Time for us all to give up. We've been defeated by Harun Yahya.
A fierce opponent of Darwinism, Yahya takes the credit for defeating the theory of evolution. "First, we offered Darwinists around the world 100 million fossils, which prove that this world came into being as a result of God's creationism and not because of evolution. Second, Darwin wrote in his books that people have to find transitional forms to prove the theory of evolution, but nobody has been able to find a single transitional form. Third, Darwinists claim that the first cell came into being as a coincidence. But it is impossible for even a single protein to be formed by chance. Fourth, we have proved that the skulls that were displayed as evidence of evolution are fake. Darwinism cannot explain how we can see or hear or sense with the support of our brain."
Polls conducted by newspapers in Germany, France, Switzerland and Denmark showed that 85-90 percent of Europeans no longer believed in the theory of evolution.
Wait, maybe we don't have to surrender. 1) Yahya doesn't have that many fossils; he has a book in which he plagiarized photos of fossils, and ignored any that represent non-extant forms. 2) We have lots of transitional forms, Yahya just closes his eyes to them. 3) The first cell was the product of chemical evolution, not coincidence. 4) The majority of the hominin skulls we know of are definitely genuine; the few fakes, like Piltdown, were exposed by scientists. 5) I don't even understand what he's trying to say with that comment about senses; Yahya is a gibbering moron.
That last sentence is contrived of imaginary statistics. Was Baghdad Bob representative of Islamic journalism or something?
- Log in to post comments
His lies for Allah looks a lot like the lies for Jesus that we see so often.
Jesus H. Christ... can these 'tards get some new talking points.
BTW I think that he got the stats around the wrong way. I would say as an off hand guess that 85-90% of people don't believe in creationism in Europe.
"85-90 percent of Europeans no longer BELIEVED in the theory of evolution"
maybe it weas just a passing phase.
One can almost see the upper echelons of the Turkish government wandering around with giant question marks floating above their heads. And asking each other why the European Union keeps black-balling them out of their club.
DT
Maybe he thinks if he says it loud enough for long enough it comes true?
I think I DO know what he means. How can he see or hear or sense with the support of THAT brain in HIS head? It's amazing that he hasn't forgotten to breathe and fallen down dead. It's a miracle! And he's described as an "intellectual" in the article. So he has that in common with Sarah Palin (giggle).
Maybe he meant that 85-90 percent of Europeans no longer _believed_ in the theory of evolution, they _know_ it's a fact because we have schools that actually manage to teach how science works to kids. So there's no need for belief, when it comes to evolution. :)
Wow, that guy is nuts.
Maybe still wrong, but less so.
No, Baghdad Bob and Harun Yahya are representative of Islamic culture. Lies are embedded in every day interactions.
My favorite part of the article is that since they use it so often they shorten 'peace be upon him' to 'pbuh'. I think PZ (pbuh) should start including that when writing about all of the Masons, atheist Zionists and Darwinists that Yahya warns us about. Plus, what is an 'Atheist Zionist'? Is that just a not so subtle stab at Jews? And how do Masons fit into our plan of world domination?
The strange thing is that in the original article, this is not in quotations, nor is it attributed to Yahya. Apparently this is a statement by the writer of the article in support of Yahya.
Just a small but important point PZ.
Turkey isn't an Arab country. Turks are different from Arabs.
PZ, you've done it now. You've criticized a muslin.
Heh. "PBUH!"
pronounced "puh-buh"
Several strung together sound like a tire going flat.
Aw, you beat me to it!
No, no...I think he's right. Time to shut down scienceblogs.com and discontinue my subscription to Seed. Thank you Yahya.
Chris @ 11, it's just part of the Jewish-Nazi-Communist-Masonic plot to take over the world. Darwinisim is a key point of the plan, and Harun Yahya will be the fearless leader who defeats them all in spite of their so-called "superior" "technology" and moon base. Sheesh. Don't you read the papers?
Oh comeon. you already know that 92% of all statistics are made up on the spot. With all the rest of his crap, you actually believe he really developed - or even just quited - ANY actual "study" of the convictions of other Europeans?
That's just silly. He is making this up, those that listen to him will continue to listen to him and quite his "statistics" as verification and choose to be none the wiser.
It worked for Intel, after all.
JC
Dang it - "quited" should be "quoted" @19 ..... preview... preview....
JC
Except in Argentina, where Arabs (and people of Arabic descent in general) are colloquially referred to as "Turks". Something to do with Arab immigration happening in the time of the Ottoman Empire.
I have a big problem as a proud European citizen now ... should I be offended at the slander, or proud to be part of the 10-15% elite?
Or should I just give up??? HELP!! [/sarcasm]
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
You misunderstand. We fit in theirs.
And they fit in that of the Illuminati.
And so on. It probably goes circular somewhere.
PZ is talking about the source: www.arabnews.com.
It always hurts to start a monday morning with stupid like this.
We know it had to occur, but we still don't really understand how the first cells formed, do we? (I mean, in other than a vague and spotty sense.)
Seems poor Mr Yahya has problems with his documentalists. First they cheat him by providing him with pictures of fishing lures and chewed gum presented as "scientific illustration". Now they mislead him about the polls on Europeans and evolution. Of course, the correct version is "85-90 percent of Europeans DO believe in the theory of evolution" (and let's not get started with the use of the stupid word "believe"). They gave it to him the wrong way round. As the villain in every B-movie says: "you can't find good helpers anymore!".
Or perhaps they did this on purpose, for a laugh, because he pays them badly.
Our current vague and spotty sense of protocell formation is getting more specific daily. You should be amazed at how _much_ we know about processes that happened four billion years ago.
I know Turks aren't Arabs: the source, though, is Arab News.
The level of ignorance in the Arab world is staggering.
I recently re-deployed from a 14 month combat tour in northern Iraq, near the city of Kirkuk. This is a very secular area, relatively peaceful and with good education.
Early in our deployment, some of our Soldiers were talking with one of the Iraqi Army units in the area at their headquarters. The Iraqi Army (IA) officers were university educated, secular professional soldiers, most of whom held rank during the Saddam era.
As usual, a TV set was on, and everyone watched as a Space Shuttle launched toward the ISS. A short time into the launch, the shuttle began it's roll program to head East and gain advantage from the Earth's rotation. Some of the IA officers began chattering in Arabic, and the translator said they were talking about the Shuttle heading for Israel.
When American officers asked what they meant, they explained (as to idiots) that the Shuttle had to aim for the hole into space left after the Mohammed ascended into heaven all those years ago.
The clinching evidence? When Columbia and Challanger were destroyed, it was because THEY MISSED THE HOLE INTO SPACE!
This was not expressed as a joke, or as a religious story - it was explained as a simple "truth".
Mind boggling.
Wow, and I loved the movie about his sisterhood!
He published over 45,000 pages? Well, I guess it's easy when absolutely nothing has to be vetted, accurate, coherent or logical.
Here, at the weird site "Science and Math [!] Defeated, there's a thread (http://sciencedefeated.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/mutants-cant-get-girlfr…) criticizing evolution on the basis that the mutated forms would have a harder time finding mates among the originating population. Well there must be a way around that "or we wouldn't be here", but if so, what? Shouldn't it should be a selective reproductive disadvantage (?) to be different from the others, so how to the "good mutations" get spread around? (First commenter says, mutated doesn't have ot mean weaker: sure, but I mean the overall "different" per se since animals seem to have an attraction to their own. Some critters will try to mate with other (usually similar) species, so many that's how it gets around?
Sure, many mutations are "setting up" for changes but it is a good critical challenge (not to be confused with, taken as decisive criticism since that only comes from waiting for possible answers and comparing to alternatives.) The question is part of the larger issue, how do the changing and piling-up mutations get nicely coordinated with mating preferences?
BTW, I take a view that evolution occurred but it is "weird" and not easily understandable in terms of conventional, common-sense notions. Sort of like saying, it isn't "classical" - I know, Darwin is already gone past, but I mean in a deeper sense. Not necessarily literally involving quantum stuff, just using that distinction as a rough analogy.
When "Harun Yahya" says there are no transitional fossils, he means that there are none *as he thinks they would have to be*. He is not using the term the way any actual scientists do. So, in his terms, he is correct. But he's defeating the strawiest straw-fossil ever imagined.
Here is what he means, as shown in his "Atlas of Creation":
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j184/G-K-4/Atlas-2.jpg
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j184/G-K-4/Atlas-3.jpg
He's saying that a transitional individual would have, for example, two left arms. One would be the old form of arm, and the other would be the new form. Picture a chimpanzee with a human arm budding from its shoulder. Same goes for legs, skulls, spines, etcetera.
He is profoundly deluded.
Heh, I like the bit where he says "Judaism is an old version of Islam." - much like the US fundies throwing the "Judeo-" into "Judeo-Christian" values to sound a little more open-minded (and less antisemitic). Much like the "atheist Zionism" part - "it's all the jews' fault, but the evil jews who are really atheists, not the nice jews who are really muslims". But that's really just a tiny facet of this guy's all-encompassing delusion...
"what is an 'Atheist Zionist'?" - chris
Someone who supported or supports the foundation or continuation of a national state for the Jews; and who does not believe in God. Many of the founders of Israel were atheists, as are many Israelis now.
Today is the 149 anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin.
Happy Birthday, rationality...
"Darwinism cannot explain how we can see or hear or sense with the support of our brain."
I think this is an idiot's reference to the fact that neuroscience is a very complicated and even clever people don't quite understand how conciousness works.
Hey - maybe they should study Yahya's brain? By working out where that went wrong, maybe they could shed some light on how normal brains work.
Harun Yahya is Turkish though (and not Arab) :)
Hi Nick!
Since you're checking in, you should see P. Scumbag's more recent comments on the "Faith Hurts" thread.
# 33
That's just common Islamic doctrine. From Wikipedia:
According to Islamic doctrine, Islam was the primordial religion of mankind, professed by Adam. At some point, a religious split occurred, and God began sending prophets to bring his revelations to the people. In this view, Abraham, Moses, Hebrew prophets, and Jesus were all Prophets in Islam, but their message and the texts of the Torah and the Gospels were corrupted by Jews and Christians. Similarly, children of non-Muslim families are born Muslims, but are converted to another faith by their parents. The idea of Islamic supremacy is encapsulated in the formula "Islam is exalted and nothing is exalted above it."
Neil B (#31) - are you trying to troll? It's nice that you point out the site you link to is "weird", but you still appear (pretend?) to take seriously a guy who claims NEGATIVE NUMBERS are a Neo-Zoroastrian/Chinese conspiracy to, er, to do what exactly? The "mutants can't get girlfriends" argument is staggeringly, transparently stupid, and I'm going to stop feeding the troll now.
GK4, #32 - that is indeed an interesting idea of "transitional forms". I like the picture of a vaguely-hominid skeleton budding and branching into something that looks like a tree.
So after reading this, I call do-over on the whole religion thing. It's gotten to stupid to be real, let's just start over and try to get something in it's place that can actually accept scientific facts and other such useful information instead of blurting nonsensical ramblings at every turn and expecting the mass amounts sheep to follow blindly.
Shameless plug: Years ago, I reviewed two of Yahya's books for Cladistics
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118782654/abstract?CRETRY=1&…
The upshot: not just crap... crazy crap.
Thanks very much SC,
I certainly will, but not right now - I have pretty severe SIWOTI syndrome, and I need to be back at the conference in 20 minutes!
Don't talk give the evidence for Evolution.
1- I think this is true. He hasnot have that many, but in scientific literature there are that much fossils. And all of them show that there are unique creatures.
2-If you have ANY transitional forms (you said many) lets give ONE SAMPLE which was not rejected by scientific evidence! You DONOT HAVE ANY. If you have, why havenot you demand 10 million dollar form Harun Yahya? He said if any darwinist show one sample serie of transitional forms, he would pay this amount.
3- Please donot fake any man, no one can create one DNA inside laboratory. Not only DNA also any gene is possible to manufacture in laboratories.
4- OOOooo skulls again. Is there a any skull which shows the evolution? do you have any? If say Yes let give us one name which is scientificly approved in a magazine which is accepted by scientist.
5- No he is Muslim. He is a believer like Abraham, Moses and Christ who are the prophet of The God (ALLAH).
Fact: God is real. Fact: evolution is false. Case closed. What? You're unconvinced? But I said they were facts? It must be true!
Also, the decline in pirates is causing the cold snap in America right now. There's a graph and everything! It must be true!
Ka, #39: D'oh. I sorta knew that, but I hadn't quite connected the dots. The part about children being "born Muslims" I didn't know - that's quite interesting, especially as it makes ALL non-Muslims effectively apostates, who should therefore be killed.
Well... I think this paper describes the main problem of the islamic world pretty well.
The title alone is already a comprehensive summary of the islamic world and worldview:
"Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
Chris, I'm an atheist Zionist. Problem is that the word Zionist now has the same negative implications as the word atheist.
Really, a Zionist is simply someone who supports the state of Israel. It doesn't have to mean support the settlements either, it could just mean supporting Israel's right to exist.
Close to 45% of all Israeli Jews are atheist or agnostic. Probably most of those people support Israel's right to exist but many may disagree with Israel being in the West Bank.
Wheres the connection with an Arab town?
I realize its in an Arab newspaper but theres also been articles in the UK Guardian about him and I doubt it would be appropriate to start off a post about that interview with the title "They have delusional crazy towns in the British world".
Believe it or not, despite what you Canadians think, the inhabitants of the middle east are not actually all the same.
"Darwinism cannot explain how we can see or hear or sense with the support of our brain."
Rudi at #36 might be right, but there seems to be an underlying assumption of dualism buried in this sentence. We don't see, hear, or sense with or through or by our brain -- no. The brain is only there to help us, because it's really the disembodied, immaterial soul doing all the real work. As science has confirmed, in Mr. Yahya's world (where the sky is whatever color Allah says it is that day.)
So if that's what he means, then he's pointing out, quite properly, that the theory of evolution cannot account for mind/body dualism. Though we should also point out, that the Theory of Magic Mind Which Needs No Brain cannot account for why we humans have brains in the first place. God could have made our heads hollow, instead of filling it with a lot of unnecessary clutter. If it "supports" the soul, then how?
@#44: Muharrem, you brainless turd.
All your and Yahya's "Arguments" especially the ones about the "missing transitional fossils" were already refuted as billion times.
But you represent the state of "islamic knowledge" pretty well. It is not surprising at all, that the scientific results of islamic societies are close to zero.
The only thing you actually ever achieve is wallowing oin your stupidity like pigs in mud and complaining whining and loudly when people don't want to be dragged down to your level.
Islamic creationism is simply cut and pasted from Christian creationist websites. The only major difference is that they have no need for young earth creationism and ignore that part of the nonsense.
Given the power of the blasphemy meme and the massive issue the islamists have with the modern world, this fight is not going to be easy, but luckily or unluckily, there is relatively little biology done in those parts and the students who wish to do real biology move to the West (and now, even to China and the Far East). Harun Yahya is an astoundingly huge Ass though...you should google him when you have the time.
Compare Islam and Judaism. Judaism has a Written Law, but the ancients decided (before Jesus) that God also gave an Oral Law and that it is up to us to discover it. The "creation" or discovery of the Oral Law has led to many centuries of Jewish creativity. The process of Torah study is one of inventiveness, with the way to respect being the ability to marshall arguments from the text (or even counter to the text) to support one's creative thesis about God's intent. By contrast, Islam preaches the Qur'an is immutable and without doubt and the highest form of learning is memorizing the verses and the highest form of art is writing out the verses.
In Judaism, nothing is taken for granted. You can argue that God is absent, that God intends evil, whatever you want if you can make a case. You can argue, as some great Rabbis have, that the literal word of the Torah should be turned upside down to reveal the substance underneath.
In Islam, while there is of course a similar process of interpretation, the emphasis is entirely different. In Islam, the world, meaning facts and ideas, must bend to the word of God. Science only exists within the word of God and any conflict means the science must be wrong. Thus we find tortured explanations that make no sense to a rational mind because faith must dominate and these rational beliefs, no matter how often repeated by experiment, are therefore wrong.
So yes, there is something deeply wrong with Islamic news and Islamic science and that will likely become a much more important issue in the decades ahead.
Remember, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I had trouble holding a strait face at "85-90% of Europeans no longer believe in evolution." This is an absurd statement, and anyone who calls it a fair assessment is ignoring all of the Gallup data, as well as polling information performed by many other groups.
Pretty soon he'll be saying that 95% of Americans are actually Muslims.
Sigmund@49:
PZ Myers is not Canadian.
"crazy town" is an idiomatic expression to describe where a wacko like Yahya gets his weird ideas.
Muhazrrem #44 wrote:
GK4 in post #2 gave a link to a picture from Yahya's book of what he thinks a "transitional form" should look like:
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j184/G-K-4/Atlas-2.jpg
If this is the sort of thing you'd be expecting, then yes, you are bound to be disappointed.
Your understanding of the theory of evolution is wrong, because you are combining some of the ideas of evolution with creationist assumptions, and getting a bizarre creation-evolution hybrid that nobody believes. Species do not exist as perfectly formed "kinds," so that an intermediate between one animal and another would be half the one, and half the other.
What you are asking is like demanding that we find a transitional form between a 2 year old and a 20 year old, and refusing to accept a 10 year old. A 10 year old is a different thing. No, you want a 2 year old with the head of a 20 year old. That is how you will believe that 2 year old babies can become 20 year old adults.
Unless you understand evolution properly, you won't know how to ask the right kind of questions, or recognize when your question is answered.
It is inevitable that there will be an islamic non-discovery sand pile to scrounge around in, with the bones of the victims of islamic justice conveniently buried at the bottom, with fanatic archaeologists "unearthing" same and proclaiming that the bones are indeed only 6000 years old as those rabid christians continually affirm. Reading this insane crap and all the other examples of religious derangement over the years leads me to wonder if we really did have an Age Of Reason. If not nuclear holocaust, then most assuredly religious holocaust will return us to the dark ages.
@Atheist Jew, Thanks for the clarification. I think in the case of Yahya's circles Zionist always had negative connotations.
Hey, wait just one hookah puffing second!
As an Arab, I have to object to the lumping in of Turkish crazies. We have enough nutjobs as it is, thank you very much.
No offense to Turks in general, of course.
O/T but I think really important :
Americans are being screwed, and the press won't tell the truth !
Citibank is being bailed out today, this is a fuck-up of historic proportions. Not because govt intervened, they had to, but because they completely screwed up.
Govt, on behalf of tax payers, is injecting $20 billion in cash, and assuming liabilities on garbage assets worth $306 billion, in exchange of .... an 8% equity share !
Now, the liabilities on the garbage, you can count on at least 50% of future losses for the tax payer.
The 8% equity is worth nothing, as the company would be bankrupt without this govt intervention.
Which means that Govt is paying $170 billion for nothing.
Tax payers have just gotten a guaranteed raise in future taxes of $1700 per household, to give to the Wall Street fat-cats who invested money in Citibank's equity or bonds.
What's important to understand, is that it is vital that Govt intervenes to save the OPERATIONS of Citibanks and the 2 million acounts that it manages. Otherwise, this would have tremendous and generate the total loss of confidence in the banking system that would have caused the kind of things that were seen in 1930/31, a recipie for the Great Depression.
But saving their OPERATIONS didn't mean saving those who invested in Citibank's equity or bonds and profitted imensely during the past bonanza years. There were other ways of doing this that would have guaranteed a much better deal for the American tax payer.
This is corruption at a major scale. Paulson and Bernanke need to be indicted. Are the American people going to get it ?
At least, Robert Reich, Clinton's Secretary of Labour and an Obama insider seems to be getting it:
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/11/citibank-scores.html
I hope the blogging community will denounce this, because the Mainstream Media wont, they'll screw up by confusing the issue between saving Citibank's investors and saving Citibank's operations. I count on Pharyngula.
I'm so tired of the anti-evolutionists of the world harping on the alleged lack of 'transitional forms' and 'transitional fossils.' The whole POINT of evolution is to understand that ALL forms are 'transitional' and subject to adaptation over generational time. There is no such thing as a NON-transitional form.
Oh, I can tell the Muslim trolls are going to be a hoot.
Any and all negative connotations remain utterly deserved regardless of how secular the motivations are.
I'm so tired of the anti-evolutionists of the world harping on the alleged lack of 'transitional forms' and 'transitional fossils.' The whole POINT of evolution is to understand that ALL forms are 'transitional' and subject to adaptation over generational time. There is no such thing as a NON-transitional form.
Ding ding ding ding! We have a winnah!
Sigmund #49
That's grossly offensive: the inhabitants of Minnesota, Tennessee, Kansas and all those other oddly named islands like to call their country South Canada to distinguish it from large neighour to the north.
I think the poll was taken in 1792. As enny fule kno, ancient wisdom is immutable.
SteveM @ #56:
>>Sigmund@49:
>>PZ Myers is not Canadian.
I think you missing the irony here.
In case your looking for another nugget of wisdom from islamic science check this out
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7359258.stm
"one geologist argues that unlike other latitudes, mecca is in alignment to magnetic north."
Seriously, no one going for the low-hanging fruit here?
"3) The first cell was the product of chemical evolution, not coincidence."
And how is this different from magic?
There hasn't been such a poll in a (mainstream) Danish newspaper, and if there had been they would have arrived at a somewhat more accurate number than somewhere between 85-90%.
Secondly Denmark being a comparatively liberal (in the actual sense of the word) and educated country, I would suggest that more likely 99% of us don't believe in creationism, much less new earth creationism. My nephew, who is 9 years old and not indoctrinated (outside of the public school system) to any kind of belief system, concluded on his own that the biblical tale of creation wasn't true (thankfully they teach that stuff in religion classes over here).
Lastly even if most of Europe had suddenly gone crazy and stopped "believing" in evolution, that doesn't mean it's not still true. Nature isn't some dick measuring contest where truth is determined by who has the most delusional believers.
Seriously. This kind of "argumentation" could only possibly work on people without access to the Internet. Oh wait.
Wouldn't be the first time :)
Sadly, lies, so blatantly obvious, as these are all too common in the Arab worlds where freedom of speech is restricted it's very hard for the common person to research what is fact. When the only science books allowed are those that agree with the religious dogma, I'm not surprised the author didn't make the least effort to make the lies somewhat believable.
Is this the same guy as the one from Turkey who was completely seriously offering like ten trillion dollars for a single transitional fossil? Or do multiple crazy muslims have major problems with numbers?
#70
"And how is this different from magic?"
If you mean the sort of magic that stage magicians do then you are on to something. You might not immediately recognise how it happened but rest assured there was nothing supernatural about it.
"one geologist argues that unlike other latitudes, mecca is in alignment to magnetic north."
He could be referring to the fact that Mecca has a magnetic declination of 0. That is, that magnetic north aligns with "true" north. While this is true, Mecca is not the only place where this is so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IGRF_2000_magnetic_declination.gif
That "Unskilled and Unaware of It" paper is a classic in the teaching literature. However, I've always found it a little funny that they can't spell Al Franken's last name (consistently, it's "Frankin").
Polls conducted by newspapers in Germany, France, Switzerland and Denmark showed that 85-90 percent of Europeans no longer believed in the theory of evolution.
[Citation needed]
@70:
Er... in many, quite fundamental ways? How does it resemble magic?
Wow that is stupid. I've created DNA in the laboratory myself many times. No big deal, it has been routine for decades and tens or hundreds of thousands of people have done it.
You don't even know what DNA is.
Along with Sweden, Denmark is the most avowedly atheistic country on earth, i read recently, in a piece on Slate, iirc, about the issue of whether atheists can be 'moral.'
Well, that is true. Darwinism also doesn't explain how indoor plumbing works or the internal combustion engine. It is the theory of how life changes through time after all. It isn't supposed to explain everything.
Christians, Muslims, religious Jews, they're all brain-dead scum.
Of course mutants have girlfreinds- anyone who has read DC or Marvel know that they are 'way cool'.
WHAT?!?!?! You mean the Unites States isn't the home to 117% of all the world's lunacy!? The rest of the world outside The Colonies isn't a paragon of intellect and perfection???? The deuce you say!
Ah. You've seen the previews for The Sims 3: The Islamic World. I hear Maxis will include honor killings and stonings, but you need to enter a secret code.
... something that I assume is temporary, given that magnetic north is migrating slowly towards... somewhere. Probably somewhere warmer, at a guess. I mean, what self respecting icon of directional probity would want to stay where it is constantly cold?
I don't thnk I can imagine a more profoundly dishonest person as Yahya, whether it's just his writings or his personal business dealings.
His website is full of incredible lies and fantastically stupid statments that unfortunately might be taken for granted by the ignorants and uneducated folks :
Evolution is the result of magical and intelligent forces : that statement comming from a creationist beats the irony meter !
"How" is a proximate question of physiological mechanism. "Darwinism" (natural selection) explains why we can see and hear (the ultimate question), but also "Darwinism" (common descent) explains many of the specific details of how--that is, why it is that vision and hearing work the way they do and not in some other, equally (or more) effective way.
Re Mine at #81, Here's the link to the Slate piece...
I think the floating question marks means they're available for you to turn in your quests, and they'll pay out gold and experience points. Maybe it's a preview for the next WoW expansion, "Wrath of the Stupid Imam".
Good News:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15902.html
PZ Myers isn't Canadian...
...yet.
At least not until the nefarious Canadian Conspiracy kidnaps him *whistle*...nothing, nothing...
(I'm an atheist Zionist too, and I'm not even Jewish. My rationale for supporting the continued existence of Medinat Yisrael is that if we're going to start cancelling people's countries simply because the British Empire created them by force and some people don't like that, an awful awful lot of us are going to have to start packing... Nobody said, thereby, that I have to like the Israeli government. They're doing a piss-poor job of making sure that my friends over there stay alive, and that sucks.)
Touch of Gray #70:
3) The first cell was the product of chemical evolution, not coincidence."
And how is this different from magic?
In the most basic sense, it is different because it's a hypothesis that generates testable predictions. Magic, not so much.
This "mutants don't get girlfriends (or boyfriends)" stuff is silly, even by creationist standards. Quite obviously, those who created this meme did not knew the difference between a mutation and a developmental anomaly. A mutant isn't by necessity a sideshow freak (and even those were often married and had children) - being one inch taller than your ancestors, or having a different eye colour, or having a different hair colour, probably wouldn't scare away many potential partners. We all are mutants, in some way or another. Beside this, many things (frogs, Charlie Sheen) aren't that selective and will try to mate with anything that
a)moves;
b)is too large to be prey;
c)is to small to be a threat and
d)runs/swims/climbs/flies not fast enough to get away.
There fixed it for ya.
Isn't this PoS currently in a Turkish prison for fraud and for organizing a group of thugs to rape young women, take pictures of their rapes, and then blackmail them with said pictures in order to extort money from them? Why is this monster even afforded the right to speak at all? He should be swinging from a yardarm.
BTW, I take a view that evolution occurred but it is "weird" and not easily understandable in terms of conventional, common-sense notions.
It's emminenetly understandable in conventional common sense notions. The question is, can you understand conventional, common sense notions, or are you just another damned troll?
If option 1, I suggest you scoot over to talkorigins and read up, they have a lot of nice, clear information, and lots of people here will be glad to answer any questions you have *after* you have absorbed the basics.
If it's option 2 (troll), then go away.
Derf,
it appears he was let free for appealing the decision or some other formality. The final word isn't spoken yet, and I'm skeptical looking at how some Turkish courts have pandered and caved to his bidding (YouTube, rdnet). He knows what threads to pull, and he apparently has the right people tied in.
#97 He wasn't convicted on the sex charges; too much he said/she said. He got two years for fraud. I think he's still out on appeal.
What is "God's creationism"?
What is "God's creationism"?
Evolution.
Denmark, the country (which I'm from, by the way) that's very much made one of the best pieces of parody ever, about his god in perticular? Pah, 80% are agnostic/atheist and less than 2 percent even think his god is of any note let alone believe in it.
If that was the issue, then how did Poland get in?
Do you really think the crazies will get any less prominent by keeping Turkey out?
Funny - I doubt you'd be able to get statistics like that even by restricting your survey to readers of the Christian Daily. Circulation is dropping, admittedly, but I can't see you polling like that even among those so backward as to still keep a paper in Denmark.
Is Turkey properly considered part of "the Arab world"? I know is the 'Middle East', but I've never really thought of the Levant as all that ... 'Eastern'.
mutants can't get girlfriends
Depends on what part mutated.
(rimshot)
Hey yo!
The first of these is not a requirement. (For frogs anyway. I haven't been following what Charlie Sheen does.)
Don't exaggerate Polish craziness. It's loud, but not all that common.
Why do people comment without reading all previous comments first? Check out comments 23 and 28.
As insidious, incredulous and frustrating to rationalists and scientists his prodigious "works" may be, Yahya's views speak clearing to HIS audience - believers and social conservatives in the Islamic world. Several years ago, together with several colleagues, attempted to rebut his frequent contentions about evolution published in the Muslim Observer (Farmington, Michigan), and to show how the Theory of Evolution, and science in general, need not conflict with the Islamic theology, and many cultural histories of countries where Islam is the majority religion (e.g., Turkey, Middle Eastern countries, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.). The publishers acknowledged receipt of our opinion piece, but refused to publish it? Why? Because Yahya spoke to their constituents (i.e., to the choir), and they did not want a dissenting opinion (i.e., anything heretical). Now, that was in Michigan. Magnify that a thousand times in Turkey and much of the Islamic world, where social and economic stratification are rampant, and rates of poverty mean that people pretty much will clamber for anything that is spiritually and egotistically uplifting, and provides (especially disadvantaged males) cultural importance and meaning. Yahya does this in spades, and provides a vocabulary as well for them to justify their displaced beliefs, and an anti-western (read: evolution) flavor to boot. Laugh as you might at Yahya's words and plagarized text and photos, but if you find him increasingly popular in the Islamic world, it tells you something frightening about the social trends there, and will have possible important (and probably deleterious) ramifications with regards to East-West social relations.
Wild generalisations can't be good, either about Poles or about Turks (or about Kansans for that matter), but I don't think you can claim Polish (religio-political) craziness is rare. The Kaczińskis didn't win elections by appealing a a tiny mohair-beret-wearing minority.
This is from May of this year. Anyone have any more up-to-date information on Yahya/Oktar's criminal status?
http://www.reuters.com/article/artsNews/idUSL0992091620080509?sp=true
It's never about being right, it's about being seen as right in the minds of the ignorant. What a fool!
I'm optimistic one of those fossils is of a fossilised snake offering a petrified apple to a fossilised woman.
Now THAT would prove EVERYTHING.
my favorite quote from Mr. Yahya:
"we have proved that the skulls that were displayed as evidence of evolution are fake"
What do you mean, "we", kimo sabe?
Ok since I'm swiss, I feel I need to defend my honour:
There are maybe 10% creationists around here, which in my opinion is way too much already, but to say there are 90%...
Well, what is one more lie when you are as nuts as Yahya?
but nobody has been able to find a single transitional form
Poor deluded Harun, he's ignoring a newly discovered transitional form between the Johnson's Spoon and the Daredevil.
66-Any and all negative connotations remain utterly deserved regardless of how secular the motivations are.
*******************
Wow, talk about assmonkey rhetoric. Chemist, do you want a banana?
I take it that you don't believe Israel has a right to exist. Why not?
Shouldn't we be speaking of transitional features rather than transitional forms? That might make it easier to explain how evolution modifies rather than spontaneously creates.
It would also do away with the crockoduck and the four armed six-legged monster of Yahya's imagination
Here is how they "safeguard" muslims.
Yahya urged Muslims not to believe in the false accusations made against him by those who oppose his views and ideas. �Atheist Zionists, Masons and Darwinists spread these allegations because they want to silence me. If you have any doubts or questions, feel free to ask me directly or email to my website. We will be glad to answer them. God has urged believers to investigate accusations before believing them,� he said.
Yahya has a large collection of fake fossils and they display them everywhere all over the country. Not 100 million fossils, but hundreds of low quality fakes. I think most of them are just plaster, painted to look like old.
It is sad that this guy has thousands of followers and he is swimming in money. He is able to suppress all his opposition in Turkey.
Regards, Levent
I'll say one thing for creationists views,to quote Artie Johnson from the old Laugh In TV Show, Very interesting, but Stuuuuuuupid.
Harun Yahya is pretty sleazy.
Sex Cult and Science
First of all everybody should now that Harun Yahya is not a scientist.
He didn't graduate University.
He can not speak Arabic and English. He speaks only Turkish.
He cooperates with ICR - Evangelist Churche in USA. He translate Evangelist Church books in to Turkish and he converts Antidarwinist Evangelist Churche pretensions to Islamic belief. Instead of Jesus-God he use Mohammed-Allah name in his books..
http://whoisharunyahya.wordpress.com/sex-cult-and-science/
I'm guessing this site is banned in Turkey.
This is from my hometown paper,***sigh.
I wake up every morning , open the paper and stuff like this falls out. If it weren't for the daily sudoku, I'd cancle my subscrption.
Oh well...
O, I'm sure. But how do we know that that's not the case for Turkey too?
Because we're lazy and impatient.
Thanks.
"Why do people comment without reading all previous comments first? Check out comments 23 and 28."
"Because we're lazy and impatient.
Thanks."
Here here!
beside's it's not that i don't try to read the comments, but sometimes it's just difficult to muster up a Damn about it. So sooooory, ppppplllththt :P
PZ, the term "prevolution" has been coined to refer to the competitive selection of variations prior to the Biogenic transition. EG: "Prevolutionary dynamics and the origin of evolution", Martin A. Nowak and Hisashi Ohtsuki (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.0806714105).
This would appear an variation advantageous for helping keep the ideas distinct for creationists who might have encountered and been confused by this coprolith. I would suggest encouraging this use.
#71 FlameDuck
This survey was published in National Geographic a few years back. Quite a handy link!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-evolution.html
"In European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and France, more than 80 percent of adults surveyed said they accepted the concept of "evolution.
Another favourite..
Religiousity vs. Wealth
"As people get less religious, they get wealthier. Or perhaps the other way around."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_10/012346.php
If you want to learn finance then here is a great place.
specialized organization in Training (distance learning, workshops, corporate training and seminars) and Conlsultancy services (Islamic finance product development, vetting, auditing, etc) in the areas of Islamic Banking, Islamic Finance and Takaful. Click Below
Learn Finance