UnbreakableMJ/science

Quarks and the Qur'an

From the page: Mohammad Ali Shomali's clerical robes are immaculate, his manner urbane. Fluent in English, with a Ph.D. from Britain's Manchester University, he spends his days in the holy city of Qum studying advanced stem-cell research and the mapping of the genome. Shomali, at 44, is clearly not your run-of-the-mill mullah, even if he insists that he is. "We live in a religious country with a religious government," says the turbaned Shia cleric, "so we have to know what our religion tells us about modern issues." Along with hundreds of other mullahs in Qum, Shomali is at work trying to define an Islamic context for advanced scientific work from nanos to, yes, nuclear technology.

Those who suspect Iran of clandestine weapons programs might imagine all sorts of disturbing scenarios conjured by the intense interest these mullahs take in science. Doomsday scenarios about Islamic zealots with apocalyptic weapons are an easy sell on American talk radio. But Shomali looks a little puzzled by such propositions. "We want to be at the forefront of scientific and technological advancements in the world, and that includes nuclear technology," he says. But he insists that the ethical constraints imposed by religion are vital, too. "When our Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei says that building, possessing and using nuclear weapons is forbidden," Shomali explains, "you have to be sure that we are not going to do that. Otherwise our Supreme Leader would lose his credibility and we would no longer trust him as a leader."

Shomali's own specialty is bioethics and environmental ethics. He is also the head of the religious department in the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, which is housed in a large building made with the same yellow bricks that are used to build religious schools in Qum. Verses from the Qur'an written on turquoise tiles adorn the façade. Yet nothing about the place or its history is quite what an outsider would expect. Its founder in 1991 and still its guiding light is the archconservative Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi [known for espousing complete isolation from Western influences and a return to the more unyielding days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution]. Whole treatises have been written in the West about Yazdi as the mystical mentor of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, perhaps even the inspiration for an apocalyptic vision tied to the second coming of the lost imam. Yet the institute's primary concerns are not about how the world will end so much as how the Islamic regime can adapt the fast-moving scientific and technological developments of the 21st century to its own needs.

Before the revolution that overthrew them, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and his father before him had seen themselves as great modernizers. They treated the religiously devout as retrograde and called the Shia clerics by the pejorative name aakhoonds: flea-infested zealots whose idea of high technology was the abacus. In those days, about 200,000 people lived in Qum. There was only one major seminary here, plus a few small religious schools. Millions of Iranian pilgrims came every year to visit the shrine of Masouma, the sister of the Shia saint Imam Reza, but they rarely lingered. Qum was a dusty, crumbling town that seemed decades, if not centuries, behind the fast-growing, fast-paced capital, Tehran. (continued below..)

Darwin's Legacy Confirmed on the 200th
Anniversary of His Birth



150 years ago, Darwin said that there was not even one single transitional form fossil. Not even one single transitional fossil exists after 150 years. According to Darwin, Darwinism is finished.

In 1859, 150 years ago, Darwin said the following in his book the Origin of Species:

WHY, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, DO WE NOT EVERYWHERE SEE INNUMERABLE TRANSITIONAL FORMS? Why is not all nature In confusIon instead of the species being, as we see them, WELL DEFINED?

INNUMERABLE TRANSITIONAL FORMS MUST HAVE EXISTED, WHY DO WE NOT FIND THEM EMBEDDED IN COUNTLESS NUMBERS IN THE CRUST OF THE EARTH?

WHY THEN IS NOT EVERY GEOLOGICAL FORMATION AND EVERY STRATUM FULL OF SUCH INTERMEDIATE LINKS?
Geology assuredly DOES NOT REVEAL any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, IS THE MOST OBVIOUS AND GRAVEST OBJECTION WHICH CAN BE URGED AGAINST MY THEORY. (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp. 172, 280)

Darwin's words he uttered 150 years ago have now come true!

Now, as Darwin said in the 19th century, there is actually NO SUCH THING AS A TRANSITIONAL FORM.

More than 100 million fossils have been unearthed in the Earth's crust. Yet NOT ONE OF THEM IS A TRANSITIONAL FORM.

These 100 million fossils unearthed reveal that NATURE IS NOT IN A STATE OF CONFUSION, as Darwin anticipated, BUT IS RATHER FULL OF COMPLETE, PERFECT, FLAWLESS LIVING THINGS WITH ALL THEIR PARTS INTACT.

IN NO GEOLOGICAL FORMATION or STRATUM IS THERE ONE TRANSITIONAL FORM FOSSIL that shows the alleged connection between living things.

Above all, new sciences have shown that CELLS, CHROMOSOMES and PROTEINS ARE EXTRAORDINARILY COMPLEX.

It has been discovered that DNA possesses ENOUGH INFORMATION TO FILL ONE MILLION ENCYCLOPEDIA PAGES and it is IMPOSSIBLE for such a marvelous structure TO HAVE COME INTO EXISTENCE BY CHANCE.

It has been realized that atoms - the most basic building blocks of everything -HAVE A PERFECT ORDER AND COMPLEXITY.

This glorious order and unique, flawless artistry on Earth has been revealed as, again just as Darwin said, THE GRAVEST OBJECTION THAT WOULD BE RAISED AGAINST HIS THEORY.

Contemporary Darwinists have confirmed the truth of this legacy:

Niles Eldredge (Paleontologist at Harvard University):
Indeed, the sudden appearance of a varied, well-preserved array of fossils, which geologists have used to mark the beginnings of the Cambrian Period (the oldest division of the Paleozoic Era) does pose a fascinating intellectual challenge.

Derek W. Ager (Paleontologist at University College, Swansea):
The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find - over and over again - not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another.

Mark Czarnecki (Evolutionist paleontologist):
A major problem in proving the theory [of evolution] has been the fossil record, the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead, species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.

Carlton E. Brett (Professor of Geology at the University of Cincinnati):
Did life on Earth change steadily and gradually through time? The fossil record emphatically says "no."