Richard Dawkins Website Banned in Turkey

It is about time I get back to the central purpose of this blog---to talk about the issue of faith and how it can be understood by those with scientific minds. Would it shock you that Richard Dawkin's website has been banned somewhere in the world? Well, it has happened in the country of Turkey where a populist creationist has played the "I'm insulted" card and is crying censorship. Again the ugly part of faith is raising it's head---the arrogant part, the part that thinks it is always right.

Here is the article:


Richard Dawkins website banned in Turkey

By Jessica Salter Last Updated: 10:59AM BST 19 Sep 2008
Adnan Oktar complained that Mr Dawkins, a fierce critic of creationism and intelligent design, had insulted him in comments made on forums and blogs.
Istanbul's second criminal court of peace has now forbidden internet users to access the site because it "violated" Mr Oktar.
Mr Oktar's press assistant, Seda Aral, said: "We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people. We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed. We have used all the legal means to stop this site. We asked them to remove the comments but they did not."
Mr Oktar is a household name in Turkey after publishing hundreds of books, pamphlets and DVDs to contest Darwin's theory of evolution.
Mr Oktar complained that he and his creationist book Atlas of Creation had been defamed by comments made by Mr Dawkins on the site.
Mr Dawkins had written on his site: "I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content."
It is illegal to criticise either Ataturk or Turkishness in Turkey.
However Mr Oktar failed to ban Mr Dawkins' book The God Delusion, which claims religious scripture is unreliable, after a Turkish court rejected his claims that it insulted religion.
But Mr Oktar, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, has been successful in persuading courts to ban other websites that he claims are libellous.
In August 2007 a court to blocked access to WordPress.com and last April it banned Google Groups after both were complained about by Mr Oktar.
Last year a court banned users to access YouTube after Greek and Turkish people were been trading video insults and attracting coverage in the Turkish press.

I've got some advice for Mr. Oktar. Banning people you disagree with doesn't work in the long run, especially if your opponent is 100 times smarter than you.





On to the Sam Harris front. Sam has gotten some interesting press lately. He has written a fierce four page letter on why Sarah Palin's rediculous world view should shock more Americans. Harris points to her magical thinking being a very scary thing for the country:





In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing—as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?

You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"?








Harris goes on to defend "elitism" in politics, and wonders when it became a bad word. Harris believes that the average American voter wants an everyday person, just like them when it comes to electing public officials. He also says that Sarah Palin's ignorance is "guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth."





It is true, a person can be judged by how they have lived their life. Palin has left 44 years of evidence of her poor choices. Those choices need to be explored and exposed one by one. She is truly a dangerous choice for the country and the world. Why don't more people see this. John McCain made an awful choice, a choice that would be highly dangerous for the country. If McCain expires in office, heaven help us.






On the Daniel Dennett front, Daniel gave an inspiring talk on September 11th at the Frank Fraser Potter Memorial Lecture. The local paper was impressed:

Dennett said humanity is the only animal that will die for an abstract idea. He said humanity has fought and died for such things as Islam, Christianity, communism, democracy, justice and freedom. He believes we are the only species able to formulate a higher purpose beyond the determination of our “genetic imperative.” This is what makes humanity the most romantic of animals, for we have the imagination to create all kinds of poetic dreams. The documented history of humanity is the story of the creation and disappearance of countless religions and ideas. Where a bird might see a night sky, our ancestors saw magic in a multicolored universe. And within this multicolored cosmos we were able to maintain and pass on old memes and impose them on the next generation, perpetuating a society, culture and civilization.
What makes humanity even more splendid is its quest for truth. From out of this convoluted and contradicting mass of ideas entangled in our traditions and cultural heritage, our reason was the light that led our cultural evolution. Humanity created science and empirical knowledge, a tool of comprehending and judging the memes that determine our lives. We have turned our cultural tools upon themselves, and in the process of sorting out our knowledge, we have created wonders. We have learned how to heal the sick and devised ways to leave the atmosphere of the Earth in rocket-propelled ships.
Dennett exaggerated our uniqueness and our rational self-determination, but his modern telling of the creation story of humankind was artistry. For Dennett, a godless world is not devoid of the magical grandeur of the old beliefs. We give our own meaning to our lives. The things we find important arise out of things that once had no meaning. We continue to adjust to new situations in which we find ourselves. And in the massive, silent space which is the universe we can take comfort with each other as we reason it out.





Is this idea of memes related to CG Jung's architypes? Very interesting. If you are interested in Dennett, check out the DVD "The Four Horsemen." It is a facinating discussion of athiesm by Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. Here is the link to see it free on the net:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-225595257312538919


Isn't internet video great?? It is a lot better than TV!