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Poor Richard Dawkins

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As if being mauled by Counterknowledge readers wasn’t enough, now he’s had richarddawkins.net banned in Turkey for being defamatory and blasphemous. No, really.

It will come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog that the culprit is our old friend(s) Harun Yahya, whose lavish (but bollocks) “Atlas of Creation” – aptly branded a “glossy tome of lies” by one recent Amazon.co.uk reviewer – was sent out to schools all over the world in 2007.

Yahya once attempted to have Dawkins’ The God Delusion banned in Turkey for “insulting religion”. Thankfully, that case was thrown out by the Turkish courts. But it’s disheartening to now see the country’s Criminal Court of Peace acquiesce to Yahya’s insane demands, in agreeing that Dawkins makes defamatory statements about the Atlas of Creation and others of Yahya’s works.

Among the objectionable statements was the following slap-down:

[I am] at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content. Is it really inanity, or just plane laziness – or perhaps cynical awareness of the ignorance and stupidity of the target audience – mostly Muslim creationists. 

The Guardian reports that:

It is the third time Oktar and his associates have succeeded in blocking sites in Turkey. In August 2007 Oktar persuaded a court to block access to WordPress.com. His lawyers argued that blogs on the site contained libellous material that it was unwilling to remove. Last April he made a libel complaint about Google Groups, which was subsequently blocked. 

As John Ozimek of The Register notes, “One irony of this action is that [Yahya] benefits greatly from a freedom to publish that he appears unwilling to extend to others.”

In May of this year, Yahya was found guilty “of creating an illegal organisation for personal gain”. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, and is currently appealing the decision.

But, says Ozimek:

Before we pat ourselves too smugly on the back, we should recall recent events in the UK. The Daily Mail is fond of publicising details of individuals investigated by police for the various new “phobia” offences (”homophobia”, for instance). Many of these are no more than a storm in a teacup, but they reveal a worrying trend in our own psyche – and it is just two years since a victory by just one vote pulled the teeth of the Government’s much-vaunted Religious Hatred Bill. As it is, we now have a law that can be used against individuals who use threatening language that is targeted on the basis of religion. 

Had that vote ended differently, we would now be living in a land in which anyone could be sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for the crime of using insulting language, even if the insult was unintended and what you said was based on truth. Far from laughing at the absurdity of the Turkish courts, we would now be reading about the arrest of Richard Dawkins and his impending prosecution in the UK for religious hatred.

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I don’t think it’s fair to say that RD got a ‘mauling’ here. What happened was somebody claimed their mates A, B and C could kick RD’s ass in debate.

I notice that when such ‘fair’ debates are arranged – by the Templeton Foundation, say – the atheist is not invariably the one counted out. I refer you to:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/realitybase/2008/09/23/god-0-atheism-2-hitchens-eats-another-religious-figure-for-lunch/

Having watched some of the Harun Yahya shows on the local community TV station, I’m amazed that he uses the same arguments as the Christian creationists, yet his conclusion is “Allah did it” rather than “God did it”.

Not that there’s all that much argument. One particularly memorable explanation went along the lines of “Isn’t the elephant an amazing animal? Allah did it.”

The ‘It’s really complicated, so God must have done it’ argument is the best the apologists have. All the clever Western ones do is use more sophisticated examples. If not the amazing elephant, then the staggering bacterial flagellum. If not the bacterial flagellum, then the eternally mysterious human imagination.

Apologies to the owners of this blog, who will disagree strongly, but religious apologists are always creationists in a broad sense of the term – they’re all convinced they’ve found god’s fingerprints somewhere.

Valdemar: in your case, I am quite disposed to excuse God of the absurd mistake of having made your brains. Clearly, a perfect being cannot be possibly guilty of anything so badly made. I am perfectly willing to believe that you are a self-made man – and worship your creator.

Now to the serious stuff. When it comes to this sort of thing, I am certainly on the side of any Dawkins or similar. What this man is doing is trying to silence an argument better than his own (yes, Dawkins is more educated than Yahya – why, what high praise). This is criminal and really does prelude to tyranny. Where the Dawkinses of the world are concerned, all I ask is the freedom to answer back anywhere and any way I feel like it, and to have my answer left untouched. That, my friends, is called freedom. It is also called honesty. To produce an expensive book of trashy propaganda, using the money of your more shadowy friends, to attack someone’s views, and then to try and prevent him from replying, is a thing with many names – cowardice, corruption, dishonesty, mendacity, tyranny. The only good thing that may be said about this kind of filth is that if these people are forced to this sort of underhanded behaviour, to the support of propaganda lies with corrupt legal procedure, that must mean that at some level they do not believe in their own case. They fear that it should be exposed. And when people entertain that sort of unspoken, unconscious fear, they usually have very good reason for it. Perhaps, like the old Soviet monster, the dragon of Islamism is weaker than we think; perhaps we are looking at one of those nightmares of Chesterton’s –

Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.

Oh, Fabio, despite your incessant rudeness (which is so endearingly devoid of wit) I agree with you. Free speech is important to me, too. Almost an article of faith, in fact. But why assume that people who resort to repression, lies and censorship are on the weaker side?

Consider the fascists and communists. Consider the Chinese regime today. Consider – and remember your blood pressure as you do it – the Church of Rome with its list of banned books. Consider Governor Palin of Alaska seeking to ban a handful of books in a tiny provincial library, in a town where (presumably) anybody can go on the net and read just about anything at all.

We like to believe that the honest and open way is the ’strong’ debating position, but the verdict of history has yet to be delivered. A lot of people seem to like being told what to think. Indeed (and here’s another opportunity to be clunkily rude to me – sieze it!) religion would hardly have survived this long if we, as a species, loved open, honest and rational debate as much as you think.

Consider your errors of fact. Consider that Governor Palin tried to ban nothing, except in the fevered fantasies of bloggers, and that the Church of Rome has no list of banned books. Consider that you clearly believe that truth has no power over lies, and that to lie is not the desperate resort of people driven into a corner by facts, but the constructive strategy of strong and purposeful statesmen. Consider that you do not believe that truth has any advantage over lies. And you may yet realize why you believe obvious lies without making any attempt to test them.

Me, I am a firm believer in truth. That is why I ask for nothing more than to be free to state it as I see it.

“And you may yet realize why you believe obvious lies without making any attempt to test them”

and just how do you test your faith, Fabio?

I came across an interesting study that supports my (admittedly pessimistic) view of the rise of creationism and other lies. Admittedly, this deals with the attitudes of American voters to Iraq and the old ‘Obama’s a Muslim’ lie. But it’s right – telling someone they are factually wrong doesn’t win the argument. Perhaps it did in 18th century drawing rooms?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080924-does-ideology-trump-facts-studies-say-it-often-does.html

Interesting article, Valdemar.

As regards the headline of this post “As if being mauled by Counterknowledge readers wasn’t enough…” , I followed the link and all I really saw was Fabio going off on one. Hardly a mauling, imo.
.

Rifty – if that is a serious question, I authorize Damian to release to you my e-mail address so that we can discuss it in the depth it requires. If it is merely an attempt to prove your cleverness at dumb soundbites, forget it – I have no intention to help anyone indulge in unwarranted self-regard.

Valdemar: considering the amount of lies to the credit of Voltaire and his mates in France, and the prevalence of Whiggery (with its adjunct, the Bloody Code) in the United KIngdom, eighteenth-century drawing rooms may not have been the most suitable places for truth. In fact, no social environment is free of lies. But lies are always a contingent and desperate attempt to salvage a toppling balance hit by the impact of hard fact. Fundamentalism, for instance, begins late in the nineteenth century when the foundation of Protestantism – namely Sola Scriptura is made untenable by the advance of historical studies. In order to preserve the primacy of Scripture, one misstatement needs to be piled on top of another, until it becomes obvious to the very cobblestones that the construct is not reasonable. The majority of Americans, including Republicans, reject creationism and fundamentalism, always have, always will. And one lie desroys a whole set of good intentions. WJ Bryant, who was, lest we forget, one of the most outstanding and progressive American politicians of his time, had perfectly good reasons to dislike the moral atmosphere created by Social Darwinism. Alas, he tried to go from the perfectly reasonable “Social Darwinism is a nasty kind of theory” to the unacceptable corollary “therefore Darwin’s science must be wrong”. And that wrecked his whole argument. Of his opponents, Mencken was a nasty man (later a supporter of Hitler), Scopes a Social Darwinist himself, whose textbook was full of racist conclusions, and Clarence Darrow an idealistic twit whose viewpoints provided nothing but mirth to more worldly persons and who would have been a natural target for Mencken himself, were they not bent on the same goal. However, there is one and only one thing that matters: they were right on the issue at hand. Darrow was clever enough to make Bryant sound like an ignorant fool, but what wins the case in front of the court of history is one thing and one thing alone: Bryant was in the wrong, and Darrow in the right. End of story.

Fabio,

It was a serious question. I’m ever increasingly bemused by the attitude of religous people on this site who , while they laugh at the counterknowlege spewed out by other people than themselves, believe in something that has no evidence for it whatsoever,ie, God. But , there you go, you beleive in him/her or whatever it is.

I’ll go back to a very simple point that should test your belief. . If God exists, then he must be a very mean and horrible god. People starve every day. Poor people, who are basically shat upon by others and the environment. If your God exists, and its your right to beleive he does, then I feel like spitting in his face. You can pray for me if you like.

It is not a simple point and if you were serious about it you would see that it does not do much to test any Christian’s belief. However, I am having trouble with my current account, the one known to Damian. This places me in a bind: if I just said that, you would take it to be an excuse to wiggle out of a debate. So I am forced to place my e-mail in a public area – something I really did not fancy. So if you want to argue seriously (and the resurrection of this old chestnut, which my grandmother could adequately have answered, does not suggest it), you had better get in touch with this new address: [email protected]

Fabio,

Firslty, thanks for the email adress.

Secondly, why in both your answers have you questioned my seriousness? I am very serious about this subject. I may not be as clever as you, and definelty not as good with the use of words as you, but my problem with your faith in an unproveable God is very serious. Also,if by some chance this unproved God figure does exiist, I do have a serious problem with your unquestioning faith in such an uncaring and mean God.

I will write to you. Thankyou again for your email adress.

My office has just been deluged with a whole box of Yayha’s atlases – where is the money coming from?

Dare I suggest from places not unconnected with petroleum?

Rifty – two reasons. First, that the Internet is full of people who think they are cleverer than Christians. Second, because the fact that you present the oldest single argument against the theodicy as if it were something novel, and as if Christians had not had thousands of years to think about it and find answers, does not suggest much seriousness. You seem to start from the notion that we are all so totally stupid as to have spent 2000 years without once reflecting on the issue of undeserved pain. Ask yourself whether you would make such an insulting assumpition about any other group, at least without admitting to yourself that it is a contemptous assumtpion to make.

Whoops. I think I gave Rifty the wrong e-mail address. It seems to be actually:
[email protected]
(not gmail). Apologies if s/he tried to get in touch and failed.

Fabio,

I dont think I’m cleverer than Christians, and I’m almost absolutely sure from reading the posts on this site (espeically yours) that I’m not as academically clever as nearly everyone on here. But being clever doesnt make you right.

Also, I didn’t present the oldest single argument (undeserved pain) against theodicy as if it were novel. I actually said “I’ll go back to a very simple point that should test your belief” For a clever person, why dont you ask yourself why its an old argument? Has it got anything to do with the fact that its still unanswered properly. By the way, I dont class undeserved pain as my Christian Grandmother dying in pain from an ailment she didnt deserve. I class it as whole masses of people dying from starvation,or living in poverty and debt because of the inaction of selfish first world rich people. Many of whom are Christians. God isnt helping those people. The only people whocan help those people are other people. Your God doesnt exist,and if he does,he bloody well doesnt care.

Look, either use the e-mail address I provided you with, or shut up. I simply refuse to get into this kind of argument on someone else’s blog. It is not the right place, and it is a perfect way to attract trolls and worse.

Are you telling me to shutup? Who are you to do that,remind me? I am simply having a discussion in a thread about God, which was started by others, including yourself. Would God approve of your arrogance and rudeness?

You are talking specifically to me. I asked you to do so somewhere else. You refused to. Now go on talking to yourself. Which is what you want to do anyway. As for arrogance, you are not just the pot, but the coal-mine calling the pale-grey sweater black.

Your own arrogance is getting really boring now, Fabio.

yawn, yawn….zzzzzz

Ask no questions and you will be told no lies :D

Poor Richard indeed! Perhaps he wouldn’t be so poor if he could manage to pull off a win in open debate with anti-darwinists

HARUN YAHYA IS GREATEST SCIENTIST ON PLANET! SECULAR ESTABLISHMENT BAN HARUNYAHYA!! HARUN YAHYA SHOW IS NO EVIDENCE FOR DAWKINISM!!!!! HARUN YAHYA SHOW NO ANIMALS EVOLUSHUNATING AT PRESENT OR IN PAST!!!!!! HARUN YAHYA NOT DONE ANYTHING CRIMNINAL!!!!! HE NOT BLACKMAIL OR BUGGER YOUNG GIRLS!!!!!! HE PURE AND VERTUOUSS MAN!!!!!!HARUN YAHYA IS BETTER THAN GOD OR ALLAH!!!!! HARUN YAHYA IS NEW PROPHET AND WILL DESTROY EVOLUSHUNATING DAWKINISTS FOREVER WHEN HE GET OUT OF PRISON!!! WAIT AND SEE DAWKINIST!!!!!
HE DESTROY YOU AND ALL WILL BE PURE AND LOVE AND HARUN YAHYA WILL BE GOD FOREVER!!!! NO DAWKINIST EVOLUSHUNATORSS, NO IMMODESTROUS EMMORALITY, NO GODLESS, JUST LOVE OF HARUN YAHYA FOREVER AND EVER!!!
WAIT AND SEE DAWKINIST!!!

Richard dawkin is god my, athiest we make god him

To the aptly named Joseph Moron. Your caricature of atheists as worshipping Richard Dawkins is way off the mark. We aren’t a religious cult like your homo erotic Adnan Oktar idolizing christian pseudoislamic cult.
You just don’t get it do you Jamshed?
That is because you are too dense to see that some people aren’t as insecure as religious adherents like you.
We simply don’t need childish and primitive “sky mommies and daddies”. We’re adults, unlike you.

As if being mauled by Counterknowledge readers wasn’t enough, now he’s had richarddawkins.net banned in Turkey for being defamatory and blasphemous. No, really.

It will come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog that the culprit is our old friend(s) Harun Yahya, whose lavish (but bollocks) “Atlas of Creation” – aptly branded a “glossy tome of lies” by one recent Amazon.co.uk reviewer – was sent out to schools all over the world in 2007.

Yahya once attempted to have Dawkins’ The God Delusion banned in Turkey for “insulting religion”. Thankfully, that case was thrown out by the Turkish courts. But it’s disheartening to now see the country’s Criminal Court of Peace acquiesce to Yahya’s insane demands, in agreeing that Dawkins makes defamatory statements about the Atlas of Creation and others of Yahya’s works.

Among the objectionable statements was the following slap-down:

[I am] at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content. Is it really inanity, or just plane laziness – or perhaps cynical awareness of the ignorance and stupidity of the target audience – mostly Muslim creationists. 

The Guardian reports that:

It is the third time Oktar and his associates have succeeded in blocking sites in Turkey. In August 2007 Oktar persuaded a court to block access to WordPress.com. His lawyers argued that blogs on the site contained libellous material that it was unwilling to remove. Last April he made a libel complaint about Google Groups, which was subsequently blocked. 

As John Ozimek of The Register notes, “One irony of this action is that [Yahya] benefits greatly from a freedom to publish that he appears unwilling to extend to others.”

In May of this year, Yahya was found guilty “of creating an illegal organisation for personal gain”. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, and is currently appealing the decision.

But, says Ozimek:

Before we pat ourselves too smugly on the back, we should recall recent events in the UK. The Daily Mail is fond of publicising details of individuals investigated by police for the various new “phobia” offences (”homophobia”, for instance). Many of these are no more than a storm in a teacup, but they reveal a worrying trend in our own psyche – and it is just two years since a victory by just one vote pulled the teeth of the Government’s much-vaunted Religious Hatred Bill. As it is, we now have a law that can be used against individuals who use threatening language that is targeted on the basis of religion. 

Had that vote ended differently, we would now be living in a land in which anyone could be sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for the crime of using insulting language, even if the insult was unintended and what you said was based on truth. Far from laughing at the absurdity of the Turkish courts, we would now be reading about the arrest of Richard Dawkins and his impending prosecution in the UK for religious hatred.

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