Suddenly, it resonates with me.
I’ve also been sent these images of spectacular wall art. I want one. Somehow, though, I doubt that I’ll be able to convince the TrophyWife™ that it’s worth $950.
Lauren Rose went to vote yesterday, wearing a t-shirt that read “liberal anti-theist”. Her polling place was in a church (as is mine, as are a great many polling places across the country), and the poll-workers tried to get her to cover up, and when she refused, started loudly praying for her. All this at a polling place splattered with Republican campaign signs.
This is something that ought to change. Why are the polling places so dominated by churches? It’s about the only time I ever have to enter one of those temples to hate and ignorance, and I’d rather not go at all, especially if they’re going to make my refusal to abide by their superstition a point of contention. My polling place is right across the street from the public school; why not use meeting rooms there?
I’ve run into this particular phenomenon many times: the True Believer in some musty ancient mythology tells me that his superstition is true, because it accurately described some relatively modern discovery in science long before secular scientists worked it out. It’s always some appallingly stupid interpretation of a vaguely useless piece of text that wouldn’t have made any sense until it was retrofitted to modern science. My particular field of developmental biology has been particularly afflicted with this nonsense, thanks to one man, Dr. Keith L. Moore, of the University of Toronto. He’s the author or co-author on several widely used textbooks in anatomy and embryology — and they are good and useful books! — but he’s also an idiot. He has published ridiculous claims that the Qur’an contains inexplicably detailed descriptions of the stages of human development, implying some sort of divine source of information.
I’ve mentioned this before. For instance, the old book claims that at one point the embryo looks like a piece of chewed gum, or mudghah, and Moore announces, “by golly, it does, sorta”, throwing away all the knowledge we have about the structure and appearance of the actual embryo, which is not a chewed lump. I’ve actually seen these kooks show pictures of a piece of gum and an embryo and declare that they are similar. It’s insane. It’s pareidolia run amuck and swamping out actual scientific information for the sake of propping up useless superstitions.
Here’s Moore himself, endorsing the divinity of Allah on the basis of mudghah.
You may not have heard of him before, but I regularly get email from Muslims telling me that as a developmental biologist, I ought to follow Islam because of its insights into embryology, which don’t exist. Thanks, Dr Moore, you dumbass.
Well, now the Muslim cranks have another coup, having persuaded some other dumbasses to publish an appallingly bad paper in the International Journal of Cardiology, a credible peer-reviewed journal. Or, at least, formerly credible.
The paper is disgracefully bad. It’s basically a compendium of an assortment of references to anatomy and health from the Qur’an, endorsing them as accurate sources of information. For instance, the Qur’an prescribes three techniques for healing, “honey, cupping, and cauterization,” and gosh, we now know that “Honey contains the therapeutic contents sugars, vitamins, anti-microbials, among other things”!
Are you impressed yet?
Since this is a cardiology journal, the article also finds it necessary to waste the readers’ time with blather about blood and arteries. Here’s an example of the Prophet’s profound knowledge of the circulatory system.
Another great vessel mentioned in the Qur’an is the Al-Aatín or aorta “We would certainly have seized his right hand and cut off his Al-Watín,” [20]. Al-Watín has been translated into different, yet similar words, including “aorta”, “life-artery”, and simply “artery”. This verse is taken to mean that if the Prophet Mohammed was lying about the teachings of God, then God would have grabbed the Prophet Mohammad’s arm and cut a vital artery, certainly killing Mohammad. This verse confirms that 1. Blood was indeed viewed as a vehicle for life and 2. The artery directly leading from the heart is vital to survival. By analyzing the different translations and exegesis of Al-Watín, it can be safely assumed that it is the aorta that the author of the Qur’an is referring to in this verse.
Hmmm. So a warlike society that had many soldiers running about chopping into people with swords was aware that cutting major arteries would lead to rapid blood loss and death. I have no idea how they could have figured that out without an omniscient god whispering the explanation into the ears of priests.
The holy book also talks about heart disease, something else a readership of cardiologists would find interesting. Does this sound like well-informed medicine to you?
The Qur’an shares with the Hadeeth a metaphorical description of the heart as a possessor of emotional faculties, thus giving the heart many characteristics that modern science attributes to the brain. As is popularly stated in Islamic culture, every action is dependent upon intentions, and “…what counts is [to God] the intention of your hearts…”. These actions, whether “good” or “bad” determine the health of the heart, namely if it is a sound or diseased heart. A diseased heart is one filled with qualities such as doubt, hypocrisy, and ignorance among many others. Possessors of such qualities have a “hardened,” diseased heart. Other malaise qualities contributing to a diseased heart includes blasphemy, rejection of truth, deviation, sin, corruption, aggressiveness, negligence, fear, anger, and jealousy, among others.
The authors of the Qur’an and of this paper seem to have confused poetic metaphor with science.
Yeah, the article also repeats Moore’s nonsense about embryology. There’s much, much more: read the original paper for yourself, or this excellent critique that also points out all the conveniently omitted parts where the Qur’an gets everything completely wrong.
How did this crap manage to get published? Once again, we have a disgraceful failure of peer-review to weed out obvious religious propaganda, allowing an Islamic tract to appear under the guise of a scientific article. Just the fact that the references consist almost entirely of citations to pages of the Qur’an ought to have triggered some concern. I’d like to know what went wrong in the reviewing process that allowed garbage like this to make it onto the pages of the International Journal of Cardiology. Write to the editor and demand an accounting; also make them squirm in embarrassment and appreciate the damage that has been done to their credibility.
And remember: ancient holy books are sources of lies and misinformation, not science.
Loukas M, et al, The heart and cardiovascular system in the Qur’an and Hadeeth, Int J Cardiol (2009), doi:10.1016/j. ijcard.2009.05.011
The election last night wasn’t as bad as it could have been — the teabaggers who’d received much ridicule, Angle and O’Donnell and probably Miller, were defeated (there’s a lesson there, I think) — but sanity did not win out, and the Republicans have taken over the US House, and here in Minnesota, they’ve taken control of both the state house and senate — Democrats have probably won the governorship, but it’s so close that there’s going to be a recount. These next few years are going to be extraordinarily painful. Personally, I’m going to take a hit: the Republicans will do their best to gut education in this state, and while I’ve already taken a pay cut this year, I expect I’ll be seeing more cuts in the future.
It’s not surprising that Democrats lost ground. The economy sucks, which means many people are flailing about for change, and we have to admit it: the Democrats are uninspiring, boring, and unfocused. They can’t deliver a strong message that makes a case for why we should continue to vote for them, and I know in my case that when I went into the election booth, I was simply making an anti-Rethuglican vote; with the exception of a few local candidates, I was not excited about any of the Democrats here.
What really makes me despair, though, is that I can guess exactly how the Democrats will respond to this drubbing. Instead of refocusing on the liberal and progressive values that ought to be their main message, they’re going to turtle up. They do it every time. Instead of trying to distinguish themselves from the loonies on the right, they’ll all move closer to what they’ll call “moderate”, but is actually more of a conservative right-wing position. And the next election will be even worse.
Unless somebody on our side wakes up and realizes that they’re in a fight, and that conciliatory measures are not called for. I’m looking at you, Obama. But somehow, I don’t think he’s the right man for the job.
By request, this open thread is dedicated exclusively to non-political topics. Let’s have a race between this one and the political thread and see which can gather the most comments overnight!
The loser thread will be closed tomorrow morning.
We shall be gnashing our teeth soon enough, so I’m opening a new instance of the constant thread dedicated to all your grousing about the elections. I already did my part and voted a straight Democratic slate, growling at every Rethuglican candidate on the ballot. Too bad that I know exactly how the vote in rural Minnesota will go.
In case there is a diversity of political opinion here, I provide three videos to cover the spectrum. And because some people don’t want to talk about politics at all, here’s an apolitical thread.
Republicans!
Moderates!
Socialists!
(Notice how I’ve cunningly selected three videos that all manage to mock the wingnuts.)
(Current totals: 11,289 entries with 1,171,609 comments.)
It’s election day here in the US, but far be it for me to tell you how to vote.
I’ll let HP do it for me.
As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.
Trust me, he knew his distorted dream-cosmoses, too.
I had no idea. The poor bigot wrote that nasty anti-gay screed that I criticized, and the Examiner decided that his plagiarizing hateful ways were not exactly what they wanted to promote.
He has complained on his blog about how Christians are a persecuted minority, starring Daniel Spratlin as Christ.
You can berate and belittle any Christian or Christian belief you want but if you do it to a Muslim, Jew, homosexual, black person, etc. you are called a vast array of vitriolic names such as bigot, hater, inciter of violence, intolerant, religious nut, etc.
I learned this first hand a couple of weeks ago. I used to (note the past tense) work as an independent contractor writing on Reformed theology for Examiner.com. Why do I say “used to”? Well, my last article linked to Albert Mohler’s article regarding the suicide of a gay Rutger’s student. Apparently you just aren’t able to express your view any view that is critical of another’s view unless that view being criticized has anything to do with Christianity. This means being even the least bit critical of the sin called homosexuality will lead to a barrage of outlandish claims, threats of physical violence and a myriad of other consequences by those who claim that you are the one with the problem.
Take, for example, a man that I’d never heard of (thanks be to God) by the name of PZ Myers. He just couldn’t stand by why I actually had the audacity to speak ill of sin. He wrote this disjointed piece a couple of days after my post. (NOTE: This “man” is unable to engage in civil conversation so please be aware of vile language in his writing.) “Why is he so full of hate,” you may ask. Well, Johnny, when a person’s heart is so absolutely hardened to God, he will act like the heathen that he is. It is the way man is due to the Fall. It really shouldn’t surprise me but, then again, I always want to be surprised by sin in all its forms.
I guess I have to cut another notch in the handle of my cyberpistol.
My developmental class is still plugging away with some new entries.
Hannah writes about fetal alcohol syndrome and mosquito speciation.
Lisa writes about leopard camouflage and gene mapping.
Logan writes about hierarchical development in parasitic wasps and bicoid in flies.
Kele is still on hiatus. He’s got a senior seminar on the Y chromosome coming up.
Rev. Frost writes about Trisomy 22.
