More About Laminin

Previously, I had blogged my opinion on the protein Laminin and its supposedly “cross” shape. The shape of this protein was seized upon by one evangelist, Louie Giglio to support a proposition in his sermon. I did not know much about the protein at that time (except what I wrote in that blog) and I was reluctant to believe that a scientist would say that the protein was “cross” shaped partly due to the sensationalism of Louie, I must admit. However, I now have found some interesting information regarding this protein’s role in cancer research.

Recently, whilst I was reading the [excellent introductory pathology and core text in my course] book, Cell, Tissue and Disease by Prof. Neville Woolf (2000), I came across this little paragraph about laminin:

“Laminin is a cross-shaped glycoprotein present in both the basement membrane and the interstitial stroma. In normal cells laminin receptors occur on the aspect of the cell apposed to the basement membrane and are occupied by basement membrane laminin. Invasive cells, however, have laminin receptors diffusely distributed over the entire cell surface and these are often unoccupied. If such tumour cells are treated with the receptor binding fragment of laminin, their invasiveness is greately reduced” [my emphases]

Firstly, the author refers to this protein explicitly as “cross-shaped”, so Louie’s description was accurate. Secondly, it appears Laminin fragments reduce the metastatic potential of a neoplastic (tumorous) growth and hence, rids the neoplasm of its dangerous property. This potential therapy can be used if the cancerous growth had not metastasized already. Even if the cancer has spread, it could (in theory) arrest further spreading. It should be noted that this is less likely to happen naturally even when there is enough laminin in the body [to arrest the spreading of a cancer] because there is little laminin fragments freely floating around in the body. I suspect that the laminin fragments have therapeutic potential because they don’t have the binding domain for the basement membrane, otherwise (I think) they might actually help the invasive cell to adhere to the basement membrane and achieve malignancy easily!

So, the cross shaped Laminin not only proves God’s promises to be true, it helps scientists to cure cancer! 

Mike Guglielmucci + porn addiction = Cognitive Dissonance in excelsis

This is huge everywhere. For a reliable source of this news check out the links in ChristianityToday’s news page.

Okay, I neither want to beat a dead horse nor do I want to repeat all the accusations against Mike, ad nauseam. I’m not like OMG! Mike is teh sux0r!1!0!1!

I first came across the news of Mike’s deception a while back, though I never really realised how big it was. Mike apparently wrote one of the popular song, Healer and performed it to a huge Hillsong Australia crowd. Now, I’m not a huge fan of Hillsong by any means, though I do have one album of their youth team United. So, it is no surprise that I did not know of this whole shebang before. And, it is a good thing. I’m not into hugely “emotional” ways of worshipping where stuff like this can creep into quickly [though, I do not abhor appropriate emotion entirely in worship settings].

Although I can empathise with the reactions of some of the young Christians, I feel that some of their very negative reactions are hardly reasonable, and hardly “Christian”.

As someone who is interested in the psychology of things, it was interesting to note that some of the physical symptoms Mike was showing originated when his porn addiction began:

“When he was about 12 he did vomit all the time, he’d get really really sick,” [Danny Guglielmucci, Mike's father] said.

“He was in the Adelaide Children’s Hospital for seven weeks at one stage; he didn’t eat and we thought we were going to lose him.”

“They took out his appendix, thinking that it might be that, but they realised that it wasn’t.”

“We signed him out from hospital and then he would go a few months and then he would get sick again.”

“We’d always take him to hospital; we’d always do the proper thing but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it until now.”

“We have watched our son go through what we thought was cancer,” [Mike's father] said. “My wife and I, over the past two years, have watched him vomit in buckets, having nosebleeds, and even his hair fell out in clumps at one stage.”

“Every time we saw him, we saw symptoms. He stayed with us for a while where we had to put a special air-conditioner in one of the rooms because he would heat up so much in the middle of winter.”

“He had this cold air-conditioner blowing on him to try to keep the heat down. As a professional minister I’ve stood in front of my congregation and cried and said to pray for my son.”

From here

That’s quite extreme, you know, the symptoms. Its like tons and tons of guilt blowing up inside. The fact that Mike is a youth pastor would have contributed much to his depression, I reckon. All that cognitive dissonance is on a completely different level on Mike’s case. It must have been mind blowing. If what is related by Mike’s father is accurate, I truly feel sorry for this man.

A Cognitively Dissonant Faith

Over at Parchment and Pen, Michael Patton had an interesting post about a person Virginia who apparently was “de-converted” from Christianity after 23 years of cognitively dissonant faith. Here are some thoughts:

Apparently, Virginia made a commitment to Christianity during a time of crisis in her family:

Virginia: “Christianity thrives on human suffering and yearn for community. It was precisely under these circumstances that I committed myself to Christ at 19 years old, when my family got into serious trouble — father filed for bankruptcy, my parents separated.”

Many people turn to religion in times of trouble in their lives. Such people tend to make a decision to follow a religion during emotional situations on a whim. After they are “in” they begin investigate the truth claims of the religion to find reasons for their belief. This latter phase usually happens after the crisis situation has finished. If during this period they do not find reasonable answers for their questions, they lead cognitively dissonant lives. For some, they find the answers they were looking for and some don’t. The latter group tend to be frustrated and lose their way. This is a very cumulative process as they investigate more and more issues, they become skeptical increasingly and as such come to identify with a skeptical viewpoint eventually.

Virginia: “I began fervently witnessing Christ, became a cell group leader on Bible study, witnessed to friends and relatives about Jesus and the salvation, using the tracts supplied from my church. I was active in church and in my college years, also leaded evangelizing activities witnessing Jesus. However, I sensed in the entire ethos of this set of belief, some incompleteness.”

Mike Patton comments on the “incompleteness” she mentions:

I would imagine that the “incompleteness” comes from a rising realization of “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance describes a physiological condition[sic] where a person’s beliefs are in contradiction to other beliefs or the way they live. Often people’s habitual patterns do not harmonize with their intellectual convictions. In Christianity, it is often the case where people live according to a Christian worldview due to traditional bents without ever experiencing a true cognitive or intellectual conversion to such. This produces a dichotomous life of dissonance—inconsistency in their beliefs and practices. I would imagine that this is the case with Virginia.

Cognitive Dissonance is a psychological condition btw and the stress it brings is magnified in a situation like this where a person is inconsistent in their actions rather than in their thoughts. Mike then reveals some reasons for her leaving the faith. Some of them I found rather unreasonable.

Centering Prayer or Self-Hypnosis or Yoga – What is it?!

Whilst I was browsing the blog Parchment and Pen, I came across a comment by a guy “britphil” who said he led “Contemplative Worship” in an Anglican church in Liverpool. I have never heard about this form of worship so I searched around trying to find what exactly it is. It turns out it is also known as “Centering Prayer”. As I began to read more about it, I felt that this type of prayer had a lot in common with meditation as it is practised in Eastern religions like Hinduism. For example, I found a quote in Wikipedia’s page on Centering prayer of Basil Pennington who appears to be one of the proponents of this technique giving guidelines about how to do this prayer:

1. Sit comfortably with your eyes closed, relax, and quiet yourself. Be in love and faith to God.

2. Choose a sacred word that best supports your sincere intention to be in the Lord’s presence and open to His divine action within you (i.e. “Jesus”, “Lord,” “God,” “Savior,” “Abba,” “Divine,” “Shalom,” “Spirit,” “Love,” etc.).

3. Let that word be gently present as [the] symbol of your sincere intention to be in the Lord’s presence and open to His divine action within you.

4. Whenever you become aware of anything (thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, associations, etc.), simply return to your sacred word, your anchor.”

The first thing that came to mind as I read this is “Woah! This almost sounds like what a Hindu would do”. The most striking thing about this is that in Step 2 just use the word “Om” to focus on and you will be doing what Hindus do in their meditations.

Laminin: A view from a “scientist to be”….

I heard about this molecule called Laminin that apparently looks like a Cross. In this age of stuff appearing in tortillas and what have you, I decided to check it out. Thinking about it, I remembered one lecturer in introducing histology mentioning about this Laminin molecule in connection to molecules in the extracellular matrix. He did not elaborate on the structure of this molecule.

So I went to Google. The first item on the search takes me to a video of Louie Giglio wowing a crowd showing a “scientific diagram” of this Laminin. Needless to say that his presentation was pretty cool (though overwrought with much emotion), I wasn’t too impressed by all the skeptics/atheists flaming in the comments section of the video. It was almost like the haters had a skewed perception of what exactly is being claimed here. In fact there was a good clarification by the uploader of another one of the video