Blue Collar Scientist

A friend of mine is a drive-time DJ on an “adult contemporary” radio station, and producer of a daytime talk show on a sister station. She, and a bunch of other people in the office, were recently sent copies of Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation. It is a huge book, with nice looking illustrations, and page after page of lies about biology, fossils, and sundry whatnot. Yahya has a well-funded organization, called the “Science Research Foundation,” which is publishing these books and sending them free to a bunch of people. I’ve heard reports that fundamentalist Christian churches have jumped on this bandwagon and have been buying this book for members of the press, which I presume is how she was sent a copy.

Anyway, she recognized it for the bullshit it is and called to tell me about it, and after I expressed interest, she gave me her copy. She also retrieved a copy from the dumpster - she has at least one colleague who recognized the stench - and gave that one to me as well. So I’m currently sitting on TWO copies of this manifesto of deception! As you can see, I’m just giddy about it - I’m nowhere near important enough to be sent one of these things on my own, so I thought I’d never see a copy of the book, which is famous - or perhaps notorious is the better word - within the science education community I’m associated with.

(Me, with one of my copies of Atlas of Creation.)

For those not in the know, Harun Yahya is an interior designer. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he went to college and studied interior design, but he dropped out before completing his degree. Some years later, he established his foundation, which is described in wikipedia as “a secretive Islamic sect,” and “a cult-like organization, that jealously guards the secrets of its considerable wealth.” Sounds spooky to me. This is the same guy who, under his real name, got Turkey to block the entire Wordpress.com domain, based on a few blogs supposedly publishing “libelous” material about him. He has also had another domain shut down entirely through his litigation. So he’s definitely not down with freedom of speech - from here, it appears he only supports freedom of speech for those rich enough to afford to litigate for it, and for those who agree with him.

Whatever. He’s bad news. This we know. I’ve slowly been going through this gorgeously-illustrated book, and it is basically the same pattern, over and over and over again. Show a picture of a fossil, next to it show a picture of a living creature, claim they are identical and they have not evolved. This claim is made even when the pictures are of creatures that are obviously, even fundamentally different. Also, claim there are no transitional forms, and claim a lot of bullshit about what biologists supposedly believe (but don’t) in order to have an easy straw man to knock down. But mostly, just keep doing the picture thing, over and over. Page after page.

Lots of the pictures, by the way, are plagiarized. This I knew when I got the book. What I didn’t know is that some of the pictures of living animals are -

get this

- fishing lures.

I am not making this up. Among the photos that were stolen for use in the book are two of Graham Owen’s outstanding fly ties. They are found on page 241 and 244 of the book. Here they are in context:

It is not at all a subtle matter in the photo of the “caddis fly” - the fishhook is glaringly obvious in the photo, especially when blown up to a size as big as my hand. Anyway, this is what passes as a good biology textbook for creationists and “intelligent design” folks - it is OK to study fishing lures instead of actual living creatures.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 11:26 pm and is filed under dimwits, evolution, religious extremism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.