Sheesh. You have one conversation with one of these slimy wankers, and they never let it go. I’ve been getting harangued constantly by this fanatic, Nadir, who is now sending me ultimatums.
retract your statement before it is too late
Hi PZ –
A major Islamic channel has asked me to
document your flip-flop, under the spotlight
of investigation, you answered in the negative
to the question of scientific errors in the Quran.
We have it ALL ON TAPE. Only upon knowing
about the Islamic promotion, you flip flopped.
This latest statement was NOT motivated by
the objective pursuit of science, but rather polemics.Regarding your NEW scientific error claim:
The Quran does NOT state that embryos were poofed into existence
with bones and flesh fully formed. If you think that anyone is going to
go for this, you are sadly mistaken. This is nothing more than a dishonest
malicious and nefarious interpretation being imposed upon the text. And you will be exposed.IF you think, there is any fool out there who will buy into this, you are mistaken.
Retract this statement by this afternoon on your blog.
Ooooh. A major Islamic channel is going to talk about me.
I did not “flip flop” on anything, nor was I under any illusions that I was not talking to a group of Islamists. It was rather obvious. They were not undercover, and were quite open about their perspective.
What he thinks is a new scientific error claim was merely recognition of their own post hoc rationalizations. One group of Muslims is telling me that there’s a clear sequential progression in development, with bones first, then muscles, and then when I point out that isn’t true, they try to tell me they’re formed at the same time, even though the text in the Quran states a sequence.
I really don’t care. It’s two fucking sentences in a holy book. Don’t try to tell me there’s some deep insight into embryology there; it’s a couple of broad guesses by people who didn’t have microscopes or any knowledge of even cell theory, so I’m going to reject any suggestion that it’s scientifically accurate.
Nominative determinism rides again! His parents undoubtedly expected better of their precious child.
A small edit in keeping with Strunk & White’s dictum, “Omit needless words”: “Never, ever waste your time with
an Islamica fundamentalist.”but, but, they have it all on tape!!!!!
Can you secretly hook them up with a chat-bot (easyPZ-bot?) to keep them busy and off your list of things to give a fuck about?
I am not surprised that islamists interacted with P Z in bad faith.
Ex-muslims everywhere could have told you the major groups of islam* dial the bad parts of religion to eleven. There are muslims who want to change the religion in a more modern direction but they are outnumbered.
Back in 2019 I spent months mapping contradictions and obvious absurdities in the koran and hadith, intended as backround for a compendium for people debating muslims in general and islamists in particular.
-Eventually, I realised I could not put the stuff on internet since it contained things that were so revolting and incriminating that bona fide xenophobes were bound to use it as a weapon against people with a muslim background.
.
The irony is, the majority of ordinary muslims – who I assume are neither worse not better than any ordinary Joe- do not know about the dreck in their own holy scriptures: the stuff is in arabic, and archaic arabic at that.
And if you criticize the stuff the imams just claim the translation is wrong. The imams know what scripture says but don’t care or are fearful of the backlash if they advocate a less fundie approach.
The dawa people who want to recruit new converts rarely show any integrity and will sweep dirt under the carpet until the convert is too invested to back out (Christian missionaries are the same but rarely advocate the death penalty for converts who change their mind).
*There are milder minority groups within islam, but they lack influence nor do they get wealthy backing from the gulf kingdoms.
The ‘Golden age’ coincides with the intellectual freedom when “Mutazilites” interpreted the scriptures in a non-literal manner, but that was 1000 years ago.