Richard Dawkins is probably the world's most famous atheist evangelist. In his numerous books, the Oxford zoologist argues that modern science, and in particular the Darwinian theory of evolution, has disproved God. He is a gifted writer, and his recent volume, The God Delusion, has become a global bestseller. Some call him “the Harry Potter of non-fiction.”More recently Dr. Dawkins made the news in Turkey, too, yet not by his arguments. As the Turkish Daily News reported on Nov. 29, following a complaint by a Turkish reader that some passages in the The God Delusion were an assault on "sacred values," an Istanbul prosecutor has opened an official investigation on the book's Turkish version. Its publisher, Erol Karaaslan, is said be “questioned” soon.Probably nothing will come out from that, and Dawkins' book will continue to show up on Turkish bookshelves. And I think it should be so. And here is why.Sleights of HandFollowers of this column might have easily guessed that I would not be among the greatest fans of Dr. Dawkins. Yes, I am not. And the reason is not his atheism, but the way he uses sleights of hand while promoting his views.Just look at the back cover of his book, which mentions, “the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.” Ah, how impressive… Yet some other writer could also rant about, “the grievous harm atheism has inflicted on society, from Stalin to Pol Pot.” And that writer would be using the same trick with Dr. Dawkins: Cherry-picking the worst representatives of the worldview that you want to bash. It is a way of propaganda, not analysis.Further tricks are hidden in Dr. Dawkins' efforts to “disprove” the existence of God by referring to Darwin's theory of evolution. First of all, Darwinian theory has serious problems. Evolution, I think, is a solid fact, and Darwin has given us important insights on the mechanisms of this colossal process. But whether every step of this process can really be explained through random and purposeless mechanisms as Darwin had suggested is a hotly debated question. The scientists who defend the “Intelligent Design” (ID) theory, such as biochemist Michael Behe, point out to the extremely complex “machinery” that exists in the living cell, whose origins have not been adequately explained by the proponents of Darwinism.Most mainstream scientists disagree with ID and argue that naturalistic explanations for all natural phenomena will be found at some point. Fair enough. But that's a presumption, not a proven conclusion.Darwin ReconsideredYet let's go with mainstream science and accept that Darwinian theory is an adequate explanation of biological origins. But even then Dawkins' atheism is not vindicated. There are in fact many Darwinists who think that this theory is perfectly compatible with belief in God. Some of these scientists actually think that the whole drama of life points to a Creator, who gave nature built-in mechanisms (aka natural laws) that are designed to support the emergence of life. One of the world's prominent paleontologists (scientists who study fossils), Simon Conway Morris, is one such “theistic evolutionist.” I listened to several lectures of him where he teaches at, The University of Cambridge, and the philosophical conclusions he drew from evolution was just the opposite of Dawkins'.Another scientist who not only disagrees with Dawkins but also counters his arguments is Alister McGrath, both a theologian and a molecular biophysicist, who teaches at Oxford University. In The Dawkins Delusion?, the 2007 book he co-authored with his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath, he shows why Dawkins' inferences from science in favor of atheism are flawed. According to Publishers Weekly "The McGraths expeditiously plow into the flank of Dawkins's fundamentalist atheism... and run him from the battlefield.” The same comment adds, “The book works partly because they are so much more gracious to Dawkins than Dawkins is to believers.”A Great IdeaAnd I think that is the correct theistic attitude to take vis-à-vis Dawkins and other preachers of atheism. A faith's strength comes from not its fervor to silence critics, but its ability to refute them. If Muslim believers in Turkey are annoyed by Dawkins' book, then they should bring counter-arguments to his theses, instead of asking for censorship by prosecutors.It would be naïve for them to fear that theism would lose from such intellectual encounters with atheism – and especially of the kind promoted by Dr. Dawkins. That would be giving him too much credit.Ah, by the way, fellow TDN columnist Sylvia Tiryaki made a good suggestion on this topic in her piece last Monday. “What we should do at this stage,” she wrote, “is to invite Mr. Dawkins to Turkey to discuss his views here publicly.” Great idea. Let me know if you hear that he decides to come, and, perhaps, if he needs a challenger to debate with. It would be my pleasure to discuss with him who is really deluded about God — and who is not. Writer : Mustafa Akyol
9 Aralık 2007 Pazar
Secular Apartheid at Work
"Injustice anywhere," said Martin Luther King, "is a threat to justice everywhere." Therefore the world should learn and care about the story of Tevhide Kütük, the 17-year-old Turkish schoolgirl who just became the latest victim of Turkey's self-styled apartheid.It all started several months ago in Kozan, a municipality in the southern city of Adana. The young and bright Tevhide, a student of the state-sponsored quasi-religious "Imam-Hatip" schools, heard about the essay contest that the Education Ministry launched to celebrate the annual Teacher's Day. She wrote a fine piece on the virtues of teaching, and submitted it to the organizing committee. Soon the jury decided that she was the best writer among all the other students in her hometown, and thus she deserved to win the award, which was a very modest present by all standards, but a very inspiring reward for a modest teenager.VIP apparatchiksOn Nov. 28, Teacher's day, Tehvide, along with other winners in poetry and painting, was invited to a ceremony at the town hall. She, of course, accepted the invitation and showed up on that day with all her enthusiasm. After some boring speeches by the usual dignitaries, the winners of the contests were called to the stage. With joyful music playing in the background, Tevhide cheerfully climbed the steps and exuberantly lined up with other kids in order to be congratulated and applauded.Yet things were not destined to go right. In the VIP seats, there were a bunch of sinister men whose loyalty to tyrannical state principles exceeded their respect and care for human beings. The moment they saw Tevhide, they were shocked and abhorred. Because the little girl was wearing the Islamic headscarf! In official Turkey, that symbol only belongs to the untouchables, those who pollute the sacred soil of the secular republic with their offensive religious presence. Especially army commander, Major Hüseyin Çopur, and local governor, Aydın Tetikoğlu, were deeply affronted by this little girl who dared to break the rules of the caste system. The outlaw had to be punished, and law and order had to be restored.So, after less than a minute that little Tevhide took stage, these two men – one in uniform, the other in unimind – took a quick measure to save the secular republic from her. "Take her down," they told their aides. And a man in a black suit approached Tevhide to whisper into her ear that she had to leave the stage immediately. She was shocked for a few seconds, and then rapidly moved away while bursting into tears.Local TV cameras were shooting the whole event. Somewhere at the back, Tevhide cried for minutes and minutes, while her parents and friends tried to calm her down. But she neither calmed down nor decided to give up. She walked again toward the front seats, in order to speak to the VIP men. She stood right in front of the national education director. "Why don't you give me my award, my teacher," she asked. "This is a great injustice."The "teacher" – a man with a thick mustache and apparently a thin conscience – just looked at her with a humiliating face. “No,” he ordered, “just get back to your seat!” There was nothing he could do, actually. As a loyal apparatchik, he was only following orders.Tevhide, who was still crying, left the hall along with her family and many other people who reacted against this official injustice. Days have passed since that episode and the family says that the young girl is still very sad and they fear that she might get into depression. Even if she doesn't, she will probably remember this trauma for the rest of her life. And not just her, but millions of others in this country who cover their heads because their beliefs will continue to feel insulted and humiliated.Shame, not happinessThe weekly humor magazine “Leman” has a great cover this week, with the title “The tears of a young girl” and a cartoon that shows the poor Tevhide being kicked by a huge army boot. (Leman is a secular magazine, by the way. It is just non-fascist.) I think this caricature is a very accurate depiction of not just Tevhide's drama, but also the whole apartheid regime in this country, which is, despite all our democratic achievements, still intact.This has to end. Now is the time for freedom for all Turkish citizens, whatever their creed, langue and way of life may be. The unelected and self-appointed VIP's of Turkey have to accept a “freedom chart” similar to the one that their ilk in South Africa had to concede in the ‘90s. Enough is enough.If they insist on preserving this system of organized injustice, then they will be undermining the very foundation of this country: The consent of the citizens. I have to admit that I am already shaky in that regard. I love Turkey with all its history, people, and culture, but I can't find a way to sympathize with its authoritarian state. It really doesn't help much to reiterate Atatürk's motto, “How happy is the one who says I am a Turk.” I do say that I am a Turk, but that hardly gives me happiness. In fact, when I see all the cruelties done in this country to its people by its sovereigns, it even gives me shame.
Turkey's Veiled Democracy [A Must-Read Article]
This article, published in the November/December issue of The American Interest magazine, is available here online (but in full only for subcribers), and here in full as a PDF file
The Scandal of The Kemalist Mind
I, unluckily, made a lot of people upset with my piece in last weekend's edition of the Turkish Daily News, “The gospel according to Atatürk.” A few dozen readers sent fuming emails, which rebuked me for daring to criticize the level of veneration shown in Turkey to its founder.If you have been reading the “Letters to the editor” section, you might have come across two of these reactions, which came from two Turkish readers living in the United States. The one from New Jersey noted that he was “shocked” by my piece, and added, “someone should tell Akyol that he is dead wrong.” The other one, a lady, expressed “anguish” at me and my “very naive look.” I, she also argued, “cannot be a Turk.”In response, I am sincerely thankful to such critics, because they present nice case studies of what I have been talking about. I said that there is a popular “cult of Atatürk” in Turkey, whose followers have a “strict mental blueprint” that leads them to “detachment from reality.” And that's precisely what you can find in these annoyed comments.Cognitive dissonanceLet me show you one example. The first reader, besides bashing me, argued that “dialogue among all people in Turkey should be improved so that no one should be afraid of saying ‘I am proud to be a Turk.'” It is really hard to understand how “dialogue among all people in Turkey” will make everybody proud of being a Turk, but that's the minor issue. The real gem is the presumption that some people in Turkey are afraid of saying, “I am proud to be a Turk.” In fact, in this country, it has never been a problem to say that, and it is in fact an officially sanctioned mantra. The real problem has always been to say that you are proud of being something other than a Turk — such as a Kurd, an Armenian, a Christian, and even a supranational Muslim. (For the record, in 1982, politician Şerafettin Elçi was imprisoned for simply saying, “I am a Kurd and there are Kurds in Turkey.”)So it is really mind-boggling that our Kemalist reader thinks that “Turkishness” is suppressed in Turkey, while the fact is that Turkishness is the only identity which is not suppressed at all.If you would like to see more detachment-from-reality in action then take a look at the second reader. She criticized me for criticizing the “I am watching you” motto put on some Atatürk flags. But she got it totally wrong by writing: “It simply means for anyone that understands English language ‘We are following your steps.'” Because the motto I criticized did not mean that Turks follow Atatürk. It rather meant Atatürk watches over the Turks. It was plain clear for anyone who has a grasp of either the English or the Turkish language.Neither publish nor perishI won't point out every case of cognitive dissonance in the writings of Kemalist readers. For most unbiased observers, it should be obvious that Kemalism has turned into a dogmatic ideology and its adherents present a pitiable intellectual poverty. The latter phenomenon is visible almost in every field. In the Turkish media, for example, die-hard Kemalist commentators are among the least sophisticated ones. Their columns are full of either dry clichés or angry polemics. In the academia, scholars or faculties who are famed to be devout Kemalists hardly produce anything that would get into international academic literature. (Alas, they neither publish nor perish!) Actually the handful of globally acclaimed Turkish scholars are detested by their Kemalist colleagues at home. Şerif Mardin, who is probably the most prominent Turkish sociologist ever, was boycotted by the all-Kemalist Turkish Sciences Academy (TÜBA), simply for that he is too lenient on religion. Actually in the field of social sciences, Turkey seems to be divided among the fruitful and articulate academics, and the rest, which includes almost all Kemalists. In literature, the situation is no different: Turkey's globally successful novelists, such as the recent Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk or Elif Şafak, are the ones who have the ability to think outside of the Kemalist box. No wonder they are abhorred by the Kemalists, who explain their achievements by conspiracy theories. They think Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize, for example, because the “imperialists” decided to promote him for “insulting Turkishness.”For quite some time, I have been pondering what makes the Kemalist mind so shallow. This cannot be related to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself, because he was a smart, well-educated and cultured statesman who vigorously promoted science and learning. I believe the problem is in the way he is perceived by his devotees. Since they see him and his period as the source all the wisdom they need, they don't have an urge to understand the world. They think the Supreme Leader already understood it perfectly and all we Turks need to is walk on his righteous path.The evangelical mindThis line of thinking creates intellectual poverty within any paradigm. Religious fundamentalism is the most obvious example. Indeed religion can be a driving force for intellectual enterprise if it is interpreted in a dynamic way — and that's what gave rise to towering figures such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) or Newton. But religion would be a mind stopper if its believers think that all they need to study is the life of a holy man and the scripture he brought.In his famous book "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," American historian Mark Noll suggests that most evangelical Christians in his country suffer from that misconception. He shows that evangelicals have failed to engage in "the whole spectrum of modern learning, including economics and political science, literary criticism and imaginative writing, historical inquiry and philosophical studies, linguistics and the history of science, social theory and the arts." “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he concludes, "is that there is not much of an evangelical mind."I am not an expert on American Christianity, and can't tell whether Noll is right or wrong. But I do know about Kemalism, and this ideology suffers from the same problem he points out. Yes, Kemalism has a “scandal” of its own, too, and it is that that there is not much of a Kemalist mind. Writer : Mustafa Akyol
