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| The 64-year-old cult leader Adnan Oktar, who owned a TV channel, was arrested in 2018 along with 200 collaborators. Credit: Anadolu Agency |
Anyone who spends much time debating creationism in online groups will be familiar with the followers of Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, a Turkish Moslem fundamentalist Creationist and purveyor of scientific disinformation on a par with Christian fundamentalists such as Kent Hovind, Ken Ham and Ray Comfort, only he is much richer and owns a TV channel.
He, unlike his Cristian counterparts (Hovid excepted), has now been sentenced by a Turkish court to over 1000 years in prison, though not, unfortunately for his crimes of lying to school children who are now taught Creationism in school and not the science of evolutionary biology, due it Oktar's political lobbying and influence.
Oktar is perhaps best known for his lavish and richly illustrate book, Atlas of Creation, an intellectually dishonest book of the highest order, in which he clearly over-compensated for his lack of knowledge and understanding of both basic biology and of the Theory of Evolution, by trying to substituting quantity for quality, as though a rich and glossy illustration of a lie made it look like a truth. The entire thrust of his argument is that there is no change to be seen between the ancient fossils and modern extant species, therefore there has been no evolution - and the Qur'an is true.
The book is full of photos plagiarised from Internet sources and used without permission or accreditation of the copyright owners.
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| Imitation cadis fly fishing lure, used to illustrate Atlas of Creation by Adnan Oktar Credit: Graham Owen
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| Imaginary red spider fishing lure, used to illustrate Atlas of Creation by Adnan Oktar Credit: Graham Owen
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| Imitation mayfly fishing lure, used to illustrate Atlas of Creation by Adnan Oktar Credit: Graham Owen |
In another illustration he juxtaposed the fossil skeleton of a 160 million-year-old salamander, complete with tail, and the skeleton of a modern frog (sans tail) and declared them identical and proof that the Qur'an was real science.
Oktar was arrested in 2018 and charged with:
- Founding and leading a criminal organisation.
- Political or military espionage.
- Aiding the Fetullah Terrorist Organisation (FETO), despite not being a member.
- Sexual abuse of minors.
- Sexual abuse.
- Deprivation of liberty of the person.
- Torture.
- Disturbance of the right to education.
- Recording personal data.
- Threats.
- Tarkan Yavas, an executive member of the organisation, sentenced to 211 years in prison for, sexual abuse of a minor, sexual abuse, misstatement of property, and committing perjury in an official document.
- Oktar Babuna, given 186 years in jail for being a member of a criminal organisation, sexual abuse of a minor, and sexual abuse.
It seems that fundamentalist Christian creationists are not the only ones seen as easy targets for criminals willing to supply them with confirmation bias and exploit their scientific illiteracy and childish credulity for money. In Oktar's case, slipping over from the simple con tricks of Creationist frauds, into the sexual exploitation of the credulous children who fell for his ploy and into other criminal conspiracies, all using religious piety as a cover, was all too easy, given his intellectual dishonesty and arrogant sense of privileged entitlement.
Perhaps his arrest and imprisonment has at least prevented Turkey suffering the same fate as the USA, and having an unscrupulous Trump-alike fraud running for elected office, supported by a cult of credulous, ignorant willing dupes.
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