DMB

There seem to be a lot of xian creationists, who base their biological ideas on the bible. Most muslims are also creationist, basing everything on the koran.

Does anyone know whether there is any co-operation between these two camps, or even copying from one another?

Has anyone knowledge of any non-xian and non-muslim creationists?

I'm really interested to know if people can arrive at creationist beliefs without starting from the premise of the truth of a holy book.

acidphos

There is also a small fundy Hindi creationist camp...

The islamic creationists seem to have copied the formula from the xtians pretty closely (harun yoyo comes to mind)

nogods4me

Well, the Raelians are sort of "atheist creationists" in their own weird little way. They think we are the product of some alien DNA experiments, or some such rot. Of course they never bothered to tell me where the aliens came from.

Undercurrent

All the while decrying belief in evolution as a corrupt fantasy of the western world.

Undercurrent

Creationism seems fairly obvious at firts glance. There are a lot of speices, and every individual of every species seems to produce children that are the same species and have parents of the same species, so one might presume that this pattern carried on into the distant past.

This, coupled with the notion that the universe had a beginning would indicate some kind of "things have been like they've always been up until some bing, magical, universe-creating event in the past" creationism.

There is a very small subset of the available data that might lead one reasonably to believe in that kind of creationism, provided you don't ask too many questions like, "why do we see roughly the same internal organs when we slaughter cows and pigs?"

Albion

According to this NCSE article and this one, there's both cooperation and copying going on. Ironic, really, since it's the Christian fundamentalists who have been the most consistently negative about Islam.

DMB

Thanks for the articles, Albion. Turkey isn't the only muslim country where creationism is rife. I think it ties in quite well with the idea that the Koran has anticipated all scientific ideas.

I also don't find it all that ironic that one sort of fundy copies from another. The pope was in league with the Iranian ayatollahs in an attempt to scupper any movement towards reproductive freedoms in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo. These people will find help wherever they can.

Oolon Colluphid

I believe the saying is, 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'.

Oolon

Calzaer

Call me crazy, but on the scale of plausibility, where 0 = "magic sky hippos cause disease" and 100 = "I exist", the above belief actually ranks significantly higher than the Christian version of creation events.

Peez

Most Christians and Muslims that I have discussed it with are not creationists, but it would not surprise me to learn that this is not the case in many parts of the world.As mentioned, there seems to be quite a bit of exchange, though not necessarily direct exchange (it is easy to lift ideas off each other's sites).There are Jewish creationists, Hindu creationists, native american creationists, etc.I believe that the Raelians have been mentioned, but there are other odd stories out there as well.

Peez