Jesus, and I thought James Randi’s million bucks were pretty impressive. Turkish creationist, or “ignorant person”, Adnan Oktar (pictured here looking like a Batman villain) has offered ten trillion lira (about $7.5 trillion) to anyone who can produce an intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution. Putting aside the fact that there are quite literally trillions of transitional fossils just lying on the ocean floor and other places, it’s important to note that Oktar, like every other person in the world, doesn’t have $7.5 trillion. At least Randi can cough up the bank statements for his measly million. But as New Scientist’s Colin Barras points out, ignorant people like Oktar often use transitional fossils as evidence that there are no transitional fossils, since they believe each transitional fossil just opens up two more gaps in the evolutionary chain on either side of it. Make sense? Of course not. More details here.
Monday, October 13, 2008
The $7.5 Trillion Challenge
