More Bad News From Turkey

It seems that, in Turkey, there will be no teaching of evolution any longer.  NPR reports:

When children in Turkey head back to school this fall, something will be missing from their textbooks: any mention of evolution.

The Turkish government is phasing in what it calls a values-based curriculum. Critics accuse Turkey's president of pushing a more conservative, religious ideology — at the expense of young people's education.

At a playground in an upscale, secular area of Istanbul, parents and grandparents express concern over the new policy.

"I'm worried, but I hope it changes by the time my grandchildren are in high school," says Emel Ishakoglu, a retired chemical engineer playing with her grandchildren, ages 5 and 2. "Otherwise our kids will be left behind compared to other countries when it comes to science education."

With a curriculum that omits evolution, Ishakoglu worries her grandchildren won't get the training they'll need if they want to grow up to be scientists like her.

While it is certainly true that this kind of thing also happens sporadically in the United States, like here, what is going on in Turkey is entirely religiously-based.  The interpretation of scripture, in this case, the Koran, will always come first. 

Henry Morris was once asked where Hell was.  His response was that it was directly beneath our feet.  When pressed with the knowledge of observations that there is no place for Hell in the center of the earth because the earth is solid down to the core, he replied that the sounding equipment had to be wrong because that is where the scriptures tell us it is.  It is very hard to fight against that level of strict ideology.  

Trouble in Turkey

As Tayyip Erdogan tightens his control over secular Turkey, the most recent casualty is evolutionary science.  The BBC News reports:

On Wednesday, the head of the education ministry's curriculum board Alpaslan Durmuş announced that a section on Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution would be excluded from biology textbooks in the ninth grade (14 and 15 year olds) from next year on.

Students are "too young to understand 'controversial subjects'", he said, adding that the topic will be delayed until undergraduate study.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already approved the proposed changes to the national curriculum, which are expected to be published next week after the Muslim Eid ending the fasting month of Ramadan.

"Turkey will be the second country after Saudi Arabia that excludes theory of evolution from its curriculum," says Feray Aytekin Aydogan, the head of Egitim-Sen - a teachers' union representing over 100,000 members across the country.

"Even in Iran, there are 60 hours of lessons on evolution and 11 hours on Darwin himself," she adds.

This has been brewing for some time in Turkey. Ten years ago, while the creationist movement had Adnan Oktar (nee Harun Yahya), as its voice, there was not unified support within the administration. That has changed.While there is resistance, it is not clear how much of it the new, conservative Islamic government will allow. 

All in the Service of a Message

A Youngstown, Ohio school district has come under fire for its inclusion of a video for tenth grade science that is produced by Adnan Oktar, also known as Harun Yahya, who was once interviewed favorably in the Intelligent Design blog Uncommon Descent (and not so favorably by The Guardian).  Yahya has a long history of being an Islamic creationist, holocaust denier and was jailed for a time in Turkey for unseemly behavior involving his organization and young girls.  

The story, by Zack Kopplin, in the Daily Beast, has this:

Youngstown, Ohio, students are learning creationism in school with materials from a Islamic, Holocaust-denying group accused of being a sex cult.

A curriculum map (PDF) recommends teachers in this public school district show a creationist video, Cambrian Fossils and the Creation of Species, as part of 10th-grade science education. The video claims that the Cambrian Explosion “totally invalidates the theory of evolution.” The Cambrian Explosion was a time period, nearly 550 million years ago, where, over the next tens of millions of years, the number of species on Earth experienced a (relatively) rapid expansion by evolutionary standards. Christian creationists regularly point to this explosion of life as evidence for creation by God and against evolution.

Blink and you’d miss the Islamic connection in the video. A black screen flashes for less than one second that says “this film is based on the works of Harun Yahya.” In the right corner, there’s a gold bubble that says, “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” in Arabic.

As alluded to above, it seems that U.S. ID supporters and creationists are perfectly happy to hitch their wagons to people like Yahya, as long as the message is anti-evolutionary. This is disturbing, since it obscures the other poisonous aspects of Yahya's message. Kopplin continues:

Youngstown City School District is trying to “teach the controversy,” which is an old creationist argument for sneaking religion into schools, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Rob Boston told The Daily Beast.

“The district is doing its students a disservice by pretending that a controversy exists when none does,” Boston said. “That the district is apparently inadvertently using material produced by an evolution-denying, anti-Semitic Islamic TV preacher who has been accused of running a sex cult only makes the situation worse.”

All in the service of a message.

Off-Topic: The Scapegoating of Larycia Hawkins and Another Evangelical Becomes Disillusioned

I have not been following the Larycia Hawkins Wheaton College controversy as well as I should.  I know that Wheaton is terminating her contract because of her public statements that Muslims and Christians worship the same God (a statement absurd on its face) but there is, as usual, considerably more to the story that Benjamin Corey, over at Patheos, delves into.  About the actual controversy, he writes:

At first it seemed like Dr. Larycia Hawkins would clearly be reinstated. Her statement that Muslims and Christians were both “people of the book” and people who, along with Jews, worship the God of Abraham, has been supported by well-respected evangelical theologians. When asked for clarification of her views in comparison to Wheaton’s statement of faith, Dr. Hawkings has consistently complied in great detail– fully affirming Wheaton’s entire statement of faith. I’ve read her personal statement of faith myself, and it’s not some liberal manifesto– it’s solidly evangelical. I could see how her statement of faith would put her at odds with liberal colleges, but evangelical ones? Absolutely not.

Yet, it seems that they are going about terminating her anyway.  Why?  Corey has some ideas:

Evangelicalism now is far closer to the fundamentalism they reacted against than perhaps anyone would have anticipated. Evangelicalism is the fundamentalism of our time. It’s fascinating from an anthropology standpoint, but tragic for the Kingdom Jesus came to establish. And this brings me to the real reason Dr. Hawkins is being terminated from Wheaton College:

The glue that holds fundamentalism together is the agreement upon a common enemy to fight, and Dr. Hawkins has rejected the notion that Muslims are the common enemy.

And this is a deal-breaker for Wheaton, whether they’ll have the courage (and self-awareness) to admit it or not. Even an informal student of culture can easily see that evangelicals in America, for the last several years, have consolidated around the agreement that Muslims are the great enemy of our time (Exhibit A: Franklin Graham’s Facebook page). For Dr. Hawkins to say she “stands in solidarity” with Muslims is a betrayal of one of their deepest held beliefs, and this (to them) makes her untrustworthy.

Read the whole piece.  I have read Dr. Hawkins' statement of faith and, while I accept that she wants to bring solidarity with Muslims into the mix by arguing that Muslims worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,  that makes a hash of many other aspects of Christianity.  For starters, Muslims are staunchly unitarian, while one of the basic tenets of Christianity is the trinity.  Secondly, and relatedly, they reject the divinity of Jesus—and that is a deal-breaker— and elevate the profit Mohammed to a level that makes the Catholic veneration of Mary look positively mild by comparison.

So, we have established that Islam is not Christianity.  But what of Judaism?  If Dr. Hawkins had worn a Sheitel instead and pledged solidarity with Jews everywhere by saying we worship the same God, would she have gotten the same reaction?  Franklin Graham has recently argued that we need to support Israel because, in the final analysis it wasn't the Jews who nailed him to the cross, it was all of us.  Although this is a historically myopic position, Graham received no rebukes for these statements.  Consequently, I wonder if the primary reason for Dr. Hawkins' removal is not that she broke with received evangelicalism/fundamentalism, but that she supported, in at least some small way, Islam.  After all, it is the self-same Graham that has recently also argued that Islam needs to be repelled at all cost and Mr. Graham is held in very high esteem (as he should be) by most evangelicals.  

I would, therefore, suggest that, in the context of the current geopolitical climate with constant news stories of radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the rise of ISIS, any support of Islam, however faint, is seen as conspiring with the Devil.  The College Board of Directors, to preserve its role in the fight (and to make sure that donor dollars keep pouring in) may have felt they had no choice but to go through with the termination, even in the face of limited evidence that Dr. Hawkins really had gone off the rails. 

I am not debating the merits of either Judaism or Islam in relation to Christianity.  I am staunchly Christian and find much in Islam very troubling.  Even moderate Islam seems deeply misogynistic and cruel by western and Christian standards.  I am, however, suggesting that Dr. Hawkins is being served up as a scapegoat in the broader war that evangelicalism is waging against one of its “enemies.”

English Education and the Rise of Islamic Radicalism

The Telegraph is reporting that education secretary Nicky Morgan has stripped kindergarten schools in the United Kingdom that teach creationism of taxpayer funding.  They write:

Any nursery that teaches creationism as scientific fact will be stripped of taxpayer funding. This is unlikely to apply to Christian nurseries as they tend to be more balanced. However large numbers of Muslim nurseries refuse to accept evolution. The rules will bring nurseries into line with schools. A government source stressed: “We are absolutely not saying, 'You can’t teach Bible stories’.”

This is a follow-up to a story that ran on Breitbart London, about the infiltration of the UK school system by radical Islamism.  The story on Breitbart reproduces a statement by Morgan to the Home Secretary, which includes the following:

But what Peter Clarke found is disturbing. His report sets out compelling evidence of a determined effort by people with a shared ideology to gain control of the governing bodies of a small number of schools in Birmingham.

Teachers have said they fear children are learning to be intolerant of difference and diversity. Instead of enjoying a broadening and enriching experience in school, young people are having their horizons narrowed and are being denied the opportunity to flourish in a modern multicultural Britain.

There has been no evidence of direct radicalisation or violent extremism. But there is a clear account in the report of people in positions of influence in these schools, with a restricted and narrow interpretation of their faith, who have not promoted fundamental British values and who have failed to challenge the extremist views of others.

Individuals associated with the Park View Educational Trust in particular have destabilised headteachers, sometimes leading to their resignation or removal. Particularly shocking is the evidence of the social media discussion of the Park View Brotherhood group whose actions “betray a collective mind-set that can fairly be described as an intolerant Islamist approach which denies the validity of alternative beliefs.”

Evidence collected by Peter Clarke shows that Birmingham City Council was aware of the practices that were subsequently outlined in the “Trojan Horse” letter long before it surfaced.

This is becoming a bit of an identity crisis for England, which has long prided itself on its MultiCulti viewpoint. The problem, of course, is sometimes you welcome viewpoints that have open hostility to yours.

Science Magazine: Turkish Scientists See Growing Antievolution Bias in Government

In an alarming and growing trend in Turkey, the main Turkish granting agency, The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey has denied a grant to a summer workshop on evolutionary biology. Science Magazine writes:

Now, the organizers are calling this the first open admission of a bias against evolutionary biology by Turkey's conservative government. The government began blocking educational evolution websites in 2011, and recently TÜBİTAK stopped publishing books on evolution, a decision it claimed was based on copyright issues.

The longer article is here.  In it, the ruling organization is quoted as saying the denial was based on objective peer-review.  The decision to stop publishing books on evolutionary biology because of copyright issues is a smokescreen. The government has been leaning toward creationism for some time and, when he was not in prison, Turkey's chief creationist, Adnan Oktar (neé Harun Yahya) enjoyed remarkable popularity. Four years ago, the Washington Post alerted the western world to this problem. At the time, Marc Kaufman wrote:

The Islamic anti-evolution campaign is taking place in Turkey, and not Egypt or Saudi Arabia, because it is the Muslim nation where evolution has been taken most seriously. Like the Bible, the Koran says that God created the Earth and everything on it, and in many Muslim nations that ends the discussion. But Turkey, which is officially secular, appears to be joining its Muslim neighbors on evolution. A recent survey, quoted in a 2008 article in the American journal Science, found that fewer than 25 percent of Turks accepted evolution as an explanation of how modern life came to be -- by far the lowest percentage of any developed nation. In a year in which conferences worldwide are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and his contribution to science, the battle against Darwinian thinking in Turkey has become something of a rout, even among aspiring science teachers.

It appears that the problem is increasing. In a sense, Turkey has it worse than the United States because the problem in the U.S. is largely the work of private organizations (AiG, ICR and the like) and in the local school boards and state legislatures. Where there are legal challenges, they are all one-sided. Creationists and ID supporters typically get their clocks cleaned. In Turkey, however, the ruling, central, Islamic government is supporting creationism. Anyone not supporting the government can get marginalized (or worse) simply on ideological grounds.

Hat tip to the Panda's Thumb

Muslims Rejecting Evolution

Ruth Gledhill, the religion correspondent for the Times Online writes an article examining current Muslim attitudes toward evolution. She writes:

Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, told the conference, being held in Egypt by the British Council, that in too many places students and academics believed they had to make a “binary choice” between evolution and creationism, rather than understanding that one could believe both in God and in Darwin’s theory.

Such is the understanding of many Christians today in the United States and Europe. This is largely promoted by both militant atheists and militant creationists. She continues:

Addressing the conference in Alexandria, organised for the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, he said that concerns among Muslims about evolution were being fuelled by Christian creationists. People in Muslim countries would find creationist theses on the internet and, not realising that these were on the fringes of scientific debate, assume that creationism had scientific credibility in the West.

“It is a serious problem,” he said. “It would be like going to my students and telling them the planets are not related to the stars, there is no relationship between them and gravitational pull or radiation, and they were all created on one day. We would not dream of describing the cosmos in such a ridiculous manner ... We cannot allow people to go into the 21st century with no understanding of science.”

He would not think of it and yet that is exactly what young earth creationists believe—without a shred of evidence to support it. Groups like the ICR that strive for scientific credibility have used the Internet as a tool to spread the creationist message.

The one thing that I teach my students in Information Literacy is that the Internet is a double-edged sword. It is great for finding all kinds of information that you would, ordinarily have to go to print resources to find but, because there is no editing or accountability, anybody can publish anything they want on the Internet without the slightest bit of academic integrity. Less-suspecting individuals will then take this information and incorporate it into their thought structure without realizing that it has no academic merit. That is why this blog (and many others) exists—to combat that in some small way. That I have to try to counter the lack of academic integrity of many other Christians is more than a little troubling.

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Richard and Judy Wonder Why

The Daily Express has an editorial by "The Nation's Favourite TV Couple," Richard and Judy on the rejection of evolution in the United States. The first line, describing the rejection of evolution by nearly 60% of the American public nearly made me snort a sandwich through my nose:

SOMETIMES a statistic leaps off the page, grabs one by the ears and shakes hard.

Yes, it does. The column is mostly lighthearted disbelief but along the way, there is a very, very, very sobering observation:

The same people who mock fundamentalist Islamists for believing that suicide bombers are martyrs, to be rewarded in paradise with honey and patiently-queueing virgins, will confidently tell you that God created the world in six days (ie 144 hours) and that all living things – dinosaurs, hummingbirds, elephants, sabre-toothed tigers, cockroaches and human beings – appeared in the same instant.

Sad, but true.
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Dawkins: Creationism Mostly a US Problem

The Irish Times has a short story on Richard Dawkins. Dawkins gave a speech in Dublin, at the RDS Concert Hall. Genevieve Carbery writes:

Dawkins said that while creationism was still largely an American problem, we needed to take stock of what was going on in the United States.

On this side of the Atlantic, Dawkins said that an influx of a very large Muslim population was difficult for scientists because Muslims believe that every single word of the Koran is true.

It may very well be that Islamic creationism will prove to be a more potent enemy than Christian fundamentalist creationism.

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Part of a Whole World View

News has come out of Nigeria of a Taliban-styled uprising that has left hundreds dead. AllAfrica has a report on several of the sect members that have been captured.They write:

He said that he believed the Nigerian "Taliban" group that engaged security forces in a bloody shoot out that left hundreds dead in Maiduguri town alone, fought for the reign of Islam "from here (Nigeria) to Spain".

He continued, "We hate Western education; it is a sin and we abhor it. It has polluted the world and if given a second chance I will continue to fight".

These groups truly want a return to Andalusia. The report continues:

So, the group had consciously modelled itself after the real Taliban, with many well-educated members, burning their certificates.

This brings to the fore one issue that many commentators have so far swept under the carpet; the fact that the group was really Islamic and not just a crazed sect, though it may rightly be said to hold crazy ideas aplenty.

One of such hard to understand idea is that Darwinism and the theory of evolution is anathema to the group. Why? Well, just as the group scorns the conventional idea of rainfall being caused by evaporation at the earth's surface and condensation as rain-bearing clouds, it opposes the teaching of Darwin's theory because it tends to remove the hand of God both in the making of rain each and every time and in the determination of every trait in the product of each and every human activity. Yet, while we may scoff at a terrible misunderstanding of a tested and proven law of Geography as the cause of rainfall, it would be foolhardy not to take seriously the group's antagonism to the Nigerian Constitution because they desire the Sharia system.

The group is apparently well-funded from outside, which is grim reminder that they do not exist in isolation but are part of a well-networked jihadist movement that demands a return to the eleventh century. Scary.

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Adnan Oktar Interviewed in Uncommon Descent

Uncommon Descent is a site devoted to Intelligent Design. William Dembski ran the site until November of 2008 after which Barry Arrington took over. Dembski still posts to the site quite often, though. Recently, they ran an interview with the Muslim creationist Adnan Oktar (a.k.a. Harun Yahya), who I have posted about several times. The interview, by someone only identified as "O'Leary" (Denyse O'Leary) is loaded with softballs that would make Chris Matthews blush. for example:

O’LEARY: Many claim that if people do not embrace Darwin and his followers’ theories, they cannot have an advanced technological culture. Others point out that the United States, arguably the world’s leader in science, features a population of which the majority doubts Darwin. Would you care to comment on that?

ADNAN OKTAR: This is totally classic Darwinist propaganda. Darwinists often resort to the idea that anyone who thinks scientifically has to be a Darwinist. For one thing, Darwinism is a pagan religion whose roots go back to the Sumerians and Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians also believed that life emerged spontaneously from the muddy waters of the Nile. The theory of evolution is a superstitious belief that has been around ever since and that is not supported by a shred of scientific evidence.

On the contrary, no matter what branch research or investigation may be conducted in, it has every time been proven that evolution is not possible. It is in fact Darwinists themselves who fly in the face of science, reject the facts revealed by science and who blacken the name of science by frauds of one kind and another.

There is no coherence in his statements. Darwinism goes back to Egypt and Sumeria??? The other half of his response is equally unbelievable:

Yet we have come up with 100 million fossils, fossils belonging to fully formed and perfect life forms that all show evolution never happened, and they have no rational answer to give. A profound silence reigns whenever the subject of fossils is raised. And everyone can see that. That is why Darwinists are desperately striving to keep Darwinism propped up with slogans and propaganda.

He offers not a shred of evidence for this position and his statement flies in the face of mountains of publications to the contrary—publications I am quite sure he has never read. His Atlas of Creation is a testament to what unbridled enthusiasm and absolutely zero scholarship will produce. The amazing thing is that the interviewer doesn't challenge him on any of these points.

But that is not why this interview is important. Increasingly, the Intelligent Design movement has become more antagonistic toward evolution supporters, despite having at least one principle researcher in their midst who supports it, Michael Behe. This antagonism has made for some strange bedfellows. Charles Taylor at LGF points out something else about Adnan Oktar that seems to go unremarked upon by O'Leary: He has written a book on holocaust denial called the Holocaust Deception. It is astounding that the Intelligent Design movement, in its efforts to step up its campaign against evolution, will associate itself with anyone who also doesn't support evolution. To be fair, O'Leary does point out that controversy swirls by linking to several not so flattering articles on the man but then presents the excuse that "it is a messy business." Messy enough to accept the work of a man who has embraced one of the biggest canards of the century, holocaust denial? About one of Oktar's other books, The Evolution Deceipt, O'Leary writes:

"I will also shortly post a review of Evolution Deceit, the most succinct and comprehensive of the critiques of overblown claims for Darwinian evolution that I have ever read."

I wonder if it is as "succinct and comprehensive" as his holocaust denial book? Is this really the direction the leaders of the ID movement want to go?

The Guardian interviews Adnan Oktar

The Monday issue of the Guardian carries an interview by religious correspondent Riazat Butt with Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar, who writes under the name Harun Yahya. He is responsible for the Atlas of Creation, Volumes 1-3, a huge effort that was mailed to science teachers the world over last year. Richard Dawkins had this to say about the content of the Atlas of Creation:

I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the "breathtaking inanity" of the content . Is it really inanity, or is it just plain laziness — or perhaps cynical awareness of the ignorance and stupidity of the target audience — mostly Muslim creationists. And where does the money come from?

Oktar doesn't say:

Oktar, squeezed into a white trouser suit, declines to reveal how the Atlas industry is funded, nor will he say how much he is paid, or indeed whether he is paid at all. Challenged to explain the apparent contradiction between his beliefs and his plush surroundings, he responds: "I want to resemble Prophet Solomon. Prophet Solomon was like this. He used to be well dressed. He liked being well dressed. His palace was beautiful; there were beautiful people around him. Allah is beautiful. Allah loves those who are beautiful, wants everywhere to be beautiful. Paradise is also beautiful. [The] aim of a Muslim should be beauty."

Surely he knows that at that point in Solomon's life, he was having some issues with his faith:

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech ^[a] the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. 7 On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods. (1 Kings 11: 4-8 NIV)

No matter. Onward. The interviewer notes:

What he thinks, unashamedly and unapologetically, is that Darwin was lying and that there has been no evolution. He repeats this point throughout the interview.

"Almost 100 million fossils have been unearthed so far. All of these show that plants, animals, humans and insects have never undergone evolution whatsoever and they were all created in the same way by God. We can see this fact in each fossil we come across. There is no fossil proving the contrary. If they can show one, I will reward them 10 trillion Turkish Lira [£4.4 trillion]."

Around a minute later he adds: "There exists no fossil to prove the Darwinian theory. If they can show a few fossils, I will reward them 10 trillion. But there are almost 100 million fossils proving creation. In Turkey, we have exhibited thousands of them."

Although somewhat guarded in their response to these claims, the writer quickly points out:

How does he reach these conclusions, I wonder, imagining him to have laboratories and researchers at his disposal. Oktar himself, by his own admission, has no scientific experience or background. He is not an academic. He studied interior design.

Interior design? That is as bad as having a degree in hydraulic engineering. On his site, there is a section on Letters of Appreciation written by individuals who have received the book. There are no biologists, palaeontologists or geologists listed, only politicians, cultural ministers and ambassadors. Meet the new face of creationism.

Salman Hameed on Islamic Creationism

The New Scientist has an interview with professor Salman Hameed of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, on the spectre of creationism in predominantly Islamic countries. To the question of how evolution is perceived in these countries, he replies:

If you ask the question of whether you accept evolution or not, we find that a large portion of people, vast majorities, reject evolution. Compared to the US, where 40% are comfortable with evolution, in the Muslim countries that would go down to 10, 15, or 20%. In Turkey, one of the more secular Muslim countries, the level is between 22 and 25%.

As to why this is the case, he says:

In some instances, evolution becomes a symbol for Western dominance and a sign of modernity. Evolution can act as a lighting rod, as a symbol of the West and everything that is bad about the West - usually translated as material culture or materialism.

He also points out something that seems to be missing in this country:

There is tremendous respect for scientists in the Muslim world, and I think biologists and other scientists should write in newspapers and magazines for Muslim audiences - write why we accept evolution, what is the evidence for evolution. I think this will be a great service.

As he and others have also noted, Harun Yahya is EVERYWHERE! Read the whole thing. Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.