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Tag: The Theory of Evolution

Turkish Government Censors Darwin, Evolution

by Anna Klenke

Concerns about censorship have risen in Turkey since November when the Council of Information Technology and Communications (BTK) placed blocks on websites that contain the words “Darwin” and “evolution.” This filtering system blocks websites about the theory of evolution, along with pornographic sites, to any Turkish computer user who has the children’s security profile activated on his or her computer.

Websites that remain unprotected include those referencing the theory of creationism, Intelligent Design and anti-evolution sentiments. While Turkey is often considered one of the most secular Islamic countries, it also houses a significant population of Islamic creationism believers. The Telegraph reports that it may be the sentiments of this group that provided the impetus for the evolution website filtering. Journalist Tom Chivers writes: “A 2006 survey of 34 countries put Turkey 34th, just behind the US, in the rate of popular acceptance of evolution.”

Chivers questions the increasing number of Turkish medical and biology students who are rejecting evolution, the very foundation of their studies. He argues that denying evolution is equivalent to denying gravity, and that students sell themselves short if they believe otherwise.

To me, the censorship of any scientific theory unrelated to obscene or inappropriate content is a cause for concern. Internet users can check which sites are forbidden on guvenlinet.org and vote against having sites banned. It is unclear, however, how many votes are necessary to remove a website from the filtering program.

via Turkish Government Censors Darwin, Evolution | Care2 Causes.

January 9, 2012
Harun Yahya, Has an Influence U.s. Creationists

Reuters , one of the worldâs biggest news agencies, issued an article of Tom Heneghan on November 22,. (News from Reuters News Agency reach 1 billion people a day) The report under the headline âCreation vs. Darwin takes Muslim twist in Turkeyâ included evolution themed works of world-famous writer Harun Yahya and how evolution belief lost ground in Turkey in the recent years. This report found a wide echo in various newspapers including Washington Post, the most important newspaper of USA, and anarray of prominent news sites includen MSNBC, YahooNews, AolNews. Some remarks are as follows:

A lavishly illustrated “Atlas of Creation” is mysteriously turning up at schools and libraries in Turkey, proclaiming that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the real root of terrorism.

Arriving unsolicited by post, the large-format tome offers 768 glossy pages of photographs and easy-to-read text to prove that God created the world with all its species.

At first sight, it looks like it could be the work of United States creationists, the Christian fundamentalists who believe the world was created in six days as told in the Bible.

But the author’s name, Harun Yahya, reveals the surprise inside. This is Islamic creationism, a richly funded movement based in predominantly Muslim Turkey which has an influence U.S. creationists could only dream of.

Creationism is so widely accepted here that Turkey placed last in a recent survey of public acceptance of evolution in 34 countries — just behind the United States.

“Darwinism is dead,” said Kerim Balci of the Fethullah Gulen network, a moderate Islamic movement with many publications and schools but no link to the creationists who produced the atlas.

A DOSE OF RELIGION

Like the Bible, the Koran says God made the world in six days and fashioned the first man, Adam, from dust. Other details vary but the idea is roughly the same.

But unlike in the West, evolution theory has not undermined the traditional creation story for many Muslims.

In 1985, a paragraph on creationism as an alternative to evolution was added to high school science textbooks and a U.S. book “Scientific Creationism” was translated into Turkish.

In the early 1990s, leading U.S. creationists came to speak at several anti-evolution conferences in Turkey.

DARWIN AND TERROR

Since then, a home-grown strain of anti-Darwinist books has developed with a clearly political message.

“Atlas of Creation” offers over 500 pages of splendid images comparing fossils with present-day animals to argue that Allah created all life as it is and evolution never took place.

Then comes a book-length essay arguing that Darwinism, by stressing the “survival of the fittest,” has inspired racism, Nazism, communism and terrorism.

“The root of the terrorism that plagues our planet is not any of the divine religions, but atheism, and the expression of atheism in our times (is) Darwinism and materialism,” it says.

One Istanbul school unexpectedly received three copies recently. “It’s very well done, with magnificent photos – a very stylish tool of creationist propaganda,” said the headmaster.

The driving force behind these books is Adnan Oktar who over the past decade has published a flood of books under the pseudonym Harun Yahya.

“Harun Yahya has managed to create a media-based and popular form of creationism,” said Taner Edis, a Turkish-born physicist at Truman State University in Missouri.

Harun Yahya, has turned out over 200 books in Turkish and translated many of them into 51 other languages.

Oktar, 50, appears on the group’s Web site sporting a clipped beard and dapper suits. His works can be found in Islamic bookshops around the world and downloaded for free over the Internet.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Intelligent Design says some organisms are too complex to have evolved without some superior cause, but avoids calling that cause God because that would ban it from U.S. science textbooks.

But most Turks show no interest because they see no need to avoid naming God.

Other media which published this article:

– Washington Post, USA, 22 November 2006

– Indian Express, India, 23 November 2006

– Times of India, India, 23 November 2006

– Daily News & Analysis (DNA), India, 23 November 2006

– Financial Express, India, 22 November 2006

– Daily Times, Pakistan, 22 November 2006

– Reuters.uk, UK, 22 November 2006

– Reuters Canada, Canada, 22 November 2006

– ABC News, 22 November 2006

– MSNBC, 22 November 2006

– Yahoo!News, 22 November 2006

– AOLNews, 22 November 2006

– RealTime.com, 22 November 2006

– RichardDawkins.net, 25 November 2006

– Alarab online, UK, 22 November 2006

– ShortNews.com, Germany, 22 November 2006

– NewsMax.com, USA, 22 November 2006

– History News Network, USA, 22 November 2006

– Free Republic.com, USA, 22 November 2006

– Mercado Digital, Arjantin, 26 November 2006

Under the pen name of Harun Yahya, Adnan Oktar has written some 250 works. His books contain a total of 46,000 pages and 31,500 illustrations. Of these books, 7,000 pages and 6,000 illustrations deal with the collapse of the Theory of Evolution. You can read, free of charge, all the books Adnan Oktar has written under the pen name Harun Yahya on these websites www.harunyahya.com

via Echo-usa – Total oil energy efficiency – Shell alternative energy – Reuters (istanbul): Harun Yahya, Has an Influence U.s. Creationists | Bethel Seminary.

November 28, 2010
Poll reveals public doubts over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

Belief in creationism is widespread in Britain, according to a new survey.

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 5:02PM GMT 06 Feb 2009

More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a “designer” must have lent a hand, the findings suggest.

And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years.

The survey, by respected polling firm ComRes, will fuel the debate around evolution and creationism ahead of next week’s 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, said the findings revealed a worrying level of scientific ignorance among Britons.

In the survey, 51 per cent of those questioned agreed with the statement that “evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages”

A further 40 per cent disagreed, while the rest said they did not know.

The suggestion that a designer’s input is needed reflects the “intelligent design” theory, promoted by American creationists as an alternative to Darwinian evolution.

Asked whether it was true that “God created the world sometime in the last 10,000 years”, 32 per cent agreed, 60 per cent disagreed and eight per cent did not know.

The findings – to be published tomorrow in a report by Theos, a theology think-tank – follow a row over the place of creationism in education.

A recent poll of science teachers found that one in three believe creationism should be taught in science classes alongside evolution and the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

However, Michael Reiss, a biologist and Anglican cleric, was forced to resign as the Royal Society’s director of education after suggesting that creationism should be discussed in lessons “not as a misconception but as a world view”.

Speaking at the British Association Festival of Science at the University of Liverpool last year, Professor Reiss estimated that about one in 10 children was from a family which supported a creationist rather than evolutionary viewpoint.

He said his experience had led him to believe it was more effective to include discussion about creationism alongside scientific theories, rather than simply giving the impression that such children were wrong.

The research for Theos shows that the level of support for creationism is much higher than Professor Reiss’s estimation, but also indicates that many people who believe in God also consider evolution to be the most realistic explanation for the origins of living things.

Paul Woolley, the director of Theos said: “Darwin is being used by certain atheists today to promote their cause.

“The result is that, given the false choice of evolution or God, people are rejecting evolution.”

While many fundamentalist Christians believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible’s account of the earth’s creation, the Church of England last year issued a statement conceding it had been over-defensive in dismissing Darwin’s ideas in the past.

The Church launched a website promoting the naturalist’s evolutionary views on which it said: “Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still.”

Prof Dawkins expressed dismay at the findings of the ComRes survey, of 2,060 adults, which he claimed were confirmation that much of the population is “pig-ignorant” about science.

“Obviously life, which was Darwin’s own subject, is not the result of chance,” he said.

“Any fool can see that. Natural selection is the very antithesis of chance.

“The error is to think that God is the only alternative to chance, and Darwin surely didn’t think that because he himself discovered the most important non-theistic alternative to chance, namely natural selection.”

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, accused Dawkins of evolving into a “very simple kind of thinker”.

He said: “His argument for atheism goes like this: either God is the explanation for the wide diversity of biological life, or evolution is. We know that evolution is true. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

“I’m an evangelical Christian, but I have no difficulties in believing that evolution is the best scientific account we have for the diversity of life on our planet.”

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, 06 Feb 2009

March 21, 2009