Al-Jazeera publishes rejection of evolution

February 15, 2014 • 1:04 pm

This is barely worth a mention except that it was published by Al-Jazeera, a Qatari news channel and website.  That organization has been recognized as one of the more liberal Arab media outlets, and in fact has been praised for the quality of its journalism.  As Wikipedia notes:

In the 2000s, the network was praised by the Index on Censorship for circumventing censorship and contributing to the free exchange of information in the Arab world, and by the Webby Awards, who nominated it as one of the five best news web sites, along with BBC News, National Geographic and The Smoking Gun. It was also voted by Brandchannel readers as the fifth most influential global brand behind Apple, Google, Ikea and Starbucks. In 2011, Salon.com said Al Jazeera’s coverage of the 2011 Egyptian protests was superior to that of the American news media.

This makes it all the more distressing that the organization’s website has published an article by  Fida’ Yasir Al-Jindi (an engineer, of course) that is naked, undiluted creationism: “Darwin’s theory: Why do they hold on to it although it has been proven wrong?” by  (original article in Arabic here). The article was translated into English by Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar, founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement, Secular Post and the Public Relations director for Global Secular Organizing and Strategy.

Without that translation, we wouldn’t know that such pap was being promulgated by Al-Jazeera.  I needn’t give long excerpts: this one will suffice, for it’s the straight Argument from Design, filtered through the eyes of a religious engineer. (At the end there’s a paragraph of praise for the wisdom of Allah). In fact, it’s really The Argument from Falcons:

The Aerospace Engineering in falcons No scientist can deny that the design of the falcon as a creature qualified for flying can never be compared with any flying machine designed by humans in terms of accuracy, elegance, skill and all other aspects. The man-made artificial machines are very different from the magnificence of the falcon (and any other bird), and any comparison made is only an insult to that living creature; for, every single thing in the falcon – starting from the smallest hair in its wing feathers, up to the largest bone in its body, has a role to play to enable it of flying, manoeuvre, take off, and land in ways that cannot be imagined. And if scientists were to explain what the falcon (and any other bird) has of systems, features, and charesteristics that allow it to fly, they would need documents and design plans that are bigger and more detailed that all the documents, designs, and sketches made by Aerospace Engineers so far (and that only to document what we know about falcons, while much remains still undiscovered).

Additionally, kind readers, birds do not need airports, maintenance, quality checks, or whatever else humans use to ensure the safety of their airplanes. We have never heard of a falcon spending the morning in its nest going through hundreds of clauses that ensure the safety of its flight, nor have we ever heard of a falcon that has to take off and land in airports, with the help of landing grounds and watch towers. The falcon has a fascinating communication system, and all it needs is to flap its wings to begin flying. A falcon only needs enough space for its feet for landing, no matter what flying speed it reaches. It does not require maintenance, or any part replacements. Despite all that, we have never heard of a falcon who had lost its way or missed its target or was forced to make an emergency landing, or thats communication system had been broken, sending it crashing down to the ground!

Now, we ask again: Where are the blueprints of the falcon? Where are its executive designs? Where is its maintenance manual? Its communication system? Where, where, where?

I cannot, as an engineer who’s knowledgeable in the phases of construction and manufacturing, knowing what it takes to make one single airplane, to be convinced (not even for 1 in a billion) that the falcon had evolved through millions of years from a reptile to a full bird, without sketches, blueprints, or even a manual, to be as perfect as we see today, unless the people making this claim would provide me with the details of the phases of its production, with full documentation of calculations, sketches and a user-guide manuals!

Well, that‘s really gonna happen! Can’t Al-Jindi just be satisfied with the fossils of feathered dinosaurs? I could ask, as a scientist who’s knowledgeable in the evidence for evolution, for Al-Jindi to convince me that Allah exists, and to do so he’d have to provide me with independent details of how God transmitted the information to Muhammad, and how we know that that information was accurate as opposed to, say, the information in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. I’d like to see all the details of Muslim hell, including how the fire is produced and how the virgins are produced in Heaven.

Al-Jindi winds up with the accusation, one that I still fail to fathom, that all scientists who accept evolution are duplicitous, promoting a theory that we know is false:

I do not understand how scientists deny these facts (and many other facts as well), and run panting after some worn-out half-monkey-skull they find in some African forests, so that they could base tons of fantasies on it in their attempt to prove this theory (which scientists would throw behind had they been honest with themselves).

Well, that’s just nuts, of course (and a tad humorous), but I wonder if such creationists ahve asked themselves, when accusing us of duplicity: what’s in it for the scientists? Why are we hiding the truth? After all, only a third of all scientists are atheists or agnostics, so even if we wanted to lie about the truth of evolution to promote atheism, that doesn’t explain the many religious scientists, like Ken Miller or Francis Collins, who also accept evolution. Have they simply been taken in?

Nor do creationists like Al-Jindi comprehend that any real scientist who had strong evidence against evolution would become famous for overturning the dominant paradigm of biology. After all, who’s gonna get a Nobel Prize for finding yet another bit of evidence that supports evolution?

The curious thing is why Al-Jazeera published this at all. (Note that it’s only on their Arabic page.) Since it’s not a real controversy in the scientific community of the West, and the Argument from Design has long been refuted, I can only assume that they’re catering to the many Muslims who overtly reject evolution.

Picture 1Proof of The Divine Origin of Falcons: the Egyptian falcon god Horus.

88 thoughts on “Al-Jazeera publishes rejection of evolution”

  1. The images of scientists who “run panting after some worn-out half-monkey-skull they find in some African forests” is pretty funny. I don’t know if it’s a poor translation but it does paint an amusing picture with the skull whizzing off, laughing at them (in my image the skull is floaty) & stereotypical scientists, wearing lab coats, chasing it threw an overgrown jungle.

    Mistranslation or not, the idea of a world conspiracy of scientists is really amusing to me. Even if there were some secret club, wouldn’t someone let the secret out? Maybe people who hold these views believe those secret leakers are the believer scientists.

    1. A secret cabal of scientists is absurd. Now, on the other hand, a secret cabal of toilet paper orientation reversers…

          3. Luckily, in Canada being in the closet is more like being behind a shower curtain so it wasn’t too bad.

        2. Good luck. Cabals are a tricky business. After a few months of trying to get everyone’s schedules to line up, most people decide it’s just not worth it.

    2. I didn’t realize that Falcons required no maintenance (so apparently don’t eat, rest, or clean themselves) and also couldn’t communicate .
      Where does this man get his information from?

  2. Pfft to him. Flacons can barely fly at the speed of sound and they really struggle to carry more than six people.

      1. I had a couple Falcons, one of which I still have (’64 convertible). They really handle well. And remember that the Mustang was built on the Falcon platform. (So next time anyone asks if you’ve seen evolution in your lifetime, just tell them that you’ve seen a bird turn into a horse.)

        Otherwise, if you’d wanted to leave the ground more easily, you shouldda gotten a Corvair.

  3. Now, we ask again: Where are the blueprints of the falcon? Where are its executive designs? Where is its maintenance manual? Its communication system? Where, where, where?

    So we don’t have any of the things that we would expect to have, had it been intelligently designed. And that proves that it WAS intelligently designed.

    Even by the standards of creationists, that one is pretty illogical.

    1. The article is the most specious argument one could make. It has nothing to do with anything. Obviously the writer has no clue what evolution is.

  5. Al-Jazeera’s international reputation comes from its English service, for obvious reasons. I can’t comment on the Arabic service as I don’t speak the language, but this certainly wouldn’t be the first time it has published dubious stuff that its English counter-part wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole.

    1. Agreed. I’m not surprised that the Arabic service published this, but then I have low expectations in that market. I can say, however, that I’ve been quite impressed by Al-Jazeera America as a news service. I can go to that channel and get reasonably reliable international news far better than anything on other US news channels. I started watching during the Egyptian Arab Spring uprising and have continued to find them a good source of all sorts of news.

    2. I think we agree about the English language service. I was a great fan of the BBC until they gave up on real news reporting. They now have ’24 hour news’ which seems to mean making worthless noise 24 hours a day. They just repeat meaningless ‘factoids’ without any attempt at analysis. At the moment English Al Jezeera is much superior.

      1. There’s a huge disconnect between Al-Jazeera English, which covers international news tolerably well and comprehensively, and has employed many Western journalists who’ve lost their jobs in recent years, and the Arabic side, which is much closer to what one might expect, with a strong “theological” bent, ie preachers with programs.

  6. I don’t believe the writer is an engineer. His writing is too close to that of a junior level madrasser to believe he holds an advanced degree in a highly technical field. I’ll bet if you looked closely at his forehead, you’d spot the area that he keep banging his Koran.

    His intellect, on the other hand, too closely resembles the mind of a toddler.

    Poor, pathetic, helpless soul.

  7. Somehow, I don’t understand on what basis, reactionaries have managed to put out the idea that evolution is un-Koranic. There are Mualim organisations who argue for an Islamic theistic evolution; e.g. The American Muslim in the US, the Quilliam Foundation in the UK. Unfortunately, the more extreme group is the one that gets to define group identity.

    1. It is disappointing on so many fronts. I check in with Al Jazeera on the web to see their point of view. Their English version depends on continuing with some sort of rational debate and they have just blown it!

  8. The Argument From Falcon sounds suspiciously like the Argument From Flower:

    “Look, just look at this flower. I mean, will you look at it? Do you think this just happened without God? No. You can’t. Nobody can. Therefore: God exists.”

    It’s a killer.

    I wonder if such creationists ahve asked themselves, when accusing us of duplicity: what’s in it for the scientists? Why are we hiding the truth?

    I have asked this very question of various friends of mine, though in their case it wasn’t scientists hiding evidence of Creationism, but scientists ignoring or concealing proof of ESP, homeopathy, and Vitalism.

    Their answers revealed an underlying belief that most scientists have truncated vision and only deal with a small area, accepting without question what they are told by others. So it’s only a few people at the top who really need to lie.

    Reasons for lying:

    1.) Money: they make more money that way (apparently there is less money curing cancer than there is in selling chemotherapy.)

    2.) Control: if the people are kept ignorant then Big Capitalism/Big Government/Big Pharma can better rule over the panicked, sickened, helpless populace.

    3.) Fear: this is probably the #1 reason, though I saved it for last.

    In their world view, people who live at a lower level of enlightenment fear knowledge and change. If these things are true then it will contradict their paradigm. Thus, they will do or say anything to avoid having to face losing their security. For intensely personal reasons then most scientists are afraid of growth.

    Uh huh. I won’t say “projection” because I am not a licensed psychologist, but I will write it with my keyboard because this is after all only the internet. To their credit (or maybe against it) I had to pull these “explanations” out with a pair of pliers.

    Of course, since none of these folks were Christian they can’t use what is probably the #1 favorite of the gentleman writing in Al_Jazweera:

    4.) Satan.

    1. Sastra beat me to it.

      “I cannot, as an engineer…” and so yawn.

      This is just a combination of two fallacies, the argument from ignorance and the argument from personal incredulity. Wonder how he’d like it if I opined, “Well, I’ve looked at the fossil record, and I just can’t accept that allah had any part in its production.”

  9. So by his argument can we say look at the ants nest functioning, not a glimpse of paperwork anywhere, therefore god! Show me the ants’ paperwork or it must be god.

      1. Does this kill the paperwork and send it to heaven? That way the angel-ants can work at it for god.

        I suppose I should support this with sophisticated theology: The new atheists don’t understand our un-knowable ground of all being god- that is why they are always wrong. By the way I know for a fact that there are angel-ants

  12. I’m more interested in what’s being said in the comments to the article. With any luck there is some hope to be found among them. Though the bit of Google translating I didn’t bring good news.

  13. After all, only a third of all scientists are atheists or agnostics, so even if we wanted to lie about the truth of evolution to promote atheism

    To me the most persuasive argument that scientists aren’t lying is that the early scientists who documented the age of the earth and evolution, including Darwin, were Christians of some sort who would have been motivated to prove that the physical evidence conformed to the Bible.

  14. It’s deeply sad to think that over a billion people are, to some extent at least, in thrall to this primitive nonsense. For a brief period, the Islamic world was arguably the most intellectually advanced civilisation on Earth. Then, the bonds of religion tightened, the stagnation set in, and the rest of the world left them behind. It’s only because of the geological accident that some of their countries sit on large reserves of oil that we need pay any attention to them at all. The Islamic world produces nothing else of any importance to humanity. Without oil, they would be irrelevant. When the oil is gone, or when the rest of the world no longer needs it, they will be irrelevant again. They can herd their camels in the desert and pore over minutiae of the Koran while the rest of us explore the solar system, probe the mysteries of the subatomic world and learn how to manipulate the genetic code and . They will be reduced to the status of performers in a mediaeval theme park.

    1. Yes, I hope that one day the rational thinkers will board starships and leave this planet to the religious fanatics and their hate, stupidity and war mongering.

      1. As a rational thinker, I can first assure you that interstellar travel is as far away for humanity today as a moon mission was to the ancient Greeks. Same deal with a mass exodus to colonize space stations or Mars or whatever. If nothing else, the energy budget isn’t remotely there…you’d need the total energy of our entire civilization for an entire year just to get a schoolbus-sized spacecraft to the nearest star in under a decade.

        Beyond that, I rather quite like this planet. While I’d love the chance to go exploring elsewhere a bit (and never expect to actually do so), I’d really like to keep it as my forever home, and to see it remain at least as beautiful as it is today.

        My hope would be for the religious fantasies to fade into the woodwork the same way that astrological fantasies have, and for us to clean up the mess we’ve made.

        Cheers,

        b&

        1. I figure the rational thinkers were the dolphins in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe that thanked us for all the fish.

          1. Even if it’s possible to re-create elsewhere the environments necessary to grow so many of our beloved foodstuffs (cocoa, vanilla, coffee, tea, etc.), it’s almost guaranteed to be far more expensive to do so than to simply protect and preserve those environments here on Earth.

            Again, I’m all for space exploration — even manned exploration where it’s cost-effective. And it’d be swell to live the centuries necessary to see the day when I could afford to personally watch, say, Saturn rise over Titan’s horizon. But not at the expense of Life on Earth.

            b&

  15. I don’t know about al-Jazeera, but I take the “perfect design” of a falcon and its ability to fly and hunt as evidence of evolution.

    1. Yes, the falcon is clearly a product of evolution. If a falcon were intelligently designed, it would not fly by flapping wings, but it would have propellers like a helicopter, which is a much more efficient way to fly. However, evolution never (to my knowledge) evolved continuously rotating body parts (except for bacteria with molecular motors). Perhaps, given enough time, rotating parts in animals might evolve, but it seems not to have happened yet.

        1. Err, no. They don’t function for propulsion, just for retardation (which requires no power input) and more significantly, they don’t rotate relative to the rest of the organism.

          There’s a fundamental problem with rotation of parts of living things, and it’s to do with plumbing. Basically, living bits require nourishment of one sort or another, which is usually fed through tubes, and tubes and rotary motion are incompatible.

    1. It’s supposed to be–by the Egyptian government translation service. Politics in that country has, well, probably put the WEIT project on hold for a while.

      Of all the translations I’d like to see, the one into Arabic is the most desired.

      1. Considering the success that Kelly Houle (?) had with her Kickstarter campaign to produce the “Illuminated Origin Of Species”, have you considered that as a route for getting the translation done?
        Contributors from here?
        Straw poll?

      3. I’m fluent in Arabic and I’d love to see the reaction to the Arabic version.
        Have you tried Lebanon? They have a more reputable translation tradition than Egypt does.

        1. We were actually considering contacting you to translate the book, but we didn’t when we realized that it was going to be translated into Arabic in Egypt.

          I actually translated the preface on my own, but never shared it because I didn’t have the permission.

          My ecology instructor (a Lebanese follower of your blog) and I are considering writing 2 books on evolution in Arabic!

  17. @4 Ben

    Only one, Apollo 15’s lander was named ‘Falcon’, after the Air Force academy’s mascot. Funny, though, it doesn’t match the Al-Jindi description of falcons at all, although there were many bookshelves of specs and other documentation before she flew.

    1. Obviously, I was being facetious — but that’s a great answer. Thanks! I’m a bit too young to have much personal recollection of the Moon shots….

      b&

  18. On a related note, I suppose it is possible for a whirlwind in a junkyard to evolve a 747. But the following conditions must be allowed:
    1) There are many billions of junkyards, and they operate over billions of years.
    2) There must be an algorithm for selection. Any simple bit of junk with lift is selected and reproduced into many copies with some variations. The various flying pieces of junk can undergo further selection for control surfaces, etc., and these too are then reproduced into many copies with variations put into some of them.
    3) There can be no requirement for it to be an actual 747. Any assemblage of material forming a large passenger plane will do. None of the successful junkyards will make any specific kind of plane, and none will make the same plane.
    4) There is no requirement for perfection. Passenger planes with bodies made from subway car panels and car tires for wheels are ok. That is after all what anatomy is today.

    The beautifully formed falcon wing has many compromises to its design because it is really a modified walking leg. Walking legs are also compromised since they are really modified fish fins, and so on.

    1. I have never had any success in getting an inerrantist to explain to me just how ancient Hebrew cosmology with its flat earth floating on a sea, the dead living under the surface, the stars, moon, planets, hung like chandeliers on tracks, etc. squares with reality that cannot be denied. They just don’t want to talk about it. Oh, here’s a new one: Dinosaurs never existed! You see Satan is tricking us with mass hypnotism so we automatically picture these creatures when the topic is mentioned, it’s all in our minds because there was no death before Adam (7,000 yrs ago) so just how can you dig up dinosaurs who have been dead for millions of years? Just Satan messing with us to ruin our faith. The dude is powerful, ain’t he?

  20. “an engineer, of course”

    What’s with the ‘of course…’? This is blatant stereotyping of engineers. Just as bad as Al-Jindi’s stereotyping of ‘scientists’ (that is, anybody with a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard…)

    Leaving all indignation aside, I’d actually like to see some statistics on whether engineers are more predisposed to woo than (a) scientists (b) philosophers or (c) the general public. (I think (b) is setting the bar pretty low but then, I guess that makes me guilty of stereotyping too).

    2. Not stereotyping: by “of course” I meant that it was his background as an engineer that led him to that argument. I did not mean that all engineers are theists, although there are far more theists among engineers than among pure scientists.

      1. I don’t think engineers are disposed to woo in general (the opposite if anything; see Dilbert), but a large number of the scientists that creationists drag out are actually engineers.
        Kind of stands to reason that if you spend all your life designing and building things you tend to see design everywhere.

        IIRC biologists tend to be the most atheistic of scientists, with physicists tending more towards the woo-ey end of belief (though still on the atheist/agnostic side.)

      2. O-kay. And I must admit, Al-Jindi used his engineering background to give credence to his argument (though frankly, I think anyone with reasonable general knowledge could have made the same argument. I could have, and I’m not an aeronautical engineer).

        I would like to know whether engineers are predisposed towards woo, or whether the (apparent) large number of them is just because they enjoy a certain prestige (like doctors and scientists) which they find useful when publicising their arguments.

        1. As an aerospace engineer at an organization with a large number of both scientists and engineers, my experience is that scientists–on average–tend to lean a bit more to the left than engineers and those engineers who lean to the right tend to be more predisposed to woo. That said, I know plenty of engineers who are atheists.

    3. when I read the “an engineer, of course” I took it to mean that he is an engineer as opposed to someone who has a qualification in biology.

      I’d love to hear the argument from how evolution is impossible because transmission through combination of genes does not allow change. The creationists never explain how that’s possible. Even if god created genetics, what did “he” put in place to stop evolution ?

  21. Hi Jerry,

    A couple of notes before I comment on Al-Jazeera’s role of promoting creationism in the Arab world:

    1) The author of the said article only earned a B.A. in Civil Engineering, so I suspect that his exposure to a real scientific education in biology is quite minimal.

    2) Your book WEIS has indeed been translated into Arabic, and this translation is quite a popular go-to source for many people who want to learn about the theory.

    With that out of the way, let me tell you and your readers that what Al-Jazeera did with that article is nothing compared to the scandal that the news outlet created when the analysis of the Ardi fossils were published back in 2009. The news outlet ran a report (on TV and on the website) claiming that the Ardi fossils showed that Darwin was wrong and that the theory of evolution had been dismantled. What’s more, the report deceptively quoted Tim White and Owen Lovejoy to show something to that effect.

    (Even though in fact Tim White was saying that Darwin was absolutely right in claiming that we haven’t descended from modern Apes in Africa. Rather, we and the modern apes descended from a common ancestor. Al-Jazeera’s reporter took the first half of that bit to claim that western scientists are now saying that we haven’t descended from apes, which – to his mind – makes Darwin’s theory of evolution wrong).

    The video report has been translated, and you can find it on YouTube with subtitles.

    This report is still widely circulated all over the internet by Muslim creationists, and I don’t think that Tim White or Owen Lovejoy even know about how Al-Jazeera deceptively undermined their research and the true intent of their words.

  22. What aeroplane crashes because it’s communication system is broken. This bloke failed Communication Systems101.

  24. Gee if their creator is so incredible why is it necessary to “fix” the errors this creator engineered into the female body? The necessity to remove the clitoris and fuse the labia in a procedure they call “Female circumcision”, (we can Female Genital Mutilation) escapes me unless we all attribute the need to correcting the mistakes of their creator. The world does not need this religion which is locked into the 6th century.

    1. 7th.

      I believe this hideous practice is largely confined to East and North Africa and Yemen, so if you’re looking for a reason to berate the Sunnis of Qatar, you should have no difficulty finding something more appropriate.

      1. I heard on BBC radio this morning that FGM is carried out in private medical clinics in Singapore and that British families are sending their girls there to have this procedure carried out.

  25. What do you think our airplanes will be like when we have been flying for as many years as falcons have been flying?

  26. ‘an engineer, of course’?

    Is there something wrong with engineers? As opposed to another discipline?

    1. It is well-known that people with a – broadly categorised – “mechanical” background or education, such as engineers, mechanics and surgeons, are more prone to accept creationism than say, biologists or chemists or astrophysicists.

      I am not sure if the reasons behind this are fully explained but my interpretation of what I have read is that the exposure to relatively straightforward “this part x is for doing y” and “if I press A here then B there goes C” makes this so.

      1. Although not an engineer formally, I have spent many years working on various research projects with engineers and scientists of different disciplines. While there were one or two who were deeply religious, I have never observed any trend to indicate that they were more blinkered regarding religion than the general population of the scientific community, or that their capacity for reasoning regarding religion was made less by the appellation ‘engineer’. The intellectual ‘distance’ between science and engineering is not a broad wasteland, impassable to all but a specialized few. I have never understood why engineers are regarded with disdain and suspicion by ‘pure’ practioners of science.

      2. It is not well known. It is a bit of Internet folklore for which I haven’t seen any surveys in support. Here is my personal opinion (also evidence free conjecture). There is a correlation between education and acceptance of creationism, and engineers follow that trend. Without specific training in biology, they are more likely to accept creationism than a biologist, but no more so than say an economics major. However, it’s much better for creationist PR to bring out an engineer who accepts creationism than an economics major.

        1. I would like (as an engineer) to think that your conjecture is right. I certainly agree with the last sentence. Engineers do seem to enjoy a certain popular prestige for rational thinking (which is sadly not, in my observation, always justified).

          I’d love to see some statistical evidence on the subject. Mind you, given the latitude in job descriptions of ‘engineer’, it’d just be begging for the ‘no-true-engineer’ fallacy to raise its head 😉

          1. I’d like to see it, too. I haven’t spent too much time looking for the data, but the little bit I have hasn’t turned up much. For example, just take a look at the entry for the Salem Hypothesis in the RationalWiki. There are no references to surveys in it, just some anecdotes and speculation – especially disappointing for a supposedly rational site.

  27. The astonishing thing here is that the author expects Aljazeera to condone evolution! If he had any idea about the Middle East, he wouldn’t have been so surprised…Nearly all my highly educated Christian friends are creationists! So what would one expect from Muslims?

  28. This remind me that one time about 7 years ago when I was accused of being part of a conspiracy to hide the “fact” that airplanes consume the oxygen so fast that we were about to suffocate. This happened in a trade show for environmental technologies and the accuser was a local scientologist leader.

    I could not put up a good argument, because I was frozen by the sheer absurdity of the claim and he triumphantly left while I were speechless for a few seconds.

  29. Sadly it is not only Muslims that reject evolution. Apparently 42% of Americans think that the universe was created in 6 days 6,000 years ago.
    A similar number also think the sun revolves around the earth!

    1. According to the most recent NSF Science and Engineering Indicators survey, it’s around 25% of people who think the sun goes around the Earth. But it’s not just Americans. It’s similar across all the countries included in that report (actually, the EU was even worse than the US, with around 33% believing that).

  30. Thank you for your feedback on the Al Jazeera article. I am glad an evolutionary biologist of your status has commented on this issue. I would however like to bring to your kind attention that the article has been translated into English not by Mr. Faisal AlMutar, but by Miss Shorouq Jalal of The Enlightened Minds Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TheEnlightenedMinds). This page was created by me and is co-managed by both of us. We however value that Mr. AlMutar shared our translation on his site giving us the proper credit and it has recieved through it your kind attention.

    The article is now also posted on our site: http://theenlightenedminds.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/al-jazeera-calls-the-theory-of-evolution-a-myth-and-praises-creationism-and-allah/

  31. “This makes it all the more distressing that the organization’s website has published an article by Fida’ Yasir Al-Jindi (an engineer, of course) that is naked, undiluted creationism…”

    There are biologists who are young earth creationists (I’m sure you can get a list from Mr. Ham).

    What is this distain for engineers? I’m an engineer. I understand evolution and support it as a valid theory. I’d be hard pressed to find young earth creationists among my fellow engineers (in Australia).
    Please don’t stereotype groups by individuals. I’m getting a complex :o)

  32. His falcon/plane comparison is ridiculous.

    “Despite all that, we have never heard of a falcon who had lost its way or missed its target or was forced to make an emergency landing, or thats communication system had been broken, sending it crashing down to the ground!” This amused me, if only for the sheer fact that falcons can’t and don’t communicate with humans, I’n no engineer but I would think it has the capability to get lost. He has nothing to back up that claim with. But then thats how religion works isn’t it? It’s funny because just yesterday we were talking about the bias in newspapers and a friend said that Al Jazeera was one of the good ones. I argued that it isn’t, partly because of where its from partly because they are all biased in one way or another. I shall be sharing this article with him.

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