A new collaboration for Harun Yahya?

by Salman Hameed

Most of the recent news about Harun Yahya lately have been dominated about his TV channel and his "angels". However, in late August, his organization held a creationist conference at a hotel in Istanbul. The title of the conference was International Conference on the Origin of Life and the Universe. Now back in early 1990s, his organization held a series of conferences with creationists in the US, in particular, the Institute of Creation Research (ICR). In fact, much of Yahya's work has been a reworking of these US based creationists, and modifying their young earth creationism with an older earth narrative suitable for Muslim audiences. However, for the August conference, his organization collaborated with another US based group Reasons to Believe. As far as I know, they are old earth creationists, and their President, Hugh Ross, is a Christian version of Maurice Bucaille. In fact, here is the main blurb on Reasons to Believe (RTB) website:

RTB's mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature.

Now, of course, there have been other creationist conferences in Turkey (I reported on one a few years ago), but those have (or more likely "had") been organized by the Gulen group. With the current political situation, those are certainly impossible. Perhaps, Harun Yahya's groups sensed an opportunity to organize one by themselves. Not surprisingly, the audience looks different between the Yahya organized conference and the one organized by the Gulen folks: 

A conference in Istanbul from August 2016 - organized by Harun Yahya's group

A conference in Istanbul in 2012 - organized in part by the Gulen group

Here is a self-reporting blurb by the organizers on what happened at the creationism conference in August: 

The conference;
- Once again proved that genetics, biology, paleontology, physics, chemistry and astrophysics all answer the question ‘How did life begin?’ with ‘Creation’.
- Hosted leading academicians from the science world -all experts in their respective areas with many academic studies.
Some of the topics discussed by the prominent scientists during the conference were as follows:
- The true origin of man
- Why I say ‘God exists’
- Detailed examination and criticism of evolutionary theory
- Origins and creation of the universe
- Fossils: The conclusive evidence of the history of life 

The Reasons to Believe speakers were: 

Dr. Fazale Rana (Biochemist, Vice President of Research & Apologetics, Reasons to Believe) http://en.a9.com.tr/watch/228733Dr. Anjeanette Roberts (Molecular Biologist) http://en.a9.com.tr/watch/228732Dr Jeff Zweerink  (Astrophysicist) http://en.a9.com.tr/watch/228730

And here is Fazle Rana on the conference: 

Beginning his lecture, Dr. Rana said, "I am truly honored to be here today. It is refreshing to be part

of a project in where the goals is to show the world that Christians and Muslims can work together towards a common goal.  Showing that there is scientific evidence for God’s existence and also showing that there are genuine scientific challenges to the evolutionary paradigm. Both are objectives that Muslims and Christians can agree upon."

This is all fascinating. Initially I thought that Fazle Rana was a token Muslim at RTB. But that is not the case. He is the Vice President of Research & Apologetics at RTB, and here is an excerpt from his bio: 

I watched helplessly as my father died a Muslim. Though he and I would argue about my conversion, I was unable to convince him of the truth of the Christian faith. 

I became a Christian as a graduate student studying biochemistry. The cell's complexity, elegance, and sophistication coupled with the inadequacy of evolutionary scenarios to account for life's origin compelled me to conclude that life must stem from a Creator. Reading through the Sermon on the Mount convinced me that Jesus was who Christians claimed Him to be: Lord and Savior. 

Still, evangelism wasn't important to me - until my father died. His death helped me appreciate how vital evangelism is. It was at that point I dedicated myself to Christian apologetics and the use of science as a tool to build bridges with nonbelievers.

I wish I could have attended the conference as it seems a fascinating amalgam of pseudoscience - both against science (evolution) and pro science (both Christian and Muslim I'jaz) at a particularly turbulent time in Turkey. 

And rest assured, our favorite creationist, Oktar Babuna, spoke over there as well (you may remember Babuna from his unintentionally hilarious presentation at the 2013 Deen Institute evolution conference in London. See my article on this here). And of course, there there were two giant faces of Harun Yahya on the screen - as well as some dancing.