First off, I wasn’t sure where to put this post, so if it needs to be moved, my apologies to the moderators.
Also, this question focuses on America.
Now then, anytime Creation VS Evolution comes up, it’s always Christian fundamentalists challenging evolution. Hinduism and Islam have creation stores, even Judaism shares the same creation story with Christianity, yet I never hear of Hindu, Islamic, or Jewish creationists, why? Is it because there’s simply more fundamentalists Christians than fundamentalist Hindus/Muslims/Jews? Or…?
Also, a related question, in general, in Theocracies, like the Islamic Middle Eastern countries, is creationism or evolution, or both taught in schools? (Again, in general since the answer may vary from Theocracy to Theocracy)
They are certainly out there. I once caught part of a show on a middle eastern version of the discovery channel that was “debunking” evolution. As for the Hindus, they seem to have their own fair share of fuzy-headed objections and creative interpretation.
I’ll assume you meant “in the US,” what with Christianity being the dominant religion here and all. I sincerely doubt that there are more “fundamentalist” Christians running around than there are in any other religion. The ones you hear about in the US tend to get more attention over things like terrorism than their objections to basic science.
There have, in fact, been Muslim creationists at the SDMB, arguing against evolution in GD. If anything, the percentage of “Koran science” believers within Islam is higher than the number of “Bible science believers” within Christianity judging (completely unscientifically) by the people I meet on the internet. In particular, a whole lot of Internet Muslims believe in elan vital, i.e. that there must be a magic “life force” which drives biological processes. That’s been debunked since we learned to make synthetic urine, over a century ago. (And a good thing, too, what with the pressure on urine banks back then…)
There’s also Vine Deloria’s bizarre screed, Red Earth, White Lies, which presents Native American Creation Science. He has a beef with scientific epistemology in general. He seems to think that science is a load of crap and can’t accomplish anything, and people only believe in it because the scientists will take their TV’s away if they don’t. By “seems to think” I mean that’s what he said, and I find it hard to believe I read it correctly.
Lastly, a Muslim handed me a booklet on Islam at a rally. It turned out to be the Muslim equivalent of “Evidence that Demands a Verdict.”
Yes I’ve heard of a few Muslim creationists. I’ve never met or heard of a Jewish creationist, even the most Orthodox Jews hold the Big Band and evolution to be true (obviously though in a theisitic way simlair to Christians who don’t reject science).
I also hear that Hare Krishnas have a problem with evolution too…
I’ve also seen some who are working it in another direction in Islam. They seem to want to correlate scientific evidence with things described in the Quran. Lame totally made up example: “The lord gave a thunderous clap and the heavens arose”->refers to big bang.
OK, thanks, and yeah, I did say I was limiting my first question to the US since I live here, and the US creationism VS evolutionism debate is the only one I’m familiar with.
The SDMB is the only place on line that I see Creationism debates, and I don’t read them much any more since I’m tire of the whole debate altogeather seeing how it keeps poping up, and poping up, and poping up, and so on. But when I do read them, it’s allways Christians taking the pro creationism side.
Hhhmmmm, and I don’t think that I’ve ever heard of Red Earch, White Lies, :eek: but after hearing that descritption, I don’t think I ever will read it.
Well, Islam is related to Christianity and Judaism, so I could understand some similar arguments being made by Islamic creationists, but if would funny if any of the information they sourced turned out to be something that Muslims don’t believe in general.
The OP has a real significance that might have escaped Joel’s notice. The scientific method is based on, among other things, rejection of authority, whether the authority of religious revelation or the authority of some well-respected philosopher or scientist like Aristotle. And “creation science” fails this test. So far as I know, each and every “creation scientist” does not only accept the Bible’s authority, but bases his “science” on it.
It is true, for at least some purposes and to a limited extent, that the most important piece of information in any message is the name of the messenger. I might be willing to admit the legitimacy of creationism as a scientific theory if at least some of its proponents were not Christians, nor followers of any other theistic religious tradition. Of course, it would be too much to expect a creationist to be an atheist – that would be illogical. But, on the other hand, there is no logical connection between the basic premise of “creation science,” that the world and universe were made by a conscious designer, and anything else in the book of Genesis, such as the sin and fall of Adam and Eve. In principle, a “philosophical theist” – one who, like the famous skeptic Martin Gardner, believes in a personal God while rejecting all traditional religious revelations about His nature – could be a creationist. But, so far as I know, there are no philosophical theists who are also creationists. Can anybody think of one?
The OP has a real significance that might have escaped Joel’s notice. The scientific method is based on, among other things, rejection of authority, whether the authority of religious revelation or the authority of some well-respected philosopher or scientist like Aristotle. And “creation science” fails this test. So far as I know, each and every “creation scientist” does not only accept the Bible’s authority, but bases his “science” on it.
It is true, for at least some purposes and to a limited extent, that the most important piece of information in any message is the name of the messenger. I might be willing to admit the legitimacy of creationism as a scientific theory if at least some of its proponents were not Christians, nor followers of any other theistic religious tradition. Of course, it would be too much to expect a creationist to be an atheist – that would be illogical. But, on the other hand, there is no logical connection between the basic premise of “creation science,” that the world and universe were made by a conscious designer, and anything else in the book of Genesis, such as the sin and fall of Adam and Eve. In principle, a “philosophical theist” – one who, like the famous skeptic Martin Gardner, believes in a personal God while rejecting all traditional religious revelations about His nature – could be a creationist. But, so far as I know, there are no philosophical theists who are also creationists. Can anybody think of one?
Creationists only seem to be Christians to you because they’re the only ones you’ve taken the trouble to notice.
Despite that, creationism is hardly mainstream in Christianity, or in Judaism, and there exists a fringe group of creationists there.
Creationism is pretty much mainstream in every Islamic society on this planet. In predominantly muslim cultures you will not find any teaching of evolutionary theory. Not in muslm high schools, nor in what pass for institutions of higher learning in those cultures.
This prohibition on teaching evolution would include so called “secular” Turkey, although the harassment there would be fairly low key as compared to the full blown theocratic thugocracies which seem to be the norm in the Islamic world.
To put it more simply, you would be placing yourself in as much danger if you tried to teach anything associated with Darwin or evolution in most muslim countries as you would be if you were caught in possession of a bible in the Saudi entity.
