Textbook Regression: Turkey’s anti-Semitic Onslaught Against Evolution
Simon A. Waldman, 28.06.2017, for Haaretz
Turkey recently decided to exclude teaching evolution in school science classes at all levels. Unveiling the new curriculum, the chair of the board of education Alpaslan Durmus said that such controversial topics are too complicated and controversial for Turkish children; they are better off learning them at university.
Under the rule of the Islamist rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), there has been an attempt to build a nationalist society in which Islamic piety is central. Evolution is considered a dangerous challenge, one that cannot be reconciled with the belief in God.
In 2006, a glossy "Atlas of Creation"found its way into many Turkish schools, claiming to disprove evolution by natural selection. It audaciously pointed to the fossil record to explain that creation is the handiwork of God. Evolution, the book further claimed, was responsible for un-Islamic and destructive doctrines such as Nazism and communism.
A couple of years later, the website of famed evolutionary biologists, most notably Richard Dawkins, were blocked after Adnan Oktar, a fierce advocate of Islamic creationism, also known by his pen name Harun Yahya, the same gentleman who wrote the "Atlas of Creation", claimed that Dawkins and others insulted him.
In 2009, TUBITAK, the Turkish body that finances the sciences, censored a magazine article about the life and work of Charles Darwin. The magazine’s editor Cigdem Atakuman was removed from her position as punishment. Later in 2013, TUBITAK stopped selling books about evolution through its catalogue list made available for educators.
Unable to totally suppress evolution, some tried to discredit it through good old-fashioned anti-Semitism. In 2012, a series of primary school books were released in a district of Istanbul which claimed that Charles Darwin was a Jew with a big nose and enjoyed the company of monkeys. Similarly, back in February 2016 Turkish columnist Seyfi Sahin claimed that Darwin had got it all mixed up. Citing the Koran, he argued that evolution was indeed true, but works in reverse because chimpanzees and gorillas are in fact mutated Jews who had been punished for their past perversions.
Such anti-Semitic views are part and parcel of the Turkish Islamist worldview from which Erdogan and the AKP emerged. In this case used to bring home the message that evolution is un-Islamic.
Last week’s announcement to cease teaching evolution is therefore no surprise. Ahead of April’s constitutional referendum to give President Erdogan more power, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus commented that “Scientifically, the theory of evolution is already an archaic and disproven theory. There is no such rule that this theory must be taught.” Indeed, there had already been reports detailing the new curriculum. More time to Turkish and Muslim scientists, less time to the country’s secular founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
It was not as if evolution was being taught well in Turkey in the first place. In contrast to the earlier 1983 school curriculum, the 2011 version about to be replaced taught evolution alongside creationism. Evolution was relegated to being an open question more akin to an unproved hypothesis. In some cases, even biology teachers demonstrated an unsound understanding of the scientific theory. Indeed, according to a 2011 Ipsos survey of 24 countries, only 19 per cent of Turks believe in evolution while 60 per cent hold creationist views, putting Turkey in the same bracket as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
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@oralloy,
oralloy wrote:
The modern day Israelis are the descendants of the Iron Age Israelites.
Religiously, yes. Rabbinical Judaism is a descendant of those earlier Yahwistic religions. Genealogically, in regard to the Ashkenazim, the people that begat the state of Israel, overwhelmingly, no. You're confusing religion with genealogy.
oralloy wrote:
Archaeology shows that the settlements from Iron Age I remained continuously occupied by the same culture throughout the following centuries, and thus were the ancestors of the Israelite kingdoms later in the Iron Age.
You're inferring conclusions that aren't supported by the archaeology what with your confusion of culture with genealogy. They're not synonymous. Mass population transfers were carried out throughout the later Iron Age periods by Assyrian kings like Tiglath-Pileser III and Sennacherib following their conquests of these areas.
oralloy wrote:InfraBlue wrote:oralloy wrote:Archaeology shows that the Israelites populated and controlled the entire West Bank area.
Nuh-uh.
There is no archaeological evidence of any Iron Age kingdoms in the West Bank area other than Judah and the Northern Israelite kingdom.
And the settlers of the West Bank area in Iron Age I have been archaeologically identified as the same culture that formed these later kingdoms.
You had begun with the claim that archaeology bares out your claim that "
the Israeli people really did have a primitive kingdom under Saul before 1000 BC." It doesn't. So then, you altered your claim stating that the "Israelites were the Canaanite people of the West Bank," and that "archaeologists date Israelite remains as far back as 1200 BC" At that time nothing distinguished "Israelites" from Canaanites.
@oralloy,
oralloy wrote:
InfraBlue wrote:Right. The point is, however, that the practice wasn't due to Jewish dietary custom. That came about much later.
Ultimately the point is whether the people of the West Bank in 1200 BC were ancestral to the Iron Age Israelites (and by extension ancestral to modern-day Israelis). If they abandoned pigs out of practicality and that only later became a religious tradition, that doesn't change the fact that they were the ancestral Israelites and this was the beginnings of their avoidance of pork.
Again, you're confusing religious practices with genealogy.
@InfraBlue,
From Wiki:
Quote:The recent African origin of modern humans is the mainstream model that describes the origin and early dispersal of anatomically modern humans. The theory is called the (Recent) Out-of-Africa model in the popular press, and academically the recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), Replacement Hypothesis, and Recent African Origin (RAO) model. The hypothesis that humans have a single origin (monogenesis) was published in Charles Darwin's Descent of Man (1871). The concept was speculative until the 1980s, when it was corroborated by a study of present-day mitochondrial DNA, combined with evidence based on physical anthropology of archaic specimens. According to genetic and fossil evidence, archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa, between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, with members of one branch leaving Africa by 60,000 years ago and over time replacing earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. The oldest fossils of Homo sapiens found in Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) in 2017 may have pushed that date back as far as 300,000 years ago.[6]
The recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa is the near-consensus position held within the scientific community.[7][8][9][10][11]
That's good enough for me! I'll continue to believe in scientific findings about Homo sapiens, and disregard books that are considered authored by a god.
@TheCobbler,
TheCobbler wrote:Oralloy, you act as if the Israelites somehow magically appeared out of nowhere in some garden somewhere and are not actually part of the human race.
No. I am acting like the Israelites were the former Canaanites of the West Bank area, who went on to form an Iron Age civilization after Canaanite civilization collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age.
TheCobbler wrote:No one is debating they existed
We've just had several pages of such a debate.
TheCobbler wrote:"One god" was not a new concept either.
If so, does it matter?
@InfraBlue,
InfraBlue wrote:Religiously, yes. Rabbinical Judaism is a descendant of those earlier Yahwistic religions. Genealogically, in regard to the Ashkenazim, the people that begat the state of Israel, overwhelmingly, no. You're confusing religion with genealogy.
I'm pretty sure that there have been genetic links showing that European Jews came from the area around Israel.
But ultimately it doesn't matter. Any genetic dilution would be the result of their involuntary expulsion from their homeland. Hardly their fault. And hardly justification for denying their claims to their ancient homeland.
InfraBlue wrote:You're inferring conclusions that aren't supported by the archaeology what with your confusion of culture with genealogy. They're not synonymous.
The consensus of archaeologists is that the settlements were continuously occupied by the same culture from Iron Age I into the period when the Israelite kingdoms existed, and therefore the Iron Age I settlements were the ancestors of those later kingdoms.
InfraBlue wrote:Mass population transfers were carried out throughout the later Iron Age periods by Assyrian kings like Tiglath-Pileser III and Sennacherib following their conquests of these areas.
That was after the Israelite kingdoms were destroyed. It doesn't change the fact that West Bank Iron Age I settlements were the ancestors of those Israelite kingdoms.
Not so much an "altered claim" as a "supporting claim". Establishing the fact that primitive Israelites were the main population at that time and place, establishes that any primitive kingdom at that time and place was a primitive Israelite kingdom.
InfraBlue wrote:At that time nothing distinguished "Israelites" from Canaanites.
Perhaps not, but the West Bank people of Iron Age I were the ancestors of the later Israelite kingdoms. And any primitive kingdom that they formed would have been their own primitive kingdom.
@oralloy,
Do you share this same way of thinking about the American Indians?
What land do you think they should they posses or control?
@reasoning logic,
reasoning logic wrote:Do you share this same way of thinking about the American Indians?
Probably. But it depends on how much of a hardliner someone is on the matter.
reasoning logic wrote:What land do you think they should they posses or control?
Whatever lands we agreed that they should possess in any treaty that we made with them.
@oralloy,
Quote:Whatever lands we agreed that they should possess in any treaty that we made with them.
Genocidal US governments are and have all been, surprise surprise, incredible liars.
With more than 500 treaties already broken, the government can do whatever it wants, it seems...
By Samuel Vargo
More than 500 treaties have been made between the government and Indian tribes and all were broken, nulllified or amended. Nothing's changed. The mere fact that the Keystone XL oil pipeline has even been considered is a violation of law and shouldn’t have seen blueprints, let alone having this North American monster voted on by the Senate and House of Representatives.
The unmitigated arrogance of it all! U.S. Congressmen and U.S. Senators had no right to even vote on the Keystone XL. A treaty is a law, and breaking a treaty, or attempting to break a treaty, is a criminal act. Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu is no better than the vilest of all miscreant reprobates – for throwing her version of the bill before her Senate peers. To think that a Democrat would be behind this thing is appalling to me. I've always believed the Democratic Party was the “Party of the People” and the political party that looks out for of the interests of the working class, the poor, even the underdog. Certainly, Democratic Senators would at least be sensitive to treaties the government has in place with American Indians. Well, it's definitely not the case with U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu.
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/21/1345986/-With-more-than-500-treaties-already-broken-the-government-can-do-whatever-it-wants-it-seems
Let's rid out government of scientists and instead replace them with hookiepooks and astrologers who can falsely predict the end of the world (as they often do) rather than when we are unnecessarily pushing the earth to the brink of cataclysm. (cynical)
The catholic church across the street helps hungry people even after 1am at night, I love them...
@TheCobbler,
Quote:Let's rid out government of scientists and instead replace them with hookiepooks and astrologers who can falsely predict the end of the world
Actually, it's the scientists and government that I'm hearing warnings of 'the end' from these days. The '6th mass extinction' coming our way is the latest 'big threat' . That is if they haven't already scared you silly with the threat of terrorism, evil immigrants, assault weapon wielding maniacs, crack cocain babies, pandemics of every description, WMDs, nuclear armed ICBMs from N. Korea, Iran, et al, and then of course there is global warming.
My horoscope only warned me about being prone to forgetfulness today. Somehow that seems less threatening than the dire warnings from government and scientists.
@Leadfoot,
The scientists are warning about the consequences of what will happen if we don't change our ways. Some of the godsquad actually want there to be some sort of global catastrophe because they mistakenly believe it will fit in with Biblical predictions.
That's the big difference, it's the difference between someone warning you of the dangers of a housefire and someone actually trying to burn your house down.
@izzythepush,
Quote:The scientists are warning about the consequences of what will happen if we don't change our ways. Some of the godsquad actually want there to be some sort of global catastrophe because they mistakenly believe it will fit in with Biblical predictions.
So it's all the 'godsquad's fault? Desperate....
Scientists and politicians are not talking about the
facts about what things actually need to change to avoid those consequences. All the talk of carbon tax, need for electric cars, etc. is BS when compared to the factors driving carbon emissions, loss of forests, etc.
The 8000 pound gorilla is 'people'.
Example: Having one less child reduces more carbon emissions than 100 people giving up fossil fuels and electricity completely.
The fact is that unless technology advances to the point where renewables can replace fossil fuels, the only way to fix things is to deny 80+ % of the worlds population of the things you and I have - or practice genocide on a scale way beyond anything ever seen. Neither of these are possible options.
Until they start talking facts, 'scientists' can all go **** themselves.
@Leadfoot,
Leadfoot wrote:
The 8000 pound gorilla is 'people'.
Example: Having one less child reduces more carbon emissions than 100 people giving up fossil fuels and electricity completely.
The fact is that unless technology advances to the point where renewables can replace fossil fuels, the only way to fix things is to deny 80+ % of the worlds population of the things you and I have - or practice genocide on a scale way beyond anything ever seen. Neither of these are possible options.
Where did you get your facts from?
@Leadfoot,
Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris accord was down to short term monetary interests and religious ignorance. And the godsquad breed like rats too, they're a pernicious influence. The world would be a much nicer, better place without them.
