Re: ABR article: "the heart does think"

I checked out the ABR website and it is YEC pure and simple. Doesn't say
much for Harvard but better be careful as I am helping with a summer school
for them.

I take it with a very large pinch of salt. After all if the rest of the
website is just a little lacking in coherence this article probably is too!

Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hon Wai Lai" <honwai@bumble.u-net.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 8:32 PM
Subject: ABR article: "the heart does think"

> Is there any scientific basis for the physiological claim below?
>
> ...........................................
> ABR ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER
> Vol. 5, Issue 5
> May 15, 2005
> http://www.biblearchaeology.org
>
> "Does the Heart 'Think'?"
>
> The wording of Genesis 6:5 makes it sounds of as if the human heart is
> capable of thinking, or at least of having some sort of emotional
> capacity: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the
> earth, and that every imagination of THE THOUGHTS OF HIS HEART was only
> evil continually." Critics deem this expression to be unscientific,
> since the heart is viewed as a purely mechanical pump. However, the
> science journal Discover, in a review of the book A Man after His Own
> Heart by Charles Siebert, reported that Siebert's book recognized
>
>
> ...that the heart is no mere pump, as some physicians still insist, but
> a sophisticated participant in the regulation of emotion. The heart has
> a mind of its own: It secretes its own brainlike hormones and actively
> partakes in a dialogue among the internal organs-a dialogue on which
> cardiac researchers are only beginning to eavesdrop. The heart likewise
> undergoes all manner of organic change inflicted on it by the
> tempestuous brain and its neurochemicals. As one doctor explains, people
> do suffer heartbreak, literally. (Burdick 2004: 72).
> The journal used the real-life example of William Schroeder, who was the
> second (as well as the longest-surviving) recipient of the Jarvik-7
> artificial heart. As a purely mechanical pump of his blood, the device
> kept Schroeder alive for an unprecedented 620 days. However, as Discover
> reported:
>
>
> The patient's mental state was another matter. Schroeder was weepy and
> deeply despondent. (Barney Clark, the first Jarvik-7 recipient,
> expressed a wish to die or be killed.) The blood still circulated, but
> something vital-some emotionally charged communication between heart and
> mind-had been lost... Affirming all [alleged] myths, the hear truly is a
> seat of human emotion. The Jarvik-7, in contrast, was deaf to the song
> of human experience; built to invigorate its patient, it instead
> alienated him, supplying Schroeder with everything but the will to live.
> He had the look, Siebert writes, 'of a man who has lost his heart'
> (Burdick 2004: 72).
> It is discoveries like these that should caution us not to be too quick
> in judging the Book of Genesis as scientifically unsound.
>
> Reference:
>
> Burdick, A. 2004. Review of A Man after His Own Heart, by Charles
> Siebert. Discover 25, no. 5.
>
> Stephen Caesar holds his master's degree in anthropology/archaeology
> from Harvard. He is a staff member at Associates for Biblical Research
> and the author of the e-book The Bible Encounters Modern Science,
> available at www.authorhouse.com.
>
>
>
Received on Wed May 18 11:06:10 2005