Creationist Offers Prize For Fossil Proof Of Evolution

The 29 September, 2008, issue of The Independent, one of Britain’s major dailies, carried a report headed, "Creationist offers prize for fossil proof of evolution." The paper, which has a circulation of 250,000, considered the impact of Adnan Oktar"s activities in Britain, saying:

... creationist [Adnan Oktar]... has offered a multitrillion-pound challenge to scientists.

Adnan Oktar said that he has "issued a call to all evolutionists" that he will give "10 trillion Turkish lira to anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution" – a sum roughly equal to £4.4trn.

The Muslim writer, who uses the pen name Harun Yahya, is a fierce critic of what he calls "the Darwinist dictatorship" and a popular figure in his home country, where – according to a 2006 survey – only a quarter of the population believe in Darwin"s theory.

... [The author] claims there are no fossils to support Darwinist theories. "Evolutionists are at a dead-end in the face of the fossil record," he said. "Not one [fossil] belongs to strange-looking creatures in the course of development of the kind supposed by evolutionists." ...

Mr Oktar found fame in 2006 when ... copies of his The Atlas Of Creation were distributed worldwide. The 800-page volume illustrated his claims that for millions of years life forms have not developed, supporting his Islamic creationist beliefs.

... Mr Oktar defended Professor Michael Reiss, the British biologist who resigned as the director of education for the Royal Society earlier this month after suggesting that science teachers should consider creationism "not as a misconception but as a world view".

Mr Oktar called it "concrete evidence of the panic Darwinists are experiencing". ...