Science and Islam in Conflict

S.A.M. said:
Sure, how is it different from modern governance?

People still throw insurgents and terrorists in jail. See the time frame.
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And THIS is your rationale and justification? :bugeye:
 
(Q) said:
And THIS is your rationale and justification? :bugeye:
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I'm not personally responsible for the ambitions of all men; however what I can see is that being Muslim made a difference in the way they treated people. Compare to any other group of the time. And even if you look at the Persians as a separate ethnic group, it is interesting that they were able to maintain their ethnic identity, just as the Turks and Arabs were, just as the Mughals and Indians were. That is similar to the way invaders in India assimilated.

The worst of the lot was arguably Genghis Khan, who killed anyone that stood in the way of his ambitions, and even he is not known for his intolerance.

Its neither rationale nor justification, that is unnecessary; its merely history in context. Even todays so called secular societies have caused more suffering and death.
 
S.A.M. said:
I'm not personally responsible for the ambitions of all men; however what I can see is that being Muslim made a difference in the way they treated people. Compare to any other group of the time.
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Who in their right mind would follow a cult whose legacy is that of conquering and pillaging their recruitments, by demanding conversion to the religion or being tossed into jail labeled an insurgent, offered slavery to those how wouldn't resist and death to those who did?

The worst of the lot was arguably Genghis Khan, who killed anyone that stood in the way of his ambitions, and even he is not known for his intolerance.

Its neither rationale nor justification, that is unnecessary; its merely history in context. Even todays so called secular societies have caused more suffering and death.
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We can ignore the strawmen arguments and other logical fallacies.
 
(Q) said:
Who in their right mind would follow a cult whose legacy is that of conquering and pillaging their recruitments, by demanding conversion to the religion or being tossed into jail labeled an insurgent, offered slavery to those how wouldn't resist and death to those who did?
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Who, indeed?
 
Michael said:
“Islam has no problems with science,” he says. “As long as what you do does not harm people, it is permitted. You can study what you want, you can say what you want.”

What about, say, evolutionary biology or Darwinism? I ask. (Evolution is taught in Egyptian schools, although it is banned in Saudi Arabia and Sudan.) “If you are asking if Adam came from a monkey, no,” Badawy responds. “Man did not come from a monkey. If I am religious, if I agree with Islam, then I have to respect all of the ideas of Islam. And one of these ideas is the creation of the human from Adam and Eve. If I am a scientist, I have to believe that.”

But from the point of view of a scientist, is it not just a story? I ask. He tells me that if I were writing an article saying that Adam and Eve is a big lie, it will not be accepted until I can prove it.

“Nobody can just write what he thinks without proof. But we have real proof that the story of Adam as the first man is true.”

“What proof?”

He looks at me with disbelief: “It’s written in the Koran.”

I find the lack of logical mental processing amazing - almost shocking.
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Not to address the original thread, but: government-supported stunting of thought. More than shocking - reprehensible. I wonder what would happen if you were foolish enough to keep pressing that humans evolved from earlier primates? Nothing good, I expect.
 
Norsefire said:
Then, go ahead and choose the one you want to believe in.

The scientists making all of these discoveries may call themselves "christian" or "muslim", but they really aren't.
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This is admission that your religion is not in perfect alignment with knowledge.
 
S.A.M. said:
The spoils of war belong to the people that fight the war, but the war should be a jihad (ie a righteous war).
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Curious: does that include the Crusades, then, which were fought against an eastern invader? :D
 
GeoffP said:
Not to address the original thread, but: government-supported stunting of thought. More than shocking - reprehensible. I wonder what would happen if you were foolish enough to keep pressing that humans evolved from earlier primates? Nothing good, I expect.
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One could always put a few aboriginal men in the zoo

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1992/6/1992_6_12.shtml
Samuel Verner was a high-strung South Carolinian, raised on Robinson Crusoe and the works of David Livingstone and Henry M. Stanley and trained for the mission field. He began his travels to the Congo region at twenty-two in search of souls but soon edged away from the church in favor of a series of schemes meant to lure investors to Africa that never quite came off. He was a vivid and prolific writer about his adventures and had brought back from his first expedition two Africans, and so in 1903, when the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, soon to open in St. Louis, wanted Pygmies imported for the area of the fairgrounds called the Anthropology Department, it seemed logical to turn to Verner.

He was given a sort of shopping list: twelve Pygmies, six more Africans of miscellaneous tribes, plus all the paraphernalia of daily living they would need to set themselves up as authentic exhibits in St. Louis. Verner did his best in the face of persistent fever, but in the end he could persuade just five Pygmies to accompany him to America.

One of them was Ota Benga. He had been out hunting when forces in the pay of Belgium, on the prowl for rumored ivory, butchered his hunting band, including his wife and children. By the time Verner happened upon him he had become a slave of the Baschilele people and had little to lose by crossing the great water. Verner bought him with salt and a few yards of cloth.

At the St. Louis fair Ota Benga and his companions found themselves living alongside a rich but eclectic sampling of aboriginal people from everywhere: Ainus from Japan, Patagonian “giants” from South America, Kwakiutls from the Northwest Coast (who had to ask for a stockade to shield their baskets and totem poles from what they tactfully called the white man’s “taking qualities”), Igorots from the Philippines, allowed to appear in their traditional loincloths only over the objections of Theodore Roosevelt, who argued that trousers would be more likely to reassure any visitors who still harbored doubts about the wisdom of acquiring the Philippines.

The Pygmies were among the most popular attractions. They were made to snap their filed teeth at visitors, perform ritual dances, compete in “Anthropology Days,” a sort of aboriginal Olympics, during which they excelled only at mud fighting. “When a white man comes to our country,” one of Ota Benga’s companions complained to a reporter, “we give them presents. . . . The Americans treat us as they do our pet monkey. They laugh at us and poke their umbrellas into our faces.”

Later, when the autumn air turned so cold that even the blankets lent the Pygmies by their Indian neighbors proved inadequate and they took shelter inside their huts, visitors heaved bricks through the windows to drive them out again.

At first the Pygmy simply wandered the grounds unnoticed, wearing ordinary clothes, earning his keep by feeding the primates. But the zoo’s director, William T. Hornaday, had a showman’s gaudy instincts. His original plans to have a fully peopled American Indian village on the grounds had never quite worked out. Now he made his small guest a big attraction. BUSHMAN SHARES A CAGE WITH BRONX PARK APES, Said The New York Times, and forty thousand people turned out on a single afternoon to see the “wild man from Africa.”

Not everyone was pleased. “Our race, we think, is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes,” said the Reverend James H. Gordon, chairman of the Colored Baptist Ministers’ Conference. “We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.”

As a black man Gordon objected primarily to the exhibition’s naked racism, but as a Baptist he had another agenda: Exhibition of a human being and an orangutan together, with its suggestion that zoo-goers were somehow seeing the missing link, would encourage Darwinism. “This is a Christian country,” Gordon explained, “and the exhibition evidently aims to be a demonstration of the Darwinian theory of evolution. The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted.”
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GeoffP said:
?? No, the native Assyrians et al who were divided up by the Saracens.
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These Assyrians????:confused:
http://library.thinkquest.org/J002807/Time and Time Again/Time and Time Again/mesoassyr.html

One of the ancient monuments discovered in the ruins of ancient Assyria has this inscription by King Asshurizirpal (reign began in 883 BC.) of a conquered city:

"Their men, young and old, I took as prisoners. Of some I cut off the feet and hands; of others I cut off the noses, ears, and lips; of the young men's ears I made a heap; of the old men's heads I built a minaret."

Hawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies" vol. 2, p85, note.
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Or these???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_Genocide

Which Crusades?
 
First: Evolution is a scientific fact.

No scientist here would disagree (I think?). We all agree we were not created by a God or multiple Gods etc.. we are not the descendants of a litteral Adam and Eve - we evolved from a common ancestor along with the other primates. Christian apologists have a means of accepting both - it usually involves reinterpreting the Bible as a set of mythical stories and that God wants his followers to get something out of reading them. AKA: there were no Adam and Eve but the story suited its purpose for its time. Yes we evolved from a common ancestor but that's what God had planned all along. Now give me my test tube I don't want to think too deeply on this.

To this we all agree - right?

Second:

During the "Arab" Golden Age or (Middle Eastern Golden Age) there were scientific advancements made. By the very people that were conquered. Just as the Chinese continued to make advancements under the rule of the Mongolians (Chinese Golden Age).
That's fine.
We all agree that is true.
Does Islam per say promote Scientific progress? I personally think no religion promotes science - as a matter of fact religous societies are associated with a loss of art and low scientific productivity. Some art yes, some advancement yes - but art is hindered and small scale advancements made in science.

The point though, is that Islam is seriously hindering science today. That's a fact. Didn't you guys read the article? Even Muslims themselves complained about the system they work in. Either that or you can accept the BS: "It's the fault of the Americans and British". Yeah, the Americans who have been a power for what 50 years, are all to blame? That's idiotic. We all know what happened to Europe in the grip of Christiandom and the exact same is happened and is continue to happen under the rule of Islam in the Middle East.

Is it really so hard a concept to grasp?

If not then WHY?

Why are the sciences in the ME so retarded? The Koreans, The Chinese, The Japanese, hell even Hong Kong which was a mud flat with some village huts a 100 years ago, all of these people despite huge losses in war, being nuked with two bombs, many famines, being colonized, being split into two countries, etc... all of these people are generations ahead of people in the middle east.

I think the answer is Islam (just like Christianity) retards scientific endeavor.

Michael
 
RE: Universities

Shang Xiang school of learning was founded in 2257–2208 BC by the king of the State of Youyu (he actually founded two schools) one was Shang Xiang and the other one was Xia Xiang. Teachers at Shang Xiang were generally erudite, elder and noble persons.

Akademia: Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC

The oldest "University" by many is considered to be Nalanda University, founded in Bihar, India around the 5th century BC. Nalanda conferred academic degree titles to its graduates, while also offering post-graduate courses.


See SAM, it was actually India. India was the correct answer - perhaps you've heard of the place before? I hear the food is yummy :)
 
Reading Incomprehension 101.

Hsuan Tsang was a famous Chinese scholar who studied at the Nalanda University.
 
RE: Hospitals

The Sinhalese (Sri Lankans) are perhaps responsible for introducing the concept of dedicated hospitals to the world. According to the Mahavamsa, the ancient chronicle of Sinhalese royalty written in the 6th century A.D., King Pandukabhaya (4th century BC) had lying-in-homes and hospitals (Sivikasotthi-Sala) built in various parts of the country. This is the earliest documentary evidence we have of institutions specifically dedicated to the care of the sick anywhere in the world. Mihintale Hospital is perhaps the oldest in the world.


AGAIN, the answer was India. You really should brush up on you history SAM!
 
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