Edis on Islamic creationism 21 Feb 2008 One of the more curious episodes in recent cultural history is the adoption, word for word, by Islamists particularly in Turkey of the American Christian fundamentalist antievolution schtick. Nobody knows more about this than Taner Edis, whose book An Illusion of Harmony: Science And Religion in Islam outlines how this came about and the relation between science and Islam (overall: not good). Here’s a nice short article by Edis, from the History of Science newsletter. Evolution History Religion
General Science The World According to Genesis: The Flood 11 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 The Flood is perhaps the most scientifically interesting story in Genesis, and it has, in fact, been discussed by scientists for over 400 years. Now we are taking the text to tell us of a world, not taking the world to tell us what to think of the text, but… Read More
Evolution Darwin [quotes] wrong 12 Feb 2009 This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, but it turns out that a number of widely quoted sayings of Darwin are, in fact, invented. I would not be surprised to find out they are taken from reviews and other authors’ summaries of Darwin. Read More
Epistemology Pattern cladism and the myth of theory dependence of observation 4 Mar 2011 A new paper has been published in the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, entitled “Pattern Cladism, Homology, and Theory-Neutrality” by Christopher Pearson. Either the journal has done something horrible to the text, or the author doesn’t know the difference between Willi Hennig and William Hennig, or between Gareth… Read More
Well, at least they’re honest about why they don’t like evolution. At least one can begin the discussion where it needs to start, with the religious beliefs, instead of all the ID hokum.
I thought Harun Yahya was the pseudonym for a real person, Adnan Oktar, rather than a movement, which is how Edis describes it/him. He is certainly well-known in Indonesia, where huge numbers of Harun Yahya books on science have been translated into Indonesian and are prominently displayed in the bookshops. Most look like – I haven’t read them – fairly straight accounts of various aspects of science aimed at schools. It is where evolution arises that he goes totally ape. I have a book (with a CD!) entitled in Indonesian “The Human Disaster of Darwinism”, with photos of such well-known “scientists” as Darwin, Hitler, Mao and Stalin on the cover. A conference on his “works ” was held in Jakarta a year or two ago. It is sad that Indonesian children (and adults) are misled in this manner, but Indonesian debate on science is generally very low level. For example, they seemed not to want to know about the Flores Hobbit, despite it being found in their own country, and despite (or because of) the obvious implications for human evolution.
Oktar may be the figurehead, but he clearly doesn’t pump out the thousands of pages of material – it’s a group effort and often plagiarised from American creationists (and the glossy photographs are also stolen in many cases from real scientific work). He’s also a Holocaust denier and Masonic-conspiracist.
Oktar may be the figurehead, but he clearly doesn’t pump out the thousands of pages of material – it’s a group effort and often plagiarised from American creationists (and the glossy photographs are also stolen in many cases from real scientific work). He’s also a Holocaust denier and Masonic-conspiracist.