Rejecting Materialism

1
Rejecting Materialism

• Taner Edis
• Department of Physics, Truman State University
• www2.truman.edu/edis/

2
Islamic Creationism

• Turkish origin, but internationally popular.
• Deny common descent.
• Borrows from Christian creationists.
• Sees Darwinism as a materialist conspiracy.

3
Science-in-scripture

• Seven layers of skies/heavens in Quran.
• H. Nurbaki, M.D.
• Solar system
• Our galaxy
• Local group of galaxies
• radio magnetic sphere
• Quasars
• Expanding universe
• remaining boundless infinities

4
Very popular pseudosciences

• Proves divine source of Quran.
• Like Biblical prophecy for conservative
  Christians.
• Spread by media, Internet.

5
Golden Age of Islamic science

• Muslim science did not greatly decline. Europe
  surged ahead with a new way of learning about
  nature.
• Medieval Muslim science embedded in religious,
  occult ways of thinking. Different from modern
  science!

6
Recent history

• Past few centuries dominated by need to catch up
  to modern, especially Western world.
• West has technological advantage ? military and
  commercial power. Need science!

7
Defending Islam

• Borrow technology but guard against foreign
  cultural influences.
• Materialist aspects of science (as seen in
  popular 19th century materialist literature)
  undesirable. External imposition, not indigenous
  heresy as in Europe.
• European secularization seen as a disaster for
  religion. Reluctance not to constrain knowledge
  by revelation.

8
Worrying about materialism

• Mustafa Akyol, (liberal Muslim, ID proponent)
  ID is indeed a wedge that can split the
  foundations of scientific materialism For the
  first time, the West appears to be the antidote
  to, not the source of, the materialist plague.
• Symbolic enemy.

9
Responding to materialism

• Technology is attractive to modern religious
  people. Linked to science. So cant ignore
  science.
• Need to appropriate science, and correct science
  if it disagrees with revealed truths.

10
Muslims respond to Darwin

• Early response to Darwin and evolution in the
  context of westernization and elite debates over
  materialist philosophy.
• Evolution largely ignored, or denounced as an
  offense to religion. Accepted by radical
  secularizers but not Muslim modernists.

11
Secularist impositions

• Turkish example most radical secularist
  experiment in Muslim world. 1920s, 30s.
• Darwinian evolution part of state science
  education.
• But only minor offense to traditional religion,
  when compared to much more serious injuries.

12
Underground creationism

• Until 1970s Turkey, little public creationism
  outside of conservative Muslim subculture.
  (Though lots of passive resistance to evolution.)
• 1970s Islamists in coalition. Opposition to
  evolution a culture-wars theme. Indirect way of
  opposing secularism.
• Grassroots modernist movements push
  pseudoscience. Mostly underground. Nur movement.

13
Said Nursi
14
Official creationism

• 1980 military coup.
  Conservative policy.
• Mid-1980s conservative
  government, Islamists in
  Ministry of Education,
  Nur influence.
• Creationism in
  secondary education. Translations
  from ICR literature,
  distributed to teachers.
• Creationist paragraphs in Turkish textbooks, even
  today.

15
Harun Yahya

• In 1997, Harun Yahya literature takes Turkey by
  storm. Creationism central theme, but Yahya
  corpus includes material on all sorts of Islamist
  and Nur-associated themes.
• Opportunistic Early Holocaust denial, now blame
  Darwinism for Holocaust. Evolution means
  materialism, which is the root of all immorality
  and evil, including terrorism, 9/11.
• Borrows from Christian creationists ICR, ID.
  Adds more traditional Islamic themes.

16
Creationists modern Muslims

• Nur movement famous for non-traditional authority
  structure, modern orientation, pro-capitalist
  development, and embrace of modern technology.
• Adnan Oktar projects modern image western
  clothes, technological and financial competence.
  Theyve mastered modernity, remained devout, and
  can challenge materialists even in scientific
  arena.
• Muslim creationists are not traditionalists.
  Thoroughly modern movement.
• Oktar is controversial, but opposition to
  Darwinian evolution enjoys a broad constituency.

17
Sophisticated creationism

• Yahya-style creationism enjoys some support from
  devout intellectuals, as a useful attack on
  materialism.
• Muslim intellectuals are also attracted to more
  sophisticated opposition to Darwinian evolution.
• Intelligent design literature has been
  translated. Supported by some modernist
  intellectuals who see religious Westerners as
  supplying ammunition against Western deviations
  such as materialism.
• ID meeting sponsored by Istanbul city government,
  2007. Includes D. Berlinski, P. Nelson, J.
  Lennox.

18
Academic creationism

• Well-known philosophers of science Seyyed Hossein
  Nasr (Iran, US), and Osman Bakar (Malaysia, US)
  are creationists.
• Claim evolution cannot create information.
  Darwinian evolution (not just common descent)
  goes against top-down, spirit-first view of
  reality demanded by religion.
• Plenty of creationist academics, including
  applied scientists, and even biologists.

19
Quran ? Evolution?

• 1526 We created man of potters clay of black
  mud altered.
• 2445 And God created all animals from water
  some of them travel on their bellies, some travel
  on two legs, some travel on four. God creates
  what God will God is capable of all things.

20
Guided evolution

• Many accept limited evolution
• Common descent somewhat OK, but more problematic
  where humans are concerned.
• Explicitly guided, non-Darwinian process.
  Creativity cannot reside in the material world.
• Attractive as a middle path, but even guided
  evolution always controversial.

21
Darwinian evolution

• Practically no popular base outside an
  increasingly discredited secularist elite
  associated with political despotism and cultural
  inauthenticity.
• To secularists, Darwin is a symbol the
  backwardness of traditional religion, the power
  of science to produce knowledge.

22
TÜBITAK controversy

• March 2009 Censorship of popular science and
  technology magazine.

23
Successful creationism

• Scientists (e.g. Turkish Academy of Sciences)
  publicly oppose creationism. Ineffectual.
• Unlike Christian creationism, Muslim creationism
  has enjoyed official support, and has penetrated
  deeply into education.
• Broad appeal beyond an insular fundamentalist
  subculture. Muslim creationism is relatively
  mainstream.
• Financial and media resources of operations like
  that of Harun Yahya envy of ICR.

24
More liberal options

• Christianity the supernatural retreats to
  ultimate, metaphysical domain. Science deals with
  mere details, is autonomous.
• Islam rarer. Science should be subordinate to
  revelation and moral concerns. (Even liberals
  think so.)
• Exceptions some defend autonomy of science.
  Abdolkarim Soroush in Iran.

25
Doctrinal conservatism

• Liberal Muslim views weaker than Christian
  counterparts.
• Reinterpretation, seeing religion as human
  strongly opposed.
• Even modernists, democrats can be cultural
  conservatives.
• Rejecting materialism conditions both popular and
  intellectual discourse on science.

26
No separate spheres?

• Science and religion in West intellectual
  friction, institutional accommodation.
• Separate spheres. Science independent of
  religion.
• Not in Islamic world?
• How much of a practical problem is scientific
  backwardness?

Religion
Science
27
Plug

• Taner Edis, An Illusion of Harmony
  Science and Religion in Islam (Prometheus Books,
  2007).

28
Thanks for listening!

• Any questions?

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