Ever since WordPress supported tags, we have been tagging each post because we believe it’s a better way to organise and find things that way compared to the archaic Categories (which I would add we still use as if they were tags). Over the years we have used quite a number of tags, and WordPress has a sidebar widget to automatically change the font size of the tags according to the times it is used. See the sidebar if you don’t understand.
Admittedly, we have talked about religion on this blog quite a lot, and our love for the Pastafarianism religion and the Flying Spaghetti Monster is quite evident. Perhaps then, by divine intervention, the tags have aligned themselves together to create a powerful message for all to see, although those tags were never used in tandem.
As if FSM is not ridiculous
Now THAT is what we call a message from God. We particularly like the part where Stupid were the most emphasised of all. A “Rediculous Religion Site Stupid” example would be “The Church of the Whale Penis” known to us many years ago. No, I AM deadly serious:
Yes, it's huge.
But perhaps one of the MOST ridiculous thing (even by crazy “Whale-penisism” standard) we have came across is from a book we got from a booth of an Islamic RMIT student association spreading the word of Islam, supposedly. We have a terribly good laugh looking at the so-called evidence of God in Quran, and forgot about it – until we rediscovered it online. Apparently the whole book is for all to see online.
Image from Pharyngula blog, originally from A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam
No, we are serious – the book compared the embryo to a “chewed substance” or a piece of chewing gum with teeth marks in it and call that evidence of the miracles in the Holy Quran. Now THAT is “Rediculous Religion Site Stupid”.
The next stage mentioned in the verse is the mudghah stage. The Arabic word mudghah means “chewed substance.” If one were to take a piece of gum and chew it in his or her mouth and then compare it with an embryo at the mudghah stage, we would conclude that the embryo at the mudghah stage acquires the appearance of a chewed substance. This is because of the somites at the back of the embryo that “somewhat resemble teethmarks in a chewed substance.”
Intrigued, we decided to do some research on that phrase in the Holy Quran. We referred to at least five translations, in English and Malay, of that specific phrase in the Holy Quran. We are not at all proficient in the Islamic religion, which is why we used translation. And all translations point to one conclusion – that the Embryo-Gum metaphor is totally ridiculous. All of them made more sense (even scientifically speaking) than the said metaphor.
Man We did create from a quintessence (of clay); Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of rest, firmly fixed; Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood; then of that clot We made a (foetus) lump; then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then we developed out of it another creature. So blessed be Allah, the best to create!
Now, we are not even sure if the book, in print and in online form, is a parody of the religion, or do some Muslim take them for Quranic miracles. We don’t even know if the RMIT Islamic students read and understood what they were handing out freely that day. I am sure they should have checked the facts, or at least the translation in the books, lest they misled people like me.
P.S.: We are not “bashing” Islam. We are just bashing some bad translation of the Quran.
