He was sentenced to 1,075 years for crimes including sexual assault, sexual abuse of minors, fraud and attempted political and military espionage, the private NTV broadcaster reported.
The court also sentenced two executives in Oktar’s organisation, Tarkan Yavas and Oktar Babuna, to 211 and 186 years, respectively. Harun Yahya
From his Wikipedia entry:
“For many years Oktar drew on the writings of Young Earth Christian creationists to develop his case against evolution. Oktar later produced material which was more similar to Intelligent Design. In fact, Harun Yahya’s website was listed as an “Islamic intelligent design” website by the Discovery Institute.”
For many years Oktar drew on the writings of young earth Christian creationists to develop his case against evolution. However, Islam does not require belief in Young Earth creationism, and making use of the fact that earth may have existed for billions of years, Oktar later produced material which was more similar to Intelligent Design. In fact, Harun Yahya’s website was listed as an “Islamic intelligent design” website by the Discovery Institute. However Oktar does not embrace use of the term ‘Intelligent Design’ due to its lack of specific mention of God, calling it ‘another of Satan’s snares’.
I had long heard rumors that Oktar was a less-than-savory character, in some ways akin to a cult leader. However given (i) the ludicrously long sentence & (ii) the current Turkish regime’s habit of punishing political rivals, it is less than clear that this sentence isn’t (at least in part) politically motivated.
You need to go beyond Wikipedia although it does state what “Islam” generally does not require. Oktar drew his Creationism from other sources that traditional Islam. From more detailed analysis it was “practically a clone of ICR’s “scientific” vision”. One way to assess their OEC/YEC stance is to look at what was brought to their conferences. In Istanbul in 1992 the invited speakers were Duane Gish and John D Morris. Bilim Arastirma Vakfi creationists chose Christian creationists in the ICR mold rather than those who hold merely an anti-Darwinian stance.
In April and July 1998, BAV held 3 “international conferences”. Joining Duane Gish and John Morris to support Turkish creationist academics were creationist luminaries Michael P Girouard, Edward Boudreaux, Carl Fliermans, and David Menton.
I haven’t checked these names but if you can determine they were OEC that would convince me that Harun Yahya was not just a cloned YEC.
I would be wary of drawing any conclusions about Oktar’s actual beliefs based on his published material - other than that he isn’t particularly attentive to details of entomological anatomy.
The conferences that you’re talking about are 20-30 years old. Back from before ID made its mark.
This conference included Fazale Rana (OEC), David Snoke (ID) and Ken Keathley (OEC).
I think the real question is whether he makes use of YEC arguments against an Old Earth, not whether he has given a megaphone to creationists of all varieties.
Not just entomological. Invertebrates in general, including some echinoderms and annelids (which he confused), crustaceans and arachnids (which he also confused), and perhaps others.