An Interview With The Historian Ronald Numbers

In an interview with the historian Ronald Numbers published on the famous US web site salon.com, the renowned journalist Steve Paulson considered the world’s creationist movements. In response to one question during the interview, published on 2 January, 2007, Ronald Numbers made mention of Harun Yahya’s works on the subject of evolution:

[Q:] So far, the rejection of evolution seems to be a predominantly Christian movement. Do we see much of this in other religious traditions?

[Ronald Numbers:] We are now. It was mostly a Christian tradition, although to a certain extent, the reason we didn"t see this in other religious cultures is because it was so dormant. Most modern Muslims weren"t accepting evolution, but they weren"t coming out in opposition to it. Most ultra-Orthodox Jews didn"t accept evolution, but they didn"t see any reason to say anything about scientific evolution. Today -- especially in the last decade or two -- we"re seeing anti-evolutionism erupt in these non-Christian cultures. It"s very big in the Muslim culture. The center for that is in Turkey, and the leader goes by the pen name Harun Yahya. His work circulates in millions of copies. They"re translated into virtually every language [spoken by] Muslims.

[Q:] Are we going to see this war between evolutionism and creationism continue for years to come?

[Ronald Numbers:] I probably shouldn"t even try to answer that question. Historians generally shouldn"t try to [make predictions]. But it doesn"t seem to be declining in any way right now. I think the creation scientists are still extremely strong. …