The authors have created a villain so evil, so cunning, so underhanded that everyone understands the need for his defeat. Good must triumph over evil!
And the heroes are common, ordinary, good folks. They are your friends and they are your neighbors. And they are fighting to save all mankind. Plus, God is on their side. They cannot, they must not, lose.
Save the cheerleader. Save the world.
Well, maybe not. In this story, the villain is not the creation of Hollywood, but the creation of the military leaders in ISTANBUL! Yep, Istanbul, Turkey.
The villain? None other than Charles Darwin!
When the right wing military coup took place in Turkey in 1980, the new leadership needed to redirect the left leaning population's attention away from the lure of communism. They needed an enemy for the average citizen to blame for their woes. And they found one right in the bookstores. He looked a lot like Karl Marx. He could almost be Marx's twin.
On the bookstore shelves was Darwin's Origin of Species.
On the surface it was tough for the military junta to blame Marx for anything. Ahhh, but Darwin. That was another matter. Darwin's teaching were a direct affront to the teachings of the Qur'an (Koran).
The early verses of the Qur'an are nearly identical to the Bible. Allah created the world in just six days. God created Adam from the dust of the earth. The teachings of the Qur'an must not be denied or insulted. And Darwin looked like Marx. It was a plot made in Heaven. Literally.
"It looked like Marx and Darwin were together, two long-bearded guys spreading ideas that make people lose their faith," said Istanbul journalist Mustafa Akyol.
But like a lot of well laid plans, this plot took on a life of it's own.
All the military leaders did was to insert a paragraph on creationism as an alternative to evolution was added to high school science textbooks. Oh, and they had a conservative Christian book "Scientific Creationism" translated into Turkish.
But you cannot unring a bell. The plot worked too well. The Muslims were quick to condemn Darwin. And fundamentalist Christians, seeing a new ally in their war on Evolution, quickly streamed to Turkey to assist in the fight against their old (well, long dead) enemy.
By the early 1990s, leading U.S. creationists traveled to Turkey to speak at several anti-evolution conferences in Turkey.
But things were bound to get ugly. And they have. A home-grown strain of anti-Darwinist books has developed with a clearly political message.
"Atlas of Creation" offers over 500 pages of splendid images comparing fossils with present-day animals to argue that Allah created all life as it is and evolution never took place.
Then comes a book-length essay arguing that Darwinism, by stressing the "survival of the fittest," has inspired racism, Nazism, communism and terrorism.
"The root of the terrorism that plagues our planet is not any of the divine religions, but atheism, and the expression of atheism in our times (is) Darwinism and materialism," it says.
Today we have Islamic creationism, a movement with deep financial pockets with its roots in the Muslim population of Turkey.
Creationism is so widely accepted in Turkey that, in a recent 34 country survey concerning the acceptance of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, Turkey placed dead last! Of course, the United States was next to last.
"Darwinism is dead," said Kerim Balci of the Fethullah Gulen network, a moderate Islamic movement.
Sadly, Celal Sengor, a geology professor at Istanbul Technical University has said it all. "Science is hardly an issue in Turkey."
LINK & SOURCE OF ALL ABOVE QUOTES: Creation Versus Darwin
AN ASIDE FROM THE WIZARD: Isn't it curious that the hit NBC television series HEROES, referred to above by their now very famous advertising tag line "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World," has, as its plot line, the next steps in man's EVOLUTION. My guess is that this series won't make it on Turkey's television stations.
TECHNORATI TAGS: ISLAM MUSLIM RELIGION DARWIN ORIGIN OF SPECIES HEROES TURKEY CHRISTIANITY QURAN BIBLE KORAN KARL MARX EVOLUTION
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1 comment:
Well at least Marx and Darwin had the decency to sport the requisite beard of Islam. God forbid that they should have been clean-shaven heathens to boot! ;-)
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