Creationist Harun Yahya Offers Prize For Fossil Proof Of Evolution

Harun Yahya



Creationist Harun Yahya Offers Prize For Fossil Proof Of Evolution
Monday, 29 September 2008 / The Independent

A controversial creationist who successfully campaigned for Richard Dawkins' official website to be banned in Turkey has offered a multitrillion- pound challenge to scientists.

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) said that he has "issued a call to all evolutionists" that he will give "10 trillion Turkish lira to anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution" – a sum roughly equal to £4.4trn.

The Muslim writer, who uses the pen name Harun Yahya, is a fierce critic of what he calls "the Darwinist dictatorship" and a popular figure in his home country, where – according to a 2006 survey – only a quarter of the population believe in Darwin's theory.

The 52-year-old former architecture student, who has been heavily criticised in the West, claims there are no fossils to support Darwinist theories. "Evolutionists are at a dead-end in the face of the fossil record," he said. "Not one [fossil] belongs to strange-looking creatures in the course of development of the kind supposed by evolutionists." However, scientists reject his claims that these fossils do not exist. Dr Kevin Padian at the University of California told The New York Times that Mr Oktar "does not have any sense of what we know about how things change through time. If he sees a fossil crab, he says, 'It looks just like a regular crab, there's no evolution,'" Dr Padian said. "Extinction does not seem to bother him."
Mr Oktar found fame in 2006 when 10,000 copies of his The Atlas Of Creation were distributed worldwide. The 800-page volume illustrated his claims that for millions of years life forms have not developed, supporting his Islamic creationist beliefs.

Richard Dawkins, the British biologist, called the Atlas "preposterous", speaking of "the breathtaking inanity of the content". Mr Oktar responded: "We could have spoken on a more scientific basis if he had been able to produce an intermediate form fossil capable of confirming evolution in the face of all the hundreds of fossils in my book."

Mr Oktar defended Professor Michael Reiss, the British biologist who resigned as the director of education for the Royal Society earlier this month after suggesting that science teachers should consider creationism "not as a misconception but as a world view".

Mr Oktar called it "concrete evidence of the panic Darwinists are experiencing". Earlier this month he successfully brought a case against Mr Dawkins to a Turkish court, claiming that his website contained blasphemous and defamatory content. Internet users in Turkey can no longer access the site.

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Because of his anti-Darwinist, anti-communist and anti-Masonic intellectual struggle, Adnan Oktar has for many years been subjected to conspiracies and slanders by certain dark forces. However, the courts have always acquitted him of these baseless accusations, and they have all been exposed as plots and slander.

1. Adnan Oktar was held in solitary confinement for nine months and then detained for a further 10 months in a mental hospital housing the most dangerous 300 inmates who had committed murders, all for saying “I am a member of the Turkish nation and of the community of Ibrahim.” 7 people were killed by inmates during his time there.

2. After being held in prison and the mental hospital for a total of 19 months, Mr. Oktar was acquitted and released by the court when the Prosecutor’s Office declared there was “no criminal offence in his words.” However, because of the mental report issued in his regard he was for years publicly portrayed as mentally ill and deprived of such rights as to vote or stand for office, to marry, to work for the state or purchase property. This conspiracy also eventually failed when the Military Hospital overturned the report.

3. Mr. Oktar was detained with no justification in 1991, and members of Ergenekon, a communist deep state that had infiltrated the state in Turkey, arranged for cocaine to be detected in his blood stream after being mixed in with his food at the Security Headquarters building. This was confirmed by the Forensic Medicine Institute. Mr. Oktar was acquitted and cleared when the court determined it had been a conspiracy.

4. Mr. Oktar has been the subject of 9 assassination attempts.

5. In 1999, Mr. Oktar and various members of the BAV (Science Research Foundation) were detained by police under the command of Adil Serdar Sacan, who is himself currently detained on charges of being a member of the terrorist organization Ergenekon. Those taken into custody were tortured by personnel at the Security Department, at the order and with the encouragement of Adil Serdar Sacan. As a result of that torture, the detainees were forced to sign untrue statements that had been drawn up beforehand.

6. A journalist by the name of Tuncay Ozkan, who is also currently in custody charged with membership of the communist Ergenekon terrorist organization, was the one who prepared in advance the statements signed under coercion by the detainees and who gave them to the Security Department. After they were signed under coercion the signed versions of these false statements were sent back to Tuncay Ozkan by Adil Serdar Sacan, and Ozkan then used them to wage a smear campaign against the BAV members with full-page reports in the newspapers every day and reports on the television. This clearly and undeniably reveals that it is this communist deep state society behind the conspiracies against Adnan Oktar and the BAV that have been going on for so many years.

7. Under the influence of the police report prepared on the basis of these statements, court proceedings were initiated and some defendants were sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment. Together with Adnan Oktar, three young women, university graduates who had never seen the inside of a prison or police station or even received a speeding ticket, were also sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment on the grounds of running a criminal enterprise. These women are intellectual, devout, progressive and secular individuals who believe in creation.

8. In his latest legal opinion regarding the case, the Public Prosecutor stated that:

• All the defendants, including Adnan Oktar, had already been acquitted in the case;
• The statements taken under coercion and in the absence of a lawyer were invalid in legal terms, and that this had in addition been accepted by the court hearing the case;
• And there was no evidence in the case file to support the charges,
And therefore REQUESTED THAT THE DEFENDANTS BE ACQUITTED.

Adnan Oktar has never committed a criminal offense, and he rejects this charge. However, he respects the court ruling by all means.
Mr. Oktar has already been acquitted in the hearts of all rational people and of the entire Islamic world and Turkish nation. Nobody in Turkey believes he is the leader of a criminal enterprise. He is a man of science, an author known to the whole world. He preaches love, peace, tolerance and compassion, and recommends moral virtues. Lies and plots have never hindered Mr. Oktar’s intellectual struggle in any way whatsoever, and neither will they do so in the future. He will heroically, persistently and determinedly continue with his anti-materialist, anti-communist and anti-Darwinist activities that call Turkey to unity and union.