How Creationism Entered Turkey’s Schools
(from an article by Taner Edis): The December 1992 issue of “Acts and Facts” (of the ICR [Institute for Creation Research]) describes a “Creation Conference” in the October of that year in Turkey, featuring Duane Gish and John Morris, explaining how
Sometime in the mid 1980s, the Turkish Minister of Education, Mr. Vehbi Dincerler [. . .] placed a call to ICR. [. . .] he wanted to eliminate the secular-based, evolution-only teaching dominant in their schools and replace it with a curriculum teaching the two models[.] As a result, several ICR books which dealt with the scientific (not Biblical) evidence for creation were translated into Turkish and distributed to all Turkey’s public school teachers.
… A widely available, low priced booklet (about 90 cents, 118 pages) by a leading Turkish creationist illustrates the nature of strict creationism in Turkey. Evolution, a Bankrupt Theory by Adem Tatli (Tatli, 1990), is also significant in that much of the included material was originally produced for the Turkish government. The level of reliance on the “creation science” produced by conservative Christians is striking….
…Before discussing the “Evolution Report” of the Turkish Education Ministry, some political background is necessary. Turkey is still in most aspects a secular state, though about 98% of the population is said to be at least nominally Muslim. It may be that “scientific creationism” is a reaction to a fairly secular cultural environment. In the more traditionally religious and culturally rural parts of the country, evolution is simply not a concern…
(click here for the entire article by Taner Edis documenting the attempt by the Turkish government to introduce creationism into Turkey’s classrooms.)
If I might report from the field. I have personally encountered smart young people interested in computers who were convinced, via the constant ID propaganda here, that the math behind what are essentially search procedures does not and cannot work and therefore anyone who suggests the study of genetic algorithms might be an atheist trying to indoctrinate them. Someone who appears to be held in high esteem here in this blog has — perhaps inadvertantly — done some harm to non-biological fields in this country by constantly badmouthing scientists and by passing off despicably misleading propaganda as sound math.
I wouldn’t worry about this too much in the US because there a reasonable education system with well-trained staff is accessible to those who seek it. People with aptitude and interest in science can easily access the educational facilities and the effects of misinformation can easily be undone for the people whose professional careers overlap with science. This is, perhaps, to be expected from a society that actually produces new science. It is a far different story here. We appear to be turning many of our smart and able youngsters into smart and able spreaders of anti-science and plain nonsense.
Some of the comments in the previous posting about Dawkins are good examples of this effect. Turks who are able to produce intelligible prose in English are not exactly the underprivileged and undereducated here.and look what they have been trying to tell us.
Wait Bulent, here is an idea. Invite those budding genetic-algorithms-challenged computer scientists to investigate/work on alternative approaches, like, based on Islamic social behavior (distributed). Instead of mating, having off-springs, selection of beneficial traits, mutations, etc., one could imagine proselytizing, gaining recruits, selection of virtuous traits, mind experiments with vices, etc.
The creationist have to be credited with many advances in science. The evolutionism community has now attempted to build their theory on the shoulders all the discoveries made by those who factually believe that God created the heaven and the earth. Kepler, Boyle and many others.
Nihat, here’s the problem and the point: they were not computer scientists. They could have become computer scientists and perhaps would have wanted to had they had easy access to formal education. What the ID movement here has done to them was to render them impervious to knowledge of part of the field. Of course they knew anyone who thought genetic algorithms could work had to have been fooled by the atheist Darwinists. We’re not talking about biology, mind you. This is an assertion about math, computational complexy,.search (in the CS sense). This is what happens when people are fed lies to by credible looking, pious and articulate oaves about what is claimed to be proven but somehow suppressed by scientists.
Did I mention this is wasn’t even biology? I know I did, but I wish to stress that.
What’s really bothersome in all this is that the Muslim conception of God does not require any of this. Not one bit of it. Even the Pope appears to have understood this when he says that the Islamic conception of God transcends reason. A Muslim doesn’t even need to commit to accepting linear/progressive time when it comes to God’s frame of reference. Grrr.
This is already long enough, but I’ll include a quotation I like from R.A.Fisher (the statistician and the geneticist):
“The custom of making abstract dogmatic assertions is not, certainly, derived from the teaching of Jesus, but has been a widespread weakness among religious teachers in subsequent centuries. I do not think that the word for the Christian virtue of faith should be prostituted to mean the credulous acceptance of all such piously intended assertions. Much self-deception in the young believer is needed to convince himself that he knows that of which in reality he knows himself to be ignorant. That surely is hypocrisy, against which we have been most conspicuously warned.”