You might have seen a video of a glorious episode of self defeating daw'ah-fail at the hands of Professor PZ Myers last year. Well the dawah-clown in chief, Hamza Tzortzis, went on to write a widely shared booklet on the so-called "embryology miracle" in an attempt to make amends for bringing ridicule upon Islam and his organisation. After being debunked several times on various points, and been subject to some fairly general debunkings, it is now in it's 4th version update. He also gives frequent lectures and tutorials about his "research".

Recently some bloggers, with help from ex-Muslim Arabic speakers and former students of classical Arabic have put together a paper tearing apart in forensic detail the evidence and arguments commonly used to support the embryology miracle claim, including many erroneous innovations made by the incompetent and stubborn buffoon, Tzortzis, which have also spread as good confirmation bias memes do. Basically Tzortzis, like other apologists, is shown to use fabricated word definitions, quotemines, twist the science, even caught using a photoshopped embryo image. The paper has lots of new evidence from Arabic sources and new arguments.

There is a video which has been mirrored many times giving a preview of the nutfah chapter of the refutation paper. Sadly, in the past day or so it has been vote-botted by a Muslim(s).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPgT_gV97tw

Here is the Islamic embryology refutation paper on its own dedicated website:

Embryology in the Qur'an: Much Ado about Nothing

It's annoying how carefree and easily religious "evidence" is generated. As DPR Jones recently said of the new paper, it doesn't take long to shit on a carpet, but it takes a lot more work to clear it up.

Quite fittingly, PZ Myers also posted about the new refutation on his blog. Tzortzis has admitted he made mistakes and will make corrections to his claims, but complains about what he sees as a mocking tone. I don't imagine many people will be interested to read much of it, but I think it may be a useful bookmark to have and post when Muslims bring their miracle claims at least, some good homework to set them!

I enjoyed this quote;

As DPR Jones recently said of the new paper, it doesn't take long to shit on a carpet, but it takes a lot more work to clear it up.

149 pages? "Much ado about nothing," indeed! Not to belittle the attempt. As you say, shit on the carpet needs to be cleaned up, no matter how onerous a task it will be.

It's worth noting that not only does Tzortzis have no training in embryology, he also cannot read classical Arabic. So his claim of having done a "scientific linguistic analysis" fails on both counts.

That video of the encounter with PZ Myers contains two moments for the ages. The first is where they rhetorically ask Myers, "Are you an embryologist?" not realizing that, in fact, he is. The second is where they say that, according to the Quran, bones form before flesh, and when Myers points out that in fact the opposite is true, the Muslims say w/out skipping a beat, "That's exactly what the Quran says: Flesh forms before bones."

I should also point anyone who happens to come across this thread here:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/islam ... 06-20.html