1. Comment #429139 by Kubrick on November 3, 2009 at 2:03 am

Well, at least most of them are the more...sophisticated creationists. No, that doesn't sound right to me, either.

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2. Comment #429143 by BiologicDentists.com on November 3, 2009 at 2:26 am

Well, they are getting there, slowly. One day, everyone will be Atheist, wish I could live in that era, would be very exciting. Plus, there would be no more holy wars and such.

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3. Comment #429144 by NakedCelt on November 3, 2009 at 2:27 am

Interesting that Muslims in Western countries are more likely to be young-earthers than Muslims in Muslim countries.

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4. Comment #429146 by rajazep on November 3, 2009 at 2:29 am

most schools in Malaysia have teachers who know nuts about evolution- or biology for that matter.. we grew up being "educated" in religious mumbo jumbo spouted by mullahs..

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5. Comment #429150 by KRKBAB on November 3, 2009 at 2:53 am

pretty strange findings- students in Pakistan more readily accept Evolution than Muslim students in Canada. Supposedly because Muslims in the West feel more threatened so they react more strongly? Very strange, if true.

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6. Comment #429157 by ANTIcarrot on November 3, 2009 at 3:53 am

"pretty strange findings- students in Pakistan more readily accept Evolution than Muslim students in Canada"

Not really. Arguing against evolution is resource expensive. Evolution itself kinda implies that you'd only find it in countries where people are rich enough to be able to spare the resources. And in subspecies of religions that had specialised in using that confrontation as a survival strategy.

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7. Comment #429177 by Jos Gibbons on November 3, 2009 at 8:15 am

So, people who don't believe the world is 6,000 years old believe the world was made in six days, each of which was a thousand years. Sounds like 6,000 years to me. But then, I guess thinking creation took 6,000 years is different from thinking the entire history of the Universe is 6,000 years so far, right? Well, actually, only if there's a difference between creation time and later time, and one wonders what that difference is. Either way, they're both wrong by a factor of a million or so (depending on whether you focus on the Earth or the three-times-older-still universe). After all, "creation" in the sense of new life-forms has been going on for billions of years. Even if creationists who concede microevolution say that doesn't count as part of the creation, I'm sure they think creation has to last at least until humans come along. Maybe Muslims who think humans have been around for ages since then really are different from YECers. But, let me remind you these same people often say things like, "Of course the Earth isn't 6,000 years old, don't be ridiculous. It's 100,000 years old." Which is, arguably, about the age of our species. The more you think about these idiots, the more - or in some ways less - sense this all makes.

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8. Comment #429179 by Michael Gray on November 3, 2009 at 8:32 am

Creationism is a spectrum of bovine excreta, from the benign deist to the dangerously toxic Y.E.C.

But none of it has even an atomic shred of evidence.

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9. Comment #429188 by PERSON on November 3, 2009 at 9:26 am

No very young earth creationism. But some of them think it's hundreds of thousands rather than billions of years old. Less bonkers (perhaps) but still young relative to the true age.

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10. Comment #429189 by PERSON on November 3, 2009 at 9:28 am

"there would be no more holy wars and such."
No, just unholy wars.

Wait a minute...

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11. Comment #429210 by SteveN on November 3, 2009 at 10:33 am

So, assuming that both YECs and islamic creationists agree that about 6000 years have passed since the 'creation', YECs believe the universe to be 6000 years old and islamic creationists believe it to be 6000 plus 7000=13000 years old (one day is "a thousand years of your reckoning"). The clever islamic creationists are therefore only out by a factor of about one million whereas the silly YECs are out by over two million. To use Richard's analogy, I can imagine the muslim creationists laughing at their christian counterparts: "They are so stupid, they think that America is only two metres across, but we know it's really four metres"

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12. Comment #429229 by Nunbeliever on November 3, 2009 at 1:12 pm

Well, I would say that the question of accepting evolution or not is the LEAST problem in the muslim world...

First they could reach an angreement on whether there are 72 muslims waiting for martyrs in heaven or not. THEN, we can talk about civilized (in comparison to other things muslims believe) topics like whether evolutions is a fact or not.

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13. Comment #429235 by Sally Luxmoore on November 3, 2009 at 1:50 pm

Some academics at the conference worried that the rejection of some aspects of evolution might leave Islamic countries at a disadvantage in scientific education.

Might ?

How can a poor education do anything other than leave them at a disadvantage?

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14. Comment #429245 by saraswati on November 3, 2009 at 2:54 pm

This is why I'm so disappointed in Dawkins's apparent focus on young-earth creationism.

I think old-earth creationism is much more insidious because it doesn't sound nearly as batty when you don't try to claim that the earth came into existence after the advent of agriculture.

Old-earth creationists simply don't realise that when it comes to evolution, or at least human evolution, their beliefs go against science as much as young-earth creationism does. And when people like Dawkins focus on young-earth creationism, it gives old-earth creationists the sense of "Ah, but my beliefs are much more sophisticated than that," and they won't even hear the rest of the argument for evolution.

I have met many Muslim old-earth creationists, and they are all very sensible people on the whole. One guy I knew was of the we-are-all-one, all-religions-are-equal variety of moderate believer, who would never condone jihad or anything like that, and after meeting me even reconciled his beliefs enough to say that I, an atheist, would still go to heaven for being a good person. And he studied science in university. But he could say with a straight face "Of course evolution happened, but humans began with Adam and Eve."

These are the types of creationists, in my opinion, who *could* be convinced with reason, and who we should be focusing our energies on.

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15. Comment #429249 by mookiemu on November 3, 2009 at 3:25 pm

biologicdentists said: "Well, they are getting there, slowly. One day, everyone will be Atheist, wish I could live in that era, would be very exciting. Plus, there would be no more holy wars and such. "

I say, "yeah, there will be no religious wars, instead the atheists will square off against the agnostics" :)

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16. Comment #429281 by TIKI AL on November 3, 2009 at 6:25 pm

Some day the majority of the people in the world will be atheists and America will have universal government health care.

Of course, I will be long dead and not know when it finally happens.

Say, if I put an Edison horn at my gravesite, do you think someone in the future could....nah, if Houdini couldn't do it what chance do I have?

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17. Comment #429304 by Netsrak on November 3, 2009 at 7:57 pm

Michael Gray,
thanks for that, it sums it all up nicely for me, and a chuckle to boot.

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18. Comment #429380 by jamiso on November 4, 2009 at 8:21 am

(to the melody of the dreidel song)

Adam Adam Adam;
I made you out of clay;
But since I have Super Magical Powers to create anything at will from nothing in an instant..;
Why the hell did I make you out of clay?

I know I'm a skeptic to begin with, but I actually have a hard time believing people can believe this stuff to begin with.

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19. Comment #429396 by black wolf on November 4, 2009 at 12:07 pm

So, creation from 'something like the Big Bang' to 'hairless apes' and 'flowering plants' took not 6 days but 6,000 years? Nice try, but still utterly ridiculous. No, plastic fishing bait insect models are not evidence that life doesn't change or hasn't changed. As evidence of any barrier to accumulation of change is completely absent, Yahya is still a kook. A filthy rich kook with political clout.
Well, let the muslim parents choose if they want pious children who don't understand reality and keep their section of the world lagging behind for some more centuries. If only we could convince them not to deprive their children of knowledge.
But if, as the article mentions is the case in our friend Saudi Arabia, they will not allow foreigners to even view their school books (even the * didn't go that far), we might have any conceivable inhuman ideology brewing. I don't want to hear any voices from the Middle East complaining that we don't trust them. They apparently go out of their way to build distrust.
In our friend Pakistan,

Mentioning human evolution led to near riots, and he had to be escorted out. “That’s the one thing that will never be possible to bridge,” he said. “Your lineage is what determines your worth.”

The islamic world will therefore never understand modern medicine or why it works, never understand why animal testing works, never understand how to make any human medical development based on genetics. Western companies will meanwhile develop AIDS and cancer treatments, possibly even remove aging, and then sell the whole lot to the Islamic world, who will then complain that the West is responsible for exploiting them. That is, if at that time they have any oil money left to pay for the meds, which is doubtful. They'll be campaigning for donations, poor helpless and innocent victims of post-colonialism they are (posturing as), and Western citizens will continue to pay out until wheneverday.

edit after reading article comments: Ironically, one of the comments coming from a muslim states exactly what I wrote above: accepting evolution leads to denigrating the value of life, therefore any science based on evolution is an immoral exploitation. Therefore (implied) it's better to ignore reality in favor of comforting myths.
Another commenter asserts that any religion is essentially a search for truth. I disagree - religion is at its core a conflation of myths cobbled together to cope with the helplessness in the face of a mysterious universe and personal death. Holding on to nebulous or very concrete answers which are either way made up is not a search for truth, it is the opposite.
Devising a reliable way to find out what is true and facing the results is honesty. Religion is fearful delusion.
(* Godwin omitted ;)

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20. Comment #429404 by PERSON on November 4, 2009 at 1:14 pm

"poor helpless and innocent victims of post-colonialism they are (posturing as),"
Maybe true of the Western-supported tyrants that run those countries. Not true of the saps they (and by proxy we: gotta have that cheap oil for the SUV) lord it over.

"any religion is essentially a search for truth"
This is correct. But it is a search confined, in effect, to the navel.

Couldn't one equally have said in 1700 that:
"The christian world will therefore never understand modern medicine or why it works, never understand why animal testing works, never understand how to make any human medical development based on genetics."?

Or for that matter, say it of Texas?

Try considering people in Muslim countries and who follow Islam through something other than a stereotype, something other than a monolithic block, mere echoes of a few crazy men and their incomprehensible, ambiguous, subjective scrawlings, little known save to the clerical elite.

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21. Comment #429407 by The Night Owl on November 4, 2009 at 1:55 pm

To make a long story short, Muslims reject YE Creationism for the wrong reason.

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22. Comment #429486 by Mr DArcy on November 4, 2009 at 6:48 pm

Surely yet another convincing piece of evidence for general relativity:

one day is "a thousand years of your reckoning".

The Koran is a pretty dense book. Obviously its gravitational pull on muslims' brains has slowed time down so much that they don't know a day from a year.

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23. Comment #429501 by F_A_F on November 4, 2009 at 7:20 pm

I still find it fascinating that of all the arguments between religion and science, that of creationism seems to be the easiest "win" for science. We have so much that is provable fact that it seems almost futile to argue against it. Much of the counter argument seems to be the traditional "la-la-la I'm not listening" with fingers in ears.

There are so many other fronts that the religious could take as their battlelines that the constant focussing on creationism appears pointless. Maybe it's seen as fighting back against the resurgent interest in Darwinian evolution of the past year or so.

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24. Comment #429505 by ramfalls on November 4, 2009 at 7:36 pm

How did they come up with a thousand years for a day? Why not two thousand? I want to know who started that rumour. Come on.. come on... you know who you are. Own up..... I'm waiting.

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25. Comment #430135 by kev_s on November 7, 2009 at 7:17 am

@ ramfalls My guess is that a thousand was just what desert nomads thought was an extremely large number in their experience. They knew it was a long time relative to human life and came up with a thousand to represent 'a long time'. Also, remember that the religious have to sell their ideas to the potentially incredulous so making it a much longer time might have made their account seem ludicrous. 4.6 billion years is inconceivable to most people even today.

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