Introduction to Islam History




BAGDAD, Islamic neuron of the Islam

BODIES: INTRODUCTION TO COMPLEXITY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqKvYUO7C7w

NO TRANSITION BETWEEN SPECIES

EVOLUTION THEN MUTATION FOR CHANCE?

Think about it...most of complex systems produce more and more complexity, based on a proved chaos theory...if that is the case, how can be possible that for chance basic systems are going to evolve in so armonic living systems.

CELLS AND COMPLEXITY

Don't you feel how fast your life has gone?

Islam and Science

A year ago I converted to Islam.

Really you don't convert to Islam, You only realize that you have always been Muslim or those that deeply believe in Allah (God) existance. The way you arrive to Islam is a unique and personal journey. I find myself in the necessity to share my experience with you. The intention of this blog is only that, to share what I found in Islam.

Since I was a child, I have always been interested in science. One of my first toys was a very simple microscope. I was a six years old boy asking my sisters for some drops of their blood to see that red liquid beneath of the lens of my new toy. I remember being fascinated with the movement of those small living things. At the age of twelve, I had my first contact with computers. When I finished high school, I decided studying engineering. A year before my graduation, I went to a book store and the owner recommended me a book wich front page said

CHAOS. Just the title made it attractive to me. It took me a while to understand the basic concepts involved such as batterfly effect (by Lorenz) or fractals (by Mandelbrot). God was always a problem of existance without a rational answer in my life. Even when I never denied him, I was not able to physically prove his existance. My head was full of rational concepts without room for absolutely no methaphysical idea. From chaos, you can learn that any mathematical model that tries to represent a physical event, it is very sensitive to the initial conditions and the reason is simple. All models that try to represent what we call reallity (what happens during conciousness) are a reduced expression of the observed phenomenon. So many variables are involved in any event, that is impossible to be represented by any medium. We only can count with a chance of occurrence. Not even my spread sheet can deal with polynoms that have grade higher than six. Even during my postgraduating studies in economics, I used to spend some time reading about phylosophy, looking for something that I didn't really know what was about by that time. I don't remember what book I red years ago, but I do remember that was something related to the story about how the naturalist Charles Darwin get into the travel around the world with the captain Robert Fitzroy (1831-1836) aboard the HMS Beagle vessel. That was the first time I got in real contact with Darwin's theory (Can Darwin's theory explain how this insect evolved to become a living leaf ?). Just think in context. By that time, there was not tv or internet. The only way to acquire information was through the books or news papers. The information was distributed through mail, not e-mail. Information was not available just in time at all. So, years of expedition plus years of research, nedded years of post-analysis. Not only that, microscopes were not so advanced by that time in order to really inspect what was going on at the very small scale of cells, the building blocks of every living creature. Have you ever asked yourself how a cell works, how interacts with other cells? Have you ever asked yourself if a neuron (your brain's cells) is capable to think? or it is a group of neurons the thinkers? neurons are happy or sad? neurons can fall in love? are really the neurons the one that is you or there is something else behind it? Are you your neurons or you are the observer above your neurons? Close your eyes for a moment and try to understand who is the being behind your thinking. Can be your soul the thinker?
I was amuzed by how this guy in that context and with such rudimentary tools was able at least to formulate his theory through the master piece "The Origin of Species". Darwin hundred and fity years ago was looking for the same thing as me today, looking for an answer of how we get here and why. After reading two or three Darwinian books I was pretty sure that he was very close to the answer. I remember reading the book Why is Sex Fun? and saying to myself, what about love, what about moral values, what about universal moral values. Look yourself. Why should I make myself these kind of questions. Should be a difference between the rest of the living things and me? If you have the opportunity of going to a natural science museum, you will be attonished of how similar is a gorila's body from a human being's body. The first idea that will come up to your head is WAW! the gorila looks like me so I am a gorila too or visceversa. From my point of view, Darwin had the same confusion. Just because a gorila share similar features than a human being, that doesn't necesarly means that we had a common ansestor. I spent many days in the Metropolitan Museum of NY, looking for answers, trying to understand. The more I tried, the more confused I was. It was like trying to zoom into fractals in search of an origin or an end (see fractals in nature).

I started thinking that maybe this guy was right. The only reason why we were here was just to reproduce our genes (the called selfish gene), my life is totally meaningless because I got here by chance, chance, chance, chance, chance, chance,

chance. I was able to live accepting the idea of natural selection(the weackest, loose) but the idea of CHANCE (The unknown and unpredictable element in happenings that seems to have no assignable cause), was something that I couldn't digest and then the batterfly effect came back to my head. Just looking at my hands, I can clearly see a very extreme complex system of parts orderly arranged. It is clearly a nonlinear system that shows the most beautiful order. It is like a huracan, have your ever seen how peaceful looks like from the space?. It is a system very sensitive to the original conditions and unpredictable long term behaviour. The starting for the origin of life if we had a common one for all of us, had to be a unique solution. Now, if the original conditions were the ideals, the system that followed it, had to be a well design nonlinear mechanism. Chance, only exists in the world of dieces. At every moment in this theoretical model, at every step, in order to have chance, failure and success had to have the same probabilities. That means that we are here, and we are what we are, thanks to a secuence of many succesful steps, rather than failures unless what we see is only the small picture of a big failure. It was for me then impossible to accept Darwin's theory. The only way to make a system succesful is trhough a design, an Intelligent Design, a SUPERIOR DESIGN.
No was until three years ago, that I had in my hands a book that changed my perspective about the origin of life. The name of the book is Darwin's Black Box by Michael J. Behe(MIT). In that book, Dr. Behe explains through examples, the complexity involved in life at its minimum expression, the cells. For example the intrincated mechanism involved in something so giving for granted like the movement of sperm cells. Did you know that the sperm's tail makes a spiral motion movement, similar to a pump impeler, in order to move forward? Some researchers still don't understand how can be possible that such mangifecense mechanism can be possible exists. The flagellum is made of a secuence of tubular sections. If they don't move accordingly to a plan, the flagellum will not move, think about it. Nasa discovered that a sperm's tail move faster in space. At the end of the book he explains the concept of IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY. All this stuff is science, real science, no science fiction. The basic idea around it, is that most of biological systems are so complex in order to evolve by CHANCE (ones again batterfly effect on action). After a while running in my head these ideas, I red the book GORGON by Peter Ward. The book walks around of how weak is owr existance in this planet. Before us, even before dinosaurs, there were many creatures. Due unknown reasons (some say due cataclysms such metheors collapsing the earth) all of them have extinted. It only took 50 million years to make a computer avaliable, from practically cero existance. The aleatory machine of evolution if existed, had to really work fast, very fast and well to produce such well stable cahotic living systems. Another reason why I thought that evolution theory was collapsing. Recently in the state of New Jersey, in the US, it was approved a law to make legal STEM CELL RESEARCH. In basic words, a stem cell is not a full developed cell that can be transformed in any functional cell. When two cells are combined and they star reproducing in pairs as the Qu'ran 1400 years ago clearly described, they evolve until a limit...after that limit the cells start diferentiating themselves, one from another and start having a particular and pre-assigned function. Some cells become flesh, and others become bones. In these pictures you can see a human stem cell after 8 days of fertilization. These cells are capable of becoming in any human cell. They can be part of a brain, bone, blood, skin or even hair cell. Thanks Dr Yorgos Nikas for these priceless images. I hope you find the subject at least interesting and you can have an idea of where I am comming from and what are the concepts that were revolving my head during years.

What I found in the Qu'ran was unespected and had change my life forever.

Alaykum salam.