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International Journal of Cardiology Hosts Islamic Superstition?

An article, published online in August 2009 in the International Journal of Cardiology^[1] appeals to superstition and pseudoscience Muslim style. The purpose of the article seems only to push a religious, spiritual agenda under the guise of being an historical account of what the authors of early Islamic mythology knew about human anatomy, etiology and pathology as they relate to diseases of the heart and cardiovascular system. The abstract of the article is freely available and reads:

Descriptions of the human anatomy derived from religious texts are often omitted from the medical literature. The present review aims to discuss the comments and commentaries made regarding the heart and cardiovascular system as found in the Qur’an and Hadeeth. Based on this review, it is clear that these early sources both had a good comprehension of these parts of the body.

There is, perhaps, good reason why medical literature omits anatomical descriptions derived from religious mythology: there are better, more reliable sources.

In the article’s introduction, the authors state:

within the Qur’an and Hadeeth are accurate descriptions of anatomical structures, surgical procedures, physiological characteristics, and medical remedies. In particular, prophylaxis of general diseases is emphasized by encouraging physical activity, herbal and organic remedies, and spiritual revitalization. Notably, within these two texts, is the emphasis on the heart and blood as both a vehicle for life and as an organ central to affecting emotion and attitude.

What’s really found in Islamic mythology is what’s generally found in most ancient mythology when it comes to discussions of the human heart. Mentions of an organ with a supernatural quality of seating the soul or being a spiritual center of the individual. When passages are talking about “disease” and “health” of the individual, it appears to be spiritual rather than physical. The authors of this paper admit to these metaphorical and “spiritual” usages of heart, indeed they spend four out of five paragraphs in the section of their paper designated “4.2 Heart” and only a single paragraph describing what they view as anatomical and physiological descriptions of the heart. One passage they quote from Islamic mythology is “[b]eware! There is a piece of flesh in the body if it remains healthy the whole body becomes healthy, and if it is diseased, the whole body becomes diseased.”

In this passage, the authors are guilty of looking at Iron Age mythology through the lens of space age common knowledge. From the point of view of a fourth century goat herder, a healthy heart meant living a pious life, and a diseased body was the individual consumed by their evil or immorality. This hadith is about the mythical angel Gabriel removing sin in the form of Satan from the inner being -the spiritual self- of Mohammed. The common thought of the period was that the heart was the center of “knowing” and “truth” and that if a demon were to dwell in a human, it would dwell in the heart. There is no more anatomical and pathological understanding of the human heart being displayed here than by Aztec kings and priests who removed the still-beating hearts of their sacrificial victims.

Loukas et al conclude their paper with:

The heart is extensively described as both an organ of psyche, intelligence, and emotion, as well as an important body of the organ that can be harmed such as exhibiting thrombi. An in-depth analysis of the contribution of Islamic medicine in anatomy, physiology, and health is severely lacking in the west and, if conducted, would uncover that discoveries made by European scientists were actually made centuries prior, within the vast Islamic empire.

I fail to see how the superstitious perspective of any mythology on the heart is important enough to be published in a scholarly journal of medical science such as this. It would make  a fine addition to any journal of religious studies or mythology. I would even see a valuable contribution to an historical journal since so much of human history is derived and influenced by mythology. The west, and science in general, should have little interest in what Bronze and Iron Age goat herders thought about human anatomy. There’s simply nothing that is revealed by Islamic mythology for them. Nor is there any indication that the authors of early Islamic mythology possessed knowledge of human anatomy that wasn’t already understood. Their mentions of the “heart” and other cardiovascular system components is related to “spiritual” health, morality, and piety not pathology or etiology.

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1. doi:10.1016 / j.ijcard.2009.05.011, the heart and cardiovascular system in the Qur’an and Hadeeth [↩]

February 3, 2010  Tags: Hadith, Health, Human anatomy, islam, Medicine, Physiology, Qur'an  Posted in: humanism, islam  No Comments

Frank Turek: Straw Man Warrior

Another Christian show captured by my DirecTV’s recorder. This time it is Frank Turek, spouting nonsense from his book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. He stood on a stage with all the high-tech audio/video found in most BFCs these days (BFC=”Big Fucking Church”). His audience looked on with a memorized lack of education, soaking up strawman after strawman argument regarding evolution, atheism, and life in general.

It was an hour long program and, as tempted as I am to refute it point by point, I’m going to just highlight a few things.

He starts by inventing his own definition for “worldview” -real definitions in use by academia today apparently aren’t to his liking and leave to many gaps. This is his main straw man: he re-shapes the definition of worldview in order to set up what he sees as the only appropriate worldview, which is his.

A worldview, according to Turek, is an explanation of why things are the way they are and “the true worldview must have explanatory power and scope to explain all of the pieces of the puzzle we call reality.” And he includes “10 things” that must be explained by any worldview.

First, this simply isn’t a definition of “worldview” that real academics use. At least not fully. What Turek is doing is limiting the definition of worldview to the narrow, bigoted range that his own worldview encompasses, while simultaneously poisoning the well (a type of ad hominem fallacy) by denigrating other ways of viewing the world as not “the true worldview.”

His “10 things” that “must be explained” are:

1. origin of the universe out of nothing
2. the extreme fine-tuning of the universe
3. origin of order and the 4 natural forces
4. origin of reason and laws of logic
5. the origin of the laws of mathematics
6. the origin of objective morality
7. origin and design of life and consciousness
8. the origin and design of new life forms
9. the origin of intelligence
10. origin of personality

He admits that a worldview can include other things as well, but these things, he insists, must be explained. He doesn’t, however, state that a worldview must support its explanations with evidence, so, by his own narrow and bigoted definition, goddidit works.

But the concept of “worldview” is one that is well discussed in philosophy and comes from the German term, Weltanschauung, which “denotes a comprehensive set of opinions, seen as an organic unity, about the world as the medium and exercise of human existence. Weltanschauung serves as a framework for generating various dimensions of human perception and experience like knowledge, politics, economics, religion, culture, science, and ethics^[1].”

According to Belgian philosopher Leo Apostle, a worldview should include, at minimum, these 6 things:

1. An explanation of the world
2. A futurology, answering the question “where are we heading?”
3. Values, answers to ethical questions: “What should we do?”
4. A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action.: “How should we attain our goals?”
5. An epistemology, or theory of knowledge. “What is true and false?”
6. An etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own “building blocks,” its origins and construction.

This seems a bit more like a comprehensive perspective on the world than simply explaining things by starting with a conclusion (goddidit) then asking questions with this answer pre-inserted.

But Turek’s goal isn’t to put forth his own cult of Christianity as “the true worldview” rather he seeks to create additional strawman arguments of evolution that he can knock down for his undereducated and gullible audience. Throughout the “10 things” list above, Turek takes about 2/3 of the program listing them and pointing out largely invented positions of evolution and science. Expectedly, he uses the terms “atheist” and “Darwinist” interchangeably throughout the program, again using the poisoning the well fallacy in his argumentation as if one can not believe in Christian superstitions as well as the fact of evolution.

Nearer the end of his presentation, Turek does what most creationist nutters with an audience do, which is quote mine scientists to distort their words. He does so with Richard Dawkins by quoting page 1 of The Blind Watchmaker:

“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of being designed for a purpose.”

He then rants on about how if things look designed they must be, using the “looks like a duck; quacks like a duck… ” joke. But he clearly doesn’t intend for his audience to actually pick up a Dawkins book to check the quote for themselves, which, in its original context is:

We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe. The universe that we know, of course, is a tiny fragment of the actual universe. There may be yet more complicated objects than us on other planets, and some of them may already know about us. But this doesn’t alter the point that I want to make. Complicated things, everywhere, deserve a very special kind of explanation. We want to know how they came into existence and why they are so complicated. The explanation, as I shall argue, is likely to be broadly the same for complicated things everywhere in the universe; the same for us, for chimpanzees, worms, oak trees and monsters from outer space. On the other hand, it will not be the same for what I shall call ’simple’ things, such as rocks, clouds, rivers, galaxies and quarks. These are the stuff of physics. Chimps  and dogs and bats and cockroaches and people andworms and dandelions and bacteria and galactic aliens are the stuff of biology.

The difference is one of complexity of design. Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. Physics is the study of simple things that do not tempt us to invoke design. At first sight, man-made artefacts like computers and cars will seem to provide exceptions. They are complicated and obviously designed for a purpose, yet they are not alive, and they are made of metal and plastic rather than of flesh and blood.

It has a far different context than the one Turek intended for his audience. The same is true for the Francis Crick quote he offered:

“The origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”

What Turek didn’t share with his audience was the name of the book, which was Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature^[2]. Nor did he share with them the words before and after the quote or that the text they reside in is a overwhelmingly in support of evolution. Here’s the proper quote with more context:

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions.

I could go on and on about the poor science, poor academics and poor philosophy being produced by Turek to his audience. They were drinking it like the Kool-Aid it is. But like I’ve said previously, these guys aren’t preaching to smart audiences. They pick their audiences very carefully and prefer to fill the seats in front of them with head nodding, side-hugging, kool-aid drinking believers who won’t ask uncomfortable questions.

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1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldview [↩]
2. Crick, Francis (1981). Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. New York: Simon and Shuster [↩]

February 1, 2010  Tags: Blind Watchmaker, Christianity, Epistemology, Ethics, Frank Turek, philosophy, Religion and Spirituality, Richard Dawkins  Posted in: evolution  No Comments

Jesus H. Carbine with a High-Power Scope

Once upon a time, The East India Company greased its rifle cartridges with pork or beef lard. This was bad for two reasons: 1) to load rifles in the 1800s, a rifleman had to bite the paper cartridge open and pour the powder in the breach, and 2) the rifleman for The East India Company was invariably either a Muslim or a Hindu, one of which would have a problem ingesting pork, the other beef. This, probably completely unintended faux paux of the East India Company is what likely became the final spark of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Now, a defense contractor, Trijcon, has manufactured and sold to the U.S. military rifle scopes that are encoded with bible verses as messages. No kidding. Forget the separation of church and state violation, what might the possible outcome be when so many Muslims realize that we’ve been training them on religious weaponry. What about the Muslims that we’re supposed to be defending and helping when they realize that we adorn our weapons with religious spells and incantations.

From ABC News:

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.” The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.

“Mikey” Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has stated that the little bible codes are wrong and unconstitutional.  ”It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” he said.

In addition, the ABC News report also states that Weinstein was told by servicemembers that there are military commanders who have claimed the sites are spiritually transformed into Jesus rifles.

Another bible verse used by Trijicon is “2COR4:6″, 2  Corinthians, Chapter 4, Verse 6, which reads, “for God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

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January 19, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

Secular Charity for Haiti

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has established a PayPal account under the name of Non-Believers Giving Aid to offer a method for anyone, believers or non-believers alike, to provide monetary assistance to the tragic survivors of the earthquake in Haiti.

I’ve blogged previously about secular charities and it looks like the RDF is using two of the charities I’ve always liked: Doctors Without Borders and The American Red Cross.

According to Michael Shermer:

“It’s all well and good to say that we nonbelievers are just as moral as believers (we are, but that’s a philosophical point) — actions count more than words and real donations are where the theoretical rubber meets the practical road. This is our time to pony up and show the world our true character.”
—Michael Shermer, Executive Director,
The Skeptics Society

I can get behind that. In fact, I’ll be making my PayPal donation tonight. I think atheists are more moral than the religious and I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

Won’t you?

(oh, and to my religious friends who read this blog from time to time, don’t let us atheists show you up! Click the link and donate! Or go through your own preferred method, but the tragedy that has befallen the gentle citizens of Haiti is bigger than the differences between the atheist and theist cultures.)

In just the first 24 hours $50,000.00 has been raised

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January 17, 2010  Tags: American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Haiti, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, Skeptics Society  Posted in: humanist  2 Comments

The psychology of atheism?

So I’m playing around with DirecTV’s search for a program feature and wonder what might come up if I typed in “atheist.” Sure enough, a single program populated in the list: “The Psychology of Atheism,” which was on a show hosted by R.C. Sproul.

So I scheduled it and promptly forgot about it.

Until I was looking at my recordings list and noticed it recorded this morning. It was only a half-hour show and, even though I knew Sproul was a Christian apologist and not likely to have anything rational to say, I decided I could stand it for 30 minutes.

The presentation actually began very rationally and sensible. He quoted some preeminent philosophers and made some very objective observations about the theist-atheist debate on whether or not a god exists. One of these (and I’m paraphrasing) was that we can all agree that the question of god is one that automatically comes with psychological baggage. I can agree with that.

He made a few observations like simply stating that without God, life would be meaningless (a la Kant) isn’t sufficient enough of an argument to say that a god exists. I can agree with that, obviously.

But then Sproul uses not logic, reason or scientific observation to arrive at his conclusion that a god -and not just any god but his God- exists! What then, does R.C. Sproul use to defend his position that a god, his God, exists?

The Apostle Paul.

I shit you not.

He makes the GIANT leap of moving from the question about the existence of a god to affirming that existence with the writings of an Iron Age misogynist. He interprets Paul as stating that the “denial of God” is a moral issue not an intellectual issue. Yet Sproul does nothing to create an intellectual link between the existence of a god in the universe and that god being his God; the god of Sproul’s own culture. And he has the gall to state it’s a “moral question” and makes an argument that atheists are immoral since they deny the “truth of God revealed in nature.”

And, no, Sproul doesn’t give an intellectual example of this “natural evidence” either. We are left to take it on faith that what he’s saying is true. What he’s saying about truth is true, that is.

This is coming from the guy who’s son was defrocked for tax fraud, identity theft, and “spiritual abuse” (whatever that means). Oh, and Jr. was a misogynist as well, referring to his wife as “barren” even though she already gave him 6 children. I’m betting the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Such presentations by apologists are never really intended for viewing or attendance by atheists and skeptics, however. They’re presentations probably designed with the primary intention of maintaining the flock and keeping the flock close, pointing out the dangers of thinking for yourself or asking the wrong questions, after all, those atheists are immoral and you don’t want to go down the path of immorality. Do you?

The flock and their shepherd.

Don’t forget, flock: the best shepherds eventually slaughter their flocks after fleecing them for years.

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January 14, 2010  Tags: atheism, Existence of God, god, morality  Posted in: Myths of Atheism  One Comment

Coffee pots, kettles, and several shades of black

I happened upon a Christian blog today in which the author was critical of a message on the Starbucks coffee cup he read:

We invite you to listen to your desires and to renew your hope. To see the world not as it is, but as it could be. Go ahead. Wish. It’s what makes the holidays the holidays

Now read his criticism:

Wishing, it says, is “what makes the holidays the holidays.” Try not to see reality, the world as it is. Wish for something else. That’s what the celebration is all about.

Doesn’t that seem sad to you? It does to me. Not bad, not evil, but sad. How does wishing help us to renew hope? Maybe by allowing us to imagine that things don’t have to be this way. Great reforms have been led by men and women who have said, “this is not good, and it can be changed.” These are dreamers, though—not wishers. They live their lives in pursuit of fulfilling those dreams. Wishes are passive. Without a wish-granter, like some lucky leprechaun or fairy godmother, they are poignant reminders that things are not as we would like them to be. Beyond that they do nothing.

My first thought was, “I agree.” 100%. It’s nice to wish for change and hope for the best, but those prepared for reality and willing to effect change through personal sacrifice are the members of society that get it done. Sometimes these are religious people. Sometimes they’re secular or even atheist. I always like it when I find a common ground with a religious person and this blogger clearly is. The title of his blog is Thinking Christian, so perhaps this implies he’s a Christian who thinks. That would be good.

Then it occurred to be, even before I left the paragraph above, that if you replace “wish” for “prayer,” you really haven’t changed the criticism. I don’t mind people who pray. I don’t even mind those that pray for change or pray for good fortune. As long as their prayers aren’t interfering with me time or imposing on me, they can have at it. And, as long as they’re willing to invest their own effort (personal sacrifice) and time to effect change, I can still respect the outcome.

To be fair, the blogger seemed to anticipate my argument above that compares “wishing” to “praying,” but he did a poor job of defending it. But, also to be fair, there’s little one can expect of a religious adherent in the way of defending prayer. The argument is bound to be circular and supernatural and, to date, never grounded in reality. Still, he ends his post with this:

My sadness is for those whose holidays are about what the coffee cup says they are: wishing the world was different. It is a cup that tastes of disappointments and empty hopes. In reality the holiday of Christmas is about God making the world different, full, and bright. It’s about hopes fulfilled and disappointments turned into joy.

The author both criticizes ineffectual wishing the world was different and then appeals to an ineffectual superstition to make the world different. The kettle has thus referred to the pot as blacker than he. Perhaps “Christian” in the blog title was an adjective and not a noun after all.

My “wish” for the holidays: that more people begin to think and rise above superstition. But we cannot just wish for this sort of thing. We must make efforts to spread inquiry and rational thought; reach out to those around us -inspire them to think and engage them in discussion and debate, and, where appropriate, push them into both.

Happy Holidays

December 23, 2009   Posted in: Uncategorized  One Comment

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-20

• Noticed my blog theme didn't render well in IE so I'm trying a new one. I like the flexible width of this one #
• @hemantmehta that would be @almightygod #
• @hemantmehta the least interesting is @christopherhitc -don't believe me? hitch has one tweet! #
• Yaaarrr! Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!
  Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile #

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September 20, 2009  Tags: atheism, atheist  Posted in: blogging  No Comments

Atheist Culture on Twitter

If you’re an atheist and not on Twitter, where have you been!?

The atheosphere is alive and well there, thriving in a see of @Tweets, RTs, and #tags (like #atheist, #atheism) which are handy ways to sort the “tweets” -short, 140 character micro-blog posts that announce what’s up to your followers and whoever picks up your tag.

And, like all good social media, there are polls. Check this one out:

As a social tool, Twitter is effective at getting the word out. The recent Iranian protests demonstrated this, so its natural, perhaps, that atheists who consider themselves activists in the cause of consciousness-raising have found themselves on Twitter and being followed. Closely.

One of my favorite bloggers, vjack of Atheist Revolution has over 1150 followers. Hemant Mehta of The Friendly Atheist has over 1900 and PZ Myers of Pharyngula has over 8450! Incidentally, Hemant is following PZ, who’s following Richard Dawkins, who has over 13,516 followers! Vjack and I are following all three.

In an on-line article with the Religion News Service^[1] Hemant was quoted as saying:

Twitter is tool a for understanding people’s experiences with atheism in different countries and a convenient medium for exchanging brief, efficient messages, especially for atheists who don’t have the time or energy to commit to a full-blown blog.

If you want some truly interesting people to follow, check out Richard Dawkins’ follows. For as many followers as he garnered, Dawkins is only following a handful -21 to be precise. To round out the Four Horsemen, Dennett’s following/follower ratio is 0/0; Sam Harris is 0/0; and Christopher Hitchens is 0/6860. Hitch has a single tweet! Among Dawkin’s 21 “following”, however, is Phil Plait, Adam Savage, PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, and “David” who’s Twitter page is “Beeritforward” and who claims to tweet each time he takes a drink!

I recommend the RNS article, Atheists put their faith in Twitter. Its a good read.

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1. Atheists put their faith in Twitter, S.J. Velasquez [↩]

September 15, 2009  Tags: Adam Savage, atheism, christopher hitchens, Phil Plait, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, sam harris, twitter  Posted in: Atheosphere, blogging  2 Comments

Yet another theme change…

I noticed that the previous theme wasn’t loading right in some Internet Explorer windows and it occasionally took a while to load. Plus I also thought the text area was just too narrow.

Then I stumbled on this gem, which is simple and flexible in its style and is also flexible in its width. If you resize your browser, the theme will adjust.

I have a couple more pages I’d like to add along the menu halo along the top, namely a list of articles already posted here. If anyone knows of a plugin that does this, let me know.

I do want to point out the link above that says “Godless Search.” If you click it, you’ll see a searchbar for Google that I have set up which searches several dozen atheist and freethinker sites, helping you narrow down search terms to these sites. Try it out! If there’s an interest, I’ll publish the list of sites/domains and accept additions or suggestions. I have it on my iGoogle page and use it all the time.

September 14, 2009   Posted in: blogging  No Comments

Creation is too hot to handle

Jeremy Thomas, the producer of The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, has a new film debuting Sept. 25th but you won’t see it in the United States. If you’re in the U.K., however, you should have no problem. Ditto Australia and the rest of the world.

The film? Creation. It’s about a young English naturalist (Paul Bettany -Silas of The Da Vinci Code) who struggles with his faith following the death of his 10 year old daughter Annie (Martha West), sharing the torment of that loss with his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly -Bettany’s real-life spouse and acclaimed actor) who remains deeply religious.

Oh, did I mention that young English naturalist’s name is non other than Charles Darwin?

And why isn’t the film also debuting in the U.S. in September?

The answer, as I’m sure you might suspect is that it hasn’t found a distributor in the nation where only 39% of the populace publicly accepts the fact of evolution -where a full one-third of the population is so fully superstitious as to believe that the writings of Bronze and Iron Age goat-herders are literally true.

It isn’t that any Christian uprising has threatened to boycott the movie should it be shown on U.S. screens (that might actually ensure enough free publicity to actually make distributing it lucrative). Instead, it seems that the U.S. distributors simply view the prospect as a potential loss in a nation so superstitious and backward as ours.

Let me leave you with the trailer:

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

“You’ve killed God, sir!”

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September 12, 2009  Tags: Charles Darwin  Posted in: Culture Wars, evolution  No Comments

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