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[Chrono]

There's so many hilarious things to say about 'islamic civilization' that I don't even know where to start. I'd rather just skip the headache and comment on this piece of wisdom:

The Islamic legal principles of international law were mainly based on Qur'an and the Sunnah of Muhammad, who gave various injunctions to his forces and adopted practices toward the conduct of war. The most important of these were summarized by Muhammad's successor and close companion, Abu Bakr, in the form of ten rules for the Muslim army:[71]
Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.

:lol Do however invade foreign lands, slaughter the brave men that defend them, take their women and distribute them like property, to enslave and rape them for the rest of their lives, erase the people's identities and culture and enslave them as second class citizens unless they join the hive and become slaves to allah.

If only the Americans or the colonialists before them followed the islamic way with their invasions of iraq, what wonderful experiences the iraqis could have been subjected to. Should they object, Bush could just say he's just doing what allah's soldiers did centuries before him. I don't think the part about taking women though is recommended, the desert sun is more than enough punishment for the marines.

 

[Shogmaster]

Related video, posted ages ago here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...ei=w2TnSuLzNIiawgPy9rX7Dg&q=neil+tyson&hl=en#

Watch from 23 minute point on (Islam comes in @ around 28 min point, but set up is needed). Actually, watch the whole thing.

 

[Anaxagoras]

As I said before, how did any of this ''played a large part in getting it [the scientific method] into the form we have today'' ?

It didn't. The most important breakthrough was the use by Keppler of observational data gathered by Tycho Brahe to formulate his laws. This showed that celestial movements could be explained by mathematical equations and not something knowable only by God or Allah. This led to Newton, his contemporaries and then onwards.

Funny how the tone is changing, first he was advertised to be the first scientist, after that it changed him being a great contributer to what we understand today as the scientific method, now he isn't that, soon it would be argued that he certainly must have practiced or performed some sort of scientific experiment through out his life time that practically or theoretically might have influenced the work of other scientists around him or in his era.

 

[Dresden]

Funny how the tone is changing, first he was advertised to be the first scientist, after that it changed him being a great contributer to what we understand today as the scientific method, now he isn't that, soon it would be argued that he certainly must have practiced or performed some sort of scientific experiment through out his life time that practically or theoretically might have influenced the work of other scientists around him or in his era.

Do you group people as a giant blob of dissenting opinions? Because you're dealing with different people here.

 

[Anaxagoras]

So... is anybody planning to show us the other side of the coin in this thread? or do I have to be the annoying guy that has to crush the religious peoples fun? as I usually am.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Do you group people as a giant blob of dissenting opinions? Because you're dealing with different people here.

I am aware of that, but go on, I am listening to whatever you are trying to argue for.

 

[Chrono]

Related video, posted ages ago here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...ei=w2TnSuLzNIiawgPy9rX7Dg&q=neil+tyson&hl=en#

Watch from 23 minute point on (Islam comes in @ around 28 min point, but set up is needed). Actually, watch the whole thing.

I made a thread about that video a while ago, good stuff.

He's wrong to talk about 'arab' mathematics though, the majority of the 'islamic' figures talked about, scientist, mathematics, or philosophers, were all mostly persian. And if course a lot of knowledge was from indians and greeks. At least if he said 'islamic' he'd be less wrong.

 

[Veidt]

Related video, posted ages ago here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...ei=w2TnSuLzNIiawgPy9rX7Dg&q=neil+tyson&hl=en#

Watch from 23 minute point on (Islam comes in @ around 28 min point, but set up is needed). Actually, watch the whole thing.

That was a damn good presentation. I like watching his stuff.

Seems like Ghazalism prevailed. And this can be seen as the reason for the downfall. Very interesting,very.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Related video, posted ages ago here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...ei=w2TnSuLzNIiawgPy9rX7Dg&q=neil+tyson&hl=en#

Watch from 23 minute point on (Islam comes in @ around 28 min point, but set up is needed). Actually, watch the whole thing.

That was interesting, thanks for sharing.

 

[Shogmaster]

I made a thread about that video a while ago, good stuff.

He's wrong to talk about 'arab' mathematics though, the majority of the 'islamic' figures talked about, scientist, mathematics, or philosophers, were all mostly persian. And if course a lot of knowledge was from indians and greeks. At least if he said 'islamic' he'd be less wrong.

So that was you, eh? Thanks for the video. One of my favs.

 

[Sibylus]

"Coexisted" would have been a better word choice than "merged". Even then it would have been inaccurate, though, as science and religion have coexisted for centuries. They still do for the most part.

 

[Prine]

So how did faith contribute to scientific progress? Would you argue that these achievements would not have been made without the guiding light of Islam?

Because its every Muslims obligation (In the Quran) to measure and learn about the world and universe that God created. Also provided many forms of motivation to seek knowledge.

The verse is something like "Look upon creation, then look again", also there were Hadith that say "For every disease sent down by God, there's a cure". These are just off the top of my head.


As for Islam and Science right now? Well Iran were heavily funding stem cell research when Bush frowned upon it. The Saudi's recently opened a new billion dollar science oasis
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8270601.stm

But science goes where the money is, which after decades of wars and corruption, Islamic countries have lost their place in Science. But they're still trying.

Historians from a number of schools respect and understand the contribution Islam and its empire made to humanity.

When Spain was reconquered, they kept alot of Islamic traditions and norms around as they did see them as a civilised culture. They were giving bikini waxes to their women way back then.

BBC will air: Islam - The language of Science in January.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gksx4

Urge all of you to watch it.

 

[Chrono]

Because its every Muslims obligation (In the Quran) to measure and learn about the world and universe that God created. Also provided many forms of motivation to seek knowledge.

The verse is something like "Look upon creation, then look again"

"roger that"

 

[Salazar]

Anybody interested by this thread needs to read Anthony Grafton's 'Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West'. It's not Grafton's master-work (that remains his history of the footnote), but it is a classic treatment of many of this thread's themes. For example, how academic specialisation is a modern phenomenon, a departure from the frame of scholarly enterprise that led Newton to spend non-scientific time on digging into religious texts.

GoogleBooks link below.



http://books.google.com/books?id=6lE-OdAQPJsC&dq=worlds+made+by+words&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=WhYI18kSff&sig=Vln1vW9IxnSW5yb9MOk-osgbnCI&hl=en&ei=6CvoSq-8ApWDkAWT15DLBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

[Princess Carl]

imagine you bring back some great ancient greek and egyptian scientists to todays world
wouldn't you think they would start to understand their religious beliefs were bullshit and they just didn't know any better 1000's of years ago?


imagine if the greek one said "WOW evolution is so cool why didn't we think of that.....now i believe ZEUS set evolution in motion"

and the egyptian one would say RA was behind evolution

they probably wouldn't do such a thing
it would become pretty clear that their respective pantheon of gods don't exist and are pure mythology

now why can't christians/muslims do the same thing?
this "god did evolution" thing is just rediculous

 

[Ikael]

Thing is, religion and science were deeply intertwined on the islamic world. The contraposition of science vs religion is a modern myth. Religion has been a huge motivation for seeking scientific knowdegle, as evidenced by many religious figures that contributed to science (Mendel, Averroes, Miguel Servet, etc).

About the fall of the Islamic civilization, that is a pretty fascinating case of study, but I would dare to say that, like any civilizations, they destroyed theirselves internally before falling to an external enemy. The case of Al - Andalus was pretty telling: internal political divisions lead to the small, fragmented Taifa kingdoms. Unable to fight the Christians due to their smaller size, they seek help on their Almoravides and Almohades "brothers", which albeit islamic, practiced a far more fundamentalist version of the islam. Instead of helping them, they conquered the Taifa kingdoms and destroyed the bulk of their cultural legacy, burning libraries and closing schools. Contrary to the plan of the original Taifa kingdoms, the almoravides and almohades were not better suited to fight the Christians: while being as fanatic and militarized as their Christian counterparts, they lost their cultural, economical and technological edge without apporting an unified political structure (not to mention that their conquer of their own "brothers" hurted pretty much all of that), and ultimately felt even faster than their (to them) girlier, whiney predecessors.

So in short: the main enemy of the Islamic world has always been, and always will be, its own fundamentalists, in despite of all their yelling and hissy fisting towards a perpetual evil external enemy, let it being the Christians, the Mongols, the Israeli or whoever shares frontiers with them.

 

[Enosh]

imagine if the greek one said "WOW evolution is so cool why didn't we think of that.....now i believe ZEUS set evolution in motion"

greeks were the first to come up with the evolutionary tough