Harun Yahya is soliciting entries in an essay contest to disprove evolution. The prize is 100,000 Turkish lira, about $63,000 or 50,000 euros. All you have to do is write a 30-60 page essay parroting creationist nonsense, and maybe you could win!
They have a list of suggested topics that make it clear that this is going to be judged by the ignorant in favor of the stupid — it’s like a series of entries from the index of creationist claims that, as is common, simply ignore the evidence against them, or worse, make up ‘facts’ that are wrong.
Personally, my favorite creationist/godbot argument is that it’s simply “self-evident” that god exists and created everything as it is presently.
No logic, no comprehension of what “self-evident” actually means — just that it’s clear to the godbotter, so it’s true.
I doubt that will be winning the award, though.
I seem to recall some computer generated paper that was submitted to a journal (and accepted), and it was pure bunk.
Maybe we need to find the people that did that and get them to submit something?
Maybe I should try. And then when I win I can come out and say “By the way, all I wrote is complete bullshit.”
Maybe Alan Sokal could have a go at it. He’d probably win.
I hear he’s looking to debate some evolutionists and will include a free trip to Turkey and even a tour of a Turkish prison. When’s your sabbatical?
My mother-in-law could have a real shot at winning this.
Well… I could really do with 50k euros… and I’ve been watching an awful lot of reasonable human being vs creationist debates lately……….
…
Depending on the likely quality of the entires, I might think of trying it…I could use 65K.
Brian
yeah. a pharyngulite definitely should win this. and then take all the money and donate part to the secular coalition or the ffrf, and part to the food crises in Zimbabwe. it would great publicity for secularism. and it would make them look absolutely retarded.
And like every good scientific paper, it has to be hand-written!
“Entries which will be hand-written on A4 paper will NOT EXCEED 60 PAGES IN LENGTH AND NOT BE LESS THAN 30 PAGES.”
I wonder if they’ll accept crayon.
i think by now harun yahya has about as much credibility as dr. nick, also as much entertainment value as dr. nick
Let Gertrude Stein in her lucid prose provide the only answer:
“There ain’t no answer.
There ain’t going to be any answer.
There never has been an answer.
That’s the answer.”
So there is the answer: No evolution, no god.
You can send that loot to The National Science Foundation.
God is great!
He created the heaven and the earth and camel fucking!
Evolution is a lie!
All filthy infidels must die!
Jihad! Jihad!
Do I win?
“(14) Darwinists have sought a solution in hiding the fossil record, which did not reveal a single intermediate fossil…”
Come on guys, you’ve got to admit you’ve been rumbled there.
Darwinists have hidden the fossil record in places called ‘museums’. The Evil Atheist Conspiracy has then corrupted our kids minds with sex, video games and secular music, meaning that they have no interest in going to museums. QED.
Hey, I can do 30 pages of this stuff no sweat. Does it have to be in Turkish?
Gif
Big fonts, lots of caps….. nice site.
Yep, someone with evolved brains should win this one. Not that Harun Yahya c.s. will learn anything from it, it just would be for fun.
“Entries which will be hand-written”
Crap, now I’ll have to download Hand-Written Font.
surely not…
Handwritten? I haven’t handwritten a paper since I left high school over 40 years ago. Nobody does handwritten papers any more.
My daughter, who’s in graduate school, has a professor who doesn’t even want papers submitted on paper. He prefers email attachments, 3.5″ discs or DVDs.
I’ll give it a shot. Know any good Atheist charities / organizations that could use a 50K donation?
I’m guessing writing a paper “defending” creationism, or “disproving” evolution, that’s slightly more coherent than what they’ve got now, yet still woefully ignorant doesn’t seem like much of a challenge really, certainly not for a 50K reward going to a good cause.
1. Enter a paper repeating all the usual creotard drivel
2. Collect prize money
3. Donate prize money to NCSE or similar.
4. Publicize Harun Yahya’s money going to a pro-science cause
5. Enjoy hilarity!
Wow, that site is a long list of stupid. Since he is so very fond of taking a single counter-example as proof of general impossibility, I guess I can do the same to his arguments:
Well, then if that were true then what are these plastic lenses sitting on my nose for? What are hearing aids for? What about color blindness? No, not everyone sees “highly colored” images. Very many of us do not see “perfectly sharp images”, nor “perfectly clear sounds”, and there is no “flawless outside world” of which he speaks. Therefore his whole argument is false and evolution triumphs!
Why doesn’t someone from here write the essay? It shouldn’t be too hard to pull 30 pages out of your ass, and then the money could be given to an organization like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
That would so pay my tuition. For my two degrees in microbiology and biological sciences (focus: evolutionary biology).
Hmm…
I’m running a real risk of being laid off right now. Perhaps this could help me financially… Plus, if I win, at least the money wont go to a creationist ;)
So I can just transcribe Answers in Genesis to A4 and win $63,000 (which is, like, one billion CAD)?
My handwriting is nearly illegible to anybody but myself. Do you suppose that’ll help my chances?
I was thinking about entering (wouldn’t it be a kick if the prize went to me and I could refute my own argument after I got the money?) but then I read this:
Hand-written? Not less than 30 pages?
I haven’t hand written an essay since I learned to type in high school.
I hope at least one entry describes His Awesome Noodly Self and how the “midgit” was involved. I’ve never been clear on that.
This contest is useless. Anyone who successfully disproves biological evolution would win a Nobel Prize!
Telling the boss what you thin he wants to hear.. call it workplace experience…
I, too, will give this a go, as I am EXCELLENT at lying.
The fifty large prize will JUST cover the expenses of the Pharyngulists (UK Branch) Annual Sick-Inna-Hedge Party.
I really think we should institute a prize for whomever manages to cram the most fallacies into one paragraph…
30-60 pages? Who the hell is going to be judging this competition, because I really feel sorry for them… having to sift through that much of likely incoherent babbling (of course, it will probably not seem incoherent to the judges). I do enjoy that this competition is specified to be a “scientific competition”… and that it is going to be judged by “academicians who are experts on the subject”. I guess it’s true that creationists cannot be called academics, and something that rhymes with magician is much more appropriate.
I think it would relatively simple to assign different sections to people and cobble together 30 pages no problem.
no no no. it can’t just be a hodge podge. what we need to do it take a lesson from chopra. find the most abstract, hard to understand, fringe theories available. and completely misinterpret them. it’s guaranteed to work. just so long as they’re abstract enough that creationists cant understand them. it shouldn’t be that hard to do. you could dedicate each section to a different one.
@ Comment 34: I totally agree. Creationists love things that are totally beyond their comprehension (their biggest problem with Darwin is that his solution is too simple and too elegant).
Anyone fancy a spread bet on how ofen the winning entry references the Atlas of Creation?
Gif
Hmmm, I might just have to write up something. If I win the money I can immediately donate it to pro-science organizations… you know, fight the crackpots using their own money..
If anyone wants to battle writer’s cramp to enter this contest, then I’d suggest a mathematical, probability argument to avoid writer’s cramp (equations can be a lot narrower in the margins than paragraphs) and impress the hell out of the judges. There’s an interesting tid-bit you can lift from George Gamow’s book “One, Two, Three… Infinity” if you know what I’m talking about — it involves monkeys typing.
http://www.thelalatheory.com/dig13.html
I’m feeling 40 pages of string theory therefore GOD coming on…this contest is more than I’m getting for the next three years…stupid small graduate stipends…
@35
yes, but it’s still very hard to understand. large time scales, emergent phenomenon, math, words…
no, it really is very counterintuitive, unless your intuitions have been shaped by like… psh…books and stuff.
Wow it’s abig money. Hope I could win without have to do things :D
I just submitted my grocery list after running it through the postmodern essay generator. I won.
Hand-written!
Ah! That reminds me – I’ve been meaning to link to this recent (and ongoing) entertaining post/discussion:
http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2008/11/how_not_to_write_a_scientific.php
I think I’ll write my submission on how Harun Yahya’s very existence disproves the principle of survival of the fittest. No way anyone that stupid should have lived this long.
My essay:
Gawddd didditt.
Where is my money? I want cash, no checks, thank you very much.
Ciao, Happy PalinDay y’all
If we were to put down this genetic information in DNA on paper, we would have to construct a giant library of 900 volumes containing 500 pages each. This unimaginable quantity of information is encoded in the parts of DNA known as “genes.”
errr … we’ll i’m doing a good job of imagining it as a set of 900 volumes of 500 pages each. 500 pages weighs in at around 4cm, so 900 books is 36m of shelving. One rack in my local library is about 1.5m wide and has 6 shelves (9m shelf space in total). So about four racks at my local (small town) library would do it. Not really so big … definitely not giant.
Maybe they can’t count either so this is, therefore, just another argument from ignorance.
So, um, if Yahoo believes that “Darwinism” has already been disproved by himself, what exactly is the point of an essay contest about how evolution is to be disproved?
Maybe he’s not confident in his heroic disprovitational powers?
On the other hand, this is some easy money compared to what he was toying real scientists with.
Very easy money.
Stupidly easy money.
I got that beat, got my notice last week, but perhaps we could collaborate, we could write alternate pages? My hand hurts just thinking about manually writing that much. Do you think illegibility would help or hurt our chances? Hmmm… perhaps you better just do it on your own.
Can you even get A4 paper here?
From Yahya’s page of stupidity. There’s definitely some money here to be had by a sarcastic rationalist…I wonder how he’d respond to “All the previous demonstrations that Darwinism is false are wrong. Here, however, is a new proof, which should settle the subject. Let M be an n-dimensional manifold and V a vector field…”
I don’t know. I consider myself a master bullshitter, but I don’t think even I could keep it up for thirty pages. I mean, really, how many ways can you say “because I want it to be that way”?
So…a question comes to mind. Do we have any reason at all to believe that the winner of this competition would actually get paid? Yahya isn’t exactly a credible source…
@janothar
he’s rich.
and stupid.
nuff said.
After we’ve been defeated, why should there be any essay written disproving evolution? Remember:
What is a person supposed to do, pad that out to 30 handwritten pages? You’d think that documenting all of that would be the only issue.
And so, it seems probable Yahya’s hoping that someone will come up with some fake documentation for his lies–a few further lies to garner a few more millions before it is all exposed.
That’s the problem with this contest. I’d seriously consider doing it, but I don’t know what they want. Paley, Dembski, Nelson, or what brand of brain-rot? Behe apparently is out, since his is a magical version of evolution which magically has the effects of real causes produced by a mind that would know better.
YECism is not what they’re interested in, I know.
I would guess that support for Yahya’s present bald-faced lies would pay off fairly well, but I wouldn’t know how to fake the documentation he’d like to have.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
The same people who think that this intellectually and morally bankrupt worm is going to pay them 50k Euro for 30 pages of ass kissing are still waiting for their free laptop, LCD TV, iPod and Playstation just for forwarding SPAM to 50 people.
The worm is going to use all of the entries to show his sponsors how many articulate people are answering the call to reject ToE and then he’ll plaigerize the best bits for his next “Atlas.”
There will be no winners, only losers.
I expect the essays become the property of the sponsor, who will compile them into his next book and make another zillion $’ off of the rubes.
List 30 pages of Dna code spaced exactly as the early Hebrew text, and run the home version of the Bible Code decoder on it.
I bet we could force some creotard jargon out of it.
Maybe even a new commandment or two.
This is so appealing to that little P.T. Barnum in me. I could use $63,000 dollars.
That’s allot of work. Anyone want to collaborate? Outline, spread the chapters around, someone to get severe hand cramps writing it.
Split the money if we win or rather than argue about how to split the money a donation would be good… although I could use some cash.
I see nearly everyone else is thinking the same thing as I am: flexing creative muscles in an attempt to make idiots look like stark raving morons to the rest of the world and make money doing it.
dNorrisM has the real machinations right though. This guy is shopping for his next trashy Sci-Fi novel under the guise of glad-handing the apologists.
Cardinal,
I seriously would be up for helping if we get some creative help. 30-60 pages is no big deal if its double-spaced. Sindle-spaced might take some doing though. That’s what tables and graphs are for though. ;)
Those seriously contemplating entering should be concerned that the money may be coming from the same pot that holds the trillion-odd dollars he promises for proof of evolution. It probably only exists in his head.
This fuckwit worries me. He seems to have more driving him than religious derangement. I suspect he’s getting paid a lot by someone to punt this crap – the same bunch who paid for his expensive book of drivel to be freely sent out everywhere.
The ideologues are dangerous enough, but they have some limits. A loony with a financial stake will do whatever it takes, and has already shown some of the nastiness he’s prepared to commit to spread his nonsense.
DON’T DO IT! You’ll never get your money:
You’ll have to travel to Turkey to pick up your award, and 100 to one odds that even then you don’t get it unless you answer the “test” questions “correctly”.
That’s for the second round of judging, but given that there is no statement about when or how the first round prizes are delivered, well, you do the math.
Jeez, what a sphincter.
Yeah, I looked things over more carefully, and there’s no way there’s a real payoff. Oh well, back to ACTUAL mathematics/science…
I’m not sure I’m versed enough in creationist crap to contribute anything to the composition of the piece but I’d be willing to hand write the thing if that’s really necessary. My only caveat would be that the money be donated either to the JREF or Dawkins’ foundation (or split evenly between two). As much as I could use the cash, the donation of creationist booty to an atheistic/skeptical organization would be much more delicious. If anyone is really interested I can be reached at pjeact1 AT earthlink DOT net.
Between 30 and 60 pages? It would be far easier to write about how their points are wrong, than try to defend them.
For all the folks willing to entertain themselves, Office Max (and I’m sure others) has A4 paper from Boise Cascade. Don’t get writer’s cramp.
OH HAY GUYZ –
We got some weirdos among even us:
http://www.secularright.com
Is there a book or books that refute or challenge the 17 bullet points or topics on that page?
SOME DILEMMAS FACING THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
(1) Life cannot emerge by chance…
(2) There is not a single intermediate fossil…
(3) “Living fossils” are a response to evolutionary myths…
etc.
ps. Don’t bother entering. I’ve got this one locked down. I’m going to submit 60 handwritten pages of “GODDIDIT!”
Simple write out ‘Goddidit’ and use it to fill 30 pages. Done.
http://jfcshow.com
Thought you folks might enjoy this one :)
Sign them ‘Moroni’ and you’ll have the Mormons eating out of your hand.
“Those seriously contemplating entering should be concerned that the money may be coming from the same pot that holds the trillion-odd dollars he promises for proof of evolution. It probably only exists in his head.”
I know. I just want the satisfaction of showing what a fraud their side of the argument is by bs’ing them into giving me one of their stupid awards that meant to signify how intelligent they claim they are.
Given that the explanation for his trillion dollar offer was that he was referring to the old, pre-revaluation lira (worth one millionth of the value of the current lira), be wary that the opposite may hold true here and the prize is actually worth about $0.06…
I think this is a gem regarding DNA:
“If we were to put down this genetic information in DNA on paper, we would have to construct a giant library of 900 volumes containing 500 pages each.”
I think that if several of the largest nations were to pool their resources, over the course of several hundred years we would be able to construct such a giant library that would indeed be able to contain 900 books of 500 pages each. If we can put people on the moon, by golly we can build a giant library to house 900 books.
ScaryDuck #30. Count me in for the annual sick-in-a-hedge party. Love the blog by the way!
Is there a book or books that refute or challenge the 17 bullet points or topics on that page?
You didn’t like the site PZ linked to in the original article?
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/
Even aside from that, most of his points are logical fallacies anyway. For example, one of his points is that mutation cannot produce new information, therefore darwin is wrong. The answer is in the way he defines mutation. Many of the others consist of using a single counter-example and concluding the general principle is wrong. For example, he says that coelecanth used to be used as proof that fish migrated onto land, but since we’ve discovered that coelecanth does not move on land, therefore no fish ever migrated onto land. Look at what he does with skulls, there are no transitional forms because for every skull presented he will drop it into either the “ape” box or the “human” box. He rules out “transitional forms” by the definition of the sorting process not by actually examining the skull morphology. etc. etc.
I’m no biologist (EE actually) and even I can see right through all of his points with only a passing familiarization with biology.
1. FindMarkov generator .
2. Find handwriting font.
3. Feed clown’s own website to Markov generator a bunch of times.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!
PZ, you’ve got to check out their new site – http://200thanniversaryofdarwinismscollapse.com/ — it has an animated photo of Darwin in a clown costume singing jingle bells. Turn up the volume, this is WILD! I found it from a link on the front page of Harun Yahya. FTW.
Whoever is going to give this a shot, I have an idea: why not use Darwin’s business acumen as a point of suspicion? PZ wrote about it not too long ago on this very blog.
I do hope one of you wins it. GOD SPEED.
Megan @ 78
Yeah, that’s a hoot from a religious idiot who is threathened by the forces of reason. The great Darwin will still have his birth celebrated 200 years from now as long as insanity does not prevail. We will do our best to ensure this.
Everyone submit an essay, and then donate the proceeds to a science organization if you win!
@ Rob, #5
>> I seem to recall some computer generated paper that was
>> submitted to a journal (and accepted), and it was
>> pure bunk.
You might be thinking about “Atlanta Nights.” ‘Course, that’s a novel, and not a journal paper, so wtf do I know?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights
Harun Yahya really is the gift that never, ever stops giving. No matter how much we’d like him to.
Is there a Creationist Paper Generator version of Scigen?
Could getting 65k out of the creationists be easier than getting the same amount out of the nsf?
If, after all this time, you still have to prove that god exists, it probably doesn’t.
@84:
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. It would be perfect, other than for the hand written requirement. I wonder if that’s the purpose behind the requirement.
A fact according to the New Oxford American Dictionary is “a thing that is indisputably the case”. The problem is macro evolution does not fit into this category. Macro evolution has never been observed in the fossil record or by the naked eye. There was a head of a British museum who contacted the head of a museum in New York. Now both of these men were P.H.D’s, staunch evolutionist and had been so for 30+ years. The head of the British museum asked and I quote “give me one fact for evolution? All I got was silence”. He then proceeded to call the head of a museum in Chicago and asked him the very same question “give me one fact, one simple fact we know for certain about evolution”, He said all I got was silence and then I got ” I know it shouldn’t be taught in schools”!! What in the world? How can we form a whole scientific theory on something that is completely void of facts. Charles Darwin said if transitional fossils were never found, he was wrong! He also said that if it can be shown that there exists intricate organelles in the cell he was wrong. No transitional fossil has ever been found and we have found intricate organelles in a cell. So why haven’t the evolutionist abandoned the “theory” that Darwin himself would have abandoned by his own admission by now? They are holding on to a belief with zero evidence; and they say we walk by blind faith?? If there is anyone who can give me one fact for evolution please be so inclined to do so. My email is Louisvchr@aol.com
@Chris Sanford:
We could *easily* do 60 pages on what’s wrong with your comment. Try doing more research.
Mr. Sanford:
Start here. Keep reading until you can make sense.
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#pred4
Yes. That easy.
Well, if evolution is not supported by the New American Oxford Dictionary, it must be wrong.
Curses.
How nice that the superstitious peasantry feels that it have something to add.
o, we got a live one.
SIWOTI times are here again…
He said no such thing.
Nope, he didn’t say that, either.
Because he wouldn’t have, and we actually know more about evolution now than he did.
Sure.
1) Organisms reproduce.
2) Offspring differ from their parents.
3) There are more offspring in a population than will survive to become parents themselves.
4) Those offspring in a population that are different from their parents in ways that help them survive will be more likely to become parents than those that don’t have those differences.
5) Over a very long time, populations that are different in different ways will no longer interbreed. Eventually the differences between them will be sufficiently large that they can no longer interbreed.
That’s five facts for the price of one. Want more? There are lots more. Try opening a textbook on biology rather than pestering people on the internet.
I’m good at internally consistent speculative fiction – maybe I should enter. “On the obvious similarity and plasticity of all mammalian features, or the play-doh hypothesis”
HARUN YAHYA is really an eye-opener
Somehow, we all should realize that evolution – really – did not happen at all. It is a kind of a fairytale that was made up in order to make people believe that somehow things were created other than the will of God. This would invent another religion, besides the true one based on Revelations.
Then some part of the world came to believe in this fairytale, actually deluded by atheists and the history of evolution is filled with fake transitionals, reconstructions and artwork to put out imaginary half-ape half-man creatures that would indoctrinate and hypnotize the masses to believe in this story.
Please wake up for your own sake! Evolution cannot have happened. There is no mechanism for it. Natural selection cannot add new genetic information on an existing DNA setup. We even do not understand what the 4 letters on the DNA mean when they come together in a 3 billion letter library filled with information. Natural selection may provide that faster running rabbits are not prey to others, but this does not make rabbits to become super rabbits!!!
I think the world is already seeing that they have been fooled by this old British storyteller named Darwin.
#96, suspiciously well spelt and coherent. Doesn’t seem real.
John i had the same feeling because of the frankly wierd first 2 paragraghs. I think Poe.
Maybe Chris is sockpuppeting… Or Maybe the post is actually calling creotards out of the woods? Uh oh,that’s not something i want to think about!
#96 blathered:
Are you presenting yourself as an example? Hmm, you might have us there. You’re clearly not our intellectual equal.
Of course natural selection can’t add information. It’s a selector, not a modifier. Heritable mutations have been observed countless times. Give enough isolation and genetic drift and BAM you have mechanisms that can produce speciation (which has been observed as well).
If you are going to speak on a topic, make sure you understand the basics. When you say “there is no mechanism”, first it’s best to make sure there really is no mechanism.
I believe when Martin Hees wrote ‘there is no mechanism’ he probably meant to append ‘…to remove my head from my ass’ to it.
@ 96,
You seem scared,why is that? Whats with evolution that you find scary?
Well,thank god it doesnt have to then,hey….Selection,as in select…Not so hard ,is it?
You Sir,are a very dishonest and intellectually disabled person….
I think the world is already seeing that they have been fooled by this old British storyteller named Darwin.
And Darwin’s greatest crime: Not being born American.
MPG #20: That’s the idea. But while enjoying the hilarity watch out for strangers with oddly thick torsos gravitating toward you or any hollow tubes pointed your way. If that guy has that kind of money to throw around, he could finance a reckoning as easily as you can say “fishing lure”.
#96: “I think the world is already seeing that they have been fooled by this old British storyteller named Darwin.”
Wait a minute. It hasn’t finished being fooled by those silly old storytellers 20 times older still.
Stick around. We’ll see where fools fall.
I was seriously considering writing an entry for this where I explained what the concepts of evolution truly were and why evolution was wrong, then I read the questions posed on the bottom of the page. So stupid, so trivial, makes me think that any entry would be a waste of time if all they are doing is moronic attacks on something they don’t understand.
I’d love to see an atheist enter and win the contest just to turn around and donate all winnings to the RDF.