The IERA, that group of Mohammed apologists who claim repeatedly that the Quran is full of amazing scientific truths that prove the truth of its magical claims, has long been promoting video recordings of Western scientists recruited for an Islamic conference 30 years ago. These scientists were caught on tape claiming that the only way the Quran could contain this information was by divine intervention.
Well, one of them, William Hay, has been tracked down and asked about those statements. It turns out he was quote-mined and edited and his words twisted around. Why am I not surprised?
I’ve also got a copy of Hamza Tzortzis’s new embryology paper that purports to show the amazing and miraculous scientific revelations of the Quran with respect to scientifically confirmed embryology. It’s total bullshit, and actually shows the puerile shallowness of the Quran to good effect. I’ll say more about that later, but right now I’ve got a headache-inducing pile of work to get done.
Why am I not surprised?
Shouldn’t there be some kind of rule that quotations from scientists must have dates attached. I’m sick of creationists quoting some scientist or other from fifty or sixty years ago about how we don’t know how something evolved, ignoring that a fuckton of solid scientific research since then has provided the answer.
Xian creationist bullshitters aid and abet the hideous distortions produced by the Quran’s belligerent apologists, partly because so many Muslims are creationists and lap up the IDiots’ distortions of science.
They all hate the usual standards for evidence in science. So why would any of them treat someone’s words with any honesty? Leave out all of the caveats, of course, because surely they don’t affect the truth of the Quran anyhow.
Does religion poison everything? I don’t know, but holding to these wretched ancient texts regardless of how vile and wrong they are poisons the rhetoric of Cameron and Islamists alike.
Glen Davidson
If only Dan Barker could have produced William Hay (ala Woody Allen & Marshall McLuhan) when he debated Tzortzis recently.
Can you really blame them for scrambling to find any shred of validation? Yeah, I guess you can.
Anything in the name of a deity can be, and frequently will be, justified through crappy rationalization.
I had already seen this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClHuG880pqU Good work.
There are more than just Hay who got tricked.
See Alfred Kroner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClHuG880pqU
Taner Edis (who grew up in Turkey) has an excellent in-depth discussion about this in his book “An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam”.
One of the instances he cites is that it is a common “urban myth” (I guess you could term it) in Muslim lands that the astronauts who first landed on the moon heard a strange sound that later they found out was the Muslim call to prayer.
I didn’t have time to watch the video, so Hay may mention this, but it is worth putting out there.
A similar thing happened to me with the so-called ‘dissent from Darwin’ signature list. As a young, naive assistant professor, I signed the statement under false pretenses, having no idea of the ultimate purpose of the creationist organizers. (I thought the purpose was to encourage kids to think and question ideas.) The page didn’t say “dissent from Darwin” either…I would have never signed that. Even looking back at the statement today, (that natural selection and random mutation alone don’t explain all of life’s diversity), that is a statement that I agree with at face value, e.g. there are other evolutionary mechanisms. It doesn’t mean one disagrees with evolutionary theory. But, it is taken to mean just that by creationists. So now I am labelled a ‘dissenter from Darwin’, when in reality I am an avid supporter of science (including evolution) education. I’ve asked to have my name removed…to no avail.
I seen the rationalizer on the magic sandwich show. It doesn’t surprise me at all that muslims or any other religious organization would stoop to this level to try and promote their shit.
So, theist fundies lied? Not exactly a huge surprise…
These are the same tactics that xian liars forJeebus have been using for years. The only novelty value is that, this time, the deceitful cretins trying to quote mine scientists to back up their irrational delusions happen to be muslims.
I was going to say that perhaps they just don’t understand context, thinking words are magical at all.
Then I remembered how often they invoke context to explain away the parts of scripture that contradict their interpretations. It’s a general lack of integrity.
Of course women don’t have souls. That goes without saying. And of course, neither do men.
#10 ParticleMan
DonExodus2 reviewed this list and came to the conclusion that many of the scientists listed were duped as you were.
“List of Scientists Rejecting Evolution – Do they really?”
http://www.youtube.com/user/DonExodus2#p/search/1/Ty1Bo6GmPqM
“These scientists were caught on tape claiming that the only way the Quran could contain this information was by divine intervention.”
Since there’s never been a shred of evidence anywhere anytime for divine intervention, I take that to mean one more mess of gobbledygook from one of the Abrahamic religions is, simply, gobbledygook. Talking about gobbledygook all day long does not diminish its gobbledegookness.
@#13,
Jehova’s Witnesses now have a translation of the bible which does exactly that – it violently reworks the material whenever necessary to have the result reflect their
particularidiot views.Since the religious fundies claim all scientists are liars why are they interested in what they say?
Brownian @ 13;
I think that there are fundies out there so acclimatised to lying that if they actually forced themselves to tell the truth they would come out in hives.
On the point of Hamza’s explanation of Quran embryology, even he tacitly admits the whole thing is meaningless:
Embarrassing.
iERA have promoted miracle claims but the only “miracle scientist” I have ever heard iERA cite is Keith Moore.
You will find lots of other pro-Islamic websites and YouTube channels which promote these scientists’ – which for some reason seem reluctant to remove quotes of Alfred Kroner and William Hay despite my interviews showing clearly that they are misrepresenting their opinions.
Who’d have thought it eh?
Maybe people don’t realise that this BS has a name.
Bucailleism/Bucaillism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Bucaille
and here http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Bucailleism
BTW: There is Islamic text clearly showing that Muhammad believed women had souls – otherwise how could most of the occupants of hell be women for disobeying their husbands?
I’ve always wanted to ask these people: can you show me something in the Koran that science doesn’t know yet but will eventually catch up on?
It’s funny that they only ‘know’ the fact after science has confirmed it and rarely the other way round.
As TheRationalizer says, iERA haven’t used these clips as far as I’m aware. Their head of research, Hamza Tzortzis, recently said something to the effect that Keith Moore renounced his earlier claims, and he encouraged Muslims not to cite Keith Moore.
Hamza’s embryology paper seems to be an attempt to undo the damage to the Quran’s reputation iERA inadvertantly caused in Dublin. It’s obvious when reading that it’s a very silly and misleading paper in more ways than I can express here, and misses the big picture that an omniscient god would forsee that his description would later arouse deep skepticism, and could even ensure there was already ideal vocabulary for the job.
iERA are raising funds to send it to thousands of academics, who will send it to the bin, but it’ll also be used in dawah and the world can do without yet more religious pseudoscience.
In response to some of the criticism he now has version 1.1 on his site. He removed wrong statements about Galen and on page 33 acknowledges that there does exist a separate Arabic word for cartilage (he doesn’t say what it is so people can check – it’s ghurdoof – Lane’s lexicon .studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume6/00000032.pdf and 00000033.pdf).
He makes the assertion that “The Arabic word for cartilage refers to a type of cartilage that is not a precursor to bones, but rather remains as flexible connective tissue.”
Is he right that the pre-ossified cartilage is a different type to cartilage in the ear, nose etc or did he make that up? My impression was that it’s the surrounding stuff that releases osteoblasts and causes a different end result.
Religious people making false claims? What next?
Do these scientists have any legal recourse when they are purposely misquoted?
I’m sure Mohammad and his followers knew a lot about human fetal development, since they likely spent a good bit of time slitting open “unbelieving” pregnant women.
> they likely spent a good bit of time slitting open “unbelieving” pregnant women.
I’m not so sure they did, did they? Do you have any evidence for this?
@ # 23:
Have things ever been “the other way around?