{"id":397,"date":"2009-06-25T22:32:58","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T22:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/06\/muslim-pseudoscience-prostrati.html"},"modified":"2009-06-25T22:32:58","modified_gmt":"2009-06-25T22:32:58","slug":"muslim-pseudoscience-prostrati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/06\/muslim-pseudoscience-prostrati.html","title":{"rendered":"muslim pseudoscience: prostration"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took a profound atheist like Douglas Adams to recognize and succinctly state what should be obvious to any believer: “proof denies faith<\/a>“. The essence of faith is to believe, and proof essentially makes the process of belief irrelevant. Thus I have a history<\/a> of arguing with<\/a> others, muslim or otherwise, who purport to have proved the unprovable.<\/p>\n

pseudoscience is a closely related endeavour – instead of proving God, it seeks to wrap religion in th elegitimacy of science. In doing so, the very essence of religion is again denied, implying that it needs science to be valid. Unfortunately, the quality of the science itself is so poor as to be nonsensical, invariably. Thus I am doubly offended by such efforts, as a man of faith and as a scientist.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately I tend to get most of this kind of thing from my friends and family, via email. Rather than annoy them with my snotty attitude about why its all wrong, I’m using the blog as an outlet. So, consider this the inauguration of a series of sorts.<\/p>\n

This is a slideshow I have received from multiple sources, purporting to explain how the act of protration (sajda) in the muslim prayer is actually beneficial from a health perspective, because it spposedly discharges harmful electromagnetic energy built up in our bodies, harmlessly into the ground.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The flaws in the argument are numerous but let’s start with some of the most egregious: the human body does not accumulate charge internally like a capacitor, though we can acumulate some (much lower voltage) of charge on our outer surfaces. In other words, the normal static shock that we all get from walking across a shag rug. The ambient electric field from our myriad gadgets and neon lights and whatnot do not contribute any charge to our bodies in the slightest, however. Let’s also note for the record that on teh surface of a sphere like teh Earth, ANY point on the surface is technically and literally the “center”, so the point about Mecca being the “true” center of the world is also essentially meaningless (though not exactly untrue).<\/p>\n

Anyway there is surely a LOT more I could nitpick with this one but I’ll leave it at that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took a profound atheist like Douglas Adams to recognize and succinctly state what should be obvious to any believer: “proof denies faith“. The essence of faith is to believe, and proof essentially makes the process of belief irrelevant. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}