What is the meaning of Life, as we know it.

[Aquagem]

About the meaning of life, I'll give an attempt from Islamic theology. Humans are to act as vicegerents of God in this world to perfect itself, the society and the whole of the universe.

 

Defining life, I'd say that all matter is alive. It has conciousness in the sense that it can perceive and react accordingly to the environment. Same with human beings, the stimulus elicits an action.

 

Let me restate the question to show the fallacy behind it. "What is the purpose of the unicorn in the ecology of Atlantis?" See the problem? The question, to make sense, demands that the unicorn and Atlantis exist. (I've used "purpose" instead of "meaning" -- same argument exactly - I just started at a later post...)

 

Which brings me to two responses.

 

1) You almost never see people asking the proper question that precedes "What is the purpose..." (unless they're getting ready to give you a sermon on it), which should be, "Does life have a purpose?" The reason we don't dwell on the question stated this way is emerging from current neuroscientific research into the survival mechanisms in our brains. They don't ask whether life has a purpose because we, as animals, have purpose, aka biological functions, built in at birth (in the LIMBIC SYSTEM), ready to be trained by the scribes who like to write on our tabula rasa (thanks, Tinny) to tell us why we're so special. Since we feel purpose throughout all of our human goals and actions, we see what we think is purpose in all of nature, and don't stop to think that our sense of purpose is an artifact of life, not of the universe. (Please see my post in Explain Your Avatars for a better description of this human attribute - my avatar is a symbol of what we do. It's Post #30 in Watercooler/Explain Your Avatars.)

 

2) Even before asking the question in 1, above, we should ask, "What do we mean by purpose?", rather than assuming purpose exists. We know what purpose feels like, because we are cybernetic (self-organizing, self-replicating, self-maintaining) organisms, and we have a powerful sense when we are acting out our hardwired purposes as programmed by our software culture.

 

To remove some of the confusion, we could susbstitute other words for purpose that are less prone to misunderstanding, like "function", as one of my biology books suggests. This puts a different spin on it altogether, though it doesn't have the same mystical ring to it. Asked "What are the functions of life", we can get to something concrete. Aristotle was the first to write them into his works (as far as I know), and they are: to survive to reproduce. These mundane functions are what we feel and experience as purpose, although, as mentioned in an earlier post, we don't love someone or have kids in full awareness that we are fulfilling a biological function.

 

The important point of this is that our purposes reside in us, not as an intention in the universe. We share these functions/purposes with all living things, but Moon probably doesn't share them with us, any more than a dead man shares them with us. It's a LIFE thing. (That is, I disagree with the consciousness of all matter, which lacks perceptual organs and brains to sort them out.)

 

One more comment, this one about Tinny's Islamic example. Given our innate sense of purpose, every culture fashions its own version of what our purpose really is. Then they go to war with one another to prove who's right (apparently another artifact of limbic system evolution). Of course, the versions all come out differently, since every culture evolves in a different environment and has its tabula written on by different scribes. Not surprisingly, Tinny's viceregents, an extrapolation of a human metaphor like most of the rest of them in different traditions, is a case in point of my avatar -- interpreting the world as though it has our characteristics, our emotions, our offices, our PURPOSES. We take our metaphor, and make it LITERAL. Same as we do with the Bible.

 

And THAT, ladies, gentlemen, and others, is why we so desperately need SCIENCE to get us out of that headspace and into one where we ask nature to explain itself, rather than forcing it to be like us.

[TINNY]

Tinny, You are truly amazing. With one post, you have managed to obliterate all evidence of intellectual progress you could have been making as a member of this forum. If you had been paying attention, you would know that your statements have been refuted over and over again. Now you're back to square one! ;)

I MENTIONED THAT IT WAS AN INTERPRETATION OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY.

Of course, as everyone knows, you abhor any religious 'dirt' on this website. But thank you so much. You really care for the world even though you very well know that it is totally unnecessary to do so. You're the most vital person in this world to save humanity from destruction.

 

 

Let me restate the question to show the fallacy behind it. "What is the purpose of the unicorn in the ecology of Atlantis?" See the problem? The question, to make sense, demands that the unicorn and Atlantis exist. (I've used "purpose" instead of "meaning" -- same argument exactly - I just started at a later post...)

As if science has no axioms and a prioris... Even so-called Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica failed miserably.

 

1) You almost never see people asking the proper question that precedes "What is the purpose..." (unless they're getting ready to give you a sermon on it), which should be, "Does life have a purpose?" The reason we don't dwell on the question stated this way is emerging from current neuroscientific research into the survival mechanisms in our brains. They don't ask whether life has a purpose because we, as animals, have purpose, aka biological functions, built in at birth (in the LIMBIC SYSTEM), ready to be trained by the scribes who like to write on our tabula rasa (thanks, Tinny) to tell us why we're so special. Since we feel purpose throughout all of our human goals and actions, we see what we think is purpose in all of nature, and don't stop to think that our sense of purpose is an artifact of life, not of the universe. (Please see my post in Explain Your Avatars for a better description of this human attribute - my avatar is a symbol of what we do. It's Post #30 in Watercooler/Explain Your Avatars.)

Thanks for the evaluation. I agree, it does ultimately lie in the fundamental question of God's existence. But I hope it is fine to logically conjecture upon an assumption.

 

To remove some of the confusion, we could susbstitute other words for purpose that are less prone to misunderstanding, like "function", as one of my biology books suggests. This puts a different spin on it altogether, though it doesn't have the same mystical ring to it. Asked "What are the functions of life", we can get to something concrete. Aristotle was the first to write them into his works (as far as I know), and they are: to survive to reproduce. These mundane functions are what we feel and experience as purpose, although, as mentioned in an earlier post, we don't love someone or have kids in full awareness that we are fulfilling a biological function.

you are merely stating that "purpose" does not exist. "Function" has an obvious answer. Cause and effect necessitates that the function of the cause is to generate the effect.

Now, if life is merely acting out a script, I don't think it gives us much motivation to strive towards perfection.

 

(That is, I disagree with the consciousness of all matter, which lacks perceptual organs and brains to sort them out.)

yes, it is not self-aware. depends on how you define consciousness. You mention about the human metaphor. I think you might have fallen into the same trap. A more general definition of consciousness - "Ability to perceive and react towards" - would include all matter. If you kick a rock, the rock responds by moving in a certain direction, which we can accurately predict based on mechanical laws of physics.

 

Not surprisingly, Tinny's viceregents, an extrapolation of a human metaphor like most of the rest of them in different traditions, is a case in point of my avatar -- interpreting the world as though it has our characteristics, our emotions, our offices, our PURPOSES. We take our metaphor, and make it LITERAL. Same as we do with the Bible.

expound on it.

[motherengine]

assuming this question is asked with a genuine desire to understand (as opposed to provoke conversation and assertions like 'life has no meaning', 'its all about the replication of genes' and 'the phrasing of this question is beneath me') than i would say its unanswerable for anyone but yourself as this is a personal philosophical question with no scientific explanation akin to 'does god exist?'.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Strictly speaking, doesn't the term 'meaning' only apply to a living thing? And it involves a perspective too, doesn't it?

 

I say, "that thing has meaning to me" or, "this thing has meaning to you". From my perspective, that is meaningful to me.

 

So, the 'meaning of life' implies a living entity contemplating living things and the meaning those things have for it.

 

So what is the meaning of life as I know it? Just that there would be no meaning without it.

[Aquagem]

First, thanks for your thoughtful replies. There is nothing like an able correspondent to get me to re-examine my thinking. I appreciate it.

 

I have little time right now, and want to do your work justice, so I'll get down what I can and finish it later. :)

 

As if science has no axioms and a prioris... Even so-called Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica failed miserably.

Could you please explain this a bit more? I have my criticisms of Russell from a philosophical standpoint, but I haven't seen any reference to the principia "failing miserably". It is, after all, the intellecutal basis of cybernetics, systems theory, and modern computing.

 

Thanks for the evaluation. I agree, it does ultimately lie in the fundamental question of God's existence. But I hope it is fine to logically conjecture upon an assumption.

Conjecturing on the nature of ultimate reality is the greatest of all conjectures. In my mind, we are so steeped in a tradition of accepting without question that all things trace to our particular culture's god, or some god, that it takes extraordinary effort to look out side of that to see whether other explanations hold up to rational investigation. That's the vital role of science, to provide an independent evaluation of the natural world. Religion has fared abysmally in making sense of nature, although it makes great sense of our limited human perspectives on ourselves and our own desires. (Feel free to challenge that - it's a major part of my entire thesis.) From the beginning, science and religion split along the lines of explanations of natural phenomena, and history since the Reneaissance is nothing if not a panoramic rendering of "miserable failures" of religious world views to contribute anything meaningful to that understanding. I believe that's a big part of why the rift between is so great today, and widening with every new discovery, despite attempts of many to force them into reconciliation.

 

you are merely stating that "purpose" does not exist. "Function" has an obvious answer. Cause and effect necessitates that the function of the cause is to generate the effect.

 

I'm not saying that purpose does not exist. The question is whether there is an outside entity that has created us or anything else with a purpose, e.g., perfection, salvation, world domination, all of the above. We certainly have attibutes that result in our frontal lobes and limbic systems lighting up with a sense of purpose. This says nothing necessarily about whether we are taking our cue from the supernatural, the universe, or just our own evolutionary history. My claim is that we have always assumed it to be supernatural in origin, and that this piece of tradition blinds us to other alternatives. I'm trying to research the other alternatives, one of which could be that there is ample evidence that our sense of purpose is a function of our biology, not the supernatural.

 

Now, if life is merely acting out a script, I don't think it gives us much motivation to strive towards perfection.

It certainly does, if it's part of the script! ("Script" isn't the way I'd describe life - more on that later -- but I wanted to use your term in your context.:D ) I would suggest that neither you nor I could just turn our backs on the idea that we can do better, be better, learn better, and leave a better world to our kids. On the other hand, I would say that if we didn't have some pretty highly evolved brain capacities, this would be something we couldn't do, any more than we can see UV radiation.

 

yes, it is not self-aware. depends on how you define consciousness. You mention about the human metaphor. I think you might have fallen into the same trap. A more general definition of consciousness - "Ability to perceive and react towards" - would include all matter. If you kick a rock, the rock responds by moving in a certain direction, which we can accurately predict based on mechanical laws of physics.

 

This needs more time than I can give it right now, and is one of the real key pieces in what I think we are both trying to get at.

 

We take our metaphor, and make it LITERAL. Same as we do with the Bible.

expound on it.

 

If I understand you correctly here, I would draw a distinction between "expounding" on something and "taking it literally". I would happily expound on the meaning and significance of the Tower of Babel, the Book of Job, or the parting of the Red Sea, but would argue that all of these stories are far too important to take them literally. That's one of my major problems with fundamentalism, whether Christian, Islamic, or scientific. Joseph Campbell made the point in several of his works and personal interviews that the tendency to take metaphors literally was a major cause of religious war and a loss of important truth. Science is prone to the same error -- trying to make its symbolic, metaphorical paradigms a literal truth, e.g., the billiard ball atom. One nice thing about science is that further research normally renders these narrow interpretations untenable.

 

More later -- thanks again!

[Fishteacher73]

Well, evolution IS something specific. Yes, evolution is Nature maximizing efficiency. Everything's purpose we see is to maximise efficiency; including life. The meaning of Life is to maximise efficiancy; however, whenever, wherever, etceterever.

 

Evolution does NOT maximize effeciency. Evolution is not always a positive direction. Many shifts are retrograde to the intial design. Evolution does many times make things more effecient, but the point of evolution is to live better today (Geologically). This may include regression. True that many forms that are more effecient survive better, but that is a side affect of evolution, not the purpose. Evolution is not a slow and steady inclined plane ever advancing to some "perfect creature".

[lindagarrette]

Evolution does NOT maximize effeciency. Evolution is not always a positive direction. Many shifts are retrograde to the intial design. Evolution does many times make things more effecient, but the point of evolution is to live better today (Geologically). This may include regression. True that many forms that are more effecient survive better, but that is a side affect of evolution, not the purpose. Evolution is not a slow and steady inclined plane ever advancing to some "perfect creature".

Very true. The only reason evolution appears to be progressive is that traits which were selected to survive prior conditions are usually preserved when the next mutation occurs.

[lindagarrette]

Joseph Campbell made the point in several of his works and personal interviews that the tendency to take metaphors literally was a major cause of religious war and a loss of important truth. Science is prone to the same error -- trying to make its symbolic, metaphorical paradigms a literal truth, e.g., the billiard ball atom. One nice thing about science is that further research normally renders these narrow interpretations untenable.

 

More later -- thanks again!

Aside from (and perhaps worse than) being literally interpreted, the metaphors usually teach inhumane treatment is justified. (Noah's Ark, Job, Babel, Abraham and Isaac....)

[Aquagem]

Assuming this question is asked with a genuine desire to understand (as opposed to provoke conversation and assertions like 'life has no meaning', 'its all about the replication of genes' and 'the phrasing of this question is beneath me') then i would say its unanswerable for anyone but yourself as this is a personal philosophical question with no scientific explanation akin to 'does god exist?'.

First, I'm wondering if the bolded passages above were aimed at me. If so, maybe I wasn't clear enough. Whether life means something to US is beyond question -- we prove it in our every move. The question, as it's often phrased, is whether there is a cosmic consciousness to whom our lives have meaning, or whether said cosmic consciousness invested our lives with special meaning by special creation. In neither case is "the phrasing of this question beneath me". If you didn't direct that to me, it's still an interesting take, although I didn't get this sense from reading what others have written here.

 

I agree that science won't answer what is ultimately an unanswerable question (says this agnostic = "we probably don't have the capacity to grasp the answer if it bit us on the leg"). That's why it's so much fun to try to prove that last statement wrong. :)

 

But we have learned huge new lessons about how we think, how we know things about the world, how the world works, as machine, as organism, as island of life in the vastness of spacetime -- and these fundamentally new sets of knowledge should cause us to question EVERYTHING we've always thought was true, including our devotion to the supernatural, ideas like a 6,000-year-old Earth, and the absolute set of behaviors dictated to us by a man in a pulpit who has voluntarily blinded himself to all that new knowledge.

 

Science has a LOT to say about these questions. It isn't going to give you a yes/no answer to the existence of God, but it can throw a bright light on your further searches in this long night of our very young evolution. And, concerning your comment about philosophy -- a new term I've encountered and really like is "empirically responsible philosphy" (Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, (2002)). In brief, it says, "If you're pushing your religion based on the assertion that the world is flat, you're fooling yourself and others".

 

And I have to ask, "At what point does remaining ignorant by choice become bearing false witness?"

[motherengine]

And, concerning your comment about philosophy -- a new term I've encountered and really like is "empirically responsible philosphy" (Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, (2002)). In brief, it says, "If you're pushing your religion based on the assertion that the world is flat, you're fooling yourself and others".

 

And I have to ask, "At what point does remaining ignorant by choice become bearing false witness?"

 

to me finding satisfaction in refuting the idea that the world is flat is settling for truth in illusion. we are all desperately clinging to shadows as evidence and smoke as proof as far as i am concerned so no matter what we believe is fact we are fooling ourselves. but this is a rather trite reply to a valid question so i will expand: one cannot choose to be ignorant and one cannot be false witness to anyone for if they believe what they are saying than it is as much truth as anything else. on the same hand if i believe that the pier is eight paces long and preach this as fact and a blind girl taking my word as gospel falls off at three i have certainly done her more immediate harm than good.

[alxfamlaw]

Wow, this thread has gotten from theology to cosmology to genetics. Guys, read and post responses as phrased. There is no simple answer, and answering with theological mind-set will only make you look silly because then you are saying that the question can only be properly responded by a theological view point. Responding to this question in a cosmological stand point makes more sense to me because I have always believed that something from beyond put us here for a reason or was it just an accident. Are we a freak accident that evolved into what we are now, and does our existence seek the answers for life as we know it? it's a rather complicated question because there is no answer other than your own faith and beliefs. Is our death the meaning of life. I mean when we die have we gone through life answering and wondering what life is? I know for a fact all of you wonder why we are here and how things work? It's a philosophical question everyone wonders about. Just a thought.

[motherengine]

faith and belief...yes. science is a tool and as such can only tell you about life, not prescibe meaning to it. personal belief can help one structure meaning for his/her life. as far as relying on others [feel free to include religious doctrine here if you like though i am not] to tell you what the meaning of your life or all life is seems like a chancy thing at best.

[TINNY]

Strictly speaking, doesn't the term 'meaning' only apply to a living thing? And it involves a perspective too, doesn't it?

it applies to a self-aware being. now, a living thing is highly debatable and controversial. but if i understand your point correctly, 'meaning' is merely subjective. how unscientific....

[TINNY]

First, thanks for your thoughtful replies. There is nothing like an able correspondent to get me to re-examine my thinking. I appreciate it.

I appreciate that too! ;)

 

Could you please explain this a bit more? I have my criticisms of Russell from a philosophical standpoint, but I haven't seen any reference to the principia "failing miserably". It is, after all, the intellecutal basis of cybernetics, systems theory, and modern computing.

the principia mathematica has been rendered invalid by the works of Kurt Godel. but yes, principia has generated significant spin-offs in those areas you mentioned.

 

 

Conjecturing on the nature of ultimate reality is the greatest of all conjectures. In my mind, we are so steeped in a tradition of accepting without question that all things trace to our particular culture's god, or some god, that it takes extraordinary effort to look out side of that to see whether other explanations hold up to rational investigation.

yes. some think that because one god belief is invalid, the immediately make the same impression on other beliefs and thus do not put up a fair evaluation and rational investigation to other religions.

That's the vital role of science, to provide an independent evaluation of the natural world.

science is the most accurate of all human knowledge. but if the facts point to a certain religion, in terms of it's consistency wholistically, then the scripture of that religion, devoid of any intellectual investigation at the time of release, has to be of even better accuracy. science does have a prioris, refer to Russel's works on sense, perception and logical atomism(this one is a bit off the realm of accepted philosophical works).

Religion has fared abysmally in making sense of nature, although it makes great sense of our limited human perspectives on ourselves and our own desires. (Feel free to challenge that - it's a major part of my entire thesis.)

so I assume that you have studied every single religion in the world...

From the beginning, science and religion split along the lines of explanations of natural phenomena, and history since the Reneaissance is nothing if not a panoramic rendering of "miserable failures" of religious world views to contribute anything meaningful to that understanding. I believe that's a big part of why the rift between is so great today, and widening with every new discovery, despite attempts of many to force them into reconciliation.

science in the islamic world in Spain during the abbasid, umayyad, and ottoman period was hand-in-hand with Islam. In fact, before the arrival of islam, the arab region was a total atrocity of immorality and ignorance. the impetus of islam was so great that it dominated the region and became a huge empire.

From the beginning, science and religion split along the lines of explanations of natural phenomena

just read some of this - such explicit description of the development of a baby during pregnancy contained in the Koran that it is virtually impossible to be made up 1400 years ago: http://www.harunyahya.com/miracles_of_the_quran_p1_07.php#8

 

what do you say?

 

 

I'm not saying that purpose does not exist. The question is whether there is an outside entity that has created us or anything else with a purpose, e.g., perfection, salvation, world domination, all of the above. We certainly have attibutes that result in our frontal lobes and limbic systems lighting up with a sense of purpose. This says nothing necessarily about whether we are taking our cue from the supernatural, the universe, or just our own evolutionary history. My claim is that we have always assumed it to be supernatural in origin, and that this piece of tradition blinds us to other alternatives. I'm trying to research the other alternatives, one of which could be that there is ample evidence that our sense of purpose is a function of our biology, not the supernatural.

you completely ignored my previous elaboration on the evolutoin concept. the creation of the universe at first began with photons bumping into each other to form atoms, to simple molecules that make up hydrogen stars, then getting more complex as the universe expands, through 'abiogenesis', through evolution of biological life, first the simple monocells, then the multiple celled, then the one-organed to the multi-organed etc.. until we get to humans where the complexity has reached such a high level. Don't you see a purpose there? A progression toward perfection?

 

 

It certainly does, if it's part of the script! ("Script" isn't the way I'd describe life - more on that later -- but I wanted to use your term in your context.;) ) I would suggest that neither you nor I could just turn our backs on the idea that we can do better, be better, learn better, and leave a better world to our kids. On the other hand, I would say that if we didn't have some pretty highly evolved brain capacities, this would be something we couldn't do, any more than we can see UV radiation.

elaborate on your 'script'.

we can do better, be better and learn better? oh, so now we have free-will huh? whatever suits you...

 

If I understand you correctly here, I would draw a distinction between "expounding" on something and "taking it literally". I would happily expound on the meaning and significance of the Tower of Babel, the Book of Job, or the parting of the Red Sea, but would argue that all of these stories are far too important to take them literally. That's one of my major problems with fundamentalism, whether Christian, Islamic, or scientific. Joseph Campbell made the point in several of his works and personal interviews that the tendency to take metaphors literally was a major cause of religious war and a loss of important truth. Science is prone to the same error -- trying to make its symbolic, metaphorical paradigms a literal truth, e.g., the billiard ball atom. One nice thing about science is that further research normally renders these narrow interpretations untenable.

True. they have to be taken wholistically, not just taking out parts out of context. The unity and interrelatedness of all things in science also has to be the taken into account - as i briefly touched on in the evolution of existence.

 

More later -- thanks again!

:cup: can't wait!

[Tormod]

the principia mathematica has been rendered invalid by the works of Kurt Godel. but yes, principia has generated significant spin-offs in those areas you mentioned.

 

Renderend invalid?

 

I think that is overdoing it a bit. Rather, the Principa Mathematica helped Goedel formulate his ideas.

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/principia-mathematica/

[Tormod]

just read some of this - such explicit description of the development of a baby during pregnancy contained in the Koran that it is virtually impossible to be made up 1400 years ago: (harunyahya link removed)

 

Tinny - you know we do not accept Harunyahya as a source for scientific discussions.

 

And it is quite obvious that such a description *could* be written 1400 years ago. Why did it have to be "made up"? It is hardly much to go on. The interpretation of it, however, seems to have no limits and is purely speculative.

 

the creation of the universe at first began with photons bumping into each other to form atoms, to simple molecules that make up hydrogen stars

 

No, the universe existed prior to photons. There were no photons around. Photons are not the building blocks of sub-atomic particles - those are the quarks.

 

Tinny - you know I appreciate your posts but when you dive into in-depth discussions I suggest reading up on the theories before you use them (like the Big Bang theory, for example).

[TINNY]

Tinny - you know we do not accept Harunyahya as a source for scientific discussions.

have you read the info? it is actually a research by Maurice Baucaille (not sure how to spell his name). anyway, since you don't like whatever is harun yahya (though that would be an ad hominem), I'll give one by Keith Moore. Here it is:

A Scientist's Interpretation of References

to Embryology in the Qur'an

Keith L. Moore, Ph.D., F.I.A.C.

The Department of Anatomy, University of Toronto, Canada.

Address all correspondence to:

Keith L. Moore, Ph.D, F.I.A.C., Professor of Anatomy and Associate

Dean Basic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University

of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M55 IAB, Canada

 

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

Statements referring to human reproduction and development are scattered throughout the Qur'an. It is only recently that the scientific meaning of some of these verses has been appreciated fully. The longdelay in interpreting these verses correctly resulted mainly from inaccurate translations and commentaries and from a lack of awareness of scientific knowledge.

Interest in explanations of the verses of the Qur'an is not new. People used to ask the prophet Muhammad all sorts of questions about the meaning of verses referring to human reproduction. The Apostle's answers form the basis of the Hadith literature.

 

The translations(*) of the verses from the Qur'an which are interpreted in this paper were provided by Sheik Abdul Majid Zendani, a Professor of Islamic Studies in King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

 

"He makes you in the wombs of your mothers in stages, one after another, in three veils of darkness."

 

This statement is from Sura 39:6. We do not know when it was realized that human beings underwent development in the uterus (womb), but the first known illustration of a fetus in the uterus was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century. In the 2nd century A.D., Galen described the placenta and fetal membranes in his book "On The Formation of the Foetus." Consequently, doctors in the 7th century A.D. likely knew that the human embryo developed in the uterus. It is unlikely that they knew that it developed in stages, even though Aristotle had described the stages of development of the chick embryo in the 4th century B.C. The realization that the human embryo develops in stages was not discussed and illustrated until the 15th century.

 

After the microscope was discovered in the 17th century by Leeuwenhoek descriptions were made of the early stages of the chick embryo. The staging of human embryos was not described until the 20th century. Streeter (1941) developed the first system of staging which has now been replaced by a more accurate system proposed by O'Rahilly (1972).

 

"The three veils of darkness" may refer to: (l) the anterior abdominal wall; (2) the uterine wall; and (3) the amniochorionic membrane (Fig. 1). Although there are other interpretations of this statement, the one presented here seems the most logical from an embryological point of view.

 

 

"Then We placed him as a drop in a place of rest."

This statement is from Sura 23:13. The drop or nutfah has been interpreted as the sperm or spermatozoon, but a more meaningful interpretation would be the zygote which divides to form a blastocyst which is implanted in the uterus ("a place of rest"). This interpretation is supported by another verse in the Qur'an which states that "a human being is created from a mixed drop." The zygote forms by the union of a mixture of the sperm and the ovum ("The mixed drop"). "Then We made the drop into a leech-like structure." This statement is from Sura 23:14. The word "alaqah" refers to a leech or bloodsucker. This is an appropriate description of the human embryo from days 7-24 when it clings to the endometrium of the uterus, in the same way that a leech clings to the skin. Just as the leech derives blood from the host, the human embryo derives blood from the decidua or pregnant endometrium. It is remarkable how much the embryo of 23-24 days resembles a leech (Fig. 2). As there were no microscopes or lenses available in the 7th century, doctors would not have known that the human embryo had this leech-like appearance. In the early part of the fourth week, the embryo is just visible to the unaided eye because it is smaller than a kernel of wheat.

 

 

"Then of that leech-like structure, We made a chewed lump."

This statement is also from Sura 23:14. The Arabic word "mudghah" means "chewed substance or chewed lump." Toward the end of the fourth week, the human embryo looks somewhat like a chewed lump of flesh (Fig. 3). The chewed appearance results from the somites which resemble teeth marks. The somites represent the beginnings or primordia of the vertebrae. "Then We made out of the chewed lump, bones, and clothed the bones in flesh."

 

This continuation of Sura 23:14 indicates that out of the chewed lump stage, bones and muscles form. This is in accordance with embryological development. First the bones form as cartilage models and then the muscles (flesh) develop around them from the somatic mesoderm. "Then We developed out of it another creature."

This next part of Sura 23:14 implies that the bones and muscles result in the formation of another creature. This may refer to the human-like embryo that forms by the end of the eighth week. At this stage it has distinctive human characteristics and possesses the primordia of all the internal and external organs and parts. After the eighth week, the human embryo is called a fetus. This may be the new creature to which the verse refers. "And He gave you hearing and sight and feeling and understanding." This part of Sura 32:9 indicates that the special senses of hearing, seeing, and feeling develop in this order, which is true. The primordia of the internal ears appear before the beginning of the eyes, and the brain (the site of understanding) differentiates last. "Then out of a piece of chewed flesh, partly formed and partly unformed." This part of Sura 22:5 seems to indicate that the embryo is composed of both differentiated and undifferentiated tissues. For example, when the cartilage bones are differentiated, the embryonic connective tissue or mesenchyme around them is undifferentiated. It later differentiates into the muscles and ligaments attached to the bones.

"And We cause whom We will to rest in the wombs for an appointed term." This next part of Sura 22:5 seems to imply that God determines which embryos will remain in the uterus until full term. It is well known that many embryos abort during the first month of development, and that only about 30% of zygotes that form, develop into fetuses that survive until birth. This verse has also been interpreted to mean that God determines whether the embryo will develop into a boy or girl.

 

The interpretation of the verses in the Qur'an referring to human development would not have been possible in the 7th century A.D., or even a hundred years ago. We can interpret them now because the science of modern Embryology affords us new understanding. Undoubtedly there are other verses in the Qur'an related to human development that will be understood in the future as our knowledge increases.

And it is quite obvious that such a description *could* be written 1400 years ago. Why did it have to be "made up"? It is hardly much to go on. The interpretation of it, however, seems to have no limits and is purely speculative.

yeah, anything could happen. skepticism is the way to go! don't breath at all for a bird flu virus might infect you!

Photons are not the building blocks of sub-atomic particles - those are the quarks.

i didn't say they are the building blocks. but basically, matter is formed from energy 'slowed down'. you know better. obfuscation based subterfuge?

 

Tinny - you know I appreciate your posts

you appreciate? you've hardly ever bothered to answer any of my posts in the past except the trivial ones on computers.

but when you dive into in-depth discussions I suggest reading up on the theories before you use them (like the Big Bang theory, for example).

I read with my utmost best to comprehend and try to fit it into my jigsaw puzzle. but if I'm wrong (almost all the time), then so'll be it. I tend to give my general understanding of my readings since there are so many theories and facts. Maybe I've come to the wrong place and should find a better home on some other forum which I have seriously considered long ago. :cup:

 

:cup: ;) ;)

 

no place for old wee tinny here huh?