Friday, July 2, 2010

Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural agency. In the 19th century, British geologists and other scientists argued that the world was considerably older than the 17th-century, scripture-based calculation of less than six millennia. In the United States, where "culture ... is dedicated to a thoroughly scientific outlook but remains firmly rooted in its deeply religious traditions", the apparent discrepancies between science and religion were seized upon and amplified in "cultural warfare" over whether science or religion could provide the most authentically American creation story. By the 1920s, Biblical creationism had become "the standard alternative to" scientific explanations of the biosphere.
Since the end of the 19th century, creationism in America has been set in sharp contrast to scientific theories, such as that of evolution, which derive from naturalistic observations of the universe and life. Strict creationists believe that evolution cannot adequately account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on Earth. Strict creationists of the Jewish and Christian faiths usually base their belief on a literal reading of the Genesis creation narrative. Other religions have different deity-led creation myths,[note 1] while different members of individual faiths vary in their acceptance of scientific findings. In contrast to the strict creationists, evolutionary creationists maintain that, although evolution accounts for the nature of the biosphere, evolution itself is cosmologically attributable to a Creator deity.
When mainstream scientific research produces theoretical conclusions which contradict a strict creationist interpretation of scripture, creationists often reject the conclusions of the research or its underlying scientific theories or its methodology. The rejection of scientific findings has sparked political and theological controversy. Two offshoots of creationism—creation science and intelligent design—have been characterized as pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific community. The most notable disputes concern the evolution of living organisms, the idea of common descent, the geological history of the Earth, the formation of the solar system and the origin of the universe

z1 PHOTO BIO CREATIONALISM

Evolutionary ideas have existed in the Muslim world ever since they were expressed by the Afro-Arab biologist Al-Jahiz (c. 776-869), who first described the struggle for existence, a precursor to natural selection. Many other medieval Islamic philosophers and biologists later expressed evolutionary ideas, including Ibn Miskawayh, the Brethren of Purity, Abu Rayhan Biruni, Nasir al-Din Tusi[5] and Ibn Khaldun.
Following the rise of Darwinism in the 19th century, the initial societal debates that took place in Europe and the United States did not happen in most countries with majority Muslim populations. By the mid-20th century, however, but evolution entered the curricula of many majority Muslim countries predominantly under the leadership of secular authoritarian governments. Therefore, at the outset, evolution inevitably gained highly political meanings. Nationalist movements especially associated evolution with "Western corruption" without seriously studying it. Later on, those movements, looking for intellectual support, learned and embraced Christian views and ideas about evolution as a shortcut for supporting the positions that they took at first. While the political debate was in progress, Islamic scholars stayed off the subject because of its dangerously political significance. Some of those movements that initially embraced anti-evolutionism proceeded on their way with it. Recently, Islamic scholars have begun making comments on the issue. Since denying scientific knowledge is forbidden in Islam, scholars just try to overview the subject in the Islamic discourse rather than rejecting it.
Little is known about general societal views of evolution in Muslim countries. A 2007 study of religious patterns found that only 8% of Egyptians, 11% of Malaysians, 14% of Pakistanis, 16% of Indonesians, and 22% of Turks agree that Darwin's theory is probably or most certainly true, and a 2006 survey reported that about 25% of Turkish adults agreed that human beings evolved from earlier animal species. In contrast, the 2007 study found that only 28% of Kazakhs thought that evolution is false; this fraction is much lower than the roughly 40% of U.S. adults with the same opinion (this could be due to the fact that Kazakhstan is a former republic of the USSR, where atheism was explicitly endorsed and promoted).
In Turkey, polemics against the theory of evolution have been waged by the Nurculuk movement of Said Nursi since the late 1970s. At present, its main exponent is the writer Harun Yahya (pseudonym of Adnan Oktar) who uses the Internet as one of the main methods for the propagation of his ideas. His BAV (Bilim Araştırma Vakfı/ Science Research Foundation) organizes conferences with leading American creationists. Another leading Turkish advocate of Islamic creationism is Fethullah Gülen. Due to the lack of a detailed account of creation in the Qur'an, aspects other than the literal truth of the scripture are emphasized in the Islamic debate. The most important concept is the idea that there is no such thing as a random event, and that everything happens according to God's will. This does not mean that God has to interfere with the universe. Hence the ideas of some Islamic creationists are closer to Intelligent design than to Young Earth Creationism. According to Guardian some British Muslim students quote the Qu'ran in scientific exams and fail as a result. At a conference in the UK in January, 2004, entitled Creationism: Science and Faith in Schools, Dr Khalid Anees, president of the Islamic Society of Britain stated that "Muslims interpret the world through both the Koran and what is tangible and seen. There is no contradiction between what is revealed in the Quran and natural selection and survival of the fittest." However, over 1,505 people opposed the creationist movement and the Brown government has recently published new standards removing creationism from the schools

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