George M. Church Quotes
I will make the argument that we are poorly adapted to our current environment. I mean, we did not evolve to sit all day and be exposed to giant amounts of really tasty food.
Church, George M., and Ed Regis. Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. Basic Books, 2012.
This quotation illustrates one of the contemporary problems that Muslims face. The problem of overeating and especially obesity are now known to be serious health problems. The Prophet had called attention to this while the majority of the world, afraid of starvation, considered obesity and overeating as a sign of affluence and health. In that sense the Prophet provided sound medical advice. However, for those Muslims who take the words of the Prophet literally, they take the statement literally and therefore pay little or no attention to immunization, water pollution, sanitation other than specified by the Prophet. To them, there are no other causes of disease because Muhammed said so. The wisdom from Aristotle to Einstein typically moved knowledge and mankind ahead with new and critical insights and revelations but all were wrong in some respects and future science has determined that. But for the fundamentalist Muslim, there can be no error in the word of the Prophet, just as for the fundamentalist Christian or Jew, there can be no error in their Bibles. Although valid for Muslims, the Hadith is less well known than the Koran which is recited by all good Muslims.
George McDonald Church is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, and chemist. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. As of March 2017, Church serves as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors.
