Adnan Oktar, the infamous creationist, has been sentenced to 8,658 years in a Turkish prison. That’s a bit harsh. Also, to go from this:
To this:
I feel sorry for him. Also, that sentence is excessive, when his crime was corruption. I suppose he won’t get a chance for rehabilitation.
As a very old wag might say, could’ve been worse; he could’ve gotten life.
I don’t feel sorry for him.
What ever will his “kittens”, who were constructed entirely by plastic surgery, do now?
A light sentence for creationism though!
Why, that sentence is longer than the age of the Earth!
I actually sorta wanted a copy of that book he wrote/edited/whatever . I like pictures of animals .
8,658 years is a very long time to live in a prison cell. And…
Whoa! It’s not just him. Ten other people were also sentenced to 8,658 years, and another 200+ people in his orb were also convicted of various crimes and given “shorter” sentence. I guess anything less than a 1,000 years will be considered “shorter”.
From the link (my bolding):
And this is why I should never be on a jury in an abuse case. I look at that sentence as too short.
Its a pity they can’t try Trump.
With good behavior, he could be out as early as 9595.
If man is still alive.
brightmoon @6
He could probably use a copy himself to help past the time. He has plenty of it now.
Not all of those pictures were of actual animals. At least one was a photo of a fishing lure that was mistaken for a real insect.
Given his crimes I give him zero sympathy.
Given that it’s Turkey, I would be cautious about assuming the reality of these “crimes”. Other than running afoul of the entrenched oligarchs, everything else could be as phony as his holier than thou attitude. That’s not to say he’s not sleazy…one glimpse of his TV show proved that.
Gee, the poor guy probably doesn’t even get your joke.
Something tells me he’ll be out of prison in a few years. That sounds like the kind of sentence intended to be chopped in the name of clemency.
Cut it in half. Quite generous, that would be.
Why is a Muslim celebrating Xmas?
A Muslim creationist at that.
@gijoel Gotta razzle dazzle people for the grift to work.
“How can they see with sequins in their eyes?
Razzle dazzle them and they’ll never catch wise.”
@9. garydargan : “Its a pity they can’t try Trump.”
They can’t eh? Why not?
I see no legal, practical or ethical reason why Trump shouldn’t be tried; merely conventions, politics and lack of will to do it.
Hoping that changes ASAP and Trump does face a court on so very many counts from tax evasion, to sexual assault (self-admittedl) plus Conspiracy to Pervert the course of Justice, obstruct the course of justice and as a domestic enemy of the United States of America. His enablers and accomplices should also face charges in my view – including some of the SCOTUS “Justices” notably Clarence Thomas who must have known about his wife’s involvement in Jan 6th.
As for Adnan Oktar’s sentence I don’t really know enough to say but it does seem a trifle on the overly long side and impractical though obviously symbolic. Not much sympathy for him though especially if the vilest of charges noted by (#8) Oggie: Mathom are true although I also don’t know if robro is correct and Turkish so-called “justice” isn’t so, yeah. Dunno.
I am reminded of the (very brief) trial of Beria in The Death of Stalin .
If he differs from Herschel Walker and prefers being a vampire, he might make the full prison term.
He was corrupt, abused kids, and sexually assaulted someone. I’m not going to complain about the length of his sentence. I hope he’s not the victim of prison violence. Not only is it wrong, but it may lead to him thinking he’s THE victim in all of this. I want him to live a very long and healthy life in prison where every day he has to remember why he deserves to be there.
The retired editor in me strongly protests
Surely, you want to say longer than?
BTW, if Türkiye (as they want be known as) uses a decimal comma, and iff my quick calculations are correct, the sentence as stated by PZ amounts to 8 years, 8 months.
@ ^ René : What is the length of the Earth?
Sounds like the fractal thing where the more you look at each coastline (or river channel?) the longer it gets.. Geographical Zeno’s (Xeno’s?) Paradox? Length defined by which feature and in which direction and assessed how?
StevoR, I don’t see how your remark adresses my remark(s?).
@26. René : (Thinks) Isn’t the decimal point always designated by a dot not a comma? Or is that just my Aussie / American / Western frame of reference?
Hmm .. wikis :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Countries_using_decimal_comma
Huh. Ok.
Türkiye as they want be known as .. So Istanbul not Constantinople? Maybe they need another catchy tune to help out here?
(Oz was among other things New Holland once before Matthew Flinders kinda gave it its name via terra Australis.. FWIW..)
@ 28. René : Longer .. in what way?
How do you measure the length of an entire planet? Unpeel it like a spirally peeled orange?
See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
Somewhat tongue in cheek & tangential..
I believe something similar applies to rivers and streams the more youlook at them indetail? Vague memory of high school geography and ..was it Hortons law (?) about stream channels doing ..something .. when averaged out and drainage patterns and .. well, as I said vague memory. Very vague.
How long is a beach if you arrange it by individual sand grains? Where does it end when boundaries are fuzzyand arbitrary and hard to clearly define?
Walter @ 11. I remember giggling over that fishing lure picture. I used to get the Jehovah Witness magazines for the good pictures they used to have of animals. I was teaching a kids biology and gen science class at the time. I’d just cut off the creationist nonsense captions and relabel them.
As far as calling Türkiye its name goes, well in my lifetime :
Peking -> Beijing
Upper Volta -> Burkina Faso
Bombay -> Mumbai
USSR / Soviet Union -> Russia
New Hebrides -> Vanuatu
Burma -> Myanmar
East Timor -> Timor Leste
Zaire -> Congo (again)
Swaziland-> Eswatini
Kiev -> Kyiv
Et cetera..
Add one more to the list I guess and no problem really. Just gotta work out how to say it with the whatyamacallitz over the letters and all.. (Yeah, will have to look it up.) That’s what they want to be called no skin off my nose & fine with doig so. Although since the only way I really know how to get those special letters with the whatyamajiggities over ’em is cut’n’paste it’s probly gunna be Turkiye in pratice because of our alphabet & keyboards. (Which applies to all those sorta weird not usual letter thingies & nothing against Turkiye in particular.)
Anyhow. Thanks. Hadn’t heard about that.
I want him, Trump, Boris Johnson, Cheney , and the surviving Vietnam war officers who ordered massacres to get the gift of eternal life so they can spend millennia behind bars.
@birferjohansson:
Don’t forget the war criminals responsible for the Iraq, Afghan, Libya wars, the blackwater creeps, criminals who flattened Fallujah, artillery officers who fired white phosphorus into Raqqa, and pilots who bombed and strafed MSF hospitals. So much war crimin’, USA!
Morality vs rule-breaking.
Going off on a tangent, game theory shows how cooperation wins over selfishmess.
This also shows that moral behavior can emerge spontanouisly without the need for divine intervention.
.
BTW it would be nice if this also would apply to AIs, but there is a social component that may not apply to non-human intelligences.
So there is no guarantee that a T-1000 would ally itself with young John Connor.
I forgot the ☆¿$ link.
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-moral-behavior-pays.html
Can anyone tell me what the conversion factor is to convert from metric years to imperial years?
René @ # 26: … iff my quick calculations are correct, the sentence as stated by PZ amounts to 8 years, 8 months.
Considering reported conditions in Turkish prisons, that may considerably exceed Adnan’s life expectancy.
Stevie @32
Calcutta -> Kolkatta
Burma -> Myanmar
Rhodesia -> Zimbabwe
Tanyanika -> Tanzania
Indo-China -> Southeast Asia
If you were older, youd have seen:
Formosa -> China
Nippon -> Japan
Siam -> Thailand
Sorry, StevoR. My auto-correct prefers to call you “Stevie.”
If actual Turkish scientists committed a string of crimes and political irritations, would they get a sentence of 5 billion years?
Hmmm. why 8658? Perhaps, given that it’s just a smidge over 24 x 360, could the judge be a closet Trekkie? “Admiral, if we go ‘by the book’ like Lieutenant Saavik, hours could seem like days.”
Or years. Or something…
Walter Solomon @ #39
Whoa nelly. That’s politically provocative. In the US/EU. “Formosa -> Taiwan” is acceptable, but “Formosa -> China” is the position of the People’s Republic of China.
Jesus – he’ll be over 8700 years old when he gets out!
Given that it’s Turkey, I would be cautious about assuming the reality of these “crimes”. Other than running afoul of the entrenched oligarchs, everything else could be as phony as his holier than thou attitude.
Actually, I’m pretty sure Oktar and his chums did indeed commit those crimes — he’s been credibly rumored to be affiliated with gangsters for many years; and his entire creationist movement has somehow gone from nothing to managing to pressure colleges all over the country to stop teaching evolution — that screams “organized crime” to me.
Offhand, I don’t think this is a case of the faction or gang losing a power struggle being framed for crimes they didn’t commit; it’s a case of the losing gang being rightly convicted for crimes EVERYONE IN POWER is committing, and getting away with as long as they don’t offend the wrong people. That’s kinda how corrupt systems work: everyone’s dirty, it’s not even possible to avoid getting dirty, so once you’re in, the only way to stay safe is to stay on the winning side and support the status-quo.
@26: “BTW, if Türkiye (as they want be known as) uses a decimal comma, and iff my quick calculations are correct, the sentence as stated by PZ amounts to 8 years, 8 months.”
Nope. 8 years 8 months would be 8.75 years because 8 is three quarters of 12.
I would suggest that his blatant corruption and immorality and like the picture indicates his christian european trappings were too much given the rise of Islamic fundamentalism for the government to continue to tolerate him being free, regardless of his creationism. too much Shades of Ottoman corruption for society these days.
@ Walter Solomon : Yes. There’s plenty of examples.
Seems its been a few months already but first I’ve heard of the name change to Türkiye tonight :
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/03/1102841197/turkey-changes-its-official-name-to-turkiye
Seems the media hasn’t really adopted it and there’s some cynicism about the timing and prioiritising of it but.the UN, WTO & NATO have recognised it. See :
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/06/28/turkey-is-now-turkiye-what-other-countries-have-changed-their-name
Plus : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/un-registers-turkiye-as-new-country-name-for-turkey
Among other sources for this.
Oh & no worries re the autocorrect error for my nymn. I suck at typing and get autocorrect stuff ups a lot here too.
@ 43. robro : Saw a few memes the other day refering China as West Taiwan – I’m sure the PRC would NOT approve!
Wondre if anyone’s written an alternative history where the Nationalist / Republican Chinese won and Mao and the Communists had been totally and permanently defeated in China’s Civil War. (Its 1927-1949 one) Would be quite a different world now I think..
robro @43
You’re right. Then again, Taiwan’s official name is the “Republic of China.” And since I didn’t identify which “China” I was referring to, the ambiguity gives me some wiggle room.
S/
#18@ gijoel Muslims consider Jesus to be a prophet . They call him Isa though.
Re: Ed Seedhouse @ #46…
8 is 2/3 of 12. So 8.67 yrs.
However, it is PZ writing the sentence with a comma in it, so it would be the US convention of a period as a decimal and a comma separator for sets of 3 digits to make large numbers easier to read.
Creationists could offer him thoughts and prayers.
(Not like those can be stopped by prison walls)
I’m with Oggie: Mathom @8 on this one. The guy is a fraud, a rapist and a sexual predators of minors. His prison sentence is too short.
He also sounds a lot like this guy (TFG)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Jeffs
I don’t feel sorry for TFG either.
Why would anyone feel bad about sending a rapist to prison or thinking that any prison sentence is excessive? Corruption was only ONE of his crimes. I sincerely doubt he feels remorse for committing rape, only that he got caught. As far as “paying his debt to society” via a prison sentence, I doubt any of his victims got a check. THEIR sentence is LIFELONG and they didn’t commit the crime.
@52: “8 is 2/3 of 12. So 8.67 yrs.”
I could quibble and say 8.66666666666666…, but point made. You are right and I was wrong.
Woah, is that the dude we spoke to with Dicky Dawk in Dublin 10 years ago?
Why would anyone feel sorry for this pretentious jackass? The first photo strongly implies he played the game quite successfully for many years, and did quite well for himself, until the wheel turned and he found himself with a few less friends, or going just a little too far or too obvious in doing what everyone else was doing.
He had his fun, he lived the good life he wanted and worked to live, and now he’s being forced into a form of retirement. It won’t be as comfy or luxurious as my mom’s retirement, but he won’t starve or freeze to death either.
rorschach: Adnan Oktar was also known as Harun Yahya for awhile. Does that help?
Re: Ed Seedhouse @ #55…
I’m old. I was just keeping the decimal expansion to what one might get using a slide rule.
Pierce R. Butler @ 38
18 November 2022 at 2:26 pm
“Considering reported conditions in Turkish prisons, that may considerably exceed Adnan’s life expectancy”.
——————
Could you point me to these reported conditions? As far as I know the conditions in most Turkish prisons are much better than the brutal inhumane conditions in US prisons which currently hold more than a fifth of the worlds prisoners. With European encouragement the Turks did set up F-Type prisons modeled on the Supermax which might come down to US standards but I don’t think even those are on the US level – and all of the F-types in the country together currently hold 5000 prisoners. I would be really interested in knowing where you saw these reports. (I doubt you mean the 80’s movie Midnight Express but just in case I should point out that Midnight Express was a movie not a documentary)
I will note that the article is BBC and the UK uses the comma as a comma and . as the decimal point.