The sensitive believers of the belief in evolution

I had said that whatever the theory of evolution is as it came to prominence through Darwin's scientific work, it is very far from being represented by the way it is brought onto the agenda today. Of course, by this I could not have meant evaluating Darwin's scientific work and rejecting it outright.

How could I? With my high-school biology and, after that, the knowledge I have gathered from popular science magazines at best, I have neither the background to endorse nor to condemn Darwin's intensive scientific investigations. That is why, in all my life, I have had neither the time nor the attempt to evaluate what exactly Darwin said, or whether Islamic philosophers said similar things too. But because it is closely related to my own field, I know a few things very well.

One, that the position of those who speak in categorical terms on this subject is no better than mine.

Two, that the popularity of evolution today stems not from its scientific value but from its context relating to belief.

Three, the decisions that lead people to be rational are often not rational, and the decisions that lead them to be scientific are not scientific either. There are social-psychological dimensions to this process, and decisions often depend on irrational-emotional factors.

Four, today there are people who "believe in evolution" and people who "deny evolution." I can easily say that a debate at this level is not a scientific debate at all. The evidence, findings and arguments flying about in these debates are all produced and adopted after people have taken their sides on the matter.

Five, in the fields concerning creation, science essentially has nothing to say. What can be known within scientific limits is far less than is supposed. It is a long debate, but in short, no knowledge that cannot be tested (or, according to one view, "falsified") is scientific. Realms of belief are also realms that science cannot enter, because they cannot be tested. Just like what is said in the name of evolution about events millions of years ago. Let whoever can test the facts of that time go ahead and test them. The approach that tries to travel to that time in the name of science, even if it rejects creation, in fact does nothing other than offer an alternative possibility of belief about creation "within the envelope of evolution or scientificity": the possibility of a belief without God.

Six, the wish not to believe in God is, whichever way you look at it, a universal wish. Throughout history, alongside those among people who wished to believe in God, there have also been those who wished not to believe in God. Evolutionism has offered modern atheism the possibility not only of not believing in God but also of supporting the legitimacy of this position of belief with a discourse endowed with the rank of scientificity, that is all.

What made me write these words again, some of which repeat what I said in my article last week, was the surprisingly intense volume of messages I received on account of that article. The fact that I have encountered far more reaction over this article than I have encountered so far when writing on many sensitive subjects such as the Kurdish question, Alevism, secularism and nationalism both surprised me and, frankly, badly confirmed what I had said on the matter. For precisely this reason I can say:

Seven, the fact that every word on this subject collides badly with an area of sensitivity means that the subject is not scientific or rational but an emotional or religious area, even for those who accept evolution. To hear that this area may very well be an area of the production of dogmatism or taboo evidently angers especially those who believe in evolution with scientific certainty.

Although the biology knowledge of most of those who write on this subject does not exceed high-school level, it appears that the concept of evolution has acquired an interesting symbolic meaning for these people. They have a firm belief that evolution has taken place through a process that sidelines God. They have no doubt that what Darwin said is scientific. In their minds there are categories that function in a way that could only have a counterpart in a religious world of meaning, such as "anti-evolutionists," "enemies of science," "those who cannot see scientific facts," and they perceive every kind of questioning of evolution as "the ill-intentioned questions of unbelievers."

Most recently, faculty members of ODTÜ and Boğaziçi University have also issued a harsh declaration against TÜBİTAK's censorship of Darwin. What strikes one at first glance in this declaration is the anger that dominates its tone. The professors rose up in anger, and in doing so, through the meaning they attribute to the evolution they defend and through such labels as "dogmatism," "censorship" and "hostility to education" that they pin on their opponents, they showed once again that they are by no means remote from belief and politics in their approach to the subject.

Meanwhile, as Rasim Ozan Kütahyalı pointed out meaningfully on CNN Türk, it is really significant that TÜBİTAK, which in its entire publication policy already follows a strictly evolutionist line, has on the occasion of this incident fallen into the position of an enemy of Darwin and evolution.

But there is nothing that cannot be understood. Here, activists, at the moment they are about to be caught by the police, play the İstiklal Marşı and stop the police chasing them. Or you build a Qur'an course or a mosque on a plot closed to development, and let any government, conservative or non-conservative, dare to touch that mosque or the unzoned structures around it. Have we not experienced examples of this kind of exploitation of mosques in the past?

Whose land has TÜBİTAK, itself badly evolutionist, trespassed on, and whom is it chasing off, that a barricade of the Darwin sacred is put up in front of it? Or who is trying to seize which lands by putting forward the Darwin sacred?