-Turkish cultures (such as the Kurds), enforcing use of a Latin-based alphabet instead of Arabic alphabet (and too bad for you if your name used not-officially-Turkish letters.) They did strongly push education of women, banned headscarves even for women who wanted to wear them, and let women vote (at least in the years they were paying attention to votes.) They’ve even had women as Prime Minister. Islam was still permitted as a religion, and was still the most common religion, but the government was not Islamic.
They stayed secular until a few years ago when more Islamists got elected to Parliament, but have loosened up since then.
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Huh? [wikipedia.org]
I don’t think they want in anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they’re less enthusiastic about joining than they used to be.
Turkey’s been doing relatively well economically, especially relative to the general economic drain-circling that the EU has been experiencing for the last couple of years and I don’t see them as eager to join in the mess that the Euro Zone has become.
What they seem more interested in is regaining their Ottoman Empire regional standing. I keep waiting for them to say “enough” and intervene in Syria, allowing them to recreate some of the Ottoman empire. Lebanon would fall into that orbit very quickly in the absence of Syrian influence.
Re:I don’t think they want in anymore (Score:5, Informative)
EU != Eurozone. There are 27 countries in the EU, and only 17 in the Eurozone. The mess you are describing is specific to the Eurozone (and the fact that countries in it can’t print their own money).
Re:I don’t think they want in anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
It does run both ways.
For years the EU has been putting up barriers and slowing down the processes that has stalled the talked for the better part of a decade. This ranges from petty (Greece & Cyprus) to cheap political grandstanding (Islamophobia, cheap labor). Would you want to join a club where the petty internal politics didn’t want you? And this was before the financial crisis.
Personally, I think if Turkey had been allowed to join this would have cemented Turkey into a secular block allowing them to be a bridge between Europe and the Middle East.
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“I think they’re less enthusiastic about joining than they used to be.”
Good. Unless Europeans hate their own culture they have no reason to defile it by admitting Superstitionist countries. It’s taken long enough to weaken Superstition in Europe itself.
Anyone who admires Islam should be willing to move to the most Islamic countries. I gently suggest the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. THAT is the sort of society religion builds. Religionists should go wallow in it.
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Book bans should fit right in (Score:5, Interesting)
Most European countries have similar book bans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial [wikipedia.org]
The Western perspective dominating Slashdot is that Turkey is banning “truth,” while Europe is banning lies, while the Turkish perspective is just the opposite.
Re:This is a country that wants in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
I’m from Texas. It’s OK with me. Isn’t there some paperwork we have to sign?
Texas
No, no, Obama’s not going to kick Texas out of the Union just because all those Confederates signed that petition. They don’t want to be in the US any more, so he’s going to give it back to Mexico.
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goodbye future (Score:2)
Re:goodbye future (Score:5, Interesting)
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The sad part is, in a few decades when the country is an impoverished backwards mess nobody will have much sympathy.
Then when the country starts breeding western-hating under-educated terrorist morons everyone in the west will wring their hands and wonder how it could have possibly happened.
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“Then when the country starts breeding western-hating under-educated terrorist morons”
Nuke’m, problem goes away.
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That only works if you stay and impose your system. That’s politically incorrect these days, so you go in, get people killed, and at the end of it all accomplish little to nothing.
Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standout (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, I thought the US was the only stand-out / weird-country with anti-evolution nuts in power.
I guess there are other countries in this unfortunate “club”
If you don’t want to believe in it (or that it’s even possible) then fine… believe in whatever you want.
But stop trying to prevent other people from learning it. Please. And please stop trying to pass religion off as science… such as those museums that say Adam rode on a dinosaur, and that dinosaurs were vegens until the apple incident.
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Insightful)
The US is just the squeakiest wheel, because we have an open press and debate our problems for the whole world to see. I can easily believe other countries have plenty of dirty laundry and just keep it to themselves.
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Informative)
No, it actually is one of the worse but Turkey is an even more extreme example, here’s a quote from WP:
A study published in Science compared attitudes about evolution in the United States, 32 European countries (including Turkey) and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%).
Only the Abrahamic world religions in general and Protestant Christianity in particular has a big issue with evolution, this graph [wikipedia.org] shows how in the US Buddhists and Hindus are the most accepting. The national figures for India are also very strong and in line with western Europe. Sure a lot other countries have other vices, but creationism is usually not one of them.
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I don’t think he was limiting his comment to just evolution. Lots of countries have lots of dirty laundry in lots of areas. The US has an open press and a massive presence on the Internet, plus a significant fraction of total world population and a disproportionate influence over the world. Hence, it’s laundry gets aired very openly.
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, I thought the US was the only stand-out / weird-country with anti-evolution nuts in power.
ARE YOU KIDDING? Please tell us you were kidding, that you’re not *that* provincial, that you believe Western rationalism really is the norm throughout the entire world, including Muslim countries and Africa?
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Informative)
Please tell us you were kidding, that you’re not *that* provincial, that you believe Western rationalism really is the norm throughout the entire world, including Muslim countries and Africa?
Over the years I’ve noticed this is a pretty common theme on Slashdot – You could post a story about some backwater, torture-filled nation lead by some despotic religious zealot and 26 replies will immediately say “Yeah, but the USA is TEN TIMES WORSE!”
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:4, Insightful)
Over the years I’ve noticed this is a pretty common theme on Slashdot – You could post a story about some backwater, torture-filled nation lead by some despotic religious zealot and 26 replies will immediately say “Yeah, but the USA is TEN TIMES WORSE!”
Over the years I’ve noticed this is a pretty common theme on Slashdot – people point out problems in other countries, others draw parallels to the US and some pseudo-patriot type comes along and exaggerates those parallels in order to complain about the people pointing them out.
The problem with your complaining is that while Americans have very little influence over other what other governments do in other countries, here at least we claim to have the democratic process in order to fix our own problems. But you can’t fix what you don’t know about. “My country, right or wrong. If right to be kept right, if wrong to be set right.”
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:4, Interesting)
“I don’t want to live on this planet any more.”
I just don’t get it. How are we not animals? How do we not recognize the extreme similarities between us and our animal cousins? The theory of evolution isn’t “a fact” but it is a general truth which is evolving and growing as our understanding grows. And frankly, some things are just obvious… painfully obvious. Ever see those growing fetus diagrams where you can’t tell if it’s human or something else because we ALL start off looking the same?
Sorry, but just no.
And when people work so hard to deny, hide and destroy information which is contrary to their beliefs surely don’t understand the nature of learning, understanding or of thought. I guarantee you that even if by some bizarre reality, all information about our animal nature and the notion of evolution vanished from the earth in a flash, people would STILL arrive at this obvious conclusion just exactly as people all over the world at different times came to realize that “air” has mass.
Re:
That opening quote is from one of my favorite Futurama episodes. And thus well chosen.
I believe that Evolution is right, or at least as right as we can ever be.
But if someone is strong in their beliefs of… well.. however the earth and man came about. I’m not going to trounce on their rights to believe it.
But it’s sad when someone tries to stifle science, in any form, because it goes against something they believe.
Re:
Bad tempered crazy Sky God is going to zap you with a thunderbolt for saying that.
Or not….
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And yet they deny evolution which the most totally ‘free market’ we know of. It’s literally kill or be killed, survive, adapt or die.
Re:
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Don’t you dare drag vegans into this.
Re:
🙂
But seriously: according to the people that try to convince me that the christian-bible-creation thing is right… they say that dinosaurs were all herbivores until Eve+Adam ate the apple.
Because, you know, the T-Rex and such had sharp meat-eating teeth just for show. SUUUURE
Re:
I clicked submit too soon.
About the SUUURE thing… fine… i don’t believe it. But honestly, I don’t try to convince anyone evolution is right as I believe everyone should just chill and believe what they want. The problem is, said person would not stop trying to convince me HE was right. Until I walk away.
That, and he was trying to use science to explain the teeth thing that even I know was not science.
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Interesting)
As a green-eyed American Caucasian, when I started my 6 month consulting gig in Istanbul in 2007-2008 I was kinda scared at first. I saw all these minarets poking up from mosques everywhere, heard the call to prayer a few times each day, and folks back home were pushing a law that would officially say Turkey committed genocide. But then I started working with my technical counter parts and guess what? There was the quiet guy, there was the hilarious guy (we’re still friends), there was the unbelievably smart guy (still the best Oracle consultant I’ve ever worked with), there was the hot girl, there was the guy who talked my ear off about how backwards he thought Muslims were, and there was the kindhearted Muslim guy who made sure I never ate lunch alone. Every archetype that I knew from the US was represented. I found them brilliant and extremely motivated. And I even saw a lot of women in high level jobs wearing fashionable clothes.
Then I got to know the city, saw some of the music scene, a little of the club scene, and soaked up some of the history. They have their own George Washington named Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who in 1923 established the Republic of Turkey, switched them from Arabic script to Western European (making my job of typing on their keyboards much easier!), and separated Mosque from State.
But exactly like in the US the religious groups find ways to work their agenda into the secular government. For example, you can’t buy pork. Why? Because from political pressure it was found “unhealthy” and one by one the farms were shutdown until there were none. There’s lots of these examples, including the article to which we’re responding. Once my eyes got adjusted I almost felt as if I were in the US, even the mosques I realized were no more numerous than our churches.
Their economy is far stronger than Romania, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, and Portugal, all members of the European Union, and the EU would do well to admit them. Turkey is the litmus test for Muslims and Christians. They are us and we are them. If we can make it work there I’m afraid we won’t make it together anywhere.
Re:
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding? You just presented direct evidence that they’re less crazy than other religions.
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because what you believe is true, doesn’t make you not crazy.
Re:
That evidence only shows that they are less crazy regarding evolution. There are plenty of other things to be crazy about, and there are plenty of Hindu extremists.
Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wow, I thought we (the US) was the only standou (Score:5, Insightful)
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I said as a SCIENCE. I think public schools SHOULD have a separate class to learn the beliefs of other cultures… if for no other reason than to give everyone a better understanding of everyone else. But such a class would be sociology.
Some schools here want creationism thought as a science. As in, squeeze it in between Astronomy and Physics. But… what they do does not follow any method of the scientific method nor to they even give anything close to scientific for the theory. The “facts” they use a
Re:
Most of them now have switched to a legally safe deny-the-religion form of creationism for public school. Teach that the earth was formed six thousand years ago, but don’t ask how. Teach that life could not have occurred naturally, but don’t suggest a theory. All the basics of creationism but with a God-shaped gap the students are left to fill in themselves so it has at least a slim chance of getting past the lawyers and inevitable day in court.
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Education is not religion and isn’t treated as such. We don’t force religion on anyone because it doesn’t help you. Forcing an education on you DOES help you….and the rest of us who would have to support your sorry ignorant ass.
Meanwhile… (Score:2, Flamebait)
Ugh (Score:5, Interesting)
I’m an American citizen of Turkish ancestry, and the fact that the US and Turkey come in at 49 and 50 of a list of 50 western nations in terms of percentage of population that believe in evolution upsets me to no end. When Erdogan and his cronies took over the first thing they did was jail all the generals. Why? Because the military always would step in and keep the country from getting too Islamic. Well the US decided to back Erdogan when he did this and now look whats happening, one more slippery step towards Turkey becoming a theocracy.
Re:
Considering the power the military has traditionally had, what kept them from doing this early or even late in the Erdogan era?
I’m familiar (at least from what I read in the NY Times…) with the jailing of the military officers (most ex-military from what I read) on somewhat shaky grounds, but I would think that if the active duty military wanted to depose him, they would easily as the vast majority of the officer corps and probably most senior enlisted had likely already been vetted for their secularism a
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
What a backwards country, to be so afraid of science as to effectively censor it.
Glad I live in ‘merica. FUCK YA!
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And? Didn’t they replace that dictator with the Muslim Brotherhood?
Re:
In case anyone missed it, that was loaded with irony.
We need a new theory… (Score:2)
It needs to cover both evolution and devolution.
By the way, we need to request that Turkey give us all their wheels and sources of fire in exchange for pretty stones we’ll happily provide them. When they ask why, we tell to just ask us again in 20 years, if they still can.
You can lead a horticulture (Score:4, Funny)
Ebooks (Score:4, Insightful)
Why did Constantinople get the works? (Score:2, Funny)
They say you can’t argue with stupid. (Score:4, Funny)
and just like that… (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong name (Score:2)
It’s the ANTI-Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey. Oh, and good luck with that EU membership thing.
ignorance is bliss (Score:2)
SHhhhhhh…dont tell them the world is round, im afraid they could not handle it at this delicate time.
Re:
The earth isn’t round. It’s shaped like a burrito!
[gocomics.com]
Why ban Stephen Jay Gould, (Score:2)
My Turkish friends are secular (Score:2)
I have friends in Turkey. Two doctors my wife and I met when we traveled there 12 years ago. They were secular, but bathed in the culture of Islam. I am sure that they are not happy about repressing science.
When we traveled through Turkey the vast majority of people were very friendly and helpful. This is true with the Muslims I met just a couple months ago in Jordan. However, we could not help but notice as friendly as they were, about 1/2 of the population lived as slaves. One vocal male friendly Mu
‘evolution censor’ was denied the next day. (Score:5, Informative)
This news is from Jan 14. Turkish state science council denied this rumor the next day (Jan 15) and provided some evidence that it’s not true. The newspaper published it and did not follow the story anymore.
At least, this fact should be in the summary as well.
Is good news! (Score:3)
For Greeks
Why does Turkey allow books other than the Qur’an? (Score:3)
subject (Score:3)
Hear that, Kansas Board of Education? Time to step up your game.
One step forwards… (Score:3)
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Indeed. I hear that many true things come out of it.
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“Indeed. I hear that many true things come out of it.”
Except “Ministry of Truth” doesn’t mean what you think it does.
“Ministry of Truth” — Babylon5.
Essentially it was a political propaganda department and like all departments of it’s type with a sliver of truth(maybe) miles underneath a cesspool of lies. Where it’s profession is to twist the truth to unrecognizability. The primary goal to manipulate the target of their interests. People working for such ilk along with a
Re:
House Intelligence Committee
Not belief, science is testable hypothesis (Score:5, Informative)
Belief has nothing to do with science. All science is testable, or it is not science.
a) genetic inheritance is observable in a lab if you have a couple of weeks and handful of flies
b) genetic inheritance and mortality leads to evolution
c) we have fossil records to support (b) occured in the past
All testable against the null hypothesis. So it is clear science.
Re:
They’ll probably want to go to war with Turkey for stealing their ideas.
Re:Will this discourge US evolution denialism? (Score:4, Insightful)
tribal allegiance first
logical coherence a distant second
so sorry, no