…and this is a 
Poor Adnan Oktar. The New Humanist published an exposé, and he and his organization are clearly freaking out. I've been getting several near-hysterical emails a day from the Turkish creationist mouthpiece, Seda Aral, insisting in many different font colors that the accusations are baseless and are a sign that the humanist movement is melting down. They've also come out with these stilted videos where Oktar goes page by page through the New Humanist.
Man. That looks like a really good magazine.
And then the creationists have produced a web page that claims to address criticisms of Oktar. For instance, you may recall that in his lavish creationist book, Atlas of Creation, he claims that organisms never change; the bulk of the book consists of plagiarized photos, pairing a picture of a modern organism with a fossil that shows relatively little change. The classic example of his sloppy methodology is that one of the pairs is of caddis flies, and the modern example is this one, an artificial lure, complete with fishhook.
Well, they have an explanation for that now: uh, yeah, they meant to do that. It was a model, yeah, that's the ticket. They put that picture in the book intentionally, yeah, and they knew they'd catch Richard Dawkins. And then Adnan would get a date with Heather Locklear! Yeah, that's the ticket!
The claim regarding the caddisfly: Dawkins highlighted the photograph of caddisfly in Adnan Oktar's opus, Atlas of Creation as a great discovery. However this is the photograph of a model particularly put by the author in the book. Whether the photograph is of a model or not does not change the fact that this living being is still alive in our day. Desperate, speechless and bored in the face of the extraordinary evidences of Creation in the Atlas of Creation that invalidate evolution, Dawkins takes every opportunity to express this photograph of a model particularly put by the author in his book as a great discovery. By this attitude Dawkins, in fact, reveals the pathetic situation in which Darwinism finds itself. Caddisfly lives in our time with the same appearance its millions of years old fossil has. That is, it has not undergone any change. That is why Dawkins feels offended.
Yeah, evolution is pathetic, because they noticed that Adnan Oktar proudly and intentionally included a photo of a fake fly in his book! That doesn't quite explain why the creationists have been purging the photos in their more recent work, however.
They're very defensive about the Atlas of Creation, too. They insist that Oktar's work is respected everywhere.
New Humanist seems to be in trouble probably due to the extraordinary, real and scientific evidence submitted by Mr. Adnan Oktar to Darwinism. Indeed, due to this trouble the magazine made a very interesting comment and claimed that Mr. Oktar's claims are met with lampoon in the West. Yet the editorial board in question very well knows that Mr. Oktar provides precise and concrete evidence against Darwinism which is a theory that thoroughly lacks any evidence. Indeed for this very reason he is the one Creationist author whose views are most respected all around the world. Readers worldwide enjoy his books which are also downloaded in ample amounts on the Internet.
I hate to be the one to break the news to him, but the Atlas of Creation is widely regarded as a joke. I know quite a few scientists, and we've talked about it; receiving a copy of his book is an opportunity for mirth, and we kind of hope that he'll send us one…to laugh over. I felt left out for a while when I didn't get one, and a colleague gave me one out of sympathy—I've since felt some vindication, though, as they've sent me three more copies now, with different colors of covers.
They are a hoot. I should scan in some of the ridiculous arguments they make, sometime; the photoshopped skeletons to illustrate what evolutionists ought to find but haven't makes me laugh every time.
Comments
Posted by: FlameDuck | November 18, 2009 8:59 AM
Wait? Richard Dawkins is a Darwinist? I thought he was a Dawkinsist!
Posted by: Anubis Bloodsin the third
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November 18, 2009 9:00 AM
Talk about a busted flush...kindda reminds me about pompous and ridiculous pastors pissing in the wind!
Hysterical and uncoordinated and extremely embarrassing.
Creationism really is in the final spasms of brain death if this is the best they can muster...priceless!
Posted by: MrFire
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November 18, 2009 9:02 AM
You clearly don't understand Oktard's point.
There's no way that fishhook could come about naturally. It's intelligently designed!
Posted by: Markus Eichhorn
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November 18, 2009 9:03 AM
You should scan the graphic of a fish morphing into a starfish, which made me wet myself with laughter the first time I saw it. I show the Atlas to my first-year undergraduates in tutorials and let them tear it to shreds, it's that easy.
Posted by: FlameDuck | November 18, 2009 9:04 AM
Oh and BTW, being "The most respected Creationist author in the world" doesn't really amount to much. It's a bit like being the smartest tea-bagger, the most vocal mute, or the most popular child molester in prison.
Even when you win, you still fail. Hard.
Posted by: AJ Milne OM
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November 18, 2009 9:07 AM
Oh man, Oktar, now you've done it, man. No way in hell you're going to win the award for 'most deserving noisy believer of the year' with a pathetic, desperate display like this...
I mean, sure, you might get some sympathy votes. But that's just not the stuff a first place finish is made of, guy. What were you thinking?
Better luck next year, I guess...
(/Or hope they open up a 'most amusing display of panic' category, mebbe... And my sympathies, 'n all.)
Posted by: Valdyr | November 18, 2009 9:08 AM
What exactly is "Darwinism", and why do creationists keep upholding Darwin's old-ass book as the final word on evolution? Are they so entrenched in the "revealed truth" worldview that they can't comprehend that what scientists refer to as "evolution" is not a single idea espoused by a single person, but a multidisciplinary theory with mutually reinforcing areas of evidence and contributions by thousands upon thousands of different minds over a period of 150 years?
Just wondering.
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred
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November 18, 2009 9:21 AM
Well well well. All the crazy religions that want to kill each other unite against the common enemy.
Reason.
Posted by: madbull
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November 18, 2009 9:26 AM
That bastard has yellow painted my country as a part of his islamic fkkin union !!
He's left out a lil patch though , prolly that's where he'll send the hindu extremists he cant convert
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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November 18, 2009 9:26 AM
Hah! All of the evil western imperialist Darwinists have flagrantly displayed your credulity! The evidence presented forthwith by gullible scientists has all been heretofore manufactured and sublimely veiled for discovery by the great respected creationist Oktar and his acolytes.
Truly, it was they who placed tiktaalik in the Devonian rocks at Ellesmere Island for later uncovering by Neil Shubin and his minions. Surely it was they who placed the junk in your DNA. The procedure of which was quite simplistic.
This running about as if you were village fowl recently separated from your skill indicates the dire predicament in which you find yourselves. Darwin is dead (and was neither resurrected, nor borne away on the wings of a flying steed, so he can't be much of a prophet at all, now, can he?), and his words are scattered about on the four winds like lost and stumbling puppies. Or perhaps kittehs. And so you final Darwinists clutch at every single misdirection and obvious falsity we place before you!
When you can only make a show-tune production of a lure for the capturing of fish (such as the above-mentioned never-fish of tiktaalik), you have demonstrated the paucity of your angry anti-creation worldview.
Best wishes, and go with God,
Adnan Oktar
Posted by: Kris | November 18, 2009 9:38 AM
I will say this: the photographs in the "Atlas of Creation" are quite beautiful. Don't read the words, just look at the pictures! Even if they are of fishing lures.
Posted by: Mango | November 18, 2009 9:50 AM
Was Oktar's appeal denied? I can't find news on it.
Posted by: Taz | November 18, 2009 9:50 AM
I think we should push the idea that creationism is a Muslim plot against god-fearing Western science. It might make a few Western creationists' heads explode.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | November 18, 2009 9:59 AM
#5: you beat me to what I was going to write (it's almost uncanny). So I'll stick to something more serious. I don't see the Atlas of Creation as a laughing matter. Its promoters have lots of money and influence, and that's scary. Where does all this money come from, by the way? Private donators? Or fundamentalist Muslim countries, perhaps?
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | November 18, 2009 10:20 AM
Creationism repeats itself: once as a farce, and once as a farce.
Pssst, PZ... a caddisfly isn't a fly any more than a dragonfly is. Beetles, butterflies, lice, fleas, almost all insects are more closely related to the flies than the caddisflies are.
Posted by: littlejohn | November 18, 2009 10:22 AM
The smartest teabagger. I like it. I'm also fond of "like being the prettiest one on The View."
By the way, I "particularly" ran my car into that tree. No, really.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 18, 2009 10:25 AM
And some used without accreditation to the photographer / original publication.
ie. stolen
Posted by: Hans | November 18, 2009 10:25 AM
You should use those extra copies of the Atlas as prizes for contests. Or you should give one to the person who suggested this.
Posted by: Islander | November 18, 2009 10:27 AM
Don't you people see!? If you take away the hook, the caddisfly no longer works as a lure... IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY!!!
evilutionists pwnd
Posted by: jpf | November 18, 2009 10:28 AM
He sounds kind of familiar...
Posted by: Holytape | November 18, 2009 10:28 AM
They need a bigger picture of the amber specimen. Although the picture isn't good, it looks like the the wings are perpendicular to the body, instead of laying tent-like over the body. The abdomen also appears to be curving upward, and the thorax appears to give it a humped-back look. Those are characteristics I tend to associate with Ephemeroptera (mayflies), instead of Trichoptera (caddisflies). I think they mis-ID'ed the fossil.
Posted by: bevo/devo | November 18, 2009 10:32 AM
That's what she said
Posted by: InfuriatedSciTeacher | November 18, 2009 10:38 AM
Shocking. How such a respected creationist would get his science wrong? Oh wait, right...
Posted by: barkdog | November 18, 2009 10:39 AM
@David Marjanović, OM
This is the right month, but I think 18 Brumaire was about ten days ago.
Posted by: Stephanie W. | November 18, 2009 10:41 AM
Echoing #15 -
Caddisfly ought to be one word (and yes, my spell check is disagreeing with me on this, so I'm guessing yours did too and that's why you went with two) since the common names in the format "[descriptor] fly(two words)" are reserved for the dipterans.
Are beetles closer, though? I thought Amphiesmenoptera was the sister group of the Antliophora. But I'm miserable at taxonomy, so, grain of salt.
Posted by: Larry
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November 18, 2009 10:41 AM
I've been searching for a book that demonstrates the evolution of fishing flies from their creation 6000 years ago to today. I plan on studying the macro evolution of Adams trout fly to the multi-hued Tarpon fly in preparation for writing my dissertation.
Be assured, plenty of field work in Montana and Florida is planned. I may even have to fly down to New Zealand to study the southern hemisphere branch of the trout fly.
Posted by: baldywilson | November 18, 2009 10:51 AM
@Chistopher Thill
None of the above. The New Humanist article went in to this subject quite deeply (I'm a subscriber, so I'd already seen this). The group recruit rich young people, who then - it appears - raid their partents bank accounts. Plus a fair amount of extortion and black-mail, which is at the center of the criminal charge that the NH article mentions.
@PZ
It is, it really is :) Although the editor did get caught out by an HIV denialist recently, but too his credit he admitted he'd been had.
Posted by: BAllanJ | November 18, 2009 10:57 AM
I have some more evidence for yaya's next book...
My granddaughter has a rubber dinosaur that looks a lot like sciency recreations of stuff that lives 70 million years ago... so no evolution, therefore, god.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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November 18, 2009 11:02 AM
Of course they're sweating. They've never been in a hole that they didn't bravely dig deeper, and such digging causes perspiration.
And don't they have anybody who can write English, or should I say, Engrish? Several of those sentences could very well go into the "Engrish" section at lolcats, etc.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Richard Eis | November 18, 2009 11:05 AM
Isn't this the book they had to give away free?
Kinda like the bible. Everyones got some, no one paid for them.
Posted by: Gabby | November 18, 2009 11:09 AM
I've got a first edition and I'm thrilled to have it!
Seriously, if you haven't seen one of these, get one. The size of the thing is only surpassed by the weight of sheer stupid involved.
HI-FREAKIN-LARIOUS
Posted by: evirus | November 18, 2009 11:12 AM
wait a minute, i just realized something, when it comes to their "picture of a model" they see nothing wrong with continuing to use the claim associated with that picture. but when we "evolutionists" use things like embryonic development, and and the peppered moths, they rapidly declare it to be false because picture-esq examples aren't accurate.
Posted by: Sastra
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November 18, 2009 11:13 AM
I watched the little video, and found it amusing that one of Oktar's big selling points was that New Humanist magazine had blasphemous, disrespectful pictures. Guess he knows how to push his audience's buttons. Look at this, an illustration of Satan standing along with images of people from different religions! Look at this, Jesus covered in blood! Look at this, a cartoon showing a Muslim man with Muslim women posed as if they're in the Mafia! Ooh. Doesn't that just tell you all you need to know?
But I noticed that on the same page where he dwells on a couple of the images there also appears to be a photoshopped pic of Darwin with deer antlers. They're even disrespecting Darwin! He is being mocked! I wonder why he didn't point that one out, too.
Posted by: Quidam
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November 18, 2009 11:14 AM
The Caddis fly lure was only one of the many silly illustrations. My favourite was this picture of a 'frog' fossil
You don't have to be an expert* in vertebrate paleontology to notice that the fossil 'frog' has - a tail. A closer examination will show that the legs are considerably different to those of the modern frog and not capable of leaping. For comparison, here is a fossil of an actual frog
Yes folks this frog that has not evolved in 280 million years is in fact a Salamander.
This fossil may indeed be understood by all, even the most illiterate (Wm. Smith)
* An expert in vertebrate paleontology could identify it as Karaurus
Posted by: noah | November 18, 2009 11:15 AM
theyre just confused as to what evolution is. evolution is what determines how fast a planet can spin!
http://www.creationastronomy.com/preview/
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred
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November 18, 2009 11:17 AM
I've noticed that. "Evolution" means anything in science that contradicts creationism.
Posted by: Masks of Eris | November 18, 2009 11:30 AM
"I am the Creation-Man, the superhero of creation science! Shrivel before my reasoned argumentation!"
"Er, Mr. Man, sir... your fly is undone."
"I knew you would mention that, since your bankrupt worldview has nothing else to say! Indeed I go everywhere with my fly undone, for so I catch Darwinists wherever I go!"
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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November 18, 2009 11:49 AM
Yes, again they go with the dishonesty. Oh yeah, and the double-standards, and lies, and misrepresentations, and misunderstandings, baseless assertions, hurt feelings, goal-post shifting, sneering, jeering, and sore-loser cheering.
And did I mention the lies?
Posted by: RHBourdeau | November 18, 2009 11:59 AM
Did he really say in that video "They included a picture taken of me in the Mental Institution?" Did I read that incorrectly?
**Leave Adnan Oktar alone!**
He's a mental patient!
Posted by: Brian Jordan | November 18, 2009 12:07 PM
Note that Oktar not only claims that the "caddisfly" photo was put there deliberately but that he photographed a plastic model.
However, posters on the Richard Dawkins Foundation forum discovered that the photograph was by Graham Owen - the man who actually made the fishing lure. Oh what a tangled web...
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=33524 explains but I can't find the original post where the source was spotted.
Posted by: Holytape | November 18, 2009 12:10 PM
I was wrong. I found a larger picture. The specimen in amber circled behind the lure isn't what they were claiming to be a caddisfly. The caddisfly specimen has been cropped from the picture.
Caddisfly is one word and they are fair close to true flies.
(((Lepidoptera (butterflies)+ Trichoptera (Caddisflies))+(Siphonaptera (fleas)+Diptera (flies)))+ ?Mecoptera (scorpionflies))
?Strepsiptera (twisted-wing parasites.)
Mecoptera could possibly be paraphyletic with Nannochoristidae more closely related to Diptera+Siphonaptera. Strepsiptera could be sister to Diptera, Coleoptera or Endopterygota as a whole.
Posted by: Zmidponk | November 18, 2009 12:11 PM
I guess they totally missed that the criticisms over this photo are about Oktar's methodology, not his argument. Even assuming that Oktar is correct to say that caddis flies have not evolved for a considerable period of time, and exist as living specimens today in the same form as they existed millions of years ago, Oktar should have used such a living specimen, instead of slapping down the first thing he saw that would seem to bolster his argument, even if it has the unfortunate status of not actually being such a living organism, which is what his argument relies on.
Unfortunately for him, even if he had, and, again, assuming what he says about caddis flies is correct (I have no idea if it is or isn't), this would still fail to make his argument unflawed, as the simple fact that SOME organisms have not evolved, for one reason or another, does not logically lead to the conclusion that ALL organisms have failed to evolve, especially as it also fails to negate the massive amounts of evidence that other organisms HAVE evolved.
Posted by: Rey Fox | November 18, 2009 12:16 PM
"Pssst, PZ... a caddisfly isn't a fly any more than a dragonfly is."
Oh come on, man. They both got wings, they both go bzzzzzzzz, right?
Posted by: emma radnitzky | November 18, 2009 12:21 PM
richarddawkins.com is blocked in Turkey because of Adnan Oktar.
Posted by: Brian Jordan | November 18, 2009 12:35 PM
@ emma #44
"richarddawkins.com is blocked in Turkey because of Adnan Oktar"
Smacks head! Why didn't think of that - what an own goal by Oktar! Because he can't see the RDF forum, he didn't realise just what a pillock he is!
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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November 18, 2009 12:55 PM
Or as Dembski put it:
I mean get real, they're all just pretending to be stupid, when they're really geniuses.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Darren Garrison | November 18, 2009 1:32 PM
Quoth PZ: "I should scan in some of the ridiculous arguments they make, sometime"
No need to do that-- the full books are available on the web:
http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/science_books/biology_genetics/AtlasCreation1.html
http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/science_books/biology_genetics/AtlasCreation2.html
http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/science_books/biology_genetics/AtlasCreation3.html
Posted by: Alan B | November 18, 2009 2:14 PM
Related to #40, Brian Jordan
Graham Owen claims that the Atlas uses 4 of his flies. He has some wonderful pictures of his work - some of which have step by step "how to" instructions:
http://www.grahamowengallery.com/fishing/more-fly-tying.html
Posted by: homosoicus | November 18, 2009 3:55 PM
I want a copy of the Atlas of Creation so bad I would almost pay money for it. Please share more samples.
Posted by: Brian Jordan | November 18, 2009 8:29 PM
@homosoicus "I want a copy of the Atlas of Creation so bad I would almost pay money for it."
Maybe if you could get your hands on a copy of Ray-Ray's perverted "Origins" you could do a swap? You'd need, though, to find someone with a table needing its leg propping up rather less than your table, I fancy.
Posted by: meprimate | November 19, 2009 12:34 AM
About a year ago I happened across Adnan Oktar's website. It was very different from the one I saw
today. A year ago he had 32 (I counted) big photos
of himself sprinkled over just a few pages. It was one of the most blatantly egotistical displays I've ever seen. Yes, thirty-two and they were big.
Posted by: EricB | November 19, 2009 12:46 AM
PZ,
You could send me one of your extra copies of the book....I am sure there is NO WAY IN HELL one would be sent to a mere high school biology teacher like myself....would love to be the DOLT who could tear it apart.
Posted by: Midnight Rambler
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November 19, 2009 4:13 AM
The whole "Strepsiptera as flies" thing is pretty much done for; let's face it, it was pretty silly to begin with. They're almost certainly in one of the other positions.Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | November 19, 2009 6:04 AM
Zmidponk:
What you said, but more so. Looking vaguely similar in a pair of photos (or, frequently, obviously belonging to different groups, like salamander and frog, snake and eel, insect and lure...) simply fails to establish what Oktar purports to prove in any case. There's no reason to accept the claim that 'some organisms have not evolved', though it's true that some lineages have been extremely conservative morphologically for many millions of years. We've no reason to think they're also unchanged genetically or behaviourally, and it's unlikely anyone could prove it.
The Atlas of Creation is the plagiaristic work of a morally bankrupt loon ignorant of biology and palaeontology. That's how seriously we take it.
Posted by: benjamin behrendt | November 19, 2009 9:02 AM
thank you for this video i read the new humanist and after this video know i now it was a lie, mr. Adnan Oktar has destroyed the Theory of Evolution.
Greats from Germany
Posted by: Martin Brock | November 19, 2009 10:09 AM
The caddis fly doesn't look fake to me. The lure looks like a dead caddis fly with a hook stuck in its abdomen, maybe sprayed with shellac or something too. I suppose it is.
Not that it matters. Obsessing over the Biblical literalists seems a terrible waste of time to me.
Posted by: Richard Eis | November 19, 2009 10:49 AM
Oh noes, our theory explodiated. Quick alert the reptilians. The fishing lure has uncovered their great and cunning plot.
Posted by: Bernard Bumner | November 19, 2009 11:08 AM
Posted by: Bernard Bumner | November 19, 2009 11:10 AM
Comments mangled my previous post.
Still, the link to Graham Owens fishing lure website still works.
Posted by: astrounit | November 19, 2009 2:07 PM
That guy - Adnan Oktar - is a full-of-himself LIAR.
Posted by: John Harshman | November 19, 2009 2:47 PM
Forget the fishing lure. I'd like to see their response to the crinoid problem. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be one. Has anyone ever told them that every picture in the book that they think is of a living crinoid (an echinoderm) is actually of a featherduster worm (an annelid)? That to me, is much funnier than the single use of a fishing lure; after all, it *was* a caddisfly fishing lure.
Posted by: John Harshman | November 19, 2009 3:36 PM
I see that Richard Dawkins, in his masterful dissection of the book, mentions the crinoid/annelid, as well as the eel/sea snake. My favorite mistake that Dawkins doesn't mention is one page where he shows a fossil spider crab, and the corresponding living picture is of a crab spider. Ah well, at least they're both arthropods. They haven't changed!
Posted by: Martin Brock | November 20, 2009 8:41 AM
The fake caddisfly seems quite intelligently designed. A genuine caddisfly seems still more intelligently designed. Paley is right about that. I suppose the confusion involves the nature of "intelligence" rather than supernatural contradictions of Darwin. Why shouldn't natural processes occuring across the biosphere over eons be called "intelligent"?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 20, 2009 8:56 AM
Martin, the way the ID folks define intelligence is that there is a conscious being that is the cause of things.
I'm not sure why you keep wanting to redefine it? What does that accomplish in this debate?
They will always be defining it as I said above so us adopting a different definition of intelligence than what is being posited by the creationists is worthless.
Posted by: Martin Brock | November 20, 2009 2:52 PM
I don't redefine Behe's or other folks' "intelligence". I rather suggest another, more scientific definition.
Defining "intelligence" differently is hardly worthless. Who made Michael Behe the lord of "intelligence"? John McCarthy coined "artificial intelligence" in 1955, when Michael Behe was three years old.
William Paley's Watchmaker Argument is very persuasive to many people, and these people are not idiots. They have an intuitive sense of the dualistic separation of Mind from Body, and they associate "intelligence" with an immaterial Mind, and they associate the usefully complex organization ("design") with "intelligence".
Behe shows these people "intelligent design" in nature and asks, "What could have generated these intelligently designed forms but something like the Mind in your head?" That's a fair question, and "'Random mutations' can do it with enough time" is not a very persuasive answer. Evolution by the Natural Selection of Random Mutations (ENSRM) is not simply "random". It's not a long series of coin tosses.
Instead of accepting Cartesian dualism and granting Paley's argument, we could instead ask, "What is the 'intelligence' in your head?" We can't understand similarities between the forms generated by ENSRM and products of a human mind without understanding the information processing in the human mind. The similarities do exist. Paley isn't just making that up.
Posted by: Steve_C | November 20, 2009 3:06 PM
Intelligent implies a designer with intent, with a goal in mind. That's what the IDist intend.
Posted by: gogogadget | November 22, 2009 11:29 AM
man almost all comments showing the evolutionist mindset. NATURAL SELECTION, flame anybody and get yourself natural selected :P