Yusuf Estes' ignorance and hilarity combo about evolution

For your amusement, here is Shaykh Yusuf Estes proudly displaying some classic misunderstandings about evolution (tip Zakir Thaver):


He is funny about things based on complete misconceptions. He sometimes even uses French to sound funny. And then he asks some "deep" questions in a gravel voice: "If man evolved from monkeys - why do we still have monkeys"? Or the claim that all of the creatures shown in the ascent of man caricatures are still around (yes - all six cartoon depictions :)). Oh no. I give up. Now that I think about these things - sure enough Estes' version of evolution seems unbelievable. The only problem is that both of these versions are a product of fundamental misconceptions about evolution: to think that evolution is a form of a ladder and that humans descended from monkeys.

But credit where credit is due. Yusuf Estes is completely right about Intelligent Design. Yes, it is indeed creationism by another name.

The issue I want to highlight here is the deadly combination of confidence he exudes and the ignorance he displays about the subject he is talking about. In many ways he is a somewhat funnier version of Harun Yahya (though Harun Yahya's writings are also unintentionally hilarious). But overall, if you need an example of a classic anti-science/anti-intellectual attitude - then this is it. Like Yahya, he is not willing to understand evolution (even at a base-minimum level) to launch an interesting and/or intellectually challenging critique. Instead, he is happy in his bizarre version of evolution - and thinks he is being clever when he make jokes about it.

For your comparative pleasure, please also see posts on the evolutionary misadventures of Harun Yahya, Zakir Naik, and Javed Ghamidi. And now you can see why I don't include Mustafa Akyol in the same category. We may disagree about Akyol's conclusions - but at least he understands evolution much much better than Estes and the three cited above and we can possibly have a reasonable discussion about science. But where do you really start a conversation with Estes, Naik, or Yahya? I'm still somewhat hopeful about Ghamidi.