Islamic creationist condemns Intelligent Design

That stupid ignoramus Judge "Jackass" Jones said in Kitzmiller v. Dover, "ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents." Darwinists use the oxymoronic term "intelligent design creationism." Darwinists, who cherry-pick their evidence instead of looking at all the evidence, harp on the typo "cdesignproponentists" -- an error in substituting the term "design proponent" for "creationist" in the book "Of Pandas and People." Ironically, many religious creationists reject intelligent design. One of the reasons why they reject ID is that they feel that god's word does not need scientific evidence to support it. Some creationists feel that it is blasphemous to even imply or suggest that god's word needs scientific evidence to support it. One of the main reasons why Darwinists insist that ID is creationism is to have a basis for using the establishment clause to attack ID.

Adrian Oktar, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, is a very prominent Turkish creationist.[1] [2] [3] [4] He wrote,

INTELLIGENT DESIGN: A NEW AGE THEORY

In order to alienate people from true religions, Masons have devised many false religions of complex description assembling them all under the heading New Age.

Their purpose in this is to inculcate in that large segment of people who are abandoning materialist ideas, a new way of living and thinking. They want to establish a new system ornamented with metaphysical language and totally divergent from the true religion and faith in Allah (God) as revealed in the Qur’an. It is an irresponsible system with nothing to offer.

. . . . .In order to alienate people in Islamic countries from true religion, Masons are intent on offering the idea of intelligent design as the most appropriate alternative in these countries.

Of course, they do not pretend that what they are doing is against Islam; on the contrary, they claim that their activities are innocent and even serve to strengthen the foundations of faith in Allah.

However, Western supporters of this movement confess that this is a non-religious system of thought. For example, the American biologist, Michael Behe, one of the noted theoreticians of intelligent design, explains that intelligent design is not an idea based in religion but religious people can make good use of it in their arguments.

Those who accept the theory of intelligent design insist that religion and science should be separate and that science should not support creation and revealed religions.

Yahya (Adrian Oktar) contradicts himself here -- first he said that ID guru Michael Behe holds that "religious people can make good use of [ID] in their arguments," and then says, "those who accept ID insist that religion and science should be separate and that science should not support creation and revealed religions."

Yahya/Oktar then attacks the Discovery Institute:
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They see themselves as outside revealed religions; they think that religion is a matter of faith and outside the parameters of science. Their view is that it would be wrong for science to rely on religion.

The official internet site of the Discovery Institute that represents this movement asks the question. ‘Is the theory of intelligent design the same as the theory of creation?’ The answer:

Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text. (http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php#questionsAboutIntelligentDesign)

However, in a post last year, the very popular blog "Little Green Footballs" accused the Discovery Institute of being in league with Turkish creationists, including Yahya/Oktar! [link] LOL

Yahya writes,

The Theory of Intelligent Design: Another Kind of Deism.

The theory of intelligent design accepts neither revealed religions nor the existence of Allah. It has an abstract and abstruse concept of a designer.

It is misleading to say that ID accepts neither revealed religions nor the existence of Allah -- or some other god(s) or goddess(es). It is more correct to say that ID does not reject revealed religions or the existence of Allah. There is a big difference.

It is interesting that Masons use the same logic in their writings when they say that the universe is like the intelligent designer -- total conscious energy. They say this energy is conscious and that it is the Great Architect of the Universe.

But Masons insist that that this conscious energy is not Allah. (Surely Allah is beyond that)

We can see that advocates of intelligent design share the same logic as Masons when it comes to explaining their position. Their ideas are very much in tune with Deism which accepts the existence of a Creator while rejecting the validity of revealed religions.

ID may be "in tune" with Deism, but that doesn't mean that ID is the same as Deism or is a kind of Deism. ID is a "big tent" with room for those who believe in Deism, young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, common descent, front-loaded (pre-programmed) evolution, theism, agnosticism, atheism (yes), etc..

In contrast to Yahya/Oktar, the young-earth creationist organization Answers-in-Genesis appears to support ID -- the AiG website praises Ben Stein's pro-ID movie "Expelled -- No Intelligence Allowed" and sells a DVD of the movie. [link].

More discussion is on Panda's Thumb and Uncommon Descent.
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McGill Symposium on Islam and Evolution

On March 30-31, the McGill University Evolution Education Research Centre held a symposium on Islam and evolution. Recordings of the symposium are here. A list of the symposium panelists is here and the panelists' pre-symposium abstracts are here. A few names are familiar or I have seen them before: Josh Rosenau, Brian Alters, Salman Hameed. I am disturbed that of the scientific specialists on the panel, none appear to be evolution skeptics.

It has been my general impression that Islam is much less evolution-friendly than mainstream Christianity and Judaism. According to Darwinist standards, Moslem countries should be the laughingstock of the world, but I don't see Darwinists doing a lot of laughing at Moslem countries. Maybe the Darwinists, aware that "fatwa" and "jihad" are terms of the Islamic religion, are afraid to laugh at Moslem countries.

Some important points seem to have been ignored by the panelists' abstracts:
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(1) Predominantly Moslem countries have low rates of acceptance of evolution. An article says,

. . . .only 25 percent of adults in Turkey agree that human beings developed from earlier species of animals, whereas 40 percent of people in the United States agree with this scientific fact, Hameed writes. And Turkey is one of the most secular and educated of Muslim countries.

Hameed cites data from a 2007 sociological study by Riaz Hassan which revealed that only a minority in five Muslim countries agree that Darwin’s theory of evolution is probably or most certainly true: 16 percent of Indonesians, 14 percent of Pakistanis, 8 percent of Egyptians, 11 percent of Malaysians and 22 percent of Turks.

Also, in a survey of 34 nations, mostly Christian European nations but also including the USA, Japan, and predominantly Moslem Turkey, Turkey had the lowest acceptance rate for evolution.

(2) Moslem countries do not have so-called "separation of church and state" (or separation of mosque and state). On the contrary, in some Moslem countries, Islamic law -- sharia -- is the basis for civil law. In the USA, a lot of the controversy over evolution is centered around the idea of separation of church and state.

(3) Islamic clergy appear to be less organized and less hierarchical than Christian clergy -- for example, Islam has no counterpart of the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Hence, Islam has no single person or small group of people who are perceived as speaking for the religion's official position on evolution. Some titles of Islamic clergy are ayatollah, caliph, mufti, and imam.

(4) It doesn't seem that Moslems do a lot of hand-wringing about how disbelief in evolution is affecting the technological competitiveness of predominantly Moslem countries. If belief in evolution affects technological competitiveness at all, and I assert that it does not, only a small area of technological competitiveness is affected.

(5) Though the foundations of modern science are imports in Moslem countries, Moslems made important contributions to science and mathematics during the Middle Ages. The legacies of these contributions are still with us -- for example, our numbers consist of Arabic numerals, "algebra" is an Arabic word, and many stars have Arabic names.

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Not surprisingly, one of the most biased abstracts is from Josh Rosenau of the ardently pro-Darwinist National Center for Science Education (the abstract also represents Peter Hess, who is not listed as a symposium panelist). The abstract says, "American Christian creationist movements have three major pillars that have persisted for over a century." The first alleged "pillar" is:

Evolution is a failed science, soon to be replaced by creationism

IMO many creationists think that evolution is too strongly entrenched to be completely replaced soon.

The second "pillar" is,

evolution cannot be reconciled with religious belief, and people must choose between the two

Yet hardly anyone believes that people must choose between heliocentrism and religious belief (the bible implies geocentrism because in the bible, the earth was created before the heavenly bodies were created). The difference here between evolution and heliocentrism is that the evidence for heliocentrism is much stronger.

The third so-called "pillar" is,

. .. .and voters or students in the classroom are entitled to pick and choose between the two.

This is not a pillar of creationism -- people can't be told what to believe.

Another biased abstract was written by Ehab Abouheif:

We may now be witnessing the beginning of what could become a large-scale clash between Islam and the science of evolution. I will argue that this conflict is largely based on political ideology rather than a proper understanding of the “theory of evolution” and what it represents for Islam. Most of the current discussions on evolution taking place within Islamic societies proceed in complete absence of insight from professionally trained evolutionary biologists who are also knowledgeable about Islam, or who are at least able to communicate with the Muslim world.

Darwinists have this fallacy that no Darwin doubters know or understand evolution theory.

A number of articles about the evolution controversy in the Islamic world have recently appeared [1] [2] [3] [4].

This blog has a number of articles about Islamic views on evolution. These articles are in the two post-groups titled "Evolution controversy abroad."
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Darwin called "Satan's biggest trick on humanity"

From the Harun Yahya website

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I have previously posted blog articles about Adrian Oktar, a Turkish Islamic creationist who uses the pen name "Harun Yahya."[1] [2] A Wall Street Journal article said,

ISTANBUL -- As scientists around the world celebrate the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's seminal work on evolution, Adnan Oktar, a college dropout turned theorist of Islamic creationism, is working on the fifth volume of a 14-part masterwork that he says will bury Darwinism once and for all.

"Darwin and his theory are dead," says Mr. Oktar, founder and honorary president of the Science Research Foundation, an Istanbul outfit dedicated to debunking the Victorian-era English naturalist. Darwin, says his 52-year-old Turkish scourge, is "Satan's biggest trick on humanity."

Mr. Oktar, who briefly studied interior design, hasn't had much success swaying scientists with the weight of his research. "He is a complete and utter ignoramus," says Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and Oxford University professor.

The physical weight of Mr. Oktar's work, however, is considerable. Each volume of his anti-Darwin magnum opus, "Atlas of Creation," weighs more than 13 pounds. Also weighing in on his side are very aggressive lawyers. They've repeatedly gone to court in Turkey to silence critics whom Mr. Oktar accuses of spreading "lies and insults." Scores of Web sites have been banned at his behest.

That's very hypocritical -- promoting censorship while decrying censorship.
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The WSJ article says,

A recent survey found that only a quarter of students entering Turkish universities accept Darwin's theory of evolution and that the proportion is much the same when they graduate . . .

. . . . Mr. Oktar's message has won support in some unlikely quarters, most notably among educated, wealthy Turks from secular families . . .

. . . . Unlike strict Christian creationists, who assert the world was created in six days around 10,000 years ago, Mr. Oktar allows for a far longer time period stretching back billions of years. But he agrees with those Christians who insist life didn't evolve, asserting that animals and plants now are exactly as they were at the dawn of time.

I am surprised that Oktar is an old-earth creationist, because I got the impression from his Harun Yahya website that he interprets ancient religious texts literally. [3]
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Catholic church sells its soul

A news article about a Vatican conference that I previously reported on this blog says,

ROME (AP) — A Vatican-backed conference on evolution is under attack from people who weren't invited to participate: those espousing creationism and intelligent design.

The Discovery Institute, the main organization supporting intelligent design research, says it was shut out from presenting its views because the meeting was funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation, a major U.S. nonprofit that has criticized the intelligent design movement. . . . . .

. . . . An official with the Pontifical Council for Culture, which is backing the conference, said the Templeton grant covered almost half the meeting's budget. But the official, the Rev. Tomasz Tramfe, also denied Templeton put any restrictions on who was invited to speak . . . . .

. . . .[The Rev. Marc Leclerc, the conference director and a professor of philosophy of nature at the Pontifical Gregorian University,] denied the decision had anything to do with Templeton's funding for the conference. "Absolutely not. We decided independently within the organizing committee, in total autonomy," Leclerc said.

That's nice. So what the conference organizers are saying is that they were not pressured by the Templeton Foundation to discriminate against critics of evolution but decided to discriminate on their own anyway. And if the conference organizers sincerely believed that critics of evolution should be excluded, then IMO the conference organizers should have rejected the Templeton Foundation funding in order to avoid even giving the appearance that they were pressured by the Templeton Foundation. As Archie Bunker said, the pope has more money than god, so the Templeton Foundation funding should not have been needed. Darwinists are fond of boasting that the Catholic church is very evolution-friendly, but this exclusion of evolution critics from a Vatican conference raises serious doubts about the sincerity of the Catholic church's alleged evolution-friendliness.

The news article also said,

Muslim creationists also complained about the conference.

Oktar Babuna, a representative of a prominent Turkish creationist, Harun Yahya, was denied the right to speak at the opening session Tuesday. Participants took the microphone away from Babuna when, during a question-and-answer session, he challenged them to give proof of transitional forms of animals in Darwinian evolution.

A post on this blog discusses Harun Yahya.

The Vatican conference is discussed on Evolution News & Views [1] and Fatheaded Ed Brayton's blog. [2].
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About half of Britons doubt Darwin

The Darwinists claim that Darwin-doubting is primarily an American phenomenon and that the USA is therefore technologically falling behind other countries. Opinion polls in foreign countries show that this is not the case. A news article says,

More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a "designer" must have lent a hand, the findings suggest.

And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years.

The survey, by respected polling firm ComRes, will fuel the debate around evolution and creationism ahead of next week's 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.
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Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, said the findings revealed a worrying level of scientific ignorance among Britons.

In the survey, 51 per cent of those questioned agreed with the statement that "evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages"

A further 40 per cent disagreed, while the rest said they did not know.

The suggestion that a designer's input is needed reflects the "intelligent design" theory, promoted by American creationists as an alternative to Darwinian evolution.

Asked whether it was true that "God created the world sometime in the last 10,000 years", 32 per cent agreed, 60 per cent disagreed and eight per cent did not know.

The findings – to be published tomorrow in a report by Theos, a theology think-tank – follow a row over the place of creationism in education.

A recent poll of science teachers found that one in three believe creationism should be taught in science classes alongside evolution and the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

However, Michael Reiss, a biologist and Anglican cleric, was forced to resign as the Royal Society's director of education after suggesting that creationism should be discussed in lessons "not as a misconception but as a world view".

Darwin-doubting is even more widespread in predominantly Moslem countries -- the National Center for Science Education gives the following figures for predominantly Moslem countries: “Only 16% of Indonesians, 14% of Pakistanis, 8% of Egyptians, 11% of Malaysians, and 22% of Turks agree that Darwin’s theory is probably or most certainly true.”
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The evolution controversy in the Islamic world

Top: A Darwin-to-Hitler collage from Harun Yahya's The Atlas of Creation
Bottom: Adnan Oktar, whose pen name is Harun Yahya.
Images courtesy harunyahya.com

CLICK ON PICTURE TO ENLARGE

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A number of articles about the evolution controversy in the Islamic world have recently appeared [1] [2] [3] [4].

One of the articles says,
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. . . .only 25 percent of adults in Turkey agree that human beings developed from earlier species of animals, whereas 40 percent of people in the United States agree with this scientific fact, Hameed writes. And Turkey is one of the most secular and educated of Muslim countries.

Hameed cites data from a 2007 sociological study by Riaz Hassan which revealed that only a minority in five Muslim countries agree that Darwin’s theory of evolution is probably or most certainly true: 16 percent of Indonesians, 14 percent of Pakistanis, 8 percent of Egyptians, 11 percent of Malaysians and 22 percent of Turks.

I have not seen much hand-wringing going on these Islamic countries in regard to how widespread disbelief in Darwinism has hurt their technological competitiveness.

The Harun Yahya website is really good, with a lot of scientific arguments against evolution and with articles with titles like the following:

The Darwinist Techniques of Clamor and Demagoguery

Darwinist Dictatorship -- Darwinism is a shamanist religion

Darwinism is the religion of the antichrist

The Global Darwinist Dictatorship Must Apologize to the Entire World!

I especially liked the Harun Yahya article "A whale fantasy from National Geographic." My blog also has an article about whale evolution. This all reminds me of Kirk Douglas singing in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," "Got a whale of a tale to tell ye lads, a whale of a tale or two . . . . "

A 2006 article says about intelligent design,

Intelligent design, a more recent argument about life’s origins that is championed by U.S. Christian groups, may also be making the leap across the Atlantic.

The concept's proponents say some organisms are too complex to have evolved without some superior cause, but avoid calling that cause God, for fear that such a reference would ban the concept from U.S. science textbooks. Last year, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that even the intelligent-design formulation represented a strain of religious thought that should not be advocated in public schools.

Akyol, a Muslim believer who says Darwinism is incompatible with his faith, has been waging an uphill struggle to popularize intelligent design here. But most Turks show no interest because they see no need to avoid naming God.

His lonely campaign got an unexpected boost last month when Education Minister Huseyin Celik hinted on television that he might want to see it added to Turkish textbooks.

“If it’s wrong to say Darwin’s theory should not be in the books because it is in line with atheist propaganda, we can’t disregard intelligent design because it coincides with beliefs of monotheistic religions about creation,” he told CNN Turk.

So far the Clergy Letter folks have posted letters only for Christian clergy and rabbis to sign -- there is no letter yet for imams and ayatollahs. Maybe those Clergy Letter people are afraid that they would get a fatwa for insulting Islam.
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Top UK educator opposes hard-sell teaching of evolution

WOULD YOU BUY A USED SCIENTIFIC THEORY FROM THIS MAN?

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Update #2: Prof. Reiss resigns from position of Royal Society's director of education.

Update: Prof. Reiss's proposal divides the Royal Society -- two Nobel laureates, other senior fellows call for his removal as education director.

The repercussions of Darwin's theory are finally coming home to roost in Darwin's home country. A news article says,

Creationism and intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons, according to a leading expert in science education.

The Rev Prof Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, said that excluding alternatives to scientific explanations for the origin of life and the universe from science lessons was counterproductive and would alienate some children from science altogether.
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He said that around one in 10 children comes from a family with creationist beliefs. "My experience after having tried to teach biology for 20 years is if one simply gives the impression that such children are wrong, then they are not likely to learn much about the science," he said . . . .

. . . . Reiss said he used to be an "evangelist" for evolution in the classroom, but that the approach had backfired. "I realised that simply banging on about evolution and natural selection didn't lead some pupils to change their minds at all. Now I would be more content simply for them to understand it as one way of understanding the universe," he said.

Reiss, who is an ordained Church of England minister, told the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool that science teachers should not see creationism as a "misconception" but as an alternative "world view". He added that he was not advocating devoting the same time to teaching creationism or intelligent design as to evolution.

There are also those who have non-religious reasons for opposing hard-sell teaching of evolution.

We all know what hard-sell teaching of evolution is like: dogmatic teaching of evolution, constantly in-your-face, no-ifs-ands-buts-or-maybes, the evolution-is-central-to-biology nonsense, no weaknesses, no evolution disclaimer statements, brainwashing, spoon-feeding, no critical thinking allowed, the-only-criticisms-of-evolution-are-unconstitutional-creationist-criticisms, no compromises, if-you-don't-like-it-you-can-go-to-hell, those kinds of things. And it is an unfortunate coincidence in the USA that Darwinists can misuse the Constitution's establishment clause to attack the teaching of scientific (pseudoscientific to them) ideas that they don't like, and I doubt that Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders would approve of such misuse. There is no constitutional principle of separation of pseudoscience and state, and it is this misuse of the establishment clause that has enabled the Darwinist tail to wag the dog.

A recent national survey of science teachers in the USA showed that approximately 25% of respondents spend some time teaching creationism or intelligent design, but many or most of them teach those things just for the purpose of disparaging them.

Why can't evolution just be taught as a sort of imaginary or hokey idea that may be wholly or partly untrue but is nonetheless useful in organizing and conceptualizing biology? As an engineer, I know that engineers are comfortable using analysis methods that are not intuitively correct or accurate, e.g.: (1) the use of complex-plane vectors in the analysis of AC circuits and (2) using rotating-cylinder aerodynamics to analyze fixed-wing airfoil aerodynamics by means of the Joukowski transformation of conformal mapping.

Suggested further reading:

An op-ed written by Prof. Reiss.

A good overview of UK evolution education in the international context.

The Discovery Institute's take on the UK controversy.
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Church of England to "apologise" to Darwin

A news article says,

The Church of England will concede in a statement that it was over-defensive and over-emotional in dismissing Darwin's ideas . . . . .

The apology, which has been written by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the Church's director of mission and public affairs, says that Christians, in their response to Darwin's theory of natural selection, repeated the mistakes they made in doubting Galileo's astronomy in the 17th century.

"The statement will read: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of 'faith seeking understanding' and hope that makes some amends."

I was not aware that the Church of England ever officially condemned either Darwin's or Galileo's ideas. The Catholic church officially condemned Galileo's ideas and apologized several years ago. It is possible that the Church of England was not even aware of Galileo's ideas because the Catholic church tried to suppress them.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, is not ready to "apologise" to Darwin -- the archbishop recently called evolution theory a "pseudo-science" and other nasty things.

Also, the United Methodist Church recently adopted some pro-evolution resolutions. IMO organizations should not take official positions on controversial issues where there is disagreement among the organizations' members.

Hat tip to FortheKids of the Reasonable Kansans blog for pointing out the article.

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Evolution education abroad is not what it is cracked up to be

Darwinists in the USA are propagandizing a myth that students in foreign countries are getting thorough educations in evolution and are therefore leaving American students behind in the dust. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A previous article in this blog exploded the myth that American students are not getting a lot of evolution education.

An article about evolution education in Canada said,

In all but one provincial science curriculum, evolution is relegated to a single unit in a Grade 11 or 12 elective course taken by a sliver of each graduating class. It would not be a stretch to say the majority of Canadian high school students graduate without ever encountering Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Only Quebec, which rolled out a new curriculum in 2004, includes evolution among key concepts in elementary school science classes and mandates a full unit of evolution in a compulsory Grade 7-8 science class. . . . .

Though Canadians have never pitted evolution against creationism in a court of law, we are squeamish about advancing evolution as part of the national education agenda. We look south of the border and want no part of the extremism that a confrontation over evolution inevitably generates.

“The whole discussion has been so tremendously skewed by a whole lot of raving idiots,” says Rev. Paul Fayter, a United Church minister and professor of science and religion at York University in Toronto, who advocates thinking “non-dogmatically” about origins. He’s as comfortable with a copy of the Bible as he is with Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

So is Denis Lamoureux, a devout evangelical Christian and confirmed evolutionist who teaches science and religion at St. Joseph’s College in the University of Alberta. “So how are we going to teach biology?” he asks. “Teach the science as metaphysically free as possible. In other words, keep God out of it, keep the atheistic world view out of it.”

I wholeheartedly agree. When I first became interested in the evolution controversy, I wanted to keep religion out of the discussion, but the Darwinists insisted on making religion an issue.

Also, the article describes how McGill University professor Brian Alters, who was a plaintiffs' expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, got his comeuppance:
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Returning from Dover, Penn., in December 2005, Brian Alters must have felt vindicated. As an expert witness in a widely publicized court case, Alters, a professor of evolution education at McGill University, helped persuade a judge that intelligent design (ID) — the idea that the complexity of certain natural phenomena is proof of a supernatural designer — was not a scientific theory, but “a religious view, a mere relabelling of creationism,” and that it had no place in Dover’s science classrooms . . . . .

Little did Alters know he would return to McGill’s Evolution Education Research Centre to find himself embroiled in a similar dispute. This time, the opposition was not a school board but a federal agency, the second-biggest grant-making institution in Canada, which declined funding for the evolution centre’s proposed study aimed at discovering what inroads ID had made in Canadian schools.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council said the review committee couldn’t find “adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct.”

LOL. Serves him right, the jerk. What goes around, comes around.

Also, the article says,

In the past decade, a sophisticated and well-funded attack on science curricula induced school boards in at least eight U.S. states to roll back the teaching of evolutionary biology.

On the contrary, this map chart shows that several states added or strengthened coverage of evolution in their science standards in the period 2000-2008 and that no states weakened or eliminated such coverage in that period. The map also shows that in 2008 the science standards of the overwhelming majority of states "treat evolution straightforwardly and/or thoroughly" and that no state science standards do not mention biological evolution at all (Iowa does not count because it does not have its own science standards) -- science standards in the remainder, eight states that are all in the Bible Belt except Illinois, mention biological evolution "briefly, unclearly." It is noteworthy that the sources for this map chart are the National Center for Science Education and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, two organizations which would be expected to be extremely stingy about giving state science standards credit for treating biological evolution "straightforwardly and/or thoroughly." Efforts to add critical analysis of evolution are often misinterpreted as efforts to reduce or eliminate the teaching of evolution.

Articles about evolution education in other foreign countries are listed under the "Evolution controversy abroad" and "Evolution controversy abroad (new #1)" post labels (these post labels are also listed in the sidebar).
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Sleazy PZ's book review of Ken Miller's Only a Theory

Picture is courtesy of Nature magazine

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A book review of Ken Miller's Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul in Nature magazine was written by -- of all people -- Sleazy PZ Myers. A complete copy of the review costs $32 for 7 days use, so I will just comment on the free part of the review.

Myers lavishly praises Miller:
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Science and evolution have an advocate in Kenneth Miller, one of North America's eminent knights-errant, a scientist who is active in defending evolutionary theory in the conflict between evolution and creationism . . . .

Miller is a fine writer who sharply addresses the details of the arguments about intelligent design creationism.

That praise is an about-face for PZ Myers -- he previously attacked Miller in a Pharyngula blog article titled "Ken Miller, creationist." I am unable to link to a copy of this Pharyngula article, but the article is discussed here on Fatheaded Ed Brayton's blog. BTW, Fatheaded Ed shows himself here to be the complete idiot that he is -- it is obvious that Ken Miller attacked the atheism of some biologists, Ed's denials notwithstanding.

The book review says,

Miller is sympathetic to the creationists' perspective but opposes them uncompromisingly.

Bill Dembski does not appear to take the view that Miller's book is "sympathetic to the creationists' perspective" (or the perspectives of other critics of evolution theory)-- Dembski wrote:

Theistic evolutionists hold that Darwinian evolution is God’s way of bringing about the diversity of life on earth. They used to be content to criticize ID on scientific grounds. But that’s no longer enough. They are now charging ID with undermining the very fabric of civilization and even the Christian religion itself. Ken Miller’s most recent book, just out, makes this point in the title — Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. From the title, you’d think that Darwin is the Messiah and that until his ideas about evolution gained acceptance, our souls were in jeopardy.

The book review says,

"Only a Theory" deals poorly with one central aspect of this battle: why this problem is so much greater in the United States than elsewhere. Miller's rationalizations are sometimes painful to read. Europe's relative freedom from the scourge of creationism is explained with a condescending anecdote: a British colleague offers that any outbreak of such nonsense is rapidly quashed by "dispatch[ing] a couple of dons from Oxford or Cambridge" to overawe the locals with their prestigious degrees, to which the populace will defer.

Sleazy PZ and his "British colleague" are so full of living crap that it is coming out of their ears. Articles with my post label Evolution controversy abroad show that the evolution controversy is a big "problem" (as PZ calls it) in the UK and other foreign countries.

The hallmark of almost any creationist argument is the tireless bleating of the same points we have rebutted since the trial of teacher John Scopes in Tennessee in 1925, which tested the law on teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory; the only twists come from new creationist authorities that enter the fray.

There we go again with that tired old argument that the Darwinists refuted all possible "creationist" claims decades ago.
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