Sema Ergezen teaches biology to Turkish students interested in teaching science themselves, and she has long struggled with her students’ ignorance of, and sometimes hostility to, the notion of evolution.
But she was taken aback when several of her Marmara University students recently accused her of being an atheist. “They said I was a liar if I called myself a Muslim because I also accepted evolution,” she said.
What especially disturbed – and amused – the veteran professor was that the arguments for creationism presented by some of the students came directly from the country where she was educated in the biological sciences – the United States.
“Why I’m so interested in seeing creationism succeed in Turkey is that evolution is an evil concept that has done such damage to society,” said John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas, who has led several searches for Noah’s Ark in eastern Turkey. Members of his group have addressed Turkish conferences numerous times.
The Discovery Institute of Seattle, which researches and promotes intelligent design as an alternative to creationism and evolution, also sent speakers to Turkey after being invited by the Istanbul municipal government in 2007. President Bruce Chapman said the
institute helped bring Turkish evolution critic Mustafa Akyol to a 2005 Kansas school board hearing on teaching critiques of evolution.
Make sense, Just not long ago, they declared 40 historical land mark type of churches “Government Properties” after they kicked out or killed last Christians that used them. What does one expect from a criminal gangster state? Nothing good.
while here, they demand the right to practice “their religion” and while there, they kill those that practice others and steal their properties.
BTW, did anyone see “Promise”? came out last year or even this? a movie that related the 1916 1.6 million Armenian Genocide done by the Turks? A good movie.
You Atheists, if you think you’re safe with these scumbags, then you’re fools.
Turkey, or the Ottomans, have been more Islamic than Christian ever since the fall of Constantinople. This is not really a surprise that anti-evolution sentiment would be popular there just as it is in a lot of the rest of the Middle East. Even so, they are far more Westernized than their Arabic neighbors.
Besides, who are we to criticize when in the U.S. the current administration basically has taken the same stance?
Ataturk would be rolling over in his grave. http://www.azquotes.com/author/16269-Mustafa_Kemal_Ataturk
From first story
... The education ministry is also reportedly planning to scale back teaching about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
the founder of modern Turkey and avowed secularist.
Ataturk’s legacy holds an uneasy place in Mr Erdogan’s Turkey. His image still appears on posters and in statues across the country and
he is revered for having won Turkey’s independence.
But Mr Erdogan and his fellow religious conservatives have also unraveled much of the strictly secular system that he left behind,
arguing that it marginalised and discriminated against religious Muslims.
I mean we these contrived arguments jam packed with lies, deceptions, omissions, etc.
and no one seems to have found stickies to expose that.
What gives?
What happened to the great intellectual enlightenment?
¶
I see a lot of debates, where there seems a tacit acceptance of contrarian questions raised,
taking them serious, playing along for argument sake, so to speak. The question is, how productive is it to entertain silly questions as though they were serious inquires?
Stop letting them set the tone of the debate.
I’m wondering if more focus on their deceptive debate practices and exposing that air of absolutism these people wrap themselves in is worth trying? Dissecting tactics rather than being played by them,
is what I’m talking about.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Define the Debate, A to Z
A Constructive Argument based on real facts, with the ultimate goal being a collective better understanding of the issue at hand.
Such as a Scientific Debate where honestly representing your opponent’s position is required.
Striving to understand your opponent’s position well enough to reject or modify it on the merits of your own facts.
If we fail, it means something. It may hurt, but it’s a learning experience for the intellectually honest.
Mistakes have always been necessary learning opportunities for the stout.
Z Lawyerly Debate, winning is all that matters, facts are irrelevant obstacles to hurdle.
Being skilled in rhetorical trickery is a prerequisite. Objective learning is not the object.
Amorality, misdirection and theatre are its hallmarks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Intellectual Confrontation
The fact is, climate science awareness is being actively stifled by ruthless individuals with bottomless bank accounts
and octopus news outlets to do their bidding.
They have sold a lazy public a pack of lies that have become the comfort zone of all too many today.
How can the misinformation this juggernaut force feeds the public be neutralized without direct intellectual confrontation
by masses of informed, concerned, engaged students, and citizens, everywhere it pops up?
It’s not about attacking people, it’s about attacking the maliciously deceptive words, the lies and stupidity they spew.
It’s about teaching them how our physical planet operates!
A good resource for factual jump starts:
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy
Focus. Expose the dishonesty in their words and educate them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Call out False Claims & Lies
When someone makes a malicious false claim, relentlessly demand evidence for said attacks -
shame and expose those who refuse to produce evidence for their malicious claims.
Examine and expose the props substituted for substance.
Focus. Expose the dishonesty in their words and educate them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Better than Skepticism ===> Critical Thinking Skills
The term “Skeptics" has been poisoned by theatre and the grotesque double standard of the GOP.
Critical Thinking Skills is a clear descriptive that explains the process itself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Confront Trash Talk with Rhetorical Jujutsu
Contrarians depend on personal attacks to distract the discussion from their bankrupt “science".
Learn to recognize the game, turn it to your favor, be prepared to point out the juvenility of the tactic,
while forcing the discussion back to the real world facts your contrarian opponent won’t have.
google “Jujutsu]" ~ ~ ~
Food for Thought, turn the conversation into an exploration of the tactics of avoidance, evasion and lying.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Where appropriate, why not point out Calumny in action?
Be ready to define it: https://dictionary.thelaw.com/calumny/
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/calumny
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I appreciate I'm just a freakster on the outside looking in,
still it's pretty obvious that in general the "intellectual enlightenment" has been a disaster since special right-wing oligarch interests started setting up their "think tank" propaganda mills and ancillary media-mills - So I figure these musing are as good as anything those more educated types have been flaying (and losing) with. :long:
Erdogan is determined to take Turkey back to the dark ages. He’s previously described democracy as a “train that you get off when you reach your destination.”
I just don’t understand why people don’t see “leaders” like Erdogan, Putin, Duterte, Maduro, Trump as the dictators they are. Do these people actually prefer to live under a dictator? I just don’t understand it.
Erdogan is determined to take Turkey back to the dark ages. He's previously described democracy as a "train that you get off when you reach your destination."
I just don't understand why people don't see "leaders" like Erdogan, Putin, Duterte, Maduro, Trump as the dictators they are. Do these people actually prefer to live under a dictator? I just don't understand it.
There are too many ‘holes’ in the theory of evolution - based on the idea that over time we… well - ‘evolved’. We have yet to find any transitional species and the fossil record itself just EXPLODES onto the scene with regards to earths ‘timeline’. It’s seems more plausible that - or at least as per the fossil record - everything shows up at once. Besides this is the idea that some 445 amino’s have to form a very specific pattern 239x in a row (!!) in order to create the protein needed to support/create ‘life’. If you look at it like a lottery ticket - it would be like having a lottery ticket with numbers on it from 1 to 106,355… and in order to “win” - you would have to correctly guess the exact sequence that the numbers would be pulled! Stack them odds against the typical ‘6’ number or ‘5+1’ (Powerball) games and it becomes readily apparent that even if evolution were true - it would be [statistically] impossible and a miracle in itself. There is no way that life just ‘happened’. There is nothing wrong with admitting that one is wrong, especially since the technology used to provide insight to these numbers didn’t exist at the time that it [the theory of evolution] was conceived. Somebody said above that 100 years from now - “Turkey will look back at this and laugh”, regarding evolution… I’d correct that to say that (unless we blow the place up - or find those transitional species) in a 100 years we are ALL going to be laughing… at ‘evolution’.
Christopher Musante -- There are too many ‘holes’ in the theory of evolution – based on the idea that over time we… well – ‘evolved’. We have yet to find any transitional species and the fossil record itself just EXPLODES onto the scene with regards to earths ‘timeline’. It’s seems more plausible that – or at least as per the fossil record – everything shows up at once.
I don't know where you get this strange idea from. If everything just "exploded" at one time, then how did paleontologists ever come up with a timeline for evolution covering hundreds of millions of years, even dividing it into periods, the Jurassic, Triassic, Cretaceous, etc.? It sounds to me as if you've been reading the blog of some creationist who didn't know what he was talking about. There is just SO MUCH evidence for the interrelatedness of all life on Earth. Even if you dismissed the theory of natural selection out of hand, if you were honest you'd still have an enormous job explaining why there is such an overwhelming appearance of evolution unless evolution actually did happen. :)
It has taken me a few years to hone my skills for responding to this sort of screed. Unfortunately, I’ve burned a few bridges doing it so going back to a reasonable conversation is not possible with many of the people who have spewed this garbage. Maybe I should stop saying they spew garbage, but, nah. But really, the response to anything, anti-Darwin, 9/11 conspiracies, Libertarianism, denial of whatever, is the same:
These things have been around for decades. That’s long enough for someone to be born and finish college. They could have been surrounded by people who supported them in believing or not believing any of these theories. They could have dedicated their life to learning the truth, to taking all the classes, reading all the books, knowing the terms and knowing how to argue for what they believe. If science is what it says it is, then doing that should have put them in a position to make their case and present their data and convince others. It happens all the time. So, where are those people? If science isn’t what it says it is, they are oppressed and marginalized and sometimes even killed. But to demonstrate that is happening, you’d need reason and evidence. Solving a worldwide conspiracy like that would require using the tools that science says it uses. So science is back to being true again. You really can’t get away from that.