New Dark Age Alert! Harun Yahya: Sowing the Seeds of Darkness!Muslim Creationists Tour France Denouncing Darwin
REUTERS: Four years after they first frightened France, Muslim creationists are back touring the country preaching against evolution and claiming the Koran predicted many modern scientific discoveries.

Followers of Harun Yahya, a well-financed Turkish publisher of popular Islamic books, held four conferences at Muslim centers in the Paris area at the weekend with more scheduled in six other cities.

At a Muslim junior high school in this north Paris suburb, about 100 pupils -- boys seated on the right, girls on the left -- listened as two Turks from Harun Yahya's headquarters in Istanbul denounced evolution as a theory Muslims should shun.

"We didn't descend from the apes," lecturer Ali Sadun told the giggling youngsters. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, he said, was "the scientific basis to defend atheism."

Harun Yahya, one of the most prolific publishers in the Muslim world, gave proudly secularist France a scare in January 2007 by mass-mailing thousands of free copies of his "Atlas of Creation" to schools and libraries across the country.

The Education Ministry quickly ordered headmasters to seize and hide copies of the large format book that, over 768 pages of glossy photographs and easy-to-read text, argues that all living things were created by God exactly as they are formed today.

It followed up with a special seminar to train teachers how to counter a small but growing group of pupils who challenge evolution with creationist theories.

In October 2007, with strong French support, the Council of Europe denounced the creationist views laid out in the "Atlas of Creation" as a religious assault on science and human rights. » | Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton | AUBERVILLIERS, France | Monday, May 16, 2011

Painting: Google Images
Academics Fight Rise of Creationism at Universities
THE GUARDIAN: More students believe Darwin got it wrong / Royal Society challenges 'insidious problem'

A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur'an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists.

Earlier this month Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin's theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution.

In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or "intelligent design" in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society's event in April.

"There is an insidious and growing problem," said Professor Jones, of University College London. "It's a step back from rationality. They (the creationists) don't have a problem with science, they have a problem with argument. And irrationality is a very infectious disease as we see from the United States." >>> Duncan Campbell | Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Muslim Scholars Rejecting Darwin's Theory of Evolution as 'Unproven'
THE TELEGRAPH: Muslim scholars around the world are increasingly rejecting Darwin's theory of evolution as an "unproven".

Muslim students and academics also said they felt they were being asked to make a "binary choice" between Darwinism and creationism, rather than both having a place.

The claim was made by Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, at a conference organised by the British Council to celebrate the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth.

He told his audience that in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia, only 15 per cent of people surveyed believed Darwin’s theory was “true” or “probably true”.

A poll he conducted at his own university showed that 62 per cent of Muslim professors and students believed evolution to be an “unproven theory”, compared with 10 per cent of non-Muslim professors.

“The rate of acceptance of evolution and of the idea of teaching evolution was extremely low,” he said. “I wondered, who are all these educated people rejecting evolution? They are even rejecting the fact that it should be taught as scientific knowledge.” >>> | Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Muslim Academics and Students Are Turning Against Darwin's Theory
TIMES ONLINE: Muslims in many countries are increasingly rejecting Darwin’s theory of evolution, under the influence of conservative elements in Islam, a science conference was told yesterday.

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.

Dr Guessoum, who is a Sunni Muslim, said that in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia, only 15 per cent of those surveyed believed Darwin’s theory to be “true” or “probably true”. This stand was equally prevalent among students and teachers, from high school to university. Most alarmingly, he claimed, science teachers were misrepresenting the facts and theories of evolution by mixing it with religious ideologies.

A survey of 100 academics and 100 students that he conducted at his own university showed that 62 per cent of Muslim professors and students believed evolution to be an “unproven theory”, compared with 10 per cent of non-Muslim professors. “The rate of acceptance of evolution and of the idea of teaching evolution was extremely low,” he said. “I wondered, who are all these educated people rejecting evolution? They are even rejecting the fact that it should be taught as scientific knowledge.”

Evolution did not contradict Islamic beliefs, Dr Guessoum said, unless a literal reading of the texts were adopted. “Many Muslim scholars, from the golden age of Islam to today, adopted an evolutionary world view,” he said. >>> Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent | Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Evolution vs. Creationism

Professor Richard Dawkins Wants to Convert Islamic World to Evolution
TIMES ONLINE: The author of The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene, whose new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, is serialised in The Times next week, has topped bestseller lists all over the world but never in a predominantly Muslim country.

None of Professor Dawkins’ books, on evolution as well as religion, has ever been translated into Arabic, and his work has been heavily censored in Turkey. In an interview with The Times, he said that popularising evolution in the Islamic world, where creationist beliefs are strong, was a challenge he is keen to take up. “To be a bestseller in a Muslim country would be a personal triumph,” he said.

“I would like to see my books translated into Arabic. They haven’t been. They are all translated into Hebrew. Persian, I’m not sure. My books are translated into Turkish and they regularly get censored and suppressed.

“The experience of my Turkish publisher of The God Delusion was that he was threatened with arrest for blasphemy. He may even have been arrested, and my website has been banned in Turkey. I feel amused really. There’s something to be said for being suppressed, it makes people want to read you.”

While most non-fundamentalist Christian traditions have largely accepted evolution, Islam was still much more hostile, he said. “It’s the fact that Islam teaches the Koran is the literal word of God, unlike most Christian sects, which say the Bible is largely symbolic. That could well be the cause.”

Professor Dawkins added that Islamic influence is the likely explanation for the growing popularity of creationist beliefs in Britain, where a recent poll found that 30 per cent of teenagers accept the rebranded idea of “intelligent design”.

“I think that’s pretty clear,” he said. “I hear that from colleagues at the coalface of teaching. There has been a sharp upturn in hostility to teaching of evolution in the classroom and it’s mostly coming from Islamic students. >>> Mark Henderson, Science Editor | Saturday, August 22, 2009

Dawkins Destroys Harun Yahya
Part 1:


Part 2
Richard Dawkins >>>

New Dark Age Alert! One in Three Teachers Says Teach Creationism Alongside Evolution
THE TELEGRAPH: One in three teachers believes schoolchildren should be taught that creationism is just as valid as evolution, according to a survey.

The poll also disclosed that pupils in almost a third of schools already learn about the controversial divine explanation of the universe, with even science teachers thinking it has a place in classrooms.

Almost all of those questioned by Teachers TV, a satellite television channel, agreed that children with strong religious beliefs would feel excluded from science lessons if their views were ignored.

The findings support the views of the Rev Professor Michael Reiss, who lost his job as director of education at the Royal Society, Britain's prestigious scientific academy, after calling for creationism to be included in school science lessons.

The ordained Church of England minister said the idea that the Earth was made by God 10,000 years ago should be discussed if pupils raise it, because "banging on" about natural selection would not lead evangelical Christians or Muslims to change their views.

But he was forced to step down after his views were denounced as "dangerous" and "outrageous" by two Nobel laureates and the Royal Society claimed he had damaged its reputation.

Commenting on the results of the survey of 1,200 viewers of Teachers TV, its chief executive, Andrew Bethell, said: "This poll data confirms that the debate on whether there is a place for the teaching of creationism in the classroom is still fierce."

The poll found that 31 per cent of teachers agree that creationism or intelligent design – the theory that the universe shows signs of having been designed rather than evolving – should be given the same status as evolution in the classroom, including 18 per cent of science teachers. >>> By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent | November 7, 2008

TELEGRAPH BLOGS / HOLY SMOKE: Islam Is the Reason British Teachers Are Suddenly Happy to Teach Creationism

One in three teachers believe that creationism should be taught in school science lessonsWhy? It's not because they've developed a sudden respect for fundamentalist Christian interpretations of the Bible. It's because devout Muslim pupils - and their parents - regard Darwin's teachings as blasphemous.

The science of evolution contradicts a literal reading of the Koran, just as it contradicts the seven-day creation narrative of Genesis. The difference is that most devout Muslims - more than 90 per cent worldwide - accept Islam's account of creation as the simple truth, whereas in Britain only a small minority of churchgoers are creationists.

In the last five years, Harun Yahya, a Turkish-based Islamic creationist propaganda machine, has been flooding the developed world with sophisticated material, including an incredibly glossy, huge and heavy 800-page Atlas of Creation which "proves" that all living species were created simultaneously. "Living beings have not undergone the slightest change for hundreds of millions of years," it asserts.

Multiple copies of this "atlas" have arrived at the two newspaper offices where I work, the Telegraph and the Catholic Herald. Schools all over the country are receiving unsolicited copies for their libraries. Is anyone even flicking through them before they go on the shelves? My guess is that the book is fast becoming an accepted resouce for state schools with Muslim pupils. Who is paying for this vast work of fantasy dressed up as science? I bet the funding doesn't all come from Turkey. Saudi, perhaps?

Meanwhile, as counterknowledge.com reports, the influence of Adnan Oktar, the fundamentalist who runs Harun Yahya, is growing enormously. Oktar has managed to block access in Turkey to numerous websites that challenge him, including at one stage Google groups. According to one report, 61 websites have been targeted by Oktar/Yahya, whose work has been translated into 57 languages.

This is a battle that the educational establishment just isn't prepared for. Guardian readers associate creationism with US Republicans, not ethnic minorities. Now they face a painful dilemma: should they fight to exclude the creationist viewpoint from science lessons, risking accusations of Islamophobia from angry parents, or should they embrace pseudoscience in the name of cultural diversity? It's a tough one. COMMENT HERE >>> Damian Thompson | November 7, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Creationism: Taking on Darwin in Turkey
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Fundamentalist Christians in America are not the only ones leading a crusade against Darwin. Creationism and "intelligent design" are becoming increasingly popular among Turkey's Muslims, too.

The man who wants to save the world goes by the name of Harun Yahya and resembles an actor from the age of silent films. He wears a white silk suit, gold cufflinks and has a finely trimmed beard on his chin. "In 20 years," he says in serious tone, "humanity will enter a golden age."

Yahya says that he discovered these joyful tidings in the Bible and the Koran. He maintains that it is a "scientific fact" that Jesus and Mahdi, the Muslim messiah, will return to mankind to solve all global conflicts. Beforehand, however, he says that these two heavenly emissaries will have to tackle another challenge: They must eradicate the heresy of British naturalist Charles Darwin, who postulated that all life arose from a process of natural selection.

As Yahya sees it, Darwinism is the root of all the world's evils. In order to help rid the world of this theory, he has had thousands of copies of The Atlas of Creation printed and shipped around the world. This large-format 800-page tome aims to prove that there never was a natural evolution of species. Instead, it contends that all forms of life on earth have remained unchanged for millions of years. Brightly colored illustrations of fossils have been included so as to document the lack of so-called transitional forms.

Yahya, 52, a onetime student of architecture, is without a doubt his country's most colorful adherent of creationism. He claims that he has already sold 8 million copies of his various books. Last year, thousands of copies of The Atlas of Creation were delivered -- on an unsolicited basis -- to schools around Europe. The identity of the person or institution footing the bill for this initiative remains unclear.

In addition to Yahya, who is currently being prosecuted "for illegal personal gain," there are other vehement opponents of evolution in Turkey. One of these is Kerim Balci, a journalist who works for the pro-government newspaper Zaman. His message: "God isn't the one who's dead; it's Darwinism." Taking on Darwin in Turkey >>> By Daniel Steinvorth in Istanbul | September 23, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
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Who Are the British Creationists?
BBC: Widely believed in the United States, creationism - the belief that God created the earth and man in six days - is enjoying a resurgence of support in the UK, say its believers and its critics.

At first glance the Genesis Expo museum, in the naval town of Portsmouth, looks like any other repository of natural history exhibits: fossils of dinosaurs and unusual rock formations.

But focus on the narrative of the information panels alongside them, and you start to realise this is a museum with a difference - one dedicated to the theory of creationism.

The revelation that US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin says creationism should be taught in schools, alongside that of evolutionary theory, has raised few eyebrows in the US. An estimated 47% of Americans reject outright Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, accepting instead the Bible's account of the creation of the universe - as laid out in the first chapter of Genesis.

But in Britain, where a portrait of Darwin appears on the back of the £10 note, his theory of life evolving from primitive to complex structures by means of natural selection appears to be unchallenged orthodoxy.

Not so, say those on both sides of the creationist divide - a point amply proved by the existence of the Genesis Expo museum, to date Britain's only creationist museum. The museum is the work of Britain's oldest creationist group, the Creation Science Movement, which has built Genesis Expo to visibly challenge the theory of evolution .

In its walk-through display, fossils in glass cases purport to show that ancient animals - including man - did not evolve from lower creatures but were instead divinely created "after their kind" (Genesis Chapter 1, verse 21).

A picture of a landslide-causing volcano is used to counter the scientific understanding that rock strata took millions of years to build up.

And throughout the display are scattered examples of "intelligent design" - complex creatures that "could not have evolved" as the result of natural selection. Who Are the British Creationists? >>> By Julian Joyce, BBC News | September 15, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
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McCain VP Pick 'Victim of Sexism'
Watch BBC video: Carly Fiorina, a senior advisor to Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, has defended his choice of running mate: She said it did not matter that Sarah Palin is a creationist and a climate change sceptic. She added that Mrs Palin was a victim of "sexist attacks" >>> | September 3, 2008

BBC:
McCain Attacks Media over Palin: John McCain's US presidential campaign has angrily condemned the media for questioning the way his running mate Sarah Palin's candidacy was vetted >>> | September 3, 2008

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Insights: Evangelicals in the South

Evangelicals in the South from Chris on Vimeo.
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