Boca wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2017 9:04 amHobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:04 pm
Lol.
That's why religions fought against every single step that science has made.
First, Islam isn't a religion like christinity, Islam is also ideology, lifestyle, social project, Science is no separate from Islam.
second, Islam from the beginning was promoting science, and never been anti like Christianity or any other religion, but since you have no knowledge of history of muslim civilization, you're babbling out of ignorance.
Maybe he doesn't know much about history of Islamic civilization? But I do, so let's unpack this topic a bit... It connects as well to the next points.
Boca wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:56 pmbut muslims are not in an ideal shape today.
Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2017 8:30 pmWhen I visited the local mosque, the young Muslim man who showed us round explained that Muslims believe that the world was made by Allah, and so it is reverence towards Allah's works that makes science appealing to Muslims. (Like the proof according to design). By contrast, there was an influence in the making of Christianity which actively disparaged the material in favour of the mental and spiritual, like what Nick is on about.
Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2017 5:30 pmNature is not designed.
Islam is not science. Everything it does flies against science.
I see the story of Islam and science like this. Islam being the religion of illiterate caravan raiding pirates it obviously was not a juggernaut of science initially. But as Islam raped and pillaged its way across the Middle-East and North Africa it come into contact with much more advanced civilizations like the Greeks, the Persians and the Babylonians. Greek philosophy and Near Eastern wisdom obviously did not jive well with the simplistic superstitions of the Arabs who kept swarming up the warpath from what is today Yemen. At some points, particularly under Muawiyah I who established the Umayyads and Al-Mamun who ruled the Abbasids at their zenith during the so-called Islamic Golden Age, the non-Arab peoples of higher culture got the upper hand back. But at other times, the dark forces of ignorance and backwardness reigned as Arabs poured into the region, examples being the "rightly guided" caliphs or the anti-Mutazilite forces led by ibn Hanbal (today seen as the inspiration for Wahhabism) and Al-Qadir. Unfortunately the forces of ignorance won, the mostly Persian and Greek scholars of the Golden Age came to be seen as dissidents and the House of Wisdom fell into obscurity. By the end of the first millennium (AD) Islamic civilization was headed into darkness and decline. For wisdom there were a few results. (1) To some degree science and maths lived on the longest since they are culturally neutral and don't as obviously threaten Islamic mumbo jumbo the way Greek philosophy or theater do. (2) Islam shifted towards anti-rationalism so that "philosophers" like Al-Ghazali who championed irrationalism gained dominance and (3) reason and science were eventually overall rejected with people of wisdom and character leaving Islam for its mystical fringe, Sufism. So, while it is true that some medical and mathematical texts from the ancients made it back to Europe via Arabic, the revival of classical culture and wisdom that sparked the Renaissance owes its origins to Islam only in the sense that when the Muslims destroyed Constantinople, the Greeks fled as refugees, with their scholars and books to Italy. When we hear of the amazing science in the Quran, I for one am not overly amazed, the typical examples include the growth of the fetus which is seems impossible that a pastoral peoples wouldn't be aware of, the seeming reluctance to mix of river and sea water which sould have been obvious enough to the ancients one would think, and strangely, a scene where Solomon has a dialogue with ants. Since ants can't talk I have no idea why this verse gets often sighted as science in the Quran, though perhaps it is one of the nicer actually, St. Francis and Rama could talk to the animals as well.
You couldn't find a better short documentary on this topic than below, (final episode yet pending),
https://youtu.be/guYMAycJgYA
https://youtu.be/UUx9NzzTz-0
https://youtu.be/4YVxJoJUlss
By the way, I don't think all this has much to do with islam in the sense of Muhammad and the Quran and so on. Instead, I see it as the result of the Near East having been under imperial domination for literally five-thousand years; ever since Sargon one or another empirical dynasty ruled: the Babylonians, the Neo-Assyrians, the Achaemenids, the Seleucids, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the French and so on. This drained the life and vigor out of the people turning them into rule-following zombies without more initiative or creativity. Islam is simply one chapter in a very long story of unfreedom and inequality.