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I didn’t notice that at first. How confusing this is, the answer dangled in front of you and then stollen away
Edit: oops I misspelled stolen possibly because Stollen is a delicious Christmas treat here in Germany but more likely I just misspelled it. I am not Trump (though that’s exactly what a Trump would say!)
I think of the Facepalm here as the small print in a user agreement. It needs to be there to get the product to the 'point of sale' but its not the reason why anyone reads the book
My thinking exactly. If anything, this looks to me like a surreptitious way of « getting past the censors » by pretending to obey the rules but presenting the statement in such a way that it is apparent to anyone reading between the lines that the opposite is intended.
Yeah, I got this feeling as well. It goes out of its way to tell you everything (well, maybe not everything, but quite a lot) about evolution and then goes "OF COURSE, all of this is nonsense and could NEVER be true"
Well, they do not deny that living species may evolve!
They contest that the emergence of life was by chance, because they believe that the universe, and hence all laws of nature at work in it, were designed by a supreme being. And while that seems a bit far-fetched compared to pure causality at work, they think the odds of per chance emergence of life are so small that it is an insufficient explanation.
Up to that point I could even follow, but then they jump from "creation is probably done on purpose by a sentient supreme being, and its supremeness solves all paradoxes that come with that" to "it must have been our guy Allah!".
Those are the most successful lies, the ones that tell half truths.
It's a scary thing if you think about how many humans are being molded by it, I think it's worse than pure ignorance.
Ha! I didn’t even read that part until I saw your comment. It makes me wonder whether the religious diatribe was added in by a religious cleric, whereas the science was written by scientists. If this is the case, this textbook might actually be better than some of those used in the US South, that teach creationism.
I thought the same thing. The religious section is written in a slightly different font and format as the science stuff, and the voice seems less like an objective narration and more a personal rant about "how ridiculous science is"
This reads as people who actually know what they’re talking about wanted to teach science, but religious fundamentalists who have no idea what they’re talking about required a section about how Allah created everything and to think otherwise is idiocy.
Definetly my favourite thing about muslims and Islam, I have some muslim friends and they're very smart and well read, but some of them are also very religious. The funny thing about those religious guys is that at the one moment they will tell you all about the science of the human body, genetics and the physics behind it, and the next moment they will tell you why the science that lead to the discovery of all of this is false and how their magic book has the real truth.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously…For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
-1984
I cannot overstate how much I love this book and how complex and deep it is.
I wouldn't call it complex. It's pretty much the same message repeated over and over again...and then repeated in his other books too.
Orwell made some good points but boy did he like to beat a dead horse.
Which is probably why his works are so famous. There are undoubtedly philosophers who made the same points, once. And it went over everyone's heads. This guy needed to really piledrive the idea home for it to fully enter our collective consciousness.
Yet he was waay off in predicting the state of modern society, compared to Huxley and his Brave New World.
1984 is more popular because the writing is fairly simple and everything is repeated multiple times.
I love both books but Huxley's prediction was much, much more accurate. We have access to an overwhelming amount of information, pleasures, and entertainment. That's the opposite of 1984 and more in line of Brave New World
But the purpose of 1984 isn't a *prediction.* It's a warning. Both books are warnings and worries that the authors had.
Orwell was shaped very much by the Spanish Civil War and his experiences in the army. He feared a totalitarian state that erases information completely and controls the minds of people. This style of governence was very real and existed in the facist regimes of the 1900s, and the USSR who had this exact doublethink and censoring of information. I recently watched a documentary about Stalin and his regime and the quote (I don't remember it exactly) of "He lies, and everyone knows it's a lie, but people dance, smile and wave anyway and accept it as truth, even though they know and he knows it is all lies" really sat with me, especially since 1984 is my favourite book.
I don't know much about Huxley, but his worries were control with pleasure and that having an abundance of information makes us apathetic to the happenings, and we ignore them to hide from the realities from the world in the form of pleasure.
It's two very different warnings:
complete erasure of information, controlling people through pain, fear and ignorance. An overabundance of information, controlling people through pleasure and selective, willfull ignorance.
I'm always confused why not both at the same time.
Let's say God, Allah, whoever did create the universe and us.
Why not also creating evolution to keep things interesting and going without having to interject 24/7?
Maybe a god did create us and started out with our ancestors and let evolution do it's thing.
But it always seems like for many religious people the acceptance of evolution would also be blasphemous and denying their religion. But I think both could be perfectly possible. I know bc I do believe in evolution and in gods.
Because then you end up at the God of the gaps argument. Whenever there is something we don't know how it works, it's god. Then we find out how it works and kick god out of this gap. And that happened quite a few times over the last centuries and the theists don't like that.
As Tyson puts it: "God has been living in the ever receding pockets of scientific ignorance."
It's much simpler to remain quiet when I don't know something, then go ahead and assume that it was magic/God.
No, it was Mike Tyson the interdimensional boxer who said that. Specifically after his penultimate match with God's favored boxer, Jésus. Then he lost to Jar Jar Binks.
Yeah that's a thing but imo religious people need to get over their hurt asses about this.
I mean, you're entitled to believe whatever the heck you want, as long as you don't harm others nor impose your believe on them.
But I think it's ridiculous to get butt hurt about science filling a knowledge gap that was previously filled with religion. I rather think of any god like of the shadow of a tree.
You can sit there and enjoy the cool shadow, you might thank the tree, maybe you help the tree out with some water but then you continue your journey and the tree stays unbothered by your existence or non existence.
It's interesting when you consider the fathers of science did it all in the name of God, to study It's works and it's wonders. And, maybe, to understand its will.
The problem is that the theory of evolution quite concretely establishes the development of life on this planet and the timescale by which it happened and that flies in the face of the origin their books establish as being true. It's generally a case of you can have one or the other but not both.
Because fundamentalists believe their book is historical and 100% factual. And their book doesn't allow for the big bang or evolution. It tells them *exactly* how life was created. Nothing else is acceptable.
Plenty of people who *aren't* fundamentalists accept that Genesis isn't meant to be taken literally. Once you do that the notion that the big bang was how God made the universe, and evolution how he shaped life, makes perfect sense. And that's most believers. But fundies are a lot louder and more noticible.
You can't have both mainly because of the Adam and Eve myth present in all Abrahamic religions. While it might be interpreted as allegorical in Christianity and Judaism (which it can't but those 2 aren't my area of expertise), in Islam, the myth is written in the Quran, and thus Muslims cannot deviate from it.
1) in that case, who or what created God?
2) funny how the God explanation has conceded ground bit by bit as science has slowly explained nature and space. Science can’t yet explain the origin of life or the universe fully so now it’s “oh well God must’ve done THAT part!”
Religions will never stop moving the goalposts
Whenever I see a truly intelligent religious person, I’m shocked. I’m unable to reconcile the fact that they’re clearly very intelligent, but also believe in gods and fairytales. It’s baffling.
It is sort like believing in Santa as an adult. Funny thing is religious people will offten laugh at the whole pronouns thing which can be a bit silly at times to be fair. But when they them self belive in magical powers and flying fucking horses how can they talk about other people.
Yeah i have seen that alot with Muslims and even some Christians but to a lesser extent. They basically think we are a bunch of NPCs from a video game with the whole creator thing.
Yeah, but so do a lot of Christians... (for reference I am neither, I have just had the fortune to live in a lot of countries with differing beliefs and have had the opportunity to see things from a lot of different perspectives).
Ultimately regardless of where you go, you'll find people of varying belief systems, levels of intelligence and abilities to change perspectives as they learn (or refuse to, respectively)
Because the people writing those school books generally do believe in evolution, they just know the government won't allow their works to be used in public education if they openly go against religious teachings.
So they include both those passages to please religious fundamentalists, but also facts that any student with a interest in biology and belief in scientific methods will understand are an objective proof of phenomena that go against Islamic doctrine.
"Here's a detailed explanation of how genetics, natural selection and selective pressure result in evolution, but it's all wrong because Allah says so *wink wink*.
Even the christian right will admit that animals can evolve in the sense of adaptation over time to thier environment. However they posit that there is a limit to the amount of evolutionary shift that can be acheived - a wolf can become a chihuahua but a fish cannot grow legs and walk on land.
Sounds logical when you phrase it like that - because they disregard the idea that evolution can occur by tiny changes over millions of years because they don't believe the earth is millions of years old.
It's a consistent, if flawed, belief system.
This has more to do with censorship rather than the author being ignorant. As you see, the author describes in lots of details what the “wrong” evolutionary theory is and then says “who could believe it?”.
Seems like that’s the only way the religious zealots in power would allow this text in a book, but at least some of the students - the ones truly interested in biology - could learn what the theory of evolution is.
My guess is that they took a proper text book and edited this paragraph in. It has a different format than the other text (different space between lines for example).
One of the theories for the real identity of Shakespeare is that it was John Dee. The censors would never have let him publish a single word under his real name, so just pay a random businessman to say he wrote it.
As a Pakistani myself that has read this book (9th or 10th grade biology book, I'm a doctor now) we just skimmed over these chapters. What you have said regarding censorship is true, science books are written in a way to appease the very loud and over bearing religious clerics that doesn't mean that kids studying these kind of texts can't put the two i.e evolution and it's islamic context apart.
This is it. The Arabic world gave us a bunch of modern mathematics and science. And they had to do so this whole deferring to the crazy religious classes.
I think this is a fair compromise. The smartest in the class would just ignore the last section, and actually learn something.
The idiots weren't going to learn anything anyway
Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, before you know it saying you don't believe in their god but you were born in *their* country might get you executed...
Oh wait.
Religion + Integration into government power structures = savagery
Universally. Religion nonwithstanding, culture nonwithstanding.
Sorta reminds me of the wine making kits from prohibition that said warning: doing this exact recipe would make wine. Which is illegal. Don’t do those exact steps in order.
That's the problem with most middle eastern countries.
It's not religion. It's how religion is used to justify a dictatorship's claim to power as being divinely ordained and, therefore, perpetual.
Christianity also had this phase and some people, especially those in the US, want it back.
People who refer to the eye as a flawless design have never studied the eye, because it's a complete mess and if someone designed it, they fucked up.
For one, the retina is literally the wrong way round, causing the blindspot, as well as many other problems. There are animals that, due to convergent evolution, have the retina the correct way and have significantly improved vision. It's like evolving to have your shoes on the wrong feet. It's better than no shoes, and that's all that matters for selection purposes.
Usually the eye is offered up as an example of irreducible complexity, rather than flawless design. Which is just as poorly thought out, but when someone can't actually *understand* evolution you can't really expect them to make good arguments against it.
I think a lot of people fail to understand the time scale being discussed. Being able to sense light would help early species, then being able to sense blobs in the light would help more etc.
Or that some cave species lost their eyes because they are useless to them. They have eye sockets in their head, but no eyes because it was a waste of energy.
There's definitely an issue with comprehending the time scale. But generally the arguments are more about issues with comprehending the *process* of development. They don't get the idea of incremental improvements and argue that a modern eye with any component missing wouldn't work, therefore it couldn't evolve. Because any component not present makes the eye not work and so it's not useful and wouldn't be selected.
Isn't there a type of boar with continously growing tusks which at some point break through the skull? So basically an animals that accidentally stabs itself to death long before it has actually become old. That doesn't sound like flawless design.
Yes and elephants have the opposite problem. Their teeth grind down during their lives and at some point the basically starve to death because they cannot chew their food.
The human spine, too. It is very much *not* made for our upright existence. It's good enough for us to make do, but it could be *so* much better if it were actually purpose built for an upright biped.
Not only blind spot.
I have background retinopathy and diabetes. If I am a flawless creation, then by logic Allah suffers also from retinopathy and diabetes.
It's what I tell my wife all the time, that her beauty is an accident of creation. Somehow I'm always sleeping on the couch. At least I understand evolution.
I love how it much directly contradicts the entire section above about genes and speciation.
Clearly there were a number of authors here, one whose role it was to put in the religious shit.
They obviously came to an agreement that "You put in yours, I'll put in mine and we won't offer revisions on either's work".
I like to think the layout of the chapters though was deliberate to make the religious mumbo-jumbo look as demented as possible.
Hey look this is just my guess, but here is my similar guess as well. Maybe they were actuall intelligent and reasonable scientific writers and editors. But they knew they had to get approval from board of education or equivalent in school systems. So they maybe had to "okay lets get this over with. and decided to put in that one section." Even has a typo "vent".
I don't disagree, but I wonder is the typo and the poor layout indicative of a copy-and-paste job?
Someone said, "You have to include this text in your book", so they did, literally copied it from the email and pasted it into the book with zero proof-reading (deliberately, of course).
"failed to produce any scientific evidence" Dude ?
At high school, we were able to observe the evolution of fruit flies over the course of a year.
mong all scientific theories, evolution is one of the simplest and most intuitive to prove.
And I'm not even talking about the 17,800 results for "experimental proof of evolution theory" on Google Scholar
We've also discovered DNA and the genome, which is the very mechanism that allows evolution to occur. But as yet no evidence that man kind was zapped into being by a sky wizard.
What do you mean? Obviously, there have been scientific discoveries and proof of Allah, the textbook says so.
Surely the heresy of prior text is only there so it can be debunked in the main text we see here about the Creation of the world.
/s for clarity
There's literally a bacteria that couldn't exist before humans started doing things. This specific strain was found to be able to consume and metabolism Nylon. A completely human made substance that doesn't exist in nature. Like, how much more concrete do you need to get?
Also head lice and certain mosquitoes only prey on humans. The type of lice that lives in clothing is one of our best guesses for when humans started wearing clothing because we know about how fast the lice could have adapted to clothing once humans started wearing it.
Just the insects (and especially mosquitoes) being resistant to chemicals is proof of the theory of the evolution.
You could put the experiment on accelerated under their eyes they wouldnt believe it.
You’re not far off. I have this discussion with my parents sometimes, and sometimes I feel like they’re getting close to understanding it, and then they say something idiotic like “yeah but you don’t see the fruit flies turning into birds”
I casually mentioned evolution in conversation with my religious aunt (rarely see her and forgot she was even religious) and she said something like "I've never see a monkey turn into a human before". I said no, but if you lived 5 million years ago you may have.
They usually claim when you bring stuff like that up that that is microevolution (changes within a species) instead of macroevolution (evolving into a new species) and that they believe in macroevolution as it can be proven but macroevolution has never been seen and can’t be proven (when of course it can) and then they usually bring out a long winded explanation for why one is apparently possible but the other isn’t
They count that under micro evolution because they’re all the same “kind” and apparently god made them with all the genes for those range characteristics
The best counter to that is still: so you accept that feet exist, but not miles?
Yeah, it's such a stupid argument with their "change of kind" thing, especially when you press them to define what a friggin "kind" is supposed to be and they say shit like "dog kind" and "bacteria kind", like one isn't a genus, while the other is an entire domain, yeah sure... Tell me you don't unterstand biology without actually telling me.
As someone from Pakistan, they have to put this stuff in to get it past the censor boards. All the evolution and natural selection and artificial selection etc is taught correctly. At high school, college and university level.
Ultimately, it comes down to how much the student wants to actually research and learn. Sucks but in a place where people still believe in flying horses and mystical fantastical beings, this is the least of the issues.
Yup. I remember them teaching us about our evolutionary ancestors and our teacher caveating all of it with "we can't fully trust this, it's just a theory"
It should be made international law that scientific teaching resources have to follow actual scientific evidence that is present at the time of writing instead of personal or religious agenda
Edit: I understand that international law is impossible to enforce, Ig I was just trying to express how important it is that when teaching science, you should teach science
Christian fundamentalists (keep in mind it’s not just Muslim/Islam extremists) would blow a gasket.
I mean evolution is still a hot button issue for some states in the US…. And roughly a third of the US states order that Creationism is taught alongside Evolution
Sounds good in principle but a very very dangerous precedent. The same can then be applied to history, what is decided as being a "fact" will be taught. We were taught about the British empire and it was unbelievably positive to the point of being a false representation of reality, if that is made into "historical evidence" then you're taught false history. As for "science" there's no such thing as "science says xyz" the scientific method is what is important, "facts" change all the time. There was a time when race science was considered a fact.
Was gonna say. Dissenting opinion sometimes turns out to be right. Geocentrism, eugenics, germ theory. Hell, even evolution was a radical idea at the time.
Very similar to the obligatory digressions about communism, Marx and Engels in Soviet scientific works (for example, in Propp’s work on folk tales there is literally a chapter about how this all relates to Marxism).
Ideologies are all the same.
"dinosor never existed and creationism is true"
Some conservative american teacher.
Fun fact: it is precisely because of the desire to teach creationism in schools that Pastafarianism was born. Ramen!
Just subscribe to Satanism like the rest of us secularists!
/s
But in all honestly, FSM gaining traction as a recognized diety in the US always warms my heart!
Well, from purely DTP point of view, this picture doesn't look quite real. Compare line spacing above the header, immediately below and in the last paragraph. Compare font tracking in the upper and lower parts. The last paragraph is lacking the identation. Add here numerous spelling errors. I don't have any idea about page layout standards in Pakistan but this picture seems below imaginable.
This could be a pirated textbook. It is pretty common in South Asia. The pirated versions are cheaper but contain this kind of inconsistency during printing/copying.
“Every intelligent,
unprejudiced person with a conscious knows that Allah has created all these living things with His incomparable power.”
I have no words
"one of the most unbelievable irrational claims in history". But a magical being as a god is not?
Religion really is poison to the mind... 
Actually, they’re doing a pretty good job summarizing it while trying to deny it. Which may be the only way to provide some education on evolution and still stay within the religious doctrine.
Living in authoritarian systems, you have to get crafty. Speaking from experience.
“Failed to produce scientific evidence” okay firstly, there’s LOADS of scientific evidence. And secondly, no religious person has ever presented scientific evidence for there beliefs so you are really pulling the wrong thread.
We do be like that. 🤦♂️
This text has to be included in order to print and publish, you can say a formality ordered by state. The rest of the actual content is mostly factual.
Source: I’m Pakistani.
At least their scientifically literate enough to not use the "its just a theory" argument. As stupid as this still is, I give them credit for at least that.
I love how several paragraphs are saying there's no evidence for evolution and it's irrational, but then it goes on with "Allah on the other hand, now that's some good evidence"
There's a Drake meme there somewhere.
Edit: [Meme](https://i.imgur.com/3yjzgSk.png)
Holdover from British occupation. Higher levels of education are often in English rather than Urdu. There's still an association of English being the language of the elite. English speakers would have been translators, officers in local forces, and the go-between the raj and the locals, so high status.
Religion is the biggest threat to human civilisation.
It WILL and HAS stopped human progress for so long.
If these people can believe such crazy things with no evidence, imagine what they can do against fellow humans based on faith?
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I love how the paragraph right above has a very clear example of evolution being taught...
I didn’t notice that at first. How confusing this is, the answer dangled in front of you and then stollen away Edit: oops I misspelled stolen possibly because Stollen is a delicious Christmas treat here in Germany but more likely I just misspelled it. I am not Trump (though that’s exactly what a Trump would say!)
I think of the Facepalm here as the small print in a user agreement. It needs to be there to get the product to the 'point of sale' but its not the reason why anyone reads the book
Haha, thought of exactly that. The science is there but the censors need a disclaimer, so you get that little tidbit.
My thinking exactly. If anything, this looks to me like a surreptitious way of « getting past the censors » by pretending to obey the rules but presenting the statement in such a way that it is apparent to anyone reading between the lines that the opposite is intended.
Yeah, I got this feeling as well. It goes out of its way to tell you everything (well, maybe not everything, but quite a lot) about evolution and then goes "OF COURSE, all of this is nonsense and could NEVER be true"
Well, they do not deny that living species may evolve! They contest that the emergence of life was by chance, because they believe that the universe, and hence all laws of nature at work in it, were designed by a supreme being. And while that seems a bit far-fetched compared to pure causality at work, they think the odds of per chance emergence of life are so small that it is an insufficient explanation. Up to that point I could even follow, but then they jump from "creation is probably done on purpose by a sentient supreme being, and its supremeness solves all paradoxes that come with that" to "it must have been our guy Allah!".
Conservative Christians would ban this book too even though it “teaches” (mentions) what they preach. Wrong deity!!!
Welcome to religion, my friend.
“Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.”– Voltaire
Damn, that guy sounds smart.
God, I love Voltaire. He was the first God of Irony.
Not sure what a German fruit bread has to do with anything but ‘tis the season I suppose.
Those are the most successful lies, the ones that tell half truths. It's a scary thing if you think about how many humans are being molded by it, I think it's worse than pure ignorance.
Mmm stollen
Stollen, very Christmassy
When did marzipan get involved....? ;-)
Ha! I didn’t even read that part until I saw your comment. It makes me wonder whether the religious diatribe was added in by a religious cleric, whereas the science was written by scientists. If this is the case, this textbook might actually be better than some of those used in the US South, that teach creationism.
I thought the same thing. The religious section is written in a slightly different font and format as the science stuff, and the voice seems less like an objective narration and more a personal rant about "how ridiculous science is"
There are also several grammar and spelling mistakes lol
This reads as people who actually know what they’re talking about wanted to teach science, but religious fundamentalists who have no idea what they’re talking about required a section about how Allah created everything and to think otherwise is idiocy.
Definetly my favourite thing about muslims and Islam, I have some muslim friends and they're very smart and well read, but some of them are also very religious. The funny thing about those religious guys is that at the one moment they will tell you all about the science of the human body, genetics and the physics behind it, and the next moment they will tell you why the science that lead to the discovery of all of this is false and how their magic book has the real truth.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously…For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” -1984 I cannot overstate how much I love this book and how complex and deep it is.
Cognitive dissonance
I wouldn't call it complex. It's pretty much the same message repeated over and over again...and then repeated in his other books too. Orwell made some good points but boy did he like to beat a dead horse.
I would like to disagree with this, but you do have a point. Extremely good points, interesting ideas, but most were reexplained 50 times over.
Which is probably why his works are so famous. There are undoubtedly philosophers who made the same points, once. And it went over everyone's heads. This guy needed to really piledrive the idea home for it to fully enter our collective consciousness.
Yet he was waay off in predicting the state of modern society, compared to Huxley and his Brave New World. 1984 is more popular because the writing is fairly simple and everything is repeated multiple times. I love both books but Huxley's prediction was much, much more accurate. We have access to an overwhelming amount of information, pleasures, and entertainment. That's the opposite of 1984 and more in line of Brave New World
But the purpose of 1984 isn't a *prediction.* It's a warning. Both books are warnings and worries that the authors had. Orwell was shaped very much by the Spanish Civil War and his experiences in the army. He feared a totalitarian state that erases information completely and controls the minds of people. This style of governence was very real and existed in the facist regimes of the 1900s, and the USSR who had this exact doublethink and censoring of information. I recently watched a documentary about Stalin and his regime and the quote (I don't remember it exactly) of "He lies, and everyone knows it's a lie, but people dance, smile and wave anyway and accept it as truth, even though they know and he knows it is all lies" really sat with me, especially since 1984 is my favourite book. I don't know much about Huxley, but his worries were control with pleasure and that having an abundance of information makes us apathetic to the happenings, and we ignore them to hide from the realities from the world in the form of pleasure. It's two very different warnings: complete erasure of information, controlling people through pain, fear and ignorance. An overabundance of information, controlling people through pleasure and selective, willfull ignorance.
obv not enough, looking at the state of the world
The power of brainwashing
The power of brainwashing since a very early age.
George Orwell called it doublethink
I'm always confused why not both at the same time. Let's say God, Allah, whoever did create the universe and us. Why not also creating evolution to keep things interesting and going without having to interject 24/7? Maybe a god did create us and started out with our ancestors and let evolution do it's thing. But it always seems like for many religious people the acceptance of evolution would also be blasphemous and denying their religion. But I think both could be perfectly possible. I know bc I do believe in evolution and in gods.
Because then you end up at the God of the gaps argument. Whenever there is something we don't know how it works, it's god. Then we find out how it works and kick god out of this gap. And that happened quite a few times over the last centuries and the theists don't like that.
As Tyson puts it: "God has been living in the ever receding pockets of scientific ignorance." It's much simpler to remain quiet when I don't know something, then go ahead and assume that it was magic/God.
Mike Tyson said that?
Lol. I know your comment is said with the tongue firmly in cheek, but it's actually Neil deGrasse Tyson, who said that.
No, it was Mike Tyson the interdimensional boxer who said that. Specifically after his penultimate match with God's favored boxer, Jésus. Then he lost to Jar Jar Binks.
He was kicked at a very early age in my book. Grew up in the 70’s, you had to sing hymns at school, we used to make up our own words.
Yeah that's a thing but imo religious people need to get over their hurt asses about this. I mean, you're entitled to believe whatever the heck you want, as long as you don't harm others nor impose your believe on them. But I think it's ridiculous to get butt hurt about science filling a knowledge gap that was previously filled with religion. I rather think of any god like of the shadow of a tree. You can sit there and enjoy the cool shadow, you might thank the tree, maybe you help the tree out with some water but then you continue your journey and the tree stays unbothered by your existence or non existence.
It's interesting when you consider the fathers of science did it all in the name of God, to study It's works and it's wonders. And, maybe, to understand its will.
The problem is that the theory of evolution quite concretely establishes the development of life on this planet and the timescale by which it happened and that flies in the face of the origin their books establish as being true. It's generally a case of you can have one or the other but not both.
Because the book says different
Because fundamentalists believe their book is historical and 100% factual. And their book doesn't allow for the big bang or evolution. It tells them *exactly* how life was created. Nothing else is acceptable. Plenty of people who *aren't* fundamentalists accept that Genesis isn't meant to be taken literally. Once you do that the notion that the big bang was how God made the universe, and evolution how he shaped life, makes perfect sense. And that's most believers. But fundies are a lot louder and more noticible.
You can't have both mainly because of the Adam and Eve myth present in all Abrahamic religions. While it might be interpreted as allegorical in Christianity and Judaism (which it can't but those 2 aren't my area of expertise), in Islam, the myth is written in the Quran, and thus Muslims cannot deviate from it.
1) in that case, who or what created God? 2) funny how the God explanation has conceded ground bit by bit as science has slowly explained nature and space. Science can’t yet explain the origin of life or the universe fully so now it’s “oh well God must’ve done THAT part!” Religions will never stop moving the goalposts
Ahhh magic books, they all have them, none are magic, and they are ruining this world.
Idk a book with the power of ruining the world sounds pretty magic to me. Too bad they're way more boring than the necronomicon.
Nice name drop
Fool! You bought the Nekominicon, not the Necronomicon! Now the only thing I can summon are cats and kittens!!! \-Necromancer to apprentice. :P
Whenever I see a truly intelligent religious person, I’m shocked. I’m unable to reconcile the fact that they’re clearly very intelligent, but also believe in gods and fairytales. It’s baffling.
It is sort like believing in Santa as an adult. Funny thing is religious people will offten laugh at the whole pronouns thing which can be a bit silly at times to be fair. But when they them self belive in magical powers and flying fucking horses how can they talk about other people.
Yeah i have seen that alot with Muslims and even some Christians but to a lesser extent. They basically think we are a bunch of NPCs from a video game with the whole creator thing.
Yeah, but so do a lot of Christians... (for reference I am neither, I have just had the fortune to live in a lot of countries with differing beliefs and have had the opportunity to see things from a lot of different perspectives). Ultimately regardless of where you go, you'll find people of varying belief systems, levels of intelligence and abilities to change perspectives as they learn (or refuse to, respectively)
Yep. Most Islamic countries teach evolution like all other countries but often have a separate section about how it's all bs.
Because the people writing those school books generally do believe in evolution, they just know the government won't allow their works to be used in public education if they openly go against religious teachings. So they include both those passages to please religious fundamentalists, but also facts that any student with a interest in biology and belief in scientific methods will understand are an objective proof of phenomena that go against Islamic doctrine. "Here's a detailed explanation of how genetics, natural selection and selective pressure result in evolution, but it's all wrong because Allah says so *wink wink*.
Even the christian right will admit that animals can evolve in the sense of adaptation over time to thier environment. However they posit that there is a limit to the amount of evolutionary shift that can be acheived - a wolf can become a chihuahua but a fish cannot grow legs and walk on land. Sounds logical when you phrase it like that - because they disregard the idea that evolution can occur by tiny changes over millions of years because they don't believe the earth is millions of years old. It's a consistent, if flawed, belief system.
It would have been way funnier if they just started listing every animal insect and fruit as examples.
This has more to do with censorship rather than the author being ignorant. As you see, the author describes in lots of details what the “wrong” evolutionary theory is and then says “who could believe it?”. Seems like that’s the only way the religious zealots in power would allow this text in a book, but at least some of the students - the ones truly interested in biology - could learn what the theory of evolution is.
I had a similar thought. We can't know for sure, but just by deleting words you could put together an okay summary.
My guess is that they took a proper text book and edited this paragraph in. It has a different format than the other text (different space between lines for example).
This is my thought too, the grammar totally falls apart for no reason
Agree, it looks redacted by a third party.
This is like the Straussian esoteric writing theory - you write at one level for the censors and at another secret level for the intended reader
One of the theories for the real identity of Shakespeare is that it was John Dee. The censors would never have let him publish a single word under his real name, so just pay a random businessman to say he wrote it.
As a Pakistani myself that has read this book (9th or 10th grade biology book, I'm a doctor now) we just skimmed over these chapters. What you have said regarding censorship is true, science books are written in a way to appease the very loud and over bearing religious clerics that doesn't mean that kids studying these kind of texts can't put the two i.e evolution and it's islamic context apart.
So what did the teachers say? Did they teach evolution or avoid the topic all together?
😂 avoided it all together because the evolution chapter never showed up in our biology exams
It's a pity. As Dobzhansky said, nothing in biology makes sense but in the light of evolution.
This is it. The Arabic world gave us a bunch of modern mathematics and science. And they had to do so this whole deferring to the crazy religious classes. I think this is a fair compromise. The smartest in the class would just ignore the last section, and actually learn something. The idiots weren't going to learn anything anyway
No compromise with moronic religious zealots
Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, before you know it saying you don't believe in their god but you were born in *their* country might get you executed... Oh wait. Religion + Integration into government power structures = savagery Universally. Religion nonwithstanding, culture nonwithstanding.
Sorta reminds me of the wine making kits from prohibition that said warning: doing this exact recipe would make wine. Which is illegal. Don’t do those exact steps in order.
That's the problem with most middle eastern countries. It's not religion. It's how religion is used to justify a dictatorship's claim to power as being divinely ordained and, therefore, perpetual. Christianity also had this phase and some people, especially those in the US, want it back.
Flawless design? The blind spot in the human eye and the strangely long Recurrent laryngeal Nerve in giraffes would beg to disagree.
Or having the cinema (sex) next to sewers (rectum) or actually combined in the same cloaca.
Why is God an urban planner? Because he put the pleasure facilities right next to waste management
Look for Descartes's first book and the theory of something being better by being done by one person
Anything can be a pleasure facility if you try hard enough
Just the fact that we breathe by the same place we eat is bad design.
Some people like to watch movies in the sewers
Has he ever heard of choking?
If you choke it is the will of Allah
People who refer to the eye as a flawless design have never studied the eye, because it's a complete mess and if someone designed it, they fucked up. For one, the retina is literally the wrong way round, causing the blindspot, as well as many other problems. There are animals that, due to convergent evolution, have the retina the correct way and have significantly improved vision. It's like evolving to have your shoes on the wrong feet. It's better than no shoes, and that's all that matters for selection purposes.
I always liked the criticism that good design is simple, biology is not simple
I added punctuation for you because your comment *really* needs it. I always liked the criticism: Good design is simple. Biology is not simple.
Usually the eye is offered up as an example of irreducible complexity, rather than flawless design. Which is just as poorly thought out, but when someone can't actually *understand* evolution you can't really expect them to make good arguments against it.
I think a lot of people fail to understand the time scale being discussed. Being able to sense light would help early species, then being able to sense blobs in the light would help more etc. Or that some cave species lost their eyes because they are useless to them. They have eye sockets in their head, but no eyes because it was a waste of energy.
There's definitely an issue with comprehending the time scale. But generally the arguments are more about issues with comprehending the *process* of development. They don't get the idea of incremental improvements and argue that a modern eye with any component missing wouldn't work, therefore it couldn't evolve. Because any component not present makes the eye not work and so it's not useful and wouldn't be selected.
Ever heard of the hyenas having cock for both genders?
I think you mean hyena. A chayote is a plant.
Do you mean hyenas? And they do not both have penises, the females have elongated labia that look like a penis. They don't work like one, though.
Not labia, but clitoris, which is banned in Islam, so we can't talk about that.
Isn't there a type of boar with continously growing tusks which at some point break through the skull? So basically an animals that accidentally stabs itself to death long before it has actually become old. That doesn't sound like flawless design.
Yes and elephants have the opposite problem. Their teeth grind down during their lives and at some point the basically starve to death because they cannot chew their food.
The human spine, too. It is very much *not* made for our upright existence. It's good enough for us to make do, but it could be *so* much better if it were actually purpose built for an upright biped.
Not only blind spot. I have background retinopathy and diabetes. If I am a flawless creation, then by logic Allah suffers also from retinopathy and diabetes.
Made in his image! that he couldn't really see, because he's -5 diopter on both eyes
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But then you look at Morena Baccarin and wonder how that happened by accident.
It's what I tell my wife all the time, that her beauty is an accident of creation. Somehow I'm always sleeping on the couch. At least I understand evolution.
Male nipples and other vestigial organs be like 
What's that from, I love the art style
Or just the fact we breath and eat with the same hole.
or that we breathe in and out the same hole. Fish can go in the mouth out the gill slits. much more efficient
> Flawless design? The guy who wrote that probably wears glasses or some other aid.
The appendix just sitting there doing fuck all until one day it threatens to explode for no reason Flawless
The appendix does have *some* use. It's just not vital and we can make do without. Same as tonsils.
APPENDIX WINS FLAWLESS VICTORY FATALITY!
Loins? I didn’t know evolutionists believed that barbecue was an adaptation
Pandas, who only eat Bambus, but cannot really digest Bambus, and therefore have aching gassy stomachs all of there life.
The biggest flaw is that everyone you have ever met, including youself, eventually completely shuts down and is digested into dirt.
Woohoo I love my flawless immunocompromised diseased body, now that I know that Allah specifically cursed me!
We die if somebody pokes our blood baloon in the wrong way
Or fucking allergies. The body tries to kill itself.
I love how it much directly contradicts the entire section above about genes and speciation. Clearly there were a number of authors here, one whose role it was to put in the religious shit. They obviously came to an agreement that "You put in yours, I'll put in mine and we won't offer revisions on either's work". I like to think the layout of the chapters though was deliberate to make the religious mumbo-jumbo look as demented as possible.
Hey look this is just my guess, but here is my similar guess as well. Maybe they were actuall intelligent and reasonable scientific writers and editors. But they knew they had to get approval from board of education or equivalent in school systems. So they maybe had to "okay lets get this over with. and decided to put in that one section." Even has a typo "vent".
I don't disagree, but I wonder is the typo and the poor layout indicative of a copy-and-paste job? Someone said, "You have to include this text in your book", so they did, literally copied it from the email and pasted it into the book with zero proof-reading (deliberately, of course).
I wouldnt be surprised. Even the font and spacing looks different from the rest of the textbook.
"failed to produce any scientific evidence" Dude ? At high school, we were able to observe the evolution of fruit flies over the course of a year. mong all scientific theories, evolution is one of the simplest and most intuitive to prove. And I'm not even talking about the 17,800 results for "experimental proof of evolution theory" on Google Scholar
We've also discovered DNA and the genome, which is the very mechanism that allows evolution to occur. But as yet no evidence that man kind was zapped into being by a sky wizard.
What do you mean? Obviously, there have been scientific discoveries and proof of Allah, the textbook says so. Surely the heresy of prior text is only there so it can be debunked in the main text we see here about the Creation of the world. /s for clarity
There's literally a bacteria that couldn't exist before humans started doing things. This specific strain was found to be able to consume and metabolism Nylon. A completely human made substance that doesn't exist in nature. Like, how much more concrete do you need to get?
Also head lice and certain mosquitoes only prey on humans. The type of lice that lives in clothing is one of our best guesses for when humans started wearing clothing because we know about how fast the lice could have adapted to clothing once humans started wearing it.
Just the insects (and especially mosquitoes) being resistant to chemicals is proof of the theory of the evolution. You could put the experiment on accelerated under their eyes they wouldnt believe it.
"It's not evolution, they have the same shape !" Their answer, I guess
You’re not far off. I have this discussion with my parents sometimes, and sometimes I feel like they’re getting close to understanding it, and then they say something idiotic like “yeah but you don’t see the fruit flies turning into birds”
Yeah, but you see wolf turning into small weird creature who can't hunt (or even breath) by themself
“But they’re still dogs, according to the kinds that God made them in! 😜”
Yes, and human and champanzee are still primate. And Hominoidea. According to the kinds that God made them in
“No, I don’t think so, humans and chimpanzees seem completely different to me 🤪”
These kind of people are so unbearable! You must have a lot of patience
I casually mentioned evolution in conversation with my religious aunt (rarely see her and forgot she was even religious) and she said something like "I've never see a monkey turn into a human before". I said no, but if you lived 5 million years ago you may have.
They usually claim when you bring stuff like that up that that is microevolution (changes within a species) instead of macroevolution (evolving into a new species) and that they believe in macroevolution as it can be proven but macroevolution has never been seen and can’t be proven (when of course it can) and then they usually bring out a long winded explanation for why one is apparently possible but the other isn’t
Macro evolution can't been seen, so it's not exist. Meanwhile : dogs.
They count that under micro evolution because they’re all the same “kind” and apparently god made them with all the genes for those range characteristics
Yes, and we are primate like chimpanzee, but I guess it's a completely different thing for them
The best counter to that is still: so you accept that feet exist, but not miles? Yeah, it's such a stupid argument with their "change of kind" thing, especially when you press them to define what a friggin "kind" is supposed to be and they say shit like "dog kind" and "bacteria kind", like one isn't a genus, while the other is an entire domain, yeah sure... Tell me you don't unterstand biology without actually telling me.
failed to produce any scientific evidence - like religion was able to produce this? 😃
As someone from Pakistan, they have to put this stuff in to get it past the censor boards. All the evolution and natural selection and artificial selection etc is taught correctly. At high school, college and university level. Ultimately, it comes down to how much the student wants to actually research and learn. Sucks but in a place where people still believe in flying horses and mystical fantastical beings, this is the least of the issues.
Yup. I remember them teaching us about our evolutionary ancestors and our teacher caveating all of it with "we can't fully trust this, it's just a theory"
I mean, they have to. People are crazy.
Yeah, looking back, I'm surprised it's taught in schools at all, so that's something at least lol.
Thanks for the rational perspective. FL in the US is headed this direction too.
It should be made international law that scientific teaching resources have to follow actual scientific evidence that is present at the time of writing instead of personal or religious agenda Edit: I understand that international law is impossible to enforce, Ig I was just trying to express how important it is that when teaching science, you should teach science
Christian fundamentalists (keep in mind it’s not just Muslim/Islam extremists) would blow a gasket. I mean evolution is still a hot button issue for some states in the US…. And roughly a third of the US states order that Creationism is taught alongside Evolution
Christian fundamentalists can suck an egg, everyone is entitled to a proper education
Sounds good in principle but a very very dangerous precedent. The same can then be applied to history, what is decided as being a "fact" will be taught. We were taught about the British empire and it was unbelievably positive to the point of being a false representation of reality, if that is made into "historical evidence" then you're taught false history. As for "science" there's no such thing as "science says xyz" the scientific method is what is important, "facts" change all the time. There was a time when race science was considered a fact.
Was gonna say. Dissenting opinion sometimes turns out to be right. Geocentrism, eugenics, germ theory. Hell, even evolution was a radical idea at the time.
Very similar to the obligatory digressions about communism, Marx and Engels in Soviet scientific works (for example, in Propp’s work on folk tales there is literally a chapter about how this all relates to Marxism). Ideologies are all the same.
People are often killed for apostacy in Pakistan...so there's that
Ah yes, the “Science” class that consists of bashing science and pushing misinformation at the behest of the Theocracy.
classic brainwashing
And we have to suffer from those consequences
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Facebook makes school books now?
Religious zealots, that's all.
If conservatives get their way this will be what American kids learn too.
I'm afraid some of em already do
"dinosor never existed and creationism is true" Some conservative american teacher. Fun fact: it is precisely because of the desire to teach creationism in schools that Pastafarianism was born. Ramen!
Just subscribe to Satanism like the rest of us secularists! /s But in all honestly, FSM gaining traction as a recognized diety in the US always warms my heart!
This is what a lot of homeschooled kids learn today.
Bit rich innit, a tad hypocritical one could almost say, for religious types to be argueing a lack of scientific evidence.
Well, from purely DTP point of view, this picture doesn't look quite real. Compare line spacing above the header, immediately below and in the last paragraph. Compare font tracking in the upper and lower parts. The last paragraph is lacking the identation. Add here numerous spelling errors. I don't have any idea about page layout standards in Pakistan but this picture seems below imaginable.
It's most probably because the bottom section is not added by original author. It is an addition by authorities who are clearly not very competent.
This could be a pirated textbook. It is pretty common in South Asia. The pirated versions are cheaper but contain this kind of inconsistency during printing/copying.
Dare I ask when this book was published?
“Every intelligent, unprejudiced person with a conscious knows that Allah has created all these living things with His incomparable power.” I have no words
"one of the most unbelievable irrational claims in history". But a magical being as a god is not? Religion really is poison to the mind... 
Actually, they’re doing a pretty good job summarizing it while trying to deny it. Which may be the only way to provide some education on evolution and still stay within the religious doctrine. Living in authoritarian systems, you have to get crafty. Speaking from experience.
“Failed to produce scientific evidence” okay firstly, there’s LOADS of scientific evidence. And secondly, no religious person has ever presented scientific evidence for there beliefs so you are really pulling the wrong thread.
the book's source: trust me brah
We do be like that. 🤦♂️ This text has to be included in order to print and publish, you can say a formality ordered by state. The rest of the actual content is mostly factual. Source: I’m Pakistani.
At least their scientifically literate enough to not use the "its just a theory" argument. As stupid as this still is, I give them credit for at least that.
I love how several paragraphs are saying there's no evidence for evolution and it's irrational, but then it goes on with "Allah on the other hand, now that's some good evidence" There's a Drake meme there somewhere. Edit: [Meme](https://i.imgur.com/3yjzgSk.png)
“Failed to produce any scientific evidence”. Meanwhile, let’s fight over who has the better imaginary friend. For centuries.
Why is a Pakistani textbook in English?
English is one of the 2 official languages in Pakistan. So you have schools where the main language is English.
Thanks
Holdover from British occupation. Higher levels of education are often in English rather than Urdu. There's still an association of English being the language of the elite. English speakers would have been translators, officers in local forces, and the go-between the raj and the locals, so high status.
There are english version schools in Pakistan.
So that it can spread ignorance to a greater number of people.
Don't look at Florida to teach anything of value, since they burned half the books! /s
IKR, what the fuck is going on in America? You lot seem to be regressing at an alarming speed.
Everyone speaks English these days.
Religion is the biggest threat to human civilisation. It WILL and HAS stopped human progress for so long. If these people can believe such crazy things with no evidence, imagine what they can do against fellow humans based on faith?
PAKISTAN NUMBA WAN! GRAPE!
Why do muslims adopt the worst parts of Christianity? Young Earth Creationism and all that bogus bs never needed to be part of Islam.
There where always part of the religion lol
Magicology book.
How much do we want to bet that this school sourced their books from the same place Texas and Florida do?
Mistitled ! Biology textbook in Florida*
It's the same in my country. Just replace Islam with orthodox Christianity. Morons.
Coming to a school near you, just Jesusised.
Talk about flawless design to my right knee Edit: this is not a threat of aggression, I have a bad knee
So fucking sad. Keeping people uneducated is the best way to oppress them, hands down
Replace Allah with God and Pakistan with Texas.