This would be funny if it weren’t quite so pathetic ... even if it’s for pure libel grounds the guy is a convicted felon with an obvious interest in this.

RDF: Turkey bans RichardDawkins.net

Ankara - Turkish internet users have been blocked via a court order from accessing the site of prominent British biologist Richard Dawkins after complaints from lawyers for Islamic creationist author Adnan Oktar, the website of Turkish television station NTV reported on Wednesday.

A court in Istanbul ordered that Turk Telekom block access to the site and since the weekend Turkish internet users seeking the site have been redirected to a page that says in Turkish ‘access to this site has been suspended in accordance with a court decision’.

NTV reported that Oktar complained he and his creationist book ‘Atlas of Creation’ had been defamed by comments made by Dawkins on the site.

‘I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content,’ Dawkins, a distinguished advocate of the theory of evolution, wrote on his website in July referring to the Atlas of Creation.

The book has caused controversy not just through its advocation of creationism but also through how thousands of copies of book were distributed to schools in a number of European countries.

Kyu

That was quite a relief.
You had me worried with the title there.
The law may well be an ass, but hopefully, Turkey continues to hold out - or at least will do so when this stupid little mess is cleared up

The action of the court is concerning though.
Blocking websites for such innocuous reasons seems a little beyond the pale.

Let’s hope the lawyers a little further west don’t get their teeth into that sort of strategy.

Hopefully the Turks can use Tor.  Banning internet content is upsetting.  I hope the west is able to hold on to the fragile freedom-of-the-internet tradition.

Someone at BCSE commented on my identical post made there.

It’s all a bit more complicated than it sounds. The “ban” refelects a civil action in the courts and is temporary until the court case is heard. Moreover, it seems that only the main ISP/broadband provider, Turk Telekom, complied with the court order - the site appears to be readily available through other service providers. My understanding is that Turk Telekom has now “lifted” the ban but I may be wrong on that.

It is some years since I looked at the Turkish Internet sector and Turk Telekom but, IIRC, the country was progessively introducing competition to meet EU regulations so Turk Telekom has no more a monopoly on access to Internet than, say, BT.

I think there is less here than meets the eye. Richard Dawkins book, the God delusion, translated into Turkish, is a best seller in the country. Ha Ha may be a nutcase but Turkey is not an extreme fundamentalist society.

He also supplied a link to the New Humanist’s view on the issue noting that Ha Ha had apparently tried to get The God Delusion banned:

http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2008/09/richard-dawkins-website-banned-in.html

Kyu

IMHO, the extremists have gone and lost their minds.  They even have a death threat on Paul McCartney.  He literally told them to stick their death threat up their bum and refuses to cancel his concert in Israel.  While I agree we need to stand up to religious bullies, I fear for his life too.  Religious zealots are getting way out of hand when they start in on the world’s well-known people.  This banning anything that has to do with freethought and/or knowledge is insane.  Even more rediculous is a death threat over a silly song called “The Frog Song”.    It’s all just plain shear silliness and insanity.

I’d like to know how Richard Dawkins is going to fight this, if at all.  It could be interesting.

Thank god we can stand firm against stuff like this.. I mean thank ethics, humanism, science, maybe not philosophy, sociology, anthropology and literature.
I fear that it literally comes down to a numbers game and the side with the most bodies will influence the whole world.. I mean we feel we are “on the right side” and those fighting for God do to, but are there more of us or more of them?  it seems to matter at this point.  chaos is always so close..

Looking back on some of my posts here and on other sites, it is striking how angry I get when nonsense like this Islamic Creationist and his book tombs appear.  That he was able to get a front page article on Tuesday 17th March in the Wall Street Journal again riles me no end.  But when I think about it, this isn’t the way to go at all.

What makes these idiots and the ones in the U.S. angry?  What makes them look as if they are the amateurs?  Does it really bother them if I get angry, or if you get angry?  Or if Richard Dawkins gets angry?  No, in fact it shows them that somehow, in spite of their ignorance and stupidity they are making inroads.

One thing that I find that makes fools upset is laughter.  If you and I told Mr. Oktar he is a comedian and we all laughed ourselves sick at his dumb nonsense, how would he feel?  How would his followers feel?  Would you follow a leader who is laughed at wherever he goes?

In the article in the Wall Street Journal it was pointed out that his latest book is full of basic mistakes - not mistakes in scientific reasoning (and there are plenty of those) but basic, stupid errors.  The one i liked most of all was his photograph of a caddis fly which turns out to be a trout fly with its hook sticking out of it, and its feathers, and all that.  What a laugh!  Point it out!  Put it on websites that are not banned! Ask how such a stupid mistake can be made in a book about science?  Laugh at the fool!

I also played around (and I’m not good at it - I do not even try to claim this) with some words which might be described as a satirical piece - perhaps if we all laughed at this dumb, brainless fool, and encouraged others to laugh at him instead of getting angry and seeing doom at the end of his book series, we might get somewhere - and feel better about ourselves, too.  So here is my simplistic shot at a laugh…...

Homo Sapiens Sapiens/Homo Erectus Missing Link (Transitional Fossil) Discovered and Identified

*Balnibarbi, *Laputa, Turkey, March 17, 2009

A late form of what was thought to be the fossil remains of a fossil of Homo Erectus (early man) was recently discovered in the mountains of Turkey.  Named *Houyhnhnm *Yahoo (also Harun Yahya and Adnan Oktar) by local tribesmen, he is a very old form of the *Struldbrug tribe and he differs from his later linked Homo Sapiens Sapiens through his inability to communicte intelligibly, and through the size and weight of his brain (a walnut-size appendage weighing about ten ounces).

Reminded of the strong need to maintain a clear scientific approach to this discovery, and the admonitions of his first science teacher, **“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”, the discoverer from Turkey identified the fossil as such:

“Bi-ped, stunted in physical growth and intelligence, omniverous, able to stand upright (sometimes), talks gibberish about creationism, lies (often), was discovered trying to think in the deep reaches of Turky’s ignorance.  Any pretence at thought was soon lost when it was realized that he was a fossil from a time before Homo Sapiens Sapiens had learned to think for hmself.”   

*Jonathan Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels.”
**Charles Dickens, “Hard Times,” Chapter 3, “Murdering The Innocents.”