So if an American organization is participating in activities in the middle-east that undermine secular institutions and promote fundamentalist Islam, should we consider them anti-American? Well to my mind, I think this could be how one could view the activities of the Discovery Institute. When it is in the interest of creationist Christians to declaim Islam as evil, they do not hesitate to do it (Pat Robertson here ). But when they see where they see they may use the power of 1.4 billion Muslims to promote their own creationist views ... well they hook up.
Please listen to this four minute report on PRI’s the World that aired yesterday. It concerns the teaching of creationism in Istanbul Turkey with the aide of Americans.
Listen
We have the Seattle based, Discovery Institute providing aid and support to undermine secular, science education in Turkey. And from the one account of the High School teacher, 3 of 5 science teachers are teaching creationism and not evolution in the public school.
(For a quick primer on the Institutes goals to promote "Intelligent Design" see this)
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
It must have taken a lot of support from Christian creationists to make this happen so quickly. Just since the election of the "moderate" Prime Minister Erdogan from the AK party we have seen pressure on the secular institutions in Turkey. They call it liberalizing. I just don’t see that it is liberalizing to distort Science.
Now we know that the current political and cultural climate in Turkey is in a state of flux. You would think that it would make sense for Americans of all stripes to promote a secular government. I also know that Turkey’s secularism has been pretty heavy handed and religious oppression is one soil in which fundamentalist angst can grow. But do we as Americans think that we can promote moderation, tolerance and modernization by pushing creationism? Even Mustafa Akyol (mentioned in The World piece) suggests where Americans should help out. And mind you, he is a creationist writing on the Discovery Institute’s website.
It is true that Turkey's Islamic circles need further modernization, but studies show that they are already on that track. And whatever Turkey's problems, it should never retreat from democracy. The Western world should support the country's efforts in that direction.
See whole article here
Think about it. How does the insertion of Creationism (or the fake-science of Intelligent Design,) into the public education of Turkish children help to modernize Islam or to promote Democracy? I think as Americans, we should see that what Discovery Institute is doing is harmful to the best efforts of moderates in Turkey. And if Mr. Akyol is sincere about wanting the West to support democracy, I think he is shopping for it in the wrong place. This fact does make me skeptical of his sincerity. As a matter of fact you get the distinct feeling that these closeted fundamentalists (both Christian and Muslim) are using each other for their own ends.
Because Akyol thinks that the AK is liberalizing he asserts that the AK has found strange bedfellows:
Noting that Western democracies give their citizens the very religious freedoms Turkey has denied its own, Muslims of the AK party have rerouted their search for freedom. Rather than trying to Islamize the state, they have decided to liberalize it. That's why in today's Turkey the AK party is the main proponent of the effort to join the European Union, democratization, free markets and individual liberties.
For the same reason, there are many secular liberals (including some atheists and agnostics) who sympathize with the AK party government led by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
See whole article here
If his assertion is true, maybe some of those atheists and agnostics need to wake up and smell the Turkish coffee. Fundamentalist religion is alive and growing in a public school near you, brought to you by the wonderful marketers of confusion, The American Religious Right. Turkey deserves religious freedom as well as freedom from a bad education. Let us support our friends in Turkey in a constructive way. No American should be holding their hands and pulling them backwards to the 7th century,even if some of them are eager to go. What the Discovery Institute is doing is just plain wrong.
For those of you interested in fighting the slide into scripture-based science on a person to person basis, I use this handy little article.
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense