This Is Disturbing – Comic Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-evolution, comic, creationism, Darwin, Darwinism, evolution, fundamentalism, God, violence.8 comments
I found this comic, courtesy of Digg. I don’t know about you, but I found it really disturbing… perhaps the artist is trying to reflect the anti-evolution sentiment rampant amongst the religous fundamentalists? By why such violence, why the use of girls?
I have a suspicion that the caption was added later by someone which has nothing to do with the drawing. I’d like to think that the drawing comes from some innocent children’s book…
Click here for the original file. Click on it to see its full size.
Truly Sad – WordPress Censored in Turkey – Creationist Harun Yahya Involved Monday, August 20, 2007
Posted by Henry in Adnan Oktar, anti-creationism, anti-evolution, anti-fundamentalism, Atlas of Creation, censorship, Edip Yuksel, education, Europe, European Union, evolution, faith, fundamentalism, Harun Yahya, Islam, rationality, reason, religion, science, Turkey, United States, WordPress.7 comments
Correction:
I was under the impression that Turkey was a member of EU, which is incorrect. Thanks for the reader who kindly pointed out my mistake.
h3nry – 21 August 2007
This is official: my dear blog host WordPress has been blocked in Turkey due to the so-called “defamation blogs” containing alleged “slanders” made to the Turkish Islamic fundamentalist, and the newest and hottest creationist kid in town, Adnan Oktar – or better known by his pen name, Harun Yahya.
Harun Yahya has recently published a fantastically crafted creationist book called Atlas of Creation that has been translated into many language and been shipped, unsolicited, to the schools and universities in various parts of Europe and the United States (which I briefly blogged here). It is not clear how Harun Yahya financed this book and its junk distribution, but the content of it often violates copyright laws.
Now on to the ban of WordPress in Turkey. It seems that the issue is that a person by the name of Edip Yuksel, a self-proclaimed Islamic reformer, has registered various subdomains of WordPress such as:
http://AdnanOktar.wordpress.com
http://HarunYahyaArabic.wordpress.com
and various other domains to, in the words of Harun Yahya’s legal team, “defame” the Islamic fundamentalist. Be sure to check out the site http://AdnanOktar.wordpress.com to see, I think, photos of what seems to be Harun Yahya in prison and being arrested by police.
Here is the extract of a letter sent to WordPress by Harun Yahya’s lawyer (italics mine):
The number of our attempts to inform and warn you regarding these defamation blogs must have been at least twenty, many times through your support page, a couple of times to your legal department and we even sent a regular mail to Mr. Matt Mullenweg (from the WordPress team). Most of our attempts were unanswered.
These defamation blogs contained slanders to some of my client’s friends as well. They also applied WordPress.com support with their official ID cards and a representative directed them to write to the legal department. So they did but again no response from legal.
So it seems this has been an on-going issue. How did WordPress respond to the letters, it is not known. Needless to say this is quite a tricky and complicated issue. The root cause is fundamentalism vs. reformation, there is the policy and responses from WordPress, and there is the unreasonable law of banning the entire blogging service in the entire country. I would have thought that one reasonable approach is to ban those subdomains in dispute get banned – if they are indeed found to be defamatory and that WordPress is judged not have been carried out its legal responsibilities (I cannot say for certain since most of the content are in Turkish and really, I guess it would be somewhat subjective and I am no expert in this fuzzy legal area). It is worth noting the comment made by a reader edezu from Turkey (italics mine):
This person’s (Harun Yahya) current strategy is to block all the sites which attacks him and his ideas. A few months ago, he made a similar move and blocked “eksi sozluk”, an open dictionary which is, in my opinion, a bastion of free speech in turkish online media, with more than 10.000 writers and about 2.000 entries each day.
Adnan Oktar is taking advantage of the gaps in Turkish laws on the internet, which are sadly on their infancy, to silence all the voices against him. Internet poses a real threat to people like him, where ideas are exposed, and people read them!
Yes, one big gap in the Turkish law indeed. My sympathy goes out to the WordPress gang and the Turkish Internet users. I wonder if the European Union will somehow act or put pressure on this Turkish ruling? What’s the lunatic Harun Yahya going to do next – ban Google?
To all of the people out there who feel that this whole entire evolution vs. creationism debate is something of a fringe interest, or an issue that can be safely dismissed – think carefully again. It is an issue that reflects the bigger war between the fundamentalists and the reasonable, the religious fanatics and the rational, lunacy and integrity.
It is good to know though, as one of the readers jimcolella noted, there is already a petition underway:
On that score, I’ve found there is already a Facebook petition to protest the blockage (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4940847710) and I would strongly recommend all interested parties to write to Al Jazeera’s “Listening Post” programme via their Web site — a great TV prog that covers precisely these types of issues, i.e., freedom of speech… precisely what I’m going to do as soon as I log out of this.
An entire blog publishing service is being censored in an European Union country, the entire freedom to information for the Turkish population is being compromised by a few deranged individuals. This is a truly sad day.
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“The Limits of Atheism”? Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-evolution, atheism, Behe, creationism, evolution, faith, fundamentalism, God, Michael Behe, rationality, reason, religion, science.3 comments
Sometimes I wonder where the journalistic standards have been these days. Here is an appalling article written by a columnist named David Warren, titled “The Limits of Atheism”. Firstly it addresses nothing on the limits of atheism, instead it is all mumbo-jumbo on evolution; secondly it is full of the straw-man and manipulative arguments coming from the religious bigotry frame of mind.
Let’s start with the second paragraph. Warren simply asserts that most of the proponents of “evolutionism” know little science and cannot engage in details scientific discussions:
For most of these correspondents know precious little science, and haven’t the stamina to engage in detailed argument. They are simply shocked and appalled that anyone would dream of challenging what they believe to be the consensus of “qualified experts,” whom they assume are a closed camp of hard-bitten materialists, with no time for religious or poetical flights.
How outrageous!
It is the creationists of any creationism flavours who exhibit the undesirable trait of ignorance in evolution (and science in general) – we see this time and time again in the never-ending debates against creationists. We are all familiar with how they argue, which involves techniques such as quote mining, mis-understanding science, trumpeting scientists’ mistakes, using out-of-date data, using any areas of uncertainty as proof etc, you name it.
It is precisely the lack of “stamina” to engage in scientific arguments that make creationists of all favours so foolish and wrong. For example, Michael Behe – one of the very few quotable reputable creationist-scientist today – has had one of his central argument refuted completely here by a grad student.
What on earth does Warren mean by putting quotes around “qualified experts”?
They (evolution proponents) imagine themselves to have an impersonal interest in defending science against “religious superstition,” and the dangers to society that the latter might present. They in fact have strong and uncompromising religious beliefs of their own, which they are loath to have questioned.
Yes of course! We stand to defend human knowledge and the scientific method as well as rationality from religious ignorance and fundamentalist thinking and manipulation.
I often wonder why the religious fundamentalists think evolutionists are arrogant, in that we have “uncompromising religious beliefs” of our own – when the complete opposite is true! Nothing, even in the face of undeniable evidence, will change the creationist’s mind, where as the proponents of evolution and science are the opposite – by definition. Now who is “uncompromising”?
In the concluding paragraphs Warren writes about a recent scientific finding showing that DNA could not have survived comets crashing into earth, because he attempts to show that yet another possible naturalistic explanation of origin of life is been shown not possible. He again shows his lack of understanding in evolution by using the argument of chance. This time this chance argument is done with a twist. Warren thinks that the materialistic evolutionists have resorted to the “multiple universes” hypothesis in order to let chance to explain the origin of life. What idiotic and criminal claim!
“What Is The Danger of Teaching Creationism?” Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-evolution, anti-ID, creationism, education, evolution, God, intelligent design, science.16 comments
This is a question asked by a fellow blogger Steve at Bits of Brain. Specifically, he would like to know what the impacts and consequences are for teaching creationism alongside of evolution in our schools:
So I remain curious as to what you see are the impacts, the consequences, the ramifications. What will HAPPEN to our children if one day our courts fail us and permit this craziness to enter the classrooms?
Naturally I was appalled by this question and so I left a couple of comments to his post, which I thought I will promote and repeat them up to a post here.
First of all here is the background. Brian at his nice blog Laelaps posted an entry titled “Combating Creationism with History“. Steve then replied with lots of questions, basically sympathesizing with the creationists and questioning why creationism must be fought against. Brian has done a lengthy reply which is worth a read, while I took a different angle in saying that it is important to combat the religious ideology because creationism and its various flavours have been a pest and great waste of resource to our educational systems.
Why is creationism dangerous? As Steve states:
… What is the danger?” What is the “threat” that creationism presents to our society, to our culture, and to our school-children?
Well, in a nutshell it is the same as teaching astrology, numerology or alchemy in our classes.
Education is established as a system to impart knowledge, values and attitudes to the children, while allowing them to learn and develop critical skills and habits.
There are several critical skills that our educational system teaches which arms the kids to become self sufficient and get more out of life. These skills include sports, using computer and learning foreign languages to other more abstract basic skill set such as critical thinking, problem solving and respecting others.
Creationism teaches none of the above – at its core it says an intelligent-designer-did-it and nothing more. Evolution, on the other hand, is a product of scientific disciplines, which is based upon several fundamental skills such problem solving and critical thinking. Now let us look at it n terms of bodies of knowledge, which for example include philosophy, arts, literature and history. Again, how does creationism fit in? What sort of knowledge does it provide?
The best category where creationism can fit in is science. But the problem is that it is not science and does not value any of the scientific fundamentals. It has nothing scientific. Granted, there are areas of uncertainty in it but this is quite normal in all scientific disciplines – just think about the fascinating unsolved mysteries in astrophysics and quantum physics. The ever-dwindling sets of unsolved problems and yet-to-be-explained phenomena are best left for science to deal with, not a religious doctrine that says god-did-it.
So we have established that creationism has absolutely no values. Therefore, the impact of teaching it in our classes is a great waste of resources. The ramification of teaching it is to dumb down or kids, and a direct insult to our educational systems.
The Monthly Dembski Watch – July 2007 Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-evolution, anti-fundamentalism, Behe, creationism, Dembski, evolution, fundamentalism, intelligent design, materialism, MIT, rationality, religion, Richard Dawkins, science, Uncommon Descent.3 comments
This is a summary of Bill Dembski’s July posts at Uncommon Descent. I started this last month when I was utterly appalled by Dembski’s classless act of making fun of Coyne’s physical appearance. Since then I have been interested in what Dembski writes, and this post is a result of it. I am particularly curious in what kind of positive contribution Dembski (and ID in general) can provide. Note that it is not the purpose of this post to provide anything substantial; it is merely a summary with some element of sarcasm (with people like him – why not?).
So these are what Bill has written in July 2007 (in reversing chronological order):
27th of July – SCIENCE’S BLIND SPOT by Cornelius Hunter
This is a short post from Bill recommending an anti-science book to his audience.
26th of July – A Scoville Scale for Dangerous Questions
This is a good one from Dembski – he is using the scale that measures the hotness of chilli as a way of rating questions proposed to “materialists”. Bill can be very creative too.
24th of July – Intelligent Design in Business Practice
Dembski cries and feels sorry for ID and wants to make it go into business practices. Be aware, the emptiness of ID has turned from school classrooms to business offices! Let’s see what ID has to offer for the success of the economies around the world.
Bill says:
Get used to it: ID is going every place that Darwinism has gotten its fetid little fingers.
I am seriously worried about Dembski’s state of mental health, no kidding. His bitterness has turned to this me-against-the-world ill feeling which has shown time and time again.
20th of July – Casey Luskin interviews Robert Marks, director of Baylor’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab
A short post by Bill advertising for his colleague Robert Marks. If you have read Bill’s post earlier, they are actually writing a very important and critical academic papers on, er, disproving Jesus Tomb.
20th of July – Kevin Padian: The Archie Bunker Professor of Paleobiology at Cal Berkeley
For those who aren’t familiar with Padian, he is a paleontologist who testified in the now famous Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005 which led to the defeat of the Intelligent Design side. Here is the entire testimony by Padian. Given this background, no wonder our oh-so-lovely Bill takes issue with Padian.
Bill creatively calls Padian the Archie Bunker this month, and as reported here last month Bill called the evolutionary biologist Coyne Hermant Munster. I am eagerly waiting what Dembski the creative soul will come up next month.
Incredibly Bill is actually on the defensive for once.
For a rebuttal of Dembski’s whining and vileness, see the wonderful Jason Rosenburg’s post here (and its comments). Jason said well to sum up William Dembski’s mentality:
Mentally healthy human beings do not write paragraphs like that.
Creationism Article in The Seoul Times Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-evolution, biology, Christianity, creationism, evolution, fundamentalism, intelligent design, Korea, religion, science, Seoul, South Korea, Turkey, UK, United Kingdom.add a comment
I came across this creationist article the other day and didn’t really pay too much attention to it, as it is yet another typical creationist fundie mumbo-jumbo. Then again on a second thought, this article seems just a little bit different to the other ones out there. You will note that the publisher is The Seoul Times – a South Korean based newspaper.
You’d thought that creationism is a peculiar US phenomenon? Well, it is not true anymore. For example, the recent creationism movement in Turkey is making great inroads in the Islamic world and has captured the attention of the media in the West. The recent Intelligent Design Movement is also making some noise under the ironic name of Truth in Science in the UK. And now, this article published in a Korean newspaper shows just perhaps creationism is also making progress in South Korea.
A while ago I posted an entry showing how the theory of evolution seems not very well accepted worldwide, however there is no data regarding South Korea, a country with a history of producing Christianity cults, so perhaps we must not be all that surprised by it.
This is what the article has to say:
My First Time Experience In a Creationism Sermon Monday, July 30, 2007
Posted by Henry in Anthony Flew, anti-creationism, anti-evolution, anti-fundamentalism, Charles Templeton, Christianity, church, Creation Ministry International, creationism, fundamentalism, Haeckel, Piltdown Man, Presbyterian, science, sermon, Sydney.3 comments
Given the rare chance and out of immense curiosity, I attended a creationism sermon – for the very first time – at a Sydney Presbyterian church last weekend. The title of the sermon is Creation, a Key to the Gospel.
The presenter was Dr. Tas Walker, a retired engineer with quite a good working experience. He now works full time at the Australian based fundamentalist organisation called Creation Ministries International, where the Ken Ham, the brain behind the $US27 million Creation Museum originally comes from. I knew this before I attended the sermon, and was glad that someone highly educated and seemingly intelligent was delivering it, rather than the idiotic Ray Comfort type. The sermon was conducted with Powerpoint slides.
Walker opened the sermon by showing a collection of newspaper headlines on evolutionary discoveries, presenting it as if the secular media favours too much on evolution. He also asked if the Christians have ever had troubles or being bothered in completing school assignments on evolution, and how he hoped his presentation would answer some of the troubles. This exemplifies one central characteristic of fundamentalists – the psychology of they being marginalised and even victimised by the secular society. Perhaps these creationists should openly protest against the teaching of evolution and start a public civil movement of destroying the fact of evolution.
After this sensationalised opening, Walker proceeded to the make his case of why creationism matters. I did not fully grasp his logic because I was puzzled by his reasoning. Anyhow it roughly went something like this: Christianity is based on the Gospels and the Genesis, the two absolute central basis of the Bible, and it is in the Genesis that it states clearly that God created the world and all living things. Then evolution comes along and turns this completely upside down, hence it must be bad for Christianity. This is quite the normal argument (although I regretted not having writing down or recording his sermon… but I think next time I will be much better prepared).
Discovery Institute Exposed Once More Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-evolution, bloggers, creationism, Discovery Institute, Explore Evolution, fundamentalism, God, humor, humour, intelligent design, parody.2 comments
I am an atheist, but I make exception for one god – the Fake God. Why? Armed with his infinitely technical knowledge, He (presumably) has cleverly exposed the people behind the book Explore Evolution – and yes, it is the Discovery Institute – the infamous “think tank” behind the despicable creationism movement known as Intelligent Design
Notice how the Discovery Instititute and Intelligent Design are not mentioned at all on the Explore Evolution website? What is the institute hiding? What is it afraid of?
The Almighty Fake God did it with the good old WhoIs search command on the Explore Evolution website, which shows that the registrant of it is the Discovery Institute:
Registrant:
Discovery Institute
1402 3rd Ave
Suite 400
Seattle, Washington 98101
United StatesRegistered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: EXPLOREEVOLUTION.COM
Created on: 28-Jun-05
Expires on: 28-Jun-08
where GoDaddy is the actual website host.
Fake God is not pleased. The Discovery Institute has failed to push creationism into the classrooms already,
And now the Heathens know the Discovery Institute is behind the “Explore Evolution” book, we’ll just have to get on with another plan! What a bunch of baboons.
Atheists – Face Your Worst Nighmares – An Awesome Video! Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-evolution, anti-fundamentalism, creationism, faith, fundamentalism, funny, God, humor, humour, nightmare, parody, religion, science, video.add a comment
Following the overwhelming success of the now famous Peanut Butter and Banana videos on the Internet, here is another video presenting not one, but many convincing and irrefutable evidences of how the Almighty God created everything! So there you go, those damn non-believers…
Courtesy of the Friendly Atheist.
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Darwinists’ Worst Nightmare – The Frightening Spectre of ID Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-evolution, anti-fundamentalism, anti-ID, creationism, Darwinism, evolution, Fred Hoyle, fundamentalism, intelligent design, natural selection, naturalism, rationality, reason, religion, science, scientists, straw-man.2 comments
Apparently the Intelligent Design movement has got the “Darwinists” scared, according to an article posted on an American right-wing extremist website (courtesy of the resourceful Darwininia).
While the title of the article “The frightening specter of Intelligent Design” sounds spectacularly frightening, it fails spectacularly to frighten anyone who knows something about ID. This is because the article is a simple repetition of the usual ID and creationism rhetorics.
So why are Darwinists scared? Because the progresses of science have rendered natural selection more and more unable to explain the complexity of life.
And this is pretty much the entire article offers – it mentions absolutely nothing, zero, nil, nada, on what these recent science progresses are.
And unlike many other more sophisticated ID arguments, the author displays all the hallmarks of basic creationism knowledge. The article starts with the main ID theme that life is too complex to be explainable by natural selection. This is where the ID argument (if there is one to start with) ends, and the good old dose of creationism takes over.
The author says that life is too complex to have come about by random chance – and he even brings up the really, really, really old and wrong Fred Hoyle chance calculation which I thought has been buried for good!
Then the scientific community is under attack with his straw-man argument:
But if design, conversely, is rational, why do so many scientists reject it? Because this is not an issue of science, but of religion. Their religion is that of materialism and naturalism, and they are under no illusions as to the implications of design.
Now this line of thinking exemplifies the frightening spectre of religious fundamentalism.
Evolution Space 