Creationists want a theocracy like the Taliban set up to rule America. It's sad.
Yeaaaaa! A crevo thread! Question for everyone: What do the Taliban think of Darwin? I'm inclined to think they agree with the creationists.I'm sure they agree with "Harun Yahya" and the ICR, who has supplied Harun Yahya with much support:
The aftermath of a military coup in 1980 presented new opportunities for Islamist politics and for creationism. Concerned that secular government allowed too much space for left-wing dissent, risking national fragmentation and social unrest, the military junta and subsequent governments promoted a more religious ideology. This naturally affected education policy. While compulsory religion courses and the teaching of a conservative view of history were its most visible results, natural science did not escape untouched. The 1980s saw the state-sponsored translation and distribution of ICR material, explicitly creationist high-school textbooks, and a general anti-evolutionary climate in secondary education (Edis 1994). In 1992, ICR´s Duane Gish and John D Morris appeared at a creationist conference held in Istanbul.
Recent years have brought important political changes that affect the creation-evolution conflict in Turkey. Islamists have grown stronger, even tasting power on their own instead of through factions within more moderate conservative parties. Although the Islamist Party lost some support to a more nationalist ultra-right party in the elections of April 1999, there is still a powerful constituency that objects to "polluting young minds" with Darwinian biology. However, the Turkish military has emerged as a counterbalancing force. Freed from the need to promote religious conservatism for anticommunist purposes, in the past few years the military has once again acted in defense of the secularist ideals of the early republic. This has extended to applying pressure to remove an Islamist-led government from power in 1997 and insisting upon educational reforms aimed at undercutting the base of Islamist politics.
In this highly charged environment, 1998 brought a new wave of creationism to Turkey. Unlike previous efforts directly aimed at public education, this wave is much more an exercise in popular propaganda through the media. By producing a series of scientific-appearing meetings and books, creationists organized in the Bilim Arastirma Vakfi (BAV; the Science Research Foundation) caught the public eye — not only through the extensive Islamist media which cheered them on and secularist newspapers which expressed concern, but also through the wider commercial media with a nose for controversy. As John Morris observes, BAV has considerable media clout: "As a group, they have access to more than adequate financial resources, as well as to the media, and are able to blanket the country with creation information. They choose to invite international creationists for their publicity value, but especially welcome Christian creationists in the ICR mold rather than those who hold merely an anti-Darwinian stance" (Morris 1998).
In April and July 1998, BAV held 3 "international conferences" in the major cities of Turkey, with a theme of "The Collapse of the Theory of Evolution: The Fact of Creation" [see sidebar, p xxx]. Joining Duane Gish and John Morris to support Turkish creationist academics were creationist luminaries Michael P Girouard, Edward Boudreaux, Carl Fliermans, and David Menton. These meetings were well-attended and well-publicized, producing successful, organized media events for creationism.
This media-savvy attention to production details is apparent in the creationist books distributed by BAV as well. Most representative is Harun Yahya´s text The Evolution Deceit. The book comes in 2 versions — a large, attractive 370-page volume notable for its many full-color illustrations and slick appearance (Yahya 1997) and an abridged 128-page booklet with fewer illustrations, which was widely distributed free of charge to the public (Yahya 1998). Especially in light of the sorry state of popular science publishing in an underdeveloped country like Turkey, these lavish productions are very impressive and demonstrate the considerable finances BAV commands.
The arguments presented both in the conferences and the books are very similar to ICR´s; indeed, ICR remains the most important source of material for Turkish creationists. ...
Your statement is just an ad-hominem at those who believe in God. It is also a completely false statement. The Christian religion has led to the freeing of humanity. It ended slavery, it has ended the cruelest tyrannies and it has led to the greatest rise of democratic self government in history. So your insults are absolutely false.