The Miraculous Eyebrow

The Miraculous Eyebrow

I, for one, have never attempted this experiment. Nevertheless it is telling.

"Shave your eyebrow, just the one. And watch it grow right back."

Obviously the trick is not in the timescale, since it would take a few weeks.

The real trick is in the contemplation of the regrowth of the eyebrow. So complete is its enaction of what it was, that the pair would never ever seem to have been parted at all.

Contemplate.
Can evolutionary genetics account for this complete fulfilment of what was?

We know that hair in different parts of the body behave differently, and that their fineness in one part might be coded for separately from their coarseness in another part of your body.

We know that DNA, the very stuff of our genetic code, provides a template for protein expression and the relative abundance of one protein, over another, in one type of hair follicle, over another in another part of the body, might account for different tensile strengths and different grades of brittleness.
And that this might account for there being short hair and long hair in different parts of your body, and even different thicknesses of hair types.

But the eyebrow is miraculous.

It grew back and then stopped growing. Or it grew at a moderate pace and then it's pace of growth slowed to the imperceptible.

Either way it's hair grew until it had formed completely the shape of your previous eyebrow and then stopped or slowed.

How did it know when to slow or stop growth?

How did each individual hair follicle in your eyebrow know when it's desired length had been reached?

Although I don't generally like to labour a point, I feel that I need to here for the devil is in the detail.

For if we take the materialist point, and the genetic point, then each individual hair follicle in your eyebrow would have coded within it it's particular protein composition.

And if its matter of growth was given by the brittleness of its composition then wouldn't it be a probabilistic expression of that particular nature. Might not one overgrow, and another undergrow.

Still more incredible is its growing at a moderate rate, and then slowing the rate of growth when a particular length had been achieved.

The materialist will say that it doesn't know when to stop, and that it is just our projection of ourselves on to it.

That we know, and that it can't and so doesn't. Sounds a bit dogmatic doesn't it?

The funny thing is that that is not how rationality works.
Rationality moves from known to unknown and not in the reverse direction.

And whilst we know that we know, perhaps the very definition of consciousness, to impart ignorance to other things without proof of such is a movement in a reverse direction. It is an assault on the very essence of rationality itself.

The foundation of Modern Science ASSUMES that objects that are non-living, and even some that might be living, do not and cannot know.

Modern Science tells us that "genes" are not living and do not know.
That the hair follicles in an eyebrow are governed by such not-knowing genes.

Then how so the EYE-BROW?

Of course another explanation might be that the eyebrow has purpose and knows its purpose and seeks to fulfil its purpose.

Crazy as it may seem, it explains the thing in a language which is more readily rational, in that we can relate to it more easily than dead robotics, than current Science.

In fact this current of thought was at the very foundations of Scientific thinking, being known as Aristotlian. For the Greeks held that stones, and all matter, fell not because of seeking decreasing potentials within a gravitational field, but because that was what they did in seeking their nature. A purposive understanding of a purposive World.

That this view of reality held sway for long is no surprise, but what is surprising is that Science developed in the way that it did.
But that is a subject of another blog.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Athens

2nd blog in the series: 

https://shafeesthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-greeks-didn-do-science.html?m=1

How Can Islam claim to be a Religion of Peace, and yet talk about War?

The Revelations in regards to War; 
"How can Islam claim to be a religion of Peace and yet talk about War?" (Part 1)


Have you never thought to put things in their proper context?

Fact 1: Islam was revealed to the Arab Nation, whilst the two superpowers of the day (Rome and Persia) allowed the Arabian peninsula autonomy.

Persia, a mighty civilization, stretching over today's Iran, and Iraq, was at continual loggerheads with Rome stretching over Turkey, Syria and Palestine. For either of them to have garrisoned Arabia would surely have been advantageous to them, since Arabia straddled both Iraq and greater Syria. It would have opened up another front for either of them in their long conflict with one another.

But neither did.

From the secondary fact that "it never did" it follows that there must have been even stronger reasons for it not happening.

The first possible reason relates to the inhospitable nature of the land.
But would that really explain the non-occurrence? Rome and Persia were both militarized societies that well understood the need for sacrifice in order to secure gain. They would have willing paid such a price if mere inconvenience were all that stood in their way.

The second possibility was that they had evaluated the option and both decided that only rudimentary gain could be had in it's annexation.

A second fact explains that loss- consider the fact that the Arab people were a warrior nation who above all else loved freedom from control. To garrison Arabia would have been both costly and of questionable benefit. That is fact.

Instead Rome and Persia both sought to placate the Arab conundrum by enlisting differing Arab tribes to their cause and then gave them autonomy. That is telling when you consider the Arab.

And so Islam was sent to work on that polytheist Nation and made it the ultimate monotheistic Nation.

From a Nation that buried their new born infant girls it changed it to a Nation that allowed women the right to possess and own.

From a nation that was tribalistic to the point of injustice bring ingrained and rife, Islam changed this to a Nation that made Law greater that all tribes and even greater than the best of their chiefs.

All of these things and more did the message of Islam achieve.

And yet when the Prophet (saw) died the Arabian peninsula was wracked with rebellion, as if attempting to revert to its original state.

For every Arab wanted freedom from a universal law, and freedom from a universal justice.

The three places.
Just three places remained true to the ideal of Islam; Taif, Mecca and Medina; from the whole of the Arabian peninsula.

A complete message?
Tell me now, in such a region and in such a place, to have left out instruction on how to carry out War, would it have been a complete message?

In fact it taught the rules of War, making them both comprehensive and limited, and even I might add honourable.

Unlike today's enacted concepts of limitless war, Islam teaches by way of a GODLY command and in reference to your enemies "If they incline to peace, then you too incline to peace." A rule of behaviour that even when it is known to be used to the Muslims' disadvantage, throughout history it is the Muslims that have honourable done so.

An unusual message.
What is unusual is not that it talked about War but that in such a place; in the dessert far from everything, to it's coming down to an insular Nation;  it is the Islamic message that is truly international.

For the Prophet (saw) said on his farewell sermon that "No Arab is superior to a non-Arab!" And to whom was he speaking? To the hundred thousands of Arabs that were before him and in Arabic. And by this he implied that this message of God is for all Nations, and meant to be delivered to all Nations:
That all men are equal in the sight of God, and that what elevates them one above the other is nothing less than godliness, piety and doing good to one another.

A message of Peace and Hope, not a message of War and Despair.

Part 2- to follow, God willing.
Find it here: http://shafeesthoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-development-of-jihad_9.html

Sent from my iPhone

A Short History of Progress

A History of Progress.

When the NHS was conceived off as an idea, it was assumed that one day it would fulfil all the needs of the people with regard to healthcare.

Historically that day never came, and looks more distant today than it did at it's very creation.

This is relevant because it shows a very real example of an occurrence where the needs of the people were thought to be finite and meet-able.

Utility is a measure of meeting a need and proving to be useful. Modernity can claim to have exponentially grown the needs of the people.

Why? Because the fulfilment of needs appears to be generative of still other needs. In the case of the NHS generative of further expectation. In simplistic terms as our lifespan lengthened, because of our fight against disease, so new diseases became prevalent and our expectation that they be fought with equal vigour grew. This is why the NHS focus has shifted significantly to both health inequalities and managing expectations.

And thus maybe fulfilling needs is the very kernel of progress: to seek to fulfil needs, is generative of still further needs.

For when we started to bring our specialities to the market-place the resultant efficiency in cost, and work saved, created more freedom for people to do other things that were not necessary. Before that time we lived, and still live in some parts of the World, in a hand to mouth existence.

And so unlike our other prior existence the marketplace and our increased efficiency savings allowed us both superfluous wealth and the time to spend it on recreation, on things other than were necessary. And this in turn generated still further industries on which that wealth could be spent, and then other needs that could then be met. A generative cycle that does not look like it can be sated.

And this is the conundrum of Heaven, an impossible place of satiety.

That maybe all of these needs that we fill ourselves with are superfluous; being as it were in addition to ourselves; and therefore can in fact cause us to loose ourselves.

The moral quandaries are two, individually they are the loss of ourselves, subsumed in the consumerism of the market-place.
The solution is not to deny the market place, but "to live in this life as if you are a traveller"(1) and are only passing through.

The second moral quandary is more insidious, and bodes of our collective responsibility one to another. For when the marketplace becomes King and efficiencies met reach a point of equanimity, the market is not moral. In the name of further efficiency savings, and further progress, exploitation becomes rife. And the people exploit the earth, its resources, and then still other people. And that exploitation of others is just slavery by another name; market efficiency and progress.
This is what is seen in the market factories of the developing World; Slavery by another name.

Shafeesthoughts
(1) a saying of the best of all men, Muhammad (saw), the Messenger from GOD, may he forever be blessed.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:NHS