http://www.harunyahya.tv/videoDetail/Lang/4/Product/37803/THE_HEART:_THE_MOST_EFFICIENT_MACHINE_ON_EARTH
This is a REALLY interesting video. This is from the organization that I researched, the Science Research Foundation. The president, Haruna Yahya made this video and a TON of others to show that Allah created everything and that evolution is wrong. From 4:50 on, he illustrates an analogy between the human heart and a water pump. The arguments he makes are easily falsifiable and often not relevant but the video is really flipping cool. It's all in the presentation. If I didn't have a basic understanding of evolution or if I was looking for a reason to believe in Allah and hate Darwin, this video would do the trick. It is really easy to make an analogy, pair it with a video and a soothing voice and BAM. It makes sense. That is why the best history teachers, in my opinion, are like story tellers; it makes the information stick. I sometimes take issue with analogies because of this. Like Kelly and the Lemon Test, I feel like they can be twisted to for situations of you want them to.
Regardless, this is worth watching.
Okay first of all I want to say that I LOVE the dancing skeleton at the beginning of the video - hilarious! This video was very interesting. I have always known that the heart is a complex organ, but this video really made me think about everything the heart does and how nothing else in the world operates like the heart. Lauren, I agree that it's all in the presentation. I had a history teacher in high school who told the best stories. He could have told me anything and I would have believed it because I loved his voice and he ran around the classroom making all kinds of motions when he told a story. Even though I don't agree with what the video is saying, I think it was smart to use the human heart as a example to disprove evolution. The example of a watch being too complex to not have a designer is good when it comes to proving intelligent design, but I think using the heart is a much better example because it is more personal and relatable to people. Like Lauren said, the good use of analogy, the soothing voice, and the cool graphics make this a very interesting and captivation video.
ReplyDeleteI just posted a piece about an Imam who has been forced to retract his statements promoting evolution because of death threats. He wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian in 2008 stating that evolution and Islam were compatable, and that the "Muslim world desperately needs to debate the matter properly without fear..." He also says that, "No wonder then that the theory is opposed by some religious elements, especially those that are ignorant of science. Snazzy websites, videos and books produced by fundamentalist Muslim "creationists" such as those at www.harunyahya.com, are obscuring clear scientific thinking." www.harunyahya.com is the website that this heart video comes from!
ReplyDeleteI made the connection after I watched the video, and I completely agree with both of you that it truely is beautiful and interesting, and as Lauren said, would probably do the job if I were looking for a reason to believe in Allah and this form of creationism in Islam. However, as Dr. Usama Hasan said in his opinion piece, the science of these kinds of videos on this website just obscure scientific thinking. Of course the animation for the water pump comparison was pretty snazzy and cool to watch, but it wasn't a good comparison because the heart is on a much smaller scale than a water pump, and of course a water pump wouldn't be able to reach 100 trillion homes per second under the same pressure. But this isn't how a heart works. This seems to assume that blood flows through only one channel trying to reach 100 trillion cells a second. Incorrect, when blood pumps, there isn't a sudden burst of blood that is sent all the way through your body per second and then returning and going back. This isn't a good explanation but what I'm trying to say makes sense in my head. The point is, as Lauren said, the science is DEFINITELY falsifiable.
I see this video as a good example of how fundamentalists can manipulate their scientific claims to support their views and work their way around the real scientific truth. This in turn does damage to scientific literacy and gives other fundamentalists subject matter/source material to defend their own views against evolution. Nice try, but they're not fooling anyone with their fancy animations.