I unlimbered my rusty, drugged-up voice to answer a really simple question today. Unfortunately, it’s the same goddamn stupid question I get from Muslim apologists all the time, and they don’t listen to the answer anyway, but I’ve been practically voiceless for a few weeks, so this was an excuse to, you know, speak again.
I can’t believe I have to start lecturing again in a week and a half.
Transcript below:
Hey, friends —
I’ve been out of it for a while, laid up on steroids and painkillers for the past week or two. I got this email question several days ago, though, and wanted to reply with a video, because I get this kind of question so goddamn often. Just out of the blue I get this kind of email every few weeks.
I’m a 16-year-old science-loving young man, my name is Grigor. I would like to ask you a question, this is something I have heard from people around me and especially from the general public, and I wonder if it is true. “Do bones and flesh exist at the same time?” This is my question, and I would be very happy if you could explain it to me in a basic embryological way.
A little background on why I’m frequently asked this stupid question: many years ago I was confronted by some Muslim fanatics on a street corner in Dublin, and they thought they’d dazzle me with an amazing insight from the Koran that would prove the truth of their religion. They recited this at me:
We created man from an essence of clay, then We placed him as a drop of fluid in a safe place. Then We made that drop of fluid into a clinging form, and then We made that form into a lump of flesh, and We made that lump into bones, and We clothed those bones with flesh, and later We made him into other forms.
The key point they tried to make was that Mohammed accurately and precisely summarized embryonic development with those words, “We made that lump into bones, and We clothed those bones with flesh.”
No. Just no. It’s a vague description of a process, not very precise at all, and as a sequence, it is incorrect. I said so. It was recorded on video, and ever since I’ve been getting these incredulous nonsensical requests that I explain myself further. It’s mildly infuriating. All you have to do is google bone and muscle development and you can see that that simplistic Islamic description is inadequate. There is no sequential development of bones, then flesh — everything happens in parallel.
Gastrulation produces a mesodermal tissue, generally undifferentiated, largely made up of mesenchyme, a collection of loose, migrating cells in a slimy matrix. This isn’t bone. It isn’t muscle. These cells aggregate into structures called somites — still not muscle or bone — which eventually segregate into tissues called sclerotome, which will form cartilage, myotome, which will form muscle, as well as dermatome, the dermis, and syndotome, tendons. I’m not currently a big fan of tendons.
They’re not bone or muscle yet. The myotomes will differentiate into skeletal muscle, and at the same time, bone will form by condensation in the sclerotome and also in the dermatome. It’s all a complex pattern of interacting tissues and progressive, branching differentiation, and I’m sorry, but Mohammed wasn’t even close, and Grigor, if you were actually interested in science rather than playing games to rationalize your simplistic religious beliefs, you’d open a textbook rather than begging people on the internet to make excuses for you. Yes. Bones and flesh exist at the same time. It’s that simple. Mohammed was wrong. It’s that simple, too.
What is flesh?
I’ve been using “meat computer” literally. What is meat?
@1
https://web.archive.org/web/20190501130711/http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/
So why are there still monkeys??!?
@ Alan: Thank you so much, I havent seen that one in decades.
It is a tragedy that goes back a long way.
For various reasons, since the Mutazilites lost influence and the Caliphate of Cordoba ceased to be 1000 years ago, the traditionalists and the mystic branches of islam have been fighting outbreaks of what we would call ‘modern thinking’ as being apostasy.
The muslims that dare think for themselves deserve our respect, because they risk social ostracism and in some countries, death.
Thank you Alan- it was the first time I read this explanation of Fermi’s paradox.
In my more pessimistic moments I think this anti-science nonsense, coming from all directions including religious and political, is going to usher in a new dark age, just as we need to deal with climate change and pandemics.
This nonsense is based on the 13th edition of Keith Moore’s embryology text, the developing human. It was a special edition with “Islamic” additions published by Sordid Arabia.
The additions were not Moore’s. They were done by a Muslim named Abdul Majeed al-Zindani. He got part way through biology and chemistry at an Egyptian university before switching to religious studies which he didn’t complete.
I’ve actually read the book and it’s full of nonsense like that. Among other things he replaces the 23 Carnegie stages of embryological development, the product of over a century of research with four Qur’anic based stages because, no surprises, the Carnegie stages are too complicated.
Zindani went on to head a university in Yemen, well funded by Saudi money, devoted to the “scientific” study of the Qur’an.
A few years ago I very cheekily submitted a paper critiquing Zindani’s additions to Moore’s textbook to a conference hosted by a reasonably progressive Muslim think tank. It has actually done a lot of good work countering some of the more extremist views that were proposed to be enacted as laws.
No surprises that the paper was rejected but I later discovered it wasn’t that they didn’t like it. It turned out one of the review panel members was an associate of Zindani.
Yeah, Moore was a smart guy who also said a lot of smart things…but his willingness to indulge the Saudis was a huge black mark on his reputation. He could have pushed back, he could have pointed out how much scientific nonsense was in the Koran, but he didn’t — I presume the Saudi money was too great a temptation.
When I was invited to speak in Istanbul about a decade ago, I turned it down because I knew I’d never be able to say anything nice about the religion there, and I’d probably get thrown into a Turkish prison.
@2. Alan G. Humphrey : Thanks for that.
.***
Good clip, thanks and hope you feel better soon. I’m wondering where Stem Cells fit in here? Not a biologist but I thought you started with stem cells and they then developed into all the flesh, bones, cartilige, nerves, etc.. Where do they fit in here please – do they come earlier still or are they another name for the what-ya-ma-call-its* here? (Asked in comments there too FWIW.).
.* Mesodermal tissue? Mesenchyme? Somites? All of the above?
He could have pushed back, he could have pointed out how much scientific nonsense was in the Koran, but he didn’t — I presume the Saudi money was too great a temptation.
If I was feeling charitable, I could guess that he figured if he didn’t take their money, someone else would, and the book would get written anyway; so why not take the money and do the job as intelligently and honestly as the client allows? Not sure if that’s a good excuse, but that might have been his reason/rationalization.
@11 Ah yes, the age old excuse of the drug dealer. Don’t be charitable.
nomdeplume, Raging Bee explicitly noted that he was not being charitable, but makes a good point nonetheless.
(Dunno about the loaded term ‘excuse’, better to have used ‘rationalisation’)
—
Comparing allowing additions to one’s textbook in a particular market with pushing drugs is homeopathic.
As in, no substance left after when the metaphor is exhausted.
I know it’s supposed to allude to the opium of the masses blah blah, but it’s such a bloody reach! Nah. He allowed it to be used for propaganda purposes, he did not do it himself.
cf. https://islampapers.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/mooreforward70.jpg
No, John, it was a reference to the idea “if he didn’t take their money, someone else would”.
PZ@9
Do you like movies about gladiators?
nomdeplume:
Writing “the drug dealer” has nothing to do with drugs.
It was merely the example that came to your mind, it had no other significance.
Fair enough. I overthought it, thought it was an allusion.
Got it.
Speaking of drugs, certain sects of Christianity as well as islam (as a whole) bans alchohol.
While I do not particularly like the stuff (and it is carcinogenic) , I am willing to raise a beer as a toast to PZs’ quick recovery. Upsetting the religious bigots is a bonus.
Being a (part-time) Heathen, I’ll raise a horn of honey-apple-pear-lemon-ginger mead to PZ’s quick recovery.
@5 birgerjohansson
The thinking part didn’t go very well if you’re still muslim afterwards.
erik333,
I guess you’d say the same about Copernicus, Brahe, Galileo, Kepler, Newton (OK, he seems to have been a unitarian heretic), Faraday, Priestly, Cuvier, Maxwell… Doubtless you’re a better thinker than any of them.
erik333 @20:
I think Abdus Salam‘s thinking went pretty well. Of course, some antitheists would just say he hadn’t thought hard enough, or that he was ‘compartmentalizing’ or some such rot. And many Muslims would say he wasn’t really a Muslim, since he was an Ahmadi. And he liked the odd dram of single malt.
Liar.
Is what true, Grigor? You’re asking a question … questions are not true or false, moron.
You know that you have both bones and flesh, you dishonest cretin. You’re too stupid to even ask a coherent question.
Pessimistic? Pshaw. It’s already too late. Kiss your ass goodbye. Things are not going to go well … here in the U.S., odds are that Donald Trump will win the Presidency from prison (outdoing Eugene V. Debs) and then free himself (no pardon is even needed).
BTW, most of the sympathy I see about Lehaina comes from people who have vacationed there, while not even mentioning global warming. They have expressed no such sympathy for the vast misery in southern Asia.
Lahaina
@ Jim Balter : Defeatism isn’t going to help. Trump lost before, he’s increasingly disgraced and facing jail.
I refuse to believe that all is totally lost just yet although clearly we – globally – are in for massive pain and a lot of global overheating is now locked in. The sooner we act and we more significantly we act the better still even with that and even now.
@PZ Myers : Thanks for your answer on the clip.
Again, much appreciated.