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fighting the creationists...
Leading scientists and naturalists, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, are claiming a victory over the creationist movement after the government ratified measures that will bar anti-evolution groups from teaching creationism in science classes.
The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. Under the new agreement, funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are "evidence-based views or theories" that run "contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations".
The British Humanist Association (BHA), which has led a campaign against creationism – the movement that denies Darwinian evolution and claims that the Earth and all its life was created by God – described the move as "highly significant" and predicted that it would have implications for other faith groups looking to run schools.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/15/free-schools-creationism-intelligent-design
- By Gus Leonisky at 16 Jan 2012 - 8:32am
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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sponging the abrahamic monkey
From Wikipedia
The Qur'an does not contain a complete chronology of creation.[3] It declares variously that it took "six days" to create the "seven heavens [or firmaments] and earth"[4][5] but the length of the "days" is not interpreted as literal twenty-four hour periods but as stages or other periods of time to complete (it is rather a relative quantity of time),[3][6] and therefore is not subject to the same level of debate as some interpretators of the Bible regarding scientific evidence and chronology. This ambiguity leaves the possibility of an old earth. Young Earth creationism is wholly absent from the Muslim world.[1]
Skeptics point out there is no explicit mention of the extinction of whole species long before the creation of man in the Qur'an, whilst its inspiration is defended on the grounds that it is not a book of science. The Bible is held by Muslims to contain errors and therefore has not presented the same level of difficulty in the Islamic world as in some sections of Christianity outlined above. However, in recent years, a movement has begun to emerge in some Muslim countries promoting themes that have been characteristic of Christian creationists and Bible literalists in the past. A few oppose this citing the lack of compatibility between the two and that the Qur'an contradicts the Bible in numerous passages.[7][8][9]Islamic Society of Britain, at a conference, Creationism: Science and Faith in Schools, made points including the following:[10] Khalid Anees, president of the
"Islam also has its own school of Evolutionary creationism/Theistic evolutionism, which holds that mainstream scientific analysis of the origin of the universe is supported by the Qur'an. Many Muslims believe in evolutionary creationism, especially among Sunni and Shia Muslims and the Liberal movements within Islam. Among scholars of Islam İbrahim Hakkı of Erzurum who lived in Erzurum then Ottoman Empire Republic of Turkey in 18th century is famous of stating 'between plants and animals there is sponge, and, between animals and humans there is monkey'."[11]