Re: [asa] Global Anti-Darwinism

The indefatigable Harun Yahya, the Turkish creationists, has long been supported by the ICR folks in California. So now the DI folks are working with him? What I've read of his works makes me shudder. The lecture I gave to the Association of Islamic Scholors of bosnia & Herzegovina in Sarajevo in Dec., 2004, was partly a response to Yahya's publications, which had begun to make inroads there. My talk was well received, and a Bosnian translation was published in a popular journal for teachers. But given the over-all weak state of science education in Islamic countries, I see a real problem with this Islamic form of creationism.

I find all of this news in the Economist op ed piece discouraging. I read a report of the pope's statements on evolution. They seemed nuanced but made me uneasy, as ithey might be easily parsed in their favor by those who wish to read their anti-evolutionist views into it.

Those like myself who are evolutionary creationists may have a harder time of it in the years ahead. I wonder about the future of science, certainly the politics of science, in the foreseeable future.

Bob
>
> From: "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> Date: 2007/04/21 Sat PM 02:15:09 EDT
> To: "ASA Discussion Group" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Subject: [asa] Global Anti-Darwinism
>
> Interesting article in this week's Economist on global efforts to discredit
> Darwinism: http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9036706
> Very interesting mention of large-scale Muslim creationism efforts, and some
> reasonably balanced discussion of tensions in Roman Catholicism.
>
> Unfortunately, the article seems to exclude the middle -- no mention of
> anyone like Alister McGrath or Francis Collins or Polkinghorne, etc. I
> wonder if ASA and CIS might want to do a joint letter to the editor
> (Economist is a Brit publication) just noting that there is indeed a robust
> third way.
>
>

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Received on Sat Apr 21 16:33:01 2007