islam rejects logic?
wf3h
role in islam's rejection of logic as a basis for critiquing the quran.
seems steven weinberg agrees, in an article cited by another poster at:
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2552017,00.html
Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most
influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who
argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of
laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's
hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in
a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because
God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no
more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.
Mujin
wf...@vsswireless.net says...
Al Ghazali wrote Incoherence of the Philosophers in the 11th Century, actually.
This spurred a rebuttal by Ibn Rushd/Averroes in the 12th Century entitled "The
incoherence of the incoherence" in which he defended Aristotelian philosophy. In
fact, latin translations of his commentary on Aristotle's works was how they were
rediscovered by Europe. He was also noted for Arabic translations of Galen and
other medical scholars, as well as his own treatises in medicine and mathematics.
Science (especially medicine) continued to develop, largely at the same rate as in
Europe up until
For example:
In the 1100s al Jazari invented a variety of mechanical devices including water
clocks, washing machines and pumps.
In the 1200s Ibn Al-Naphis discovered and described in print the human
pulmonary system
in the 1300s Ibn Khaldun produced several early works on economics and political
science
Also in the 1300s, an early brass moveable type press was developed in Moorish
spain, though Gutenberg's version in 1454 was much more sophisticated.
Also in the 1300s, Kamal ad-Din independently discovered refraction of light and
the spectrum.
In the 13th and 14th centuries muslim military engineers were making limited use
of canons, which of course were adopted and enormously developed by
Europeans.
Muslim explorers and geographers were producing detailed maps, almanacs and
"ethnographies" up to the 15th century.
It's certainly true that most scientific innovation was done by the 13th
century, though astronomy, medicine and mathematics developed pretty much
constantly until 1450, producing trig tables, extensive practical use of
trigonometry, algebra and in the case of medicine even the use of
narcotic-soaked sponges in surgery. In part, the decline of the muslim academic
world was due to the collapse of the Moorish holdings in Spain and the growing
dominance of Italian trade networks throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.
Internal conflicts didn't help.
It's also often claimed that despite the reintroduction of scientific thought to the
muslim world in the 19th Century by European empire-builders, the muslim world
rejected modernity in its entirety. Just a quick look at history shows this to not
be true. Many areas of the muslim world made an effort to modernize with
greater or lesser success. Yes, there were those who rejected science because
they felt the entangled philosophical ideas conflicted with their faith, but there
were also those who accepted both the science and the philosophy and those
who managed to disentangle scientific thought from the liberal ideas of the West.
The main barrier to development in the muslim world in the early years of the
20th Century wasn't religious it was social: for example, Persia tried to modernize,
but was hampered by a combination of a rigid, hierarchical social structure and
interference from European powers which wanted to keep the region free of a
modern power. Right now, there are any number of excellent muslim scientists,
doctors and engineers all over the world.
The "turning away" from science that people go on about when talking about
Islam is a crock of shit, to put it bluntly. There is no more "turning away"
inherent in Islam than there is in Christianity. Are there those who reject the
modern world and retreat into fanatical fundamentalism? Absolutely. But the
same is true of Christianity, the great religion of the West.
Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with all
Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who happen
to get most of the media coverage?
--
Mujin
Qualia
news:MPG.201b5c79b...@news.cc.
>
> Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with
> all
> Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
> it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who
> happen
> to get most of the media coverage?
Answer: because those 'seemingly reasonable people' are *the most privileged
class of westerners* -- and for them to evaluate Islam fairly would first of
all require them to admit to a long and horrible catalogue of crimes
perpetrated against Muslims *by* and *for* the most privileged class of
westerners. And there's no way in the fucking world that *that's* gonna
happen.
Sam Harris's 'The End of Faith' is the ultimate, disgraceful, best-selling
proof of what I say: contemporary 'jihadic' Islam is presented as the
ultimate evil enemy -- essentially, a force that 'can't be bargained with;
can't be reasoned with; doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and which
absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead' -- while the west's
central role in provoking it, creating it, and giving it moral legitimation
is *whitewashed out of sight*. After all, even the most elementary
historical, moral or geopolitical realism will stop a book selling well in a
demented America whose response to a mere token reprisal is to bleat 'Why Do
They Hate Us?'...
T.
wf3h
Mujin wrote:
> In article <1169264888....@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> wf...@vsswireless.net says...
> > a few weeks ago i mentioned that Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali may have had a
> > role in islam's rejection of logic as a basis for critiquing the quran.
> > seems steven weinberg agrees, in an article cited by another poster at:
> >
> > http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2552017,00.html
> >
> > Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most
> > influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who
> > argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of
> > laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's
> > hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in
> > a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because
> > God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no
> > more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.
>
> Al Ghazali wrote Incoherence of the Philosophers in the 11th Century, >
> clocks, washing machines and pumps.
>
> In the 1200s Ibn Al-Naphis discovered and described in print the human
> pulmonary system
wonderful. 700 years ago islam was an intellectual influence in the
world.
and 3000 years ago the phoenicians invented writing. so what?
>
>
> The main barrier to development in the muslim world in the early years of the
> 20th Century wasn't religious it was social: for example, Persia tried to modernize,
> but was hampered by a combination of a rigid, hierarchical social structure and
> interference from European powers which wanted to keep the region free of a
> modern power. Right now, there are any number of excellent muslim scientists,
> doctors and engineers all over the world.
that's exactly the problem. they're all over the world, except in
muslim countries since science is virtually non existent in muslim
countries. as weinberg points out, in his entire career he's never read
a single important scientific paper from a muslim country.
>
> The "turning away" from science that people go on about when talking about
> Islam is a crock of shit, to put it bluntly.
a recent survey of the world's 500 best universities found that only in
turkey were there any from muslim countries in the top 500.
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2003/2003main.htm
>
> Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with all
> Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
> it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who happen
> to get most of the media coverage?
>
it's true that not all muslims are terrorists, but virtually all
terrorists are muslims. worldwide islamist imperialist aggression is
the greatest threat to civilization today.
what is the rate of female literacy in muslim countries...especially
arab ones...today compared to 30 years ago? the rate of book
publication...except in religion....etc etc...
guscubed
wf3h wrote:
It's true that not all men are terrorists, but virtually all terrorists
are men. The Y chromosome is the greatest therat to civilisation today.
Did you see what I did there?
Grandbank
Mujin wrote:
(snip)
> The "turning away" from science that people go on about when talking about
> Islam is a crock of shit, to put it bluntly. There is no more "turning away"
> inherent in Islam than there is in Christianity. Are there those who reject the
> modern world and retreat into fanatical fundamentalism? Absolutely. But the
> same is true of Christianity, the great religion of the West.
>
(snip)
Christians and Muslims are civilized precisely to the degree that they
do not practice their religions in a manner consistent with their
texts. The fact that a majority of Christians or Muslims live in peace
with those around them suggests that they have decided to adopt
self-evident human values, and retain their religious identities only
by following a tortuous path of semantic horse droppings ("nuancing")
which allows them to pretend that words mean the opposite of what they
say.
KP
Talash
guscubed wrote:
> wf3h wrote:
> > it's true that not all muslims are terrorists, but virtually all
> > terrorists are muslims. worldwide islamist imperialist aggression is
> > the greatest threat to civilization today.
>
> It's true that not all men are terrorists, but virtually all terrorists
> are men. The Y chromosome is the greatest therat to civilisation today.
>
>
> Did you see what I did there?
Yep, you tried to equate the choice of following a religion like Islam
that supports killing innocent people (oh sorry, no non-muslims are
"innocent") to something that can't be chosen like gender. Nice try,
but that doesn't poke any holes in what wf3h said.
Lexington Victoria-Rice
The anger and hatred spawned by colonialism is understandable; but the
actions of the jihadists are being justified by religious
interpretation. Perhaps Harris glossed over the contribution of western
powers; but the point of his book is that as long as the jihadists use
Islam to inspire terrorists we aren't going to find a political solution
to the problem.
The influence of the western powers can't explain the extreme level of
Jew-hating in even our "friendly" countries such as Egypt and Saudi
Arabia, can it?
Moderate Muslims are not doing enough to fight the influence of the
jihadists, according to Harris, and because of this they are as culpable
as the jihadists. If you read the entire book, you would understand
that he is making the point that religion does not bring peace but is
instead used to justify horrendous acts.
Suppose that the powers in Islamic faith were to instead say "Rather
than waging continual war against the rest of the world, we should
instead be using our intellectual powers to improve the world." I would
like to finally see an example of the "religion of peace" finally having
that effect; in that they would be far ahead of the Christians.
I don't see that happening as long as they cling to this belief that
knowledge of Allah is the only absolute knowledge. Same thing for
Christians and Jesus.
--
And yeah, a great way to marginalize creationists is to use their idiocy
to highlight the weaknesses of religion, and draw people away from the
churchly hothouse that fosters that kind of damned dumb thinking.
Meanwhile, some people make excuses for the source of our nation's curse
and beg us not to pick on poor, blameless religion, because that will
antagonize people.
Tough.
PZ Myers
Pharyngula Blog, 12/26/2006
Baron Bodissey
Typical anti-Western propaganda. God knows the West is not blameless,
but neither is Islam, which based its spread from the very beginning on
conquest. North Africa, Spain, Constantinople did not voluntarily join
the world of Islam. The Crusades, if anything, merely returned the
favor.
Baron Bodissey
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see
nothing but sea.
- Francis Bacon
wf3h
Qualia wrote:
> "Mujin" <umwi...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in message
> news:MPG.201b5c79b...@news.cc.
> >
> > Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with
> > all
> > Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
> > it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who
> > happen
> > to get most of the media coverage?
>
> Answer: because those 'seemingly reasonable people' are *the most privileged
> class of westerners* -- and for them to evaluate Islam fairly would first of
> all require them to admit to a long and horrible catalogue of crimes
> perpetrated against Muslims *by* and *for* the most privileged class of
> westerners. And there's no way in the fucking world that *that's* gonna
> happen.
oh brother talk about a distortion of history. you think islam hasn't
had it own cases of slaughter? what about darfur? somalia? the armenian
genocide?
>
> Sam Harris's 'The End of Faith' is the ultimate, disgraceful, best-selling
> proof of what I say: contemporary 'jihadic' Islam is presented as the
> ultimate evil enemy -- essentially, a force that 'can't be bargained with;
> can't be reasoned with;
oh. it seems you've never heard of the kharijites....the genocidal
islamic ideology older than the US...
you're a bigot...guilty of the bigotry of low expectations. seems you
think muslims are just stupid little children, unable to do anything
but react to western actions...unable to invent genocidal ideologies on
their own...
DougC
Qualia wrote:
> demented America whose response to a mere token reprisal is to bleat 'Why Do
> They Hate Us?'...
They don't really hate us. Within the world of Islam, the jihad is a
popular sport. If it is a slow day, a small tribe in the remote
mountains will attack the neighboring tribe. Any excuse will do.
Sunnis and Shiites are trying to eradicate each other, both want to
kill Kurds, and everybody wants to destroy Israel. Suicide missions
are the gateway to paradise in lieu of a costly trip to Mecca.
Doug Chandlert
Robert Carnegie
wf3h wrote:
> oh brother talk about a distortion of history. you think islam hasn't
> had it own cases of slaughter? what about darfur? somalia? the armenian
> genocide?
IIRC, the latest and dominant news from Darfur, Somalia, and Yugoslavia
is Christians killing Muslims. this isn't to say that Muslims can't
commit massacres, but they often don't.
Vend
Lexington Victoria-Rice wrote:
> The anger and hatred spawned by colonialism is understandable; but the
> actions of the jihadists are being justified by religious
> interpretation. Perhaps Harris glossed over the contribution of western
> powers; but the point of his book is that as long as the jihadists use
> Islam to inspire terrorists we aren't going to find a political solution
> to the problem.
Religion always served as a justification for war. I don't expect this
to change.
> The influence of the western powers can't explain the extreme level of
> Jew-hating in even our "friendly" countries such as Egypt and Saudi
> Arabia, can it?
Because the "friendly" countries aren't actually "friendly". They are
more like American colonies.
The 9/11 terrorists didn't come from Iran or Syria. They come exactly
from the "friendly" countries.
> Moderate Muslims are not doing enough to fight the influence of the
> jihadists, according to Harris, and because of this they are as culpable
> as the jihadists.
Of course, try to demonstrate against Hamas in Gaza and see what
happens to you.
> If you read the entire book, you would understand
> that he is making the point that religion does not bring peace but is
> instead used to justify horrendous acts.
As far as I understand the problem is with Arabs, not with Muslims.
Probably most Arabs, expecially those living in Arab countries, feel
that they are treated unfairly by Western powers. Since their
governments are weak and usually western-friendly, the only forces who
fight against the westerns are the jihadists.
It's not really a matter of religion. Is a matter of land and oil.
> Suppose that the powers in Islamic faith were to instead say "Rather
> than waging continual war against the rest of the world, we should
> instead be using our intellectual powers to improve the world." I would
> like to finally see an example of the "religion of peace" finally having
> that effect; in that they would be far ahead of the Christians.
>
> I don't see that happening as long as they cling to this belief that
> knowledge of Allah is the only absolute knowledge. Same thing for
> Christians and Jesus.
I don't think that religion differences actually cause wars. Religions
are used to promote and justify wars fought for 'material' purpouses.
Look at European history for instace: 2000 years of war between
Christians. And when the Britishers on the other side of the Atlantic
separated form their homeland, they also managed to fight a war between
themselves.
Alexander
On Jan 20, 1:17 pm, "Baron Bodissey" <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Qualia wrote:
> > "Mujin" <umwin...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in message
> >news:MPG.201b5c79b...@news.cc.
>
> > > Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with
> > > all
> > > Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
> > > it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who
> > > happen
> > > to get most of the media coverage?
>
> > Answer: because those 'seemingly reasonable people' are *the most privileged
> > class of westerners* -- and for them to evaluate Islam fairly would first of
> > all require them to admit to a long and horrible catalogue of crimes
> > perpetrated against Muslims *by* and *for* the most privileged class of
> > westerners. And there's no way in the fucking world that *that's* gonna
> > happen.
>
> > Sam Harris's 'The End of Faith' is the ultimate, disgraceful, best-selling
> > proof of what I say: contemporary 'jihadic' Islam is presented as the
> > ultimate evil enemy -- essentially, a force that 'can't be bargained with;
> > can't be reasoned with; doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and which
> > absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead' -- while the west's
> > central role in provoking it, creating it, and giving it moral legitimation
> > is *whitewashed out of sight*. After all, even the most elementary
> > historical, moral or geopolitical realism will stop a book selling well in a
> > demented America whose response to a mere token reprisal is to bleat 'Why Do
> > They Hate Us?'...
>
>Typical anti-Western propaganda. God knows the West is not blameless, but neither is Islam, which based its spread from the very beginning on conquest. North Africa, Spain, Constantinople did not voluntarily join the world of Islam. The Crusades, if anything, merely returned the favor.
>
Er ... Constantinople didn't fall to the Moors which was the old empire
of the ME, N. Africa and Spain. The Reconquista was in the 13th
century and the last crusade against the ME was in the late 13th
Century as well - which saw the final Christian dominion in Syria fall
to various Muslim powers - they certainly weren't going to go any
further at that point as the Mongols were pretty much everywhere and
kicking all comers into touch for another few years yet. Muslim
authority and dominion at that point across central asia, china,
anatolia and the ME was pretty thin on the ground. The Mongols didn't
really care what you believed however, as long as you put your pointy
sticks and swords down and backed away carefully, so the religion
survived fairly intact - as did Christianity in its various heretical
eastern forms.
Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, Turks not Arabs, in the 15th
century. Constantinople had only been defeated in battle once before
and that wasn't to the Muslims, it was to the Christian 4th Crusade
nominally arranged by the Venetian Doge. There was no love lost
between the Latin see and the Eastern Orthodox church.
So it's hard to see how the Crusades were retribution for this -
especially when the Crusades were entirely religiously motivated by
Urban and about reclaiming the Holy Land for Christendom.
Using empire building as an example of 'blame' is a little bizarre
anyway. I'm English and the UK apparently had a small section of the
world not so very long ago as well. We certainly didn't abuse that
privilege though, being British and all ... as long as everyone spoke
English, was Christian and served tea at 4 ... and handed over all
trading rights and privileges. If they didn't then we had these nifty
gunboats that would hove into view and politely ask you to reconsider.
Ernest Major
Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> writes
clear cut.
--
alias Ernest Major
CreateThis
<umwi...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote:
>Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with all
>Christians is unreasonable.
If Gene Scott's followers were blowing people up in supermarkets
Christianity would be blames, but those blaming Christianity would be
from other religions. Atheists are a tiny fraction of non-Christians
and the least likely to behave irrationally. Religious bigotry is the
province of the religious.
>Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
>it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who happen
>to get most of the media coverage?
Reasonable people ask themselves, "If people can believe it's *good*
to kill each other for religion, is religion itself an inherently good
thing?"
CT
Mujin
wf...@vsswireless.net says...
>
> Mujin wrote:
> > In article <1169264888....@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> > wf...@vsswireless.net says...
> > > a few weeks ago i mentioned that Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali may have had a
> > > role in islam's rejection of logic as a basis for critiquing the quran.
> > > seems steven weinberg agrees, in an article cited by another poster at:
> > >
> > > http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2552017,00.html
> > >
> > > Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most
> > > influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who
> > > argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of
> > > laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's
> > > hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in
> > > a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because
> > > God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no
> > > more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.
> >
> > Al Ghazali wrote Incoherence of the Philosophers in the 11th Century, >
> > In the 1100s al Jazari invented a variety of mechanical devices including water
> > clocks, washing machines and pumps.
> >
> > In the 1200s Ibn Al-Naphis discovered and described in print the human
> > pulmonary system
>
> wonderful. 700 years ago islam was an intellectual influence in the
> world.
>
> and 3000 years ago the phoenicians invented writing. so what?
So your statement of "fact" regarding science in muslim countries
after al Ghazali was a lie. Muslim academic progress continued in
several fields up until the 1400s - coincidentally the very same
period in which Europe began its meteoric rise to the top. Al
Ghazzali's ideas weren't the end of intellectual progress in the
middle east - a complex sequence of economic and political events
from the mid 14th Century on caused the Muslim "dark age" from 1500
to the late 1800s.
>
> >
> >
> > The main barrier to development in the muslim world in the early years of the
> > 20th Century wasn't religious it was social: for example, Persia tried to modernize,
> > but was hampered by a combination of a rigid, hierarchical social structure and
> > interference from European powers which wanted to keep the region free of a
> > modern power. Right now, there are any number of excellent muslim scientists,
> > doctors and engineers all over the world.
>
> that's exactly the problem. they're all over the world, except in
> muslim countries since science is virtually non existent in muslim
> countries.
Exactly the opposite: there's no science in many muslim countries
*because* their scientists have relocated to places all over the
world.
> as weinberg points out, in his entire career he's never read
> a single important scientific paper from a muslim country.
And? What does this prove except:
a) there aren't many muslims working in his field
b) he doesn't pay much attention when he's reading papers
c) he doesn't recognise muslim countires when he sees them; or
d) there's no way for him to identify a muslim researcher anyway
A quick search of my library reveals the following names from
universities in muslim countries:
Indonesia:
Ron Nelwan, University of Indonesia
Yelilsan Veeraragu, Trisakti University
S Josodiwondo, University of Indonesia
Sutji Wibowo, Padjadjaran University
Mohammad Farid Aziz, University of Indonesia
Budiningsih Siregar, University of Indonesia
Malaysia:
Farida Jamal, Universiti Putra Malaysia
Adeeba Kamarulazaman, Universiti Malaya
Navaratnam Parasakthi, Universiti Malaya
W. A. T. Wan Abdullah, Universiti of Malaya
Hapipah Ali, Universiti Malaya
Sh. Rohaiza S. Omar, Universiti Kebangsaan
M. Sukeri M. Yusof, Universiti Kebangsaan
Bohari M. Yaminb, Universiti Kebangsaan
Pakistan:
P. Islamabad, Quaid-l-Azam University
M.Z. Virani, Bahauddin Zakariya University
K.Qamruddin, Aga Khan University
A.A. Shah, Aga Khan University
A.Omair, Aga Khan University
O.Pahsa, Aga Khan University
Hashim R, Aga Khan University
Hassany F, Aga Khan University
Hussain N, Aga Khan University
Iqbal Z, Aga Khan University
Irfanullah A, Aga Khan University
Islam N, Aga Khan University
Jalisi F, Aga Khan University
Janoo J, Aga Khan University
Kamal K, Aga Khan University
Kara A, Aga Khan University
Khan A, Aga Khan University
Khan R, Aga Khan University
Mirza O, Aga Khan University
Mubin T, Aga Khan University
Pirzada F, Aga Khan University
Rizvi N, Aga Khan University
Hussain A, Aga Khan University
Ansari G, Aga Khan University
Siddiqui A, Aga Khan University
This is just three countries, just the names that emerged with a
google scholar search criteria consisting of the country name and the
word "university", and just the science articles that appeared on the
first page of hits. Anyone who says there are no muslim scientists
working in muslim countries is either blind or lying. Which are you?
> >
> > The "turning away" from science that people go on about when talking about
> > Islam is a crock of shit, to put it bluntly.
>
> a recent survey of the world's 500 best universities found that only in
> turkey were there any from muslim countries in the top 500.
> http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2003/2003main.htm
Is there a reason you didn't count the Indian and Singapore
universities? No chance there might be muslim scientists there?
Anyway, so what? What proportion of universities on that list are
third world countries of *any* kind? You don't suppose a lack of
funds caused by economic privation might have something to do with
developing countries' research performance, do you?
This survey also privileges the fully developed countries of Europe
and North America by assigning 20% of its score to Nobel Prize
winners - something not readily accessible to anyone outside Europe
and North America until the second half of the 20th Century.
Obviously scientists need to be able to read and participate in the
global English academic literature, but the ranking criteria also
exclude researchers who might be prolific in their native languages
but submit to English journals only occasionally.
The list of the top 500 is more a measure of track record to date -
something obviously dominated by countries which have been in a
position to pursue academic research in a university setting for a
couple of hundred years and countries with the economic clout to fund
the big, important projects. Many third world countries look at
economic realities and reason that it would be cheaper to give a
stipend to a promising researcher and send him off as a post-doc (or
even PhD student) to a wealthier country where materials and
equipment are already available than it would be to build their own
research facilities. Do these researchers' work count for their home
country or their host country?
Looking at lists like this can be interesting, but it requires deeper
thought than you seem to have put into it.
> >
> > Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with all
> > Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
> > it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who happen
> > to get most of the media coverage?
> >
>
> it's true that not all muslims are terrorists, but virtually all
> terrorists are muslims.
Are they? Looking here:
http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/terrorist-groups.cfm
suggests the numbers are about 50-50, muslim vs non-muslim, but this
list only contains groups of immediate interest to the CDI. At this
site:
we can see that there are many more non-religious terrorist groups
than there are religious groups:
Religious terrorist groups: 207
Other terrorist groups: 742
No doubt some of the groups listed are defunct or very small, but the
same is true of both groups.
> worldwide islamist imperialist aggression is
> the greatest threat to civilization today.
Riiiight. Are you taking your pills?
Seriously, political and religious fundamentalism is a problem
throughout the developing world, and not all of it has its roots in
Islam by any stretch of the imagination. Islamic extremists just
happen to be the most organized and the best funded at the moment.
20-30 years ago the main problem was communists and fascists. In
another generation it'll be something different. Is Islamic Jihad
currently a major problem for the world? Sure - but get a
perspective.
> what is the rate of female literacy in muslim countries
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/
country Fem/National
Bahrain: 85%/89.1%
Brunei: ?/94.7%
Indonesia: ?/90%
Iran: 73%/79%
Kazakhstan: ?/98.4%
Kuwait: 90.8/91.2%
Kyrgystan: ?/98.7%
Malaysia: ?/93.5%
Qatar: 88.6%/89%
Turkmenistan: ?/98.8%
Uzbekistan: ?/97%
Are there muslim countries in which women have a significantly lower
literacy rate than the average? Absolutely. But there are also
muslim countries in which the literacy rate for women doesn't vary
significantly from the average, or with such high rates of literacy
that, although we don't know the actual female literacy rate, it's
mathematically impossible for it to be much lower. And a quick look
at the list shows us that the pattern is that underdeveloped
countries (regardless of religion) have lower female literacy rates
than male literacy rates.
> ...especially
> arab ones...today compared to 30 years ago?
I don't know. Do you? If so, trot out your source. Considering
what the economies of most muslim countries were like 30 years ago, I
would put money on literacy rates being higher now.
> the rate of book
> publication...except in religion
The Journal of Arabic Literature seems to think there's a strong
modern literary tradition, though: http://www.brill.nl/jal
and I would have thought a lack of modern fiction in Arabic would
have made the compilation of the anthology _Modern Arabic Fiction_ by
Salma Khadra Jayyusi quite difficult.
http://www.allbookstores.com/Arabic_Fiction.html
> ....etc etc...
If this is the quality of your knowledge on this subject, you'll
forgive me if I don't think you're likely to be worth the effort of
further discussion.
--
Mujin
Mujin
Creat...@yippee.con says...
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:54:34 -0600, Mujin
> <umwi...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote:
>
> >Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with all
> >Christians is unreasonable.
>
> If Gene Scott's followers were blowing people up in supermarkets
> Christianity would be blames, but those blaming Christianity would be
> from other religions.
And other sects of Christianity would rightly point out that whatever
sect was doing the bombing wasn't representative, or wasn't actually
Christian at all - as has happened every time in recent history when
a group claiming to be Christian committed acts of violence in the
name of their religion.
> Atheists are a tiny fraction of non-Christians
> and the least likely to behave irrationally. Religious bigotry is the
> province of the religious.
Not entirely. The rantings against religion of certain brands of
atheist can't reasonably be defined as anything but religious
bigotry. Atheism isn't a religion, but some (a small minority) do go
one step further to actually attack religion and the religious.
> >Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
> >it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who happen
> >to get most of the media coverage?
>
> Reasonable people ask themselves, "If people can believe it's *good*
> to kill each other for religion, is religion itself an inherently good
> thing?"
If people can believe it's *good* to kill each other for politics, is
politics an inherently good thing? Obvious answer: no. Political
thinking can be constructive or destructive - sometimes both at
different times - and so can religion.
Truly reasonable people might actually be expected to realize that
the relationship between religion and violence is more complex than
one of direct causality.
>
> CT
>
>
--
Mujin
TomS
<MPG.201c2452c...@news.cc.umanitoba.ca>, Mujin stated..."
[...snip...]
>So your statement of "fact" regarding science in muslim countries
>after al Ghazali was a lie. Muslim academic progress continued in
>several fields up until the 1400s - coincidentally the very same
>period in which Europe began its meteoric rise to the top. Al
>Ghazzali's ideas weren't the end of intellectual progress in the
>middle east - a complex sequence of economic and political events
>from the mid 14th Century on caused the Muslim "dark age" from 1500
>to the late 1800s.
This is an interesting subject. Do you have some references where
we can read about it?
--
---Tom S.
"...when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and
in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it."
GK Chesterton, Doubts About Darwinism (1920)
wf3h
darfur xtians...and animists...have defended themselves against muslim
aggression. there are no xtians in somalia.
Robert Carnegie
> And other sects of Christianity would rightly point out that whatever
> sect was doing the bombing wasn't representative, or wasn't actually
> Christian at all - as has happened every time in recent history when
> a group claiming to be Christian committed acts of violence in the
> name of their religion.
Lucky, that...I call "No True Scotsman", though.
I think you also have to declare all the Orthodox churches
non-Christian, too, after Yugoslavia and Chechnya.
Ernest Major
<wf...@vsswireless.net> writes
violence.
--
alias Ernest Major
Perplexed in Peoria
"wf3h" <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote in message news:1169325947.9...@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I find it difficult to call it 'aggression' when the national government
attacks secessionists. Morally wrong, perhaps, particularly if civilians
are targeted, but not 'aggression' in the usual meaning of the word.
> there are no xtians in somalia.
Were none, until the recent Ethiopian invasion...
wf3h
Mujin wrote:
> In article <1169273911.1...@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> wf...@vsswireless.net says...
> > > >
>
> So your statement of "fact" regarding science in muslim countries
> after al Ghazali was a lie.
?? how long does it take for an idea to spread? did they have radio
communications in his time to instantly spread his message that logic
and argumentation is an inappropriate way to the 'truth'?
you ignore the crux of weinberg's comment: no scientific advancment has
happened in weinberg's experience in his career.
the nobel prize winning author v.s. naipul made the same comment in his
book 'among the believers'. islamists believe that, when the west is
destroyed, god will provide the TV's, the radios, etc.
Muslim academic progress continued in
> several fields up until the 1400s - coincidentally the very same
> period in which Europe began its meteoric rise to the top. Al
> Ghazzali's ideas weren't the end of intellectual progress in the
> middle east - a complex sequence of economic and political events
> from the mid 14th Century on caused the Muslim "dark age" from 1500
> to the late 1800s.
and, it appears, al Ghazal was among those 'political events'....as was
the religion itself. religion is hardly unknown as being able to squash
intellectual freedom. weinberg's point was that islamic rulers appear
to view science as a threat to faith.
> > >
> > that's exactly the problem. they're all over the world, except in
> > muslim countries since science is virtually non existent in muslim
> > countries.
>
> Exactly the opposite: there's no science in many muslim countries
> *because* their scientists have relocated to places all over the
> world.
?? gee. why is that? it's EXACTLY my point!
>
> > as weinberg points out, in his entire career he's never read
> > a single important scientific paper from a muslim country.
>
> And? What does this prove except:
> a) there aren't many muslims working in his field
ridiculous. there are a number of prominent muslim physicists,
chemists, and engineers throughout the world. but it appears other
cultures are hospitable to them than are muslim cultures.
> b) he doesn't pay much attention when he's reading papers
yeah, i guess being a founder of quantum chromodynamics, and having a
nobel prize means you don't read much in your field. i can see your
point.
>
> A quick search of my library reveals the following names from
> universities in muslim countries:
ever hear of the 'citation index'? it's a list of influential papers
cited by other scientists. can you tell me how many muslim scientists
working in muslim countries rank high on the citation index? answer:
virtually none.
> >
> This is just three countries, just the names that emerged with a
> google scholar search criteria consisting of the country name and the
> word "university", and just the science articles that appeared on the
> first page of hits. Anyone who says there are no muslim scientists
> working in muslim countries is either blind or lying. Which are you?
you're barking up the wrong tree, sport. it does you no good to pretend
science is well and good in muslim countries, because it aint.
virtually no scientists in those countries do important scientific
research. virtually no universities in those countries are centers of
learning. and that's not my take on it. it's the opinion of the
researchers in the paper i previously cited who listed the world's 500
best universities. there are more israeli universities on that list
than there are in the entire muslim world.
>
> > >
> > > The "turning away" from science that people go on about when talking about
> > > Islam is a crock of shit, to put it bluntly.
> >
> > a recent survey of the world's 500 best universities found that only in
> > turkey were there any from muslim countries in the top 500.
> > http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2003/2003main.htm
>
> Is there a reason you didn't count the Indian and Singapore
> universities? No chance there might be muslim scientists there?
gee. i wasn't aware that those were muslim countries.
>
> Anyway, so what? What proportion of universities on that list are
> third world countries of *any* kind? You don't suppose a lack of
> funds caused by economic privation might have something to do with
> developing countries' research performance, do you?
and why is there economic privation? could it have to do with RELIGION?
why does saudi arabia graduate more 'islamic studies' students than
engineers and scientists?
>
> This survey also privileges the fully developed countries of Europe
> and North America by assigning 20% of its score to Nobel Prize
> winners - something not readily accessible to anyone outside Europe
> and North America until the second half of the 20th Century.
> Obviously scientists need to be able to read and participate in the
> global English academic literature,
and certainly muslim scientists can do that...most speak english.
>
> The list of the top 500 is more a measure of track record to date -
> something obviously dominated by countries which have been in a
> position to pursue academic research in a university setting for a
> couple of hundred years
really? tell it to the japanese and germans. the japanese did not have
a robust scientific culture until after the war. germany was destroyed
and came back. china has surpassed muslim countries, as has korea and
taiwan.
>
> Looking at lists like this can be interesting, but it requires deeper
> thought than you seem to have put into it.
methinks thou protest too much. why do muslim researchers leave muslim
countries? why are universities in muslim countries 3rd rate?
could it have something to do with islam?
>
> > >>
> > worldwide islamist imperialist aggression is
> > the greatest threat to civilization today.
>
> Riiiight. Are you taking your pills?
well let's see..oh...it was BUDDHIST terrorists who attacked NYC on
9/11. yes, i see your point.
>
> Seriously, political and religious fundamentalism is a problem
> throughout the developing world, and not all of it has its roots in
> Islam by any stretch of the imagination.
you're mixing apples and cement
the fact that countries may have indigenous problems does NOT make the
ideologies fueling those problems imperialistic. islamist imperialism
wants to attack and destroy everything which falls outside the purview
of islam...
Islamic extremists just
> happen to be the most organized and the best funded at the moment.
> 20-30 years ago the main problem was communists and fascists. In
> another generation it'll be something different. Is Islamic Jihad
> currently a major problem for the world? Sure - but get a
> perspective.
?? how big a perspective do i have to have to mourn 3000 dead
americans? or be concerned about the foiled attacks on the german
transport system, etc. etc.
>
> > what is the rate of female literacy in muslim countries
> >
> Are there muslim countries in which women have a significantly lower
> literacy rate than the average? Absolutely. But there are also
> muslim countries in which the literacy rate for women doesn't vary
> significantly from the average, or with such high rates of literacy
> that, although we don't know the actual female literacy rate, it's
> mathematically impossible for it to be much lower. And a quick look
> at the list shows us that the pattern is that underdeveloped
> countries (regardless of religion) have lower female literacy rates
> than male literacy rates.
>
> > ...especially
> > arab ones...today compared to 30 years ago?
>
> I don't know. Do you? If so, trot out your source.
did you read the UN report...prepared by muslim scholars a few years
ago...which pointed out that female literacy is DECLINING in arab
countries?
see the report summarized at:
http://www.meforum.org/article/513
On July 2, 2002, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) released
the Arab Human Development Report 2002. The report, compiled by a
"group of distinguished Arab intellectuals" led by Egyptian
statistician Nader Fergany, has resonated in the Western and Arab
media. With uncommon candor and a battery of statistics, the report
tells a sorry story of two decades of failed planning and developmental
decline. One inescapable conclusion emerges from its sober pages of
tables and charts: the Arab world is in decline, even relative to the
developing world.
Arab countries saw very strong growth during the second half of the
1970s: 8.6 per cent (1975-1980), followed by a very sharp drop between
1982 and 1990 (0.7 percent), the so-called lost decade, and then a
return to more modest averages (3.8 percent) between 1990 and 1998. The
overall trend was downward over the period as a whole.
In an age of knowledge intensity, poor knowledge acquisition, let alone
its production, is a serious shortfall. A telling indicator of the poor
level of educational attainment in the Arab countries is the
persistence of illiteracy rates that are higher, and educational
enrollment rates that are lower, than those of dynamic less developed
countries in East Asia and Latin America.
Moreover, the number of illiterate people is still increasing, to the
extent that Arab countries embark upon the twenty-first century
burdened by over 60 million illiterate adults, the majority of whom are
women.
Arab countries have some of the lowest levels of research funding in
the world. R&D [research and development] expenditure as a percentage
of GDP was a mere 0.4 for the Arab world in 1996, compared to 1.26 in
1995 for Cuba, 2.35 in 1994 for Israel, and 2.9 for Japan.
Science and technology output is quantifiable and measurable in terms
of the number of scientific papers per unit of population. The average
output of the Arab world per million inhabitants is roughly 2 per cent
of that of an industrialized country. While Arab scientific output more
than doubled from 11 papers per million in 1985 to 26 papers per
million in 1995, China's output increased eleven-fold from one paper
per million inhabitants in 1981 to 11 papers per million in 1995. The
Republic of Korea increased its output from 6 to 144 papers per million
inhabitants over the same period.
Considering
> what the economies of most muslim countries were like 30 years ago, I
> would put money on literacy rates being higher now.
http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/may03/middleEast5.asp
For most of the Arab countries their real per capita incomes have
either stagnated or declined compared to the 1980s. Real wages in many
of the countries have declined over the last two decades. Productivity
per worker has on average declined in most Arab states since the 1980s.
> >
> If this is the quality of your knowledge on this subject, you'll
> forgive me if I don't think you're likely to be worth the effort of
> further discussion.
your denial isn't gonna get you very far in the real world. The UN
report cited above shows stagnation in the arab muslim world. nobel
prize winners weinberg and naipul also see stagnation.
your answer: 'it isn't happening'. your proof?
none. none at all.
Mujin
says...
> "On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:07:16 -0600, in article
> <MPG.201c2452c...@news.cc.umanitoba.ca>, Mujin stated..."
> [...snip...]
> >So your statement of "fact" regarding science in muslim countries
> >after al Ghazali was a lie. Muslim academic progress continued in
> >several fields up until the 1400s - coincidentally the very same
> >period in which Europe began its meteoric rise to the top. Al
> >Ghazzali's ideas weren't the end of intellectual progress in the
> >middle east - a complex sequence of economic and political events
> >from the mid 14th Century on caused the Muslim "dark age" from 1500
> >to the late 1800s.
> [...snip...]
>
> This is an interesting subject. Do you have some references where
> we can read about it?
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/index/#people
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/index/ip/p1.htm
Hogendijk, Jan (2003) _The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New
Perspectives_ The MIT Press
King, David (2005) _In Synchrony With the Heavens: Studies in
astronomical time keeping and instrumentation in medieval Islamic
civilization (Volume 2: Instruments of mass calculation)_ The
Netherlands: Brill
Hodgson, Marshall (1977) _The Venture of Islam (Three Volumes)_
University of Chicago Press
Huff, Toby (2003) _The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and
the West_ Second Ed. Cambridge University Press
Turner, Howard (1997) _Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated
Introduction_ University of Texas Press
>
>
>
--
Mujin
Mujin
rja.ca...@excite.com says...
> Mujin wrote:
> > And other sects of Christianity would rightly point out that whatever
> > sect was doing the bombing wasn't representative, or wasn't actually
> > Christian at all - as has happened every time in recent history when
> > a group claiming to be Christian committed acts of violence in the
> > name of their religion.
>
> Lucky, that...I call "No True Scotsman", though.
That's my point - The majority of Christians try to distance
themselves from extremists, and (except when they actually try to
deny that the extremists are Christian at all) this is accepted as
quite reasonable by most - but when muslims try to distance
themselves from muslim extremists the argument is suddenly
unreasonable.
>
> I think you also have to declare all the Orthodox churches
> non-Christian, too, after Yugoslavia and Chechnya.
I'd rather let Christians decide for themselves who's "really
Christian" - after all, it's not really any of my business.
--
Mujin
Free Lunch
Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote in
<qt6xhgzQ...@meden.invalid>:
Proving that Moslems can be every bit as racist as Christians have
proven themselves.
Free Lunch
"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in
<Fzvsh.68759$wP1....@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net>:
I thought the secessionism was more of a North-South thing. I was not
aware that there was an organized secession movement in Darfur before
the Janjuweed decided, with the cooperation of the central government,
to attack women and children because of the color of their skin.
Free Lunch
Mujin <umwi...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in
<MPG.201c4e529...@news.cc.umanitoba.ca>:
I thought Jesus got to do it, but I gave up on the whole affair, so it's
not terribly important to me any more. Still, as someone who is part of
Western (seldom distinguished from Christian) Culture, some of the
claims of self-described Christians are hard to swallow.
Ernest Major
<lu...@nofreelunch.us> writes
A peace settlement has been brokered in the south. (Apparently one of
the unheralded diplomatic successes of the Bush administration.) Under
this the south gets some autonomy, some control over income, and an
independence plebiscite in a few years time.
As I understand the matter, some of the regional elites in Darfur
decided that they wanted their share, and started separatist movements
(I don't know whether they were after secession or devolution.) My
understanding doesn't extend to the motivation for the nature of the
central government response.
>
>>> there are no xtians in somalia.
>>
>>Were none, until the recent Ethiopian invasion...
>
--
alias Ernest Major
Free Lunch
Thank you.
Perplexed in Peoria
"Free Lunch" <lu...@nofreelunch.us> wrote in message news:eg55r2lkid30m1kdc...@4ax.com...
Well, whether the goal is secession, autonomy, or overthrow of the
national government, there is currently a state of armed rebellion.
See the wiki article "Darfur conflict" for the origins, including the
activity of the Janjuweed.
As has been pointed out, both (all?) sides in Darfur are Muslim. So both
Carnegie and wf3h are wrong to mention Christians. And the North/South
war (which does pit Muslims against Christians and animists) is clearly
a war of secession.
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <1169328339.8...@51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com>):
>> Is there a reason you didn't count the Indian and Singapore
>> universities? No chance there might be muslim scientists there?
>
> gee. i wasn't aware that those were muslim countries.
There are well over 120 million Muslims in India. This makes India one of he
largest Muslim population centers in the world. (See
<http://www.indianchild.com/population_of_india.htm> and
<http://www.iloveindia.com/population-of-india/index.html>) And here are the
population stats from Singapore, which is a small island off shore from a a
large country which is majority Muslim and across the straits from the most
populous Muslim country in the world:
<http://www.singstat.gov.sg/keystats/c2000/r2/t38-45.pdf>. He's right. There
are a _lot_ of Muslims in both places. Including a _lot_ of Muslim
scientists.
--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.
Perplexed in Peoria
"wf3h" <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote in message news:1169328339.8...@51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com...
>
> Mujin wrote:
> > In article <1169273911.1...@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> > wf...@vsswireless.net says...
> > > a single important scientific paper from a muslim country.
> >
> > And? What does this prove except:
> > a) there aren't many muslims working in his field
>
> ridiculous. there are a number of prominent muslim physicists,
> chemists, and engineers throughout the world. but it appears other
> cultures are hospitable to them than are muslim cultures.
>
> > b) he doesn't pay much attention when he's reading papers
>
> yeah, i guess being a founder of quantum chromodynamics, and having a
> nobel prize means you don't read much in your field. i can see your
> point.
I'm sure you both already know this, but for the benefit of the lurkers,
he shared that Nobel prize with Abdus Salam, a practicing Muslim.
CreateThis
But only religion is assumed to be inherently good. In fact, politics
is usually considered to be the opposite. Yet another example of
religion getting undeserved special treatment.
CT
Robert Carnegie
Whatever it was, it's now ethnic cleansing.
There are two major schools of Muslims and many sub-divisions, as you
may have noticed from Iraq. I haven't checked to see whether the
militia is a different sort of Muslim from the civilians and defeated
insurrectionists. As far as I can tell they're a bunch of bastards on
four legs and that's as far as I've got.
They're working for the government, in the south, which is Christian.
The sponsorship, arms, and air support is Christian. Yay us. (I'm not
a practising Christian but I still have most of the prejudices.)
Someone has pointed out that Somalia was invaded by Ethiopian
Christians, plus the Americans turned up late once again for the war
and dropped a bomb on something, no one knows what.
Jeffrey Turner
> Qualia wrote:
>
>> "Mujin" <umwi...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in message
>> news:MPG.201b5c79b...@news.cc.
>>
>>> Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott
>>> with
>>> all
>>> Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
>>> it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the
>>> fanatics who
>>> happen
>>> to get most of the media coverage?
>>
>>
>> Answer: because those 'seemingly reasonable people' are *the most
>> privileged
>> class of westerners* -- and for them to evaluate Islam fairly would
>> first of
>> all require them to admit to a long and horrible catalogue of crimes
>> perpetrated against Muslims *by* and *for* the most privileged class of
>> westerners. And there's no way in the fucking world that *that's* gonna
>> happen.
>>
>> Sam Harris's 'The End of Faith' is the ultimate, disgraceful,
>> best-selling
>> proof of what I say: contemporary 'jihadic' Islam is presented as the
>> ultimate evil enemy -- essentially, a force that 'can't be bargained
>> with;
>> can't be reasoned with; doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and which
>> absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead' -- while the west's
>> central role in provoking it, creating it, and giving it moral
>> legitimation
>> is *whitewashed out of sight*. After all, even the most elementary
>> historical, moral or geopolitical realism will stop a book selling
>> well in a
>> demented America whose response to a mere token reprisal is to bleat
>> 'Why Do
>> They Hate Us?'...
>
> The anger and hatred spawned by colonialism is understandable; but the
> actions of the jihadists are being justified by religious
> interpretation. Perhaps Harris glossed over the contribution of western
> powers; but the point of his book is that as long as the jihadists use
> Islam to inspire terrorists we aren't going to find a political solution
> to the problem.
What about the role played by the CIA, in the interests of the Cold War,
along with the Saudis and Pakistan's ISI, in fostering jihadist
madrassas in Afghanistan in the 1980s?
> The influence of the western powers can't explain the extreme level of
> Jew-hating in even our "friendly" countries such as Egypt and Saudi
> Arabia, can it?
The Wahabbis, in Saudi Arabia, are fundamentalists. The Shi'as there
are a despised minority. Why would one expect better for the Jews?
Surely Egypt's experience with "the Jewish State" has something to do
with popular Jew-hating there. And Israel was a creation of the
Western powers.
> Moderate Muslims are not doing enough to fight the influence of the
> jihadists, according to Harris, and because of this they are as culpable
> as the jihadists. If you read the entire book, you would understand
> that he is making the point that religion does not bring peace but is
> instead used to justify horrendous acts.
The moderates have spoken out, but when you've got the United States
going on a "Crusade" the moderates don't have as much influence as they
might have.
> Suppose that the powers in Islamic faith were to instead say "Rather
> than waging continual war against the rest of the world, we should
> instead be using our intellectual powers to improve the world." I would
> like to finally see an example of the "religion of peace" finally having
> that effect; in that they would be far ahead of the Christians.
Who invaded whom?
> I don't see that happening as long as they cling to this belief that
> knowledge of Allah is the only absolute knowledge. Same thing for
> Christians and Jesus.
Ah, but Jebus isn't a "tin god."
--Jeff
--
The shepherd always tries to persuade
the sheep that their interests and
his own are the same. --Stendhal
Jeffrey Turner
>
>
> Of course, try to demonstrate against Hamas in Gaza and see what
> happens to you.
Considering the treatment Hamas is getting from the West, and the
poverty that's been called down on their heads, I really can't blame
them for being a bit defensive.
wf3h
Ernest Major wrote:
> In message <1169325947.9...@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, wf3h
> <wf...@vsswireless.net> writes
> >> >
> >aggression. there are no xtians in somalia.
> >
> Your confusing Equatoria with Darfur. Darfur is Muslim on Muslim
> violence.
> --
unfortunately the primary victims of islamic extremisim are
muslims...they tend to forget that as they slaughter everyone in sight.
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu
[...]
>> > as weinberg points out, in his entire career he's never read
>> > a single important scientific paper from a muslim country.
First of all, it's worth pointing out that he says "there are talented
scientists of Muslim origin working productively in the West..." --
his remarks are not so much about Muslim scientists as about Islamic
countries.
Second, though, I suspect that he forgot about Turkey or Iran, both
of which have very good scientists in his field who I expect he knows:
for example, Gueven (Turkey) and Sheikh-Jabbari (Iran) have each
written recent papers in string theory with more 250 citations.
> ever hear of the 'citation index'? it's a list of influential papers
> cited by other scientists. can you tell me how many muslim scientists
> working in muslim countries rank high on the citation index? answer:
> virtually none.
Rather than searching the whole science citation index, I just looked
at the Spires database of high energy physics papers, which is more
easily searchable (and which, after all, is Weinberg's area). I found
47 papers written by people in Islamic countries that had over 100
citations apiece. Of these, 14 were from Turkey, 7 from Iran, 7 from
Morocco, and 8 from the former Soviet Union (Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan).
But there were also one or two apiece from Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.
(Note: a citation number of more than 100 places a paper in the top
5% of high energy physics papers.)
Now, 47 is *not* a high number -- it's only about .4% of all papers in
the field with more than 100 citations. I think Weinberg is right in saying
that the culture and, equally important, the governments of many Islamic
countries are not especially friendly to science. But this is not the
case for all such countries -- Iran and Turkey are certainly exceptions
-- and one shouldn't exaggerate.
Steve Carlip
wf3h
J.J. O'Shea wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 16:25:39 -0500, wf3h wrote
> (in article <1169328339.8...@51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com>):
>
> >> Is there a reason you didn't count the Indian and Singapore
> >> universities? No chance there might be muslim scientists there?
> >
> > gee. i wasn't aware that those were muslim countries.
>
> There are well over 120 million Muslims in India.
out of a population of a billion
This makes India one of he
> largest Muslim population centers in the world.
which does not make india a muslim country.
( He's right. There
> are a _lot_ of Muslims in both places. Including a _lot_ of Muslim
> scientists.
which proves my point: muslim scientists can succeed in non muslim
countries. they generally don't do so in muslim countries.
thanks for backing up my claim. appreciate it.
wf3h
Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
> "wf3h" <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote in message news:1169328339.8...@51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > chemists, and engineers throughout the world. but it appears other
> > cultures are hospitable to them than are muslim cultures.
> >
> > > b) he doesn't pay much attention when he's reading papers
> >
> > yeah, i guess being a founder of quantum chromodynamics, and having a
> > nobel prize means you don't read much in your field. i can see your
> > point.
>
> I'm sure you both already know this, but for the benefit of the lurkers,
> he shared that Nobel prize with Abdus Salam, a practicing Muslim.
that is true, and it's a point he mentions in the article he wrote.
wf3h
Mujin wrote:
> > That's my point - The majority of Christians try to distance
> themselves from extremists, and (except when they actually try to
> deny that the extremists are Christian at all) this is accepted as
> quite reasonable by most - but when muslims try to distance
> themselves from muslim extremists the argument is suddenly
> unreasonable.
>
> >
since islamist extremism is worldwide, and lavishly funded by, inter
alia, the saudis, it seems it's part of islam. as i said, robert pipes
estimates 10-30% of muslims support islamist imperialist aggression.
and who defines who is/isnt muslim? there isn't a muslim pope nor
muslim doctrine nor muslim synods or councils.
Jeffrey Turner
Bit simplistic, isn't it? Spreading desertification in Sudan, driven in
no small part by global warming, has fomented a (lopsided, if not
entirely one-sidede) conflict between the nomads who make up the
janjiweed and the agriculturalist natives of Darfut. Racial
characteristics may make your view of the conflict simpler, but it's
really a resource-driven war, much like other regional conflicts that
center on control of certain combustible hydrocarbons.
David Iain Greig
> "Mujin" <umwi...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in message
> news:MPG.201b5c79b...@news.cc.
Who is this 'GREG' and why would he be blocking your posts?
A cursory review of the inbox filters shows nothing blocked apart from
'mailerdaemon', 'postmaster' and 'lacks a Newsgroups: header' for the
last 4 days.
--D.
--
david iain greig dgr...@ediacara.org
moderator, talk.origins sp4 kox
http://www.ediacara.org/~dgreig arbor plena alouattarum
Baron Bodissey
Alexander wrote:
> On Jan 20, 1:17 pm, "Baron Bodissey" <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Qualia wrote:
> > > "Mujin" <umwin...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in message
> > >news:MPG.201b5c79b...@news.cc.
> >
> > > > Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with
> > > > all
> > > > Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people consider
> > > > it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the fanatics who
> > > > happen
> > > > to get most of the media coverage?
> >
> > > Answer: because those 'seemingly reasonable people' are *the most privileged
> > > class of westerners* -- and for them to evaluate Islam fairly would first of
> > > all require them to admit to a long and horrible catalogue of crimes
> > > perpetrated against Muslims *by* and *for* the most privileged class of
> > > westerners. And there's no way in the fucking world that *that's* gonna
> > > happen.
> >
> > > Sam Harris's 'The End of Faith' is the ultimate, disgraceful, best-selling
> > > proof of what I say: contemporary 'jihadic' Islam is presented as the
> > > ultimate evil enemy -- essentially, a force that 'can't be bargained with;
> > > can't be reasoned with; doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and which
> > > absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead' -- while the west's
> > > central role in provoking it, creating it, and giving it moral legitimation
> > > is *whitewashed out of sight*. After all, even the most elementary
> > > historical, moral or geopolitical realism will stop a book selling well in a
> > > demented America whose response to a mere token reprisal is to bleat 'Why Do
> > > They Hate Us?'...
> >
> >
>
> Er ... Constantinople didn't fall to the Moors which was the old empire
> of the ME, N. Africa and Spain. The Reconquista was in the 13th
> century and the last crusade against the ME was in the late 13th
> Century as well - which saw the final Christian dominion in Syria fall
> to various Muslim powers - they certainly weren't going to go any
> further at that point as the Mongols were pretty much everywhere and
> kicking all comers into touch for another few years yet. Muslim
> authority and dominion at that point across central asia, china,
> anatolia and the ME was pretty thin on the ground. The Mongols didn't
> really care what you believed however, as long as you put your pointy
> sticks and swords down and backed away carefully, so the religion
> survived fairly intact - as did Christianity in its various heretical
> eastern forms.
>
> Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, Turks not Arabs, in the 15th
> century. Constantinople had only been defeated in battle once before
> and that wasn't to the Muslims, it was to the Christian 4th Crusade
> nominally arranged by the Venetian Doge. There was no love lost
> between the Latin see and the Eastern Orthodox church.
>
> So it's hard to see how the Crusades were retribution for this -
> especially when the Crusades were entirely religiously motivated by
> Urban and about reclaiming the Holy Land for Christendom.
>
> Using empire building as an example of 'blame' is a little bizarre
> anyway. I'm English and the UK apparently had a small section of the
> world not so very long ago as well. We certainly didn't abuse that
> privilege though, being British and all ... as long as everyone spoke
> English, was Christian and served tea at 4 ... and handed over all
> trading rights and privileges. If they didn't then we had these nifty
> gunboats that would hove into view and politely ask you to reconsider.
>
>
> > Baron Bodissey
> > They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see
> > nothing but sea.
> > - Francis Bacon
I didn't say Arabs, I said Islam. The point is that nobody is
blameless. Islam was spread by the sword as much as Christianity was,
to the credit of neither.
Baron Bodissey
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see
nothing but sea.
- Francis Bacon
wf3h
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu wrote:
> wf3h <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
> >> > as weinberg points out, in his entire career he's never read
> >> > a single important scientific paper from a muslim country.
>
> First of all, it's worth pointing out that he says "there are talented
> scientists of Muslim origin working productively in the West..." --
> his remarks are not so much about Muslim scientists as about Islamic
> countries.
exactly my point. exactly.
> >
> > ever hear of the 'citation index'? it's a list of influential papers
> > cited by other scientists. can you tell me how many muslim scientists
> > working in muslim countries rank high on the citation index? answer:
> > virtually none.
> >
> Now, 47 is *not* a high number -- it's only about .4% of all papers in
> the field with more than 100 citations. I think Weinberg is right in saying
> that the culture and, equally important, the governments of many Islamic
> countries are not especially friendly to science. But this is not the
> case for all such countries -- Iran and Turkey are certainly exceptions
> -- and one shouldn't exaggerate.
good info. thanks for the update. would be interesting to see how many
iranian and turkish scientists working in the west have similar
rankings.
John Wilkins
> In article <1169264888....@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> wf...@vsswireless.net says...
> > a few weeks ago i mentioned that Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali may have had a
> > role in islam's rejection of logic as a basis for critiquing the quran.
> > seems steven weinberg agrees, in an article cited by another poster at:
> >
> > http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2552017,00.html
> >
> > Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most
> > influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who
> > argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of
> > laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's
> > hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in
> > a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because
> > God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no
> > more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.
>
> Al Ghazali wrote Incoherence of the Philosophers in the 11th Century,
> actually. This spurred a rebuttal by Ibn Rushd/Averroes in the 12th
> Century entitled "The incoherence of the incoherence" in which he defended
> Aristotelian philosophy. In fact, latin translations of his commentary on
> Aristotle's works was how they were rediscovered by Europe. He was also
> noted for Arabic translations of Galen and other medical scholars, as well
> as his own treatises in medicine and mathematics.
>
> Science (especially medicine) continued to develop, largely at the same
> rate as in Europe up until
>
> For example:
>
> In the 1100s al Jazari invented a variety of mechanical devices including
> water clocks, washing machines and pumps.
>
> In the 1200s Ibn Al-Naphis discovered and described in print the human
> pulmonary system
>
> in the 1300s Ibn Khaldun produced several early works on economics and
> political science
>
> Also in the 1300s, an early brass moveable type press was developed in
> Moorish spain, though Gutenberg's version in 1454 was much more
> sophisticated.
>
> Also in the 1300s, Kamal ad-Din independently discovered refraction of
> light and the spectrum.
>
> In the 13th and 14th centuries muslim military engineers were making
> limited use of canons, which of course were adopted and enormously
> developed by Europeans.
>
> Muslim explorers and geographers were producing detailed maps, almanacs
> and "ethnographies" up to the 15th century.
>
> It's certainly true that most scientific innovation was done by the 13th
> century, though astronomy, medicine and mathematics developed pretty much
> constantly until 1450, producing trig tables, extensive practical use of
> trigonometry, algebra and in the case of medicine even the use of
> narcotic-soaked sponges in surgery. In part, the decline of the muslim
> academic world was due to the collapse of the Moorish holdings in Spain
> and the growing dominance of Italian trade networks throughout the Eastern
> Mediterranean. Internal conflicts didn't help.
And the revival of Islamic antimodernism, so to speak, after the fall of
the University of Toledo and of the Baghdad Caliphate, led to the
demolition of the Islamic Enlightenment.
>
> It's also often claimed that despite the reintroduction of scientific
> thought to the muslim world in the 19th Century by European
> empire-builders, the muslim world rejected modernity in its entirety.
> Just a quick look at history shows this to not be true. Many areas of the
> muslim world made an effort to modernize with greater or lesser success.
> Yes, there were those who rejected science because they felt the entangled
> philosophical ideas conflicted with their faith, but there were also those
> who accepted both the science and the philosophy and those who managed to
> disentangle scientific thought from the liberal ideas of the West.
True. The main reason why these Islamic inventions and discoveries
faield to take root, and science begin with them, was the lack of a
publishing system such as developed in the pre-Reformation European
world, and even then it took a further century to start up, once the
religious wars had begun to subside.
>
> The main barrier to development in the muslim world in the early years of
> the 20th Century wasn't religious it was social: for example, Persia tried
> to modernize, but was hampered by a combination of a rigid, hierarchical
> social structure and interference from European powers which wanted to
> keep the region free of a modern power. Right now, there are any number
> of excellent muslim scientists, doctors and engineers all over the world.
>
> The "turning away" from science that people go on about when talking about
> Islam is a crock of shit, to put it bluntly. There is no more "turning
> away" inherent in Islam than there is in Christianity. Are there those
> who reject the modern world and retreat into fanatical fundamentalism?
> Absolutely. But the same is true of Christianity, the great religion of
> the West.
I believe that Christendom is inherently anti-science. I think that the
west has rebelled against the strictures of religious domination, and
that is why science has florished for a brief while here.
What is happening in the developing nations, such as India, supports
this - Hindu extremism is opposed to modernism in those countries, and
only economics is preventing them from winning out.
>
> Even the most hard-core atheist would admit that equating Gene Scott with
> all Christians is unreasonable. Why do seeminly reasonable people
> consider it reasonable to tar the whole of Islam with the brush of the
> fanatics who happen to get most of the media coverage?
The media has its sieves, through which only acceptable tropes and
cliches may pass. At the moment, this includes putting Islam in the
"enemy" slot. But truly, we'd be better served, if not much more
accurate, if we put "religion" in that slot rather than "other people's
religion".
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
Free Lunch
Jeffrey Turner <jtu...@localnet.com> wrote in
<12r5edq...@corp.supernews.com>:
As long as the central government is supporting the attacks on the
pastoralists who happen to be black, it's pretty hard to ignore the
racial impact of this.
wf3h
John Wilkins wrote:
> >
> I believe that Christendom is inherently anti-science. I think that the
> west has rebelled against the strictures of religious domination, and
> that is why science has florished for a brief while here.
>
> The media has its sieves, through which only acceptable tropes and
> cliches may pass. At the moment, this includes putting Islam in the
> "enemy" slot. But truly, we'd be better served, if not much more
> accurate, if we put "religion" in that slot rather than "other people's
> religion".
all religions are inherently anti science. it's part of being in the
'mystery' business...accepting belief concepts that are antirational
and must not be questioned. although islam is coming under (IMHO
warranted) criticism, neither xtianity nor islam is science friendly.
contemporary xtianity, because of the existence of secular law in the
west, is virtually powerless to stop criticism and analysis of its
claims. islam, however, seems to breed those who murder those who
examine its origins.
Perplexed in Peoria
"Free Lunch" <lu...@nofreelunch.us> wrote in message news:3mm5r2l9lrk3nmcui...@4ax.com...
Want to see a picture of the man who is killing blacks because of the
color of their skin?
http://www.search.com/reference/Omar_Hasan_Ahmad_al-Bashir
Chris Devol
>
> John Wilkins wrote:
>> >
>> I believe that Christendom is inherently anti-science. I think that the
>> west has rebelled against the strictures of religious domination, and
>> that is why science has florished for a brief while here.
>>
>
>> The media has its sieves, through which only acceptable tropes and
>> cliches may pass. At the moment, this includes putting Islam in the
>> "enemy" slot. But truly, we'd be better served, if not much more
>> accurate, if we put "religion" in that slot rather than "other people's
>> religion".
>
>
> all religions are inherently anti science. it's part of being in the
> 'mystery' business...accepting belief concepts that are antirational
> and must not be questioned. although islam is coming under (IMHO
> warranted) criticism, neither xtianity nor islam is science friendly.
Correction. All religions are inherently anti-materialism, not anti-science.
Science and materialism are not synonymous. Science is a method of study
which may be applied to any phenomenon, including spiritual phenomena.
Materialism is a metaphysical value system.
Since all religions concern themselves with re-connecting us to our
spiritual (non-material) source, they must be anti-materialistic. This is
quite proper And since all religions profess to have real knowledge
(science) of that spiritual source and real procedures (experiment) to
re-connect with it, they must be inherently scientific. This is also quite
proper.
rmj
> I believe that Christendom is inherently anti-science. I think that the
> west has rebelled against the strictures of religious domination, and
> that is why science has florished for a brief while here.
Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, Dante Alighieri, Copernicus, Leonardo da
Vinci, Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel . . .
Clearly an unfair statement. However, I would agree that the non-religious
are greater worshippers of science.
<snip>
CreateThis
wrote:
>"wf3h" <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote in message
>news:1169353599.7...@11g2000cwr.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> John Wilkins wrote:
>>> >
>>> I believe that Christendom is inherently anti-science. I think that the
>>> west has rebelled against the strictures of religious domination, and
>>> that is why science has florished for a brief while here.
>>>
>>
>>> The media has its sieves, through which only acceptable tropes and
>>> cliches may pass. At the moment, this includes putting Islam in the
>>> "enemy" slot. But truly, we'd be better served, if not much more
>>> accurate, if we put "religion" in that slot rather than "other people's
>>> religion".
>>
>>
>> all religions are inherently anti science. it's part of being in the
>> 'mystery' business...accepting belief concepts that are antirational
>> and must not be questioned. although islam is coming under (IMHO
>> warranted) criticism, neither xtianity nor islam is science friendly.
>
>Correction. All religions are inherently anti-materialism, not anti-science.
>Science and materialism are not synonymous. Science is a method of study
>which may be applied to any phenomenon, including spiritual phenomena.
>Materialism is a metaphysical value system.
Describe non-materialistic science, Krusty.
>Since all religions concern themselves with re-connecting us to our
>spiritual (non-material) source, they must be anti-materialistic. This is
>quite proper And since all religions profess to have real knowledge
>(science) of that spiritual source and real procedures (experiment) to
>re-connect with it, they must be inherently scientific. This is also quite
>proper.
This is all quite nonsensical, Bozo.
CT
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <1169340288....@s34g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
>
> J.J. O'Shea wrote:
>> On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 16:25:39 -0500, wf3h wrote
>> (in article <1169328339.8...@51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com>):
>>
>>>> Is there a reason you didn't count the Indian and Singapore
>>>> universities? No chance there might be muslim scientists there?
>>>
>>> gee. i wasn't aware that those were muslim countries.
>>
>> There are well over 120 million Muslims in India.
>
> out of a population of a billion
That's 12% of that billion. Or to put it another way, that would be 40% of
the population of the US. Or 200% of the population of the UK. 120 million is
a damn big number. And that 12% of the population is concentrated into a
relatively small part of the country; large numbers of Muslims in most of
India either departed for Pakistan (do recall that at partition there were
two parts of Pakistan; what was then East Pakistan is now Bangladesh; recall
also that there are substantial non-Muslim minorities in both Pakistan and
Bangladesh, for the same reasons why there is a substantial Muslim minority
in India) at partition or at least to areas of India where there were lots of
other Muslims. There are actually Muslim majorities in certain parts of
India... just as there are Catholic majorities in certain parts of India.
>
> This makes India one of he
>> largest Muslim population centers in the world.
>
> which does not make india a muslim country.
It does mean that there are a lot of Muslims there. Including a lot of Muslim
scientists. And a look at the history of India will show _why_ India is not a
Muslim country. See further 'Sikhs, history of' and 'Mughal Empire, history
of'. In particular you might want to look up exactly how and why Sikhism went
from being a particularly non-violent sect of Hinduism to being an
effectively separate, and very militant, religion. Hint: India _used_ to be a
Muslim country. In fact, it used to be the _largest_ Muslim country.
You might also want to look up who is the current President of India. Hint:
he's Muslim. <http://presidentofindia.nic.in/> There was an absurd ruckus
about a Muslim member of Congress in the US. The noise effects which would
result from a Muslim president of the US would be quite interesting, if
observed from a safe distance. Delhi sounds close enough.
>
> ( He's right. There
>> are a _lot_ of Muslims in both places. Including a _lot_ of Muslim
>> scientists.
>
> which proves my point: muslim scientists can succeed in non muslim
> countries. they generally don't do so in muslim countries.
Actually, it does no such thing.
>
> thanks for backing up my claim. appreciate it.
>
Sigh. He's right on this. You're wrong. All the flailing around in the world
will not change this.
This alleged lack of scientific talent in Muslim countries is interesting,
given items such as the SD-10 missile, which is equal in most respects to its
US equivalent. (Hint: that particular item was designed in a certain
Muslim-majority country, and is built there and in another country and is
sold to some countries which can't get the American equivalent because of
American export laws.)
It is simply not accurate to say that science is dead in Islamic countries.
Insisting on that non-fact is as bad as when McClueless carries on about moon
pools in large barges.
And, oh, yeah, that point about female literacy rates... it should be noted
that the US only just managed to get a female speaker of one part of its
equivalent of a parliament, and has never had a female head of state,
something at least one Muslim country has done... twice. Yep, them thar
towelheads, they're too busy oppressing women and building suicide vests to
do any real science. Ayup.
wf3h
Chris Devol wrote:
>>
> Since all religions concern themselves with re-connecting us to our
> spiritual (non-material) source, they must be anti-materialistic. This is
> quite proper And since all religions profess to have real knowledge
> (science) of that spiritual source and real procedures (experiment) to
> re-connect with it, they must be inherently scientific. This is also quite
> proper.
what experiments can confirm the virgin birth? the resurrection? many
claims of religions are antirational and not subject to any
experimentation at all. there can be no 'science' to check these claims
because these claims are, by definition, uncheckable.
science is a recent invention of the human race. religion is not.
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <AhCsh.387$4H1...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net>):
His mind's made up on this. Facts will make no difference whatsoever.
wf3h
J.J. O'Shea wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:44:48 -0500, wf3h wrote
> > >>
> >
> > out of a population of a billion
>
> That's 12% of that billion.
which does not make india a muslim country.
Or to put it another way, that would be 40% of
> the population of the US.
are you claiming america is a latin nation because 12% of american are
latin americans?
Or 200% of the population of the UK. 120 million is
> a damn big number.
not against a billion it's not.
>
> >
> > This makes India one of he
> >> largest Muslim population centers in the world.
> >
> > which does not make india a muslim country.
>
> It does mean that there are a lot of Muslims there.
let me type this slowly so you get it:
india is not a muslim country. you keep claiming it is, although you
yourself admit only 12% of indians are muslims. 12% of anything is not
a majority.
> >
> > which proves my point: muslim scientists can succeed in non muslim
> > countries. they generally don't do so in muslim countries.
>
> Actually, it does no such thing.
>
> >
> > thanks for backing up my claim. appreciate it.
> >
>
> Sigh. He's right on this. You're wrong. All the flailing around in the world
> will not change this.
sigh...i'm right. his figures show that almost no scientific research
is being done in muslim countries, as did the UN report i cited
earlier. arab countries devote about 0.4% of GDP to scientific
research. the US, israel, the EU, etc. devote about 6X as much.
all the flailing around in the world will not change this.
> >
> It is simply not accurate to say that science is dead in Islamic countries.
> Insisting on that non-fact is as bad as when McClueless carries on about moon
> pools in large barges.
really? compare the number of jewish nobel prize winners to muslim
prize winners, for starters...OK?
>
> And, oh, yeah, that point about female literacy rates... it should be noted
> that the US only just managed to get a female speaker of one part of its
> equivalent of a parliament, and has never had a female head of state,
> something at least one Muslim country has done... twice. Yep, them thar
> towelheads, they're too busy oppressing women and building suicide vests to
> do any real science. Ayup.
you need to start with something more basic...like your belief that 12%
of anything makes a majority...
and, yes, muslim countries often do oppress women. if you disagree,
perhaps you can explain by a dozen girls were murdered last year by the
saudi mutaween for running out of a burning building w/o their head
scarves. the cops were afraid they'd be seen by men, and chased them
back into the burning building.
Douglas Clark
news:1hsahrg.i4s6vlk3zo8fN%j.wil...@uq.edu.au...
>
> And the revival of Islamic antimodernism, so to speak, after the fall of
> the University of Toledo and of the Baghdad Caliphate, led to the
> demolition of the Islamic Enlightenment.
>>
> John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
> University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
John
The fall of the Caliphate to the Mongols of Hulagu directly caused the
teachings of Ibn Taymiyya on jihad which gave rise to that of Al-Wahhab from
whom come the Wahhabis. (see Charles Allen's book 'God's Terrorists). I dont
know about the University of Toledo although the translators there did so
much for the Renaissance.
So we are effectively seeing a conservative backlash in Islam after 1258
which meant that science was not welcome. In the UK there is a current
problem with Moslem medical students refusing to accept training contrary to
their faith.
John Wilkins
We saw a similar thing with the early reformation, but the revival of
classical learning was widespread enough to prevent it becoming
entrenched.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
Alexander
You said that the 'Crusades returned the favour'. Constantinople
didn't fall to any Muslim force for roughly 900 years after Islam was
founded and around 200 years after the last crusade in the ME. North
Africa (well - Egypt really) was nominally Coptic - a heretical faith
in the eyes of the Latin church and the Eastern Orthodox (the only
crusading activity against Egypt was pretty abortive as well) and what
is now Spain was in the middle of a civil war between 2 warring
Christian groups when the Moors arrived and it was around 500 years or
so before the Reconquista (and before them Justinian was busy trying to
reclaim the Iberian peninsula for the Byzantine empire), so I'm
struggling to see the connection.
As I also pointed out the only other time Constantinople fell was to
the 4th Crusade. Not a Muslim force.
Several different ethnic groups, each with their own take on Islam and
related governance rose and fell over this time and the crusades had
little or nothing to do with those politics. The whole point of the
crusades as started by Urban was to retake Jerusalem and the Holy Land
- nothing more or less. It wouldn't have mattered to him who was in
control - it certainly didn't matter to the Crusaders as long as it
wasn't the local Jews, Christians or Muslims.
The only other power in the region over the 13th century when the
Crusades were still kind of active were the Mongols - a tad aggressive,
the worlds largest contiguous land empire and nothing to do with Islam.
Perhaps we should blame animism for their imperial ambitions.
The idea that the Islamic world is some sort of homogenous entity was
no more true then than it is now. Anymore than the Christian world is
united. It's an asinine argument - it's like saying that the Romans
only occupied most of the known world at the time because they
worshipped Mars.
The point of the earlier comment was that to reduce an argument to only
a single premise (blame the religion) is superficial and redundant - it
doesn't answer anything, neither will it help resolve anything. This
isn't 'anti-western propoganda', it's a rather harsh real-politik. The
Crusaders that founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem discovered this to
their cost ironically. Once they settled around the various parts of
the region they quickly realised that the tentative nature of their
survival depended on actually being able to maintain good diplomacy and
an understanding of their Islamic neighbours (and a degree of playing
off certain factions against each other).
It was usually the new arrivals from the west who had travelled under
the assumption that they were there to kill the infidel that caused the
problems by breaking the peace. The Franks and others who arrived once
the Kingdom was established were generally quite disdainful of the
local Crusaders who had adopted a lot of the local customs and dress -
they were also infuriated that there was no sustained assualt on Muslim
territories and they were invariably oblivious to how ridiculous the
entire concept was, given the forces that could be brought to bear on
them.
The politics in the region then were no less sophisticated and delicate
than they are now.
To say that it's 'anti western propoganda' to point out that the
situation is more complex, subtle and delicate than just blaming a
single faith is an equally absurd reductionism for the present day.
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <1169360498....@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>):
>
> J.J. O'Shea wrote:
>> On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:44:48 -0500, wf3h wrote
>>>>>
>>>> There are well over 120 million Muslims in India.
>>>
>>> out of a population of a billion
>>
>> That's 12% of that billion.
>
> which does not make india a muslim country.
>
> Or to put it another way, that would be 40% of
>> the population of the US.
>
> are you claiming america is a latin nation because 12% of american are
> latin americans?
Y'all ain't never been to Miami-Dade or Broward Counties in Florida, have
you, or you'd not ask that question. Parts of the US most definitely _are_
Latin American countries. The Metro Dade are is, specifically, North Cuba. If
you doubt this, look up the current mayor & county commissioners. And have a
look at the past few mayors and commissioners.
>
> Or 200% of the population of the UK. 120 million is
>> a damn big number.
>
> not against a billion it's not.
One in eight Indians is Muslim. It's a big number.
>>
>>>
>>> This makes India one of he
>>>> largest Muslim population centers in the world.
>>>
>>> which does not make india a muslim country.
>>
>> It does mean that there are a lot of Muslims there.
>
> let me type this slowly so you get it:
>
> india is not a muslim country. you keep claiming it is, although you
> yourself admit only 12% of indians are muslims. 12% of anything is not
> a majority.
That's nice. You keep ignoring the simple fact that there are 120 million
Muslims there. That's one hell of a lot. You keep ignoring that, just for one
prominent example, the current President of India, who also used to run
India's ballistic missile program, is Muslim. Muslim science is not dead.
>>>
>>> which proves my point: muslim scientists can succeed in non muslim
>>> countries. they generally don't do so in muslim countries.
>>
>> Actually, it does no such thing.
>>
>>>
>>> thanks for backing up my claim. appreciate it.
>>>
>>
>> Sigh. He's right on this. You're wrong. All the flailing around in the world
>> will not change this.
>
> sigh...i'm right. his figures show that almost no scientific research
> is being done in muslim countries, as did the UN report i cited
> earlier. arab countries devote about 0.4% of GDP to scientific
> research. the US, israel, the EU, etc. devote about 6X as much.
>
> all the flailing around in the world will not change this.
So Pakistan is not Muslim, eh? And neither are Turkey or Iran, eh? Nice to
know this.
>
>>>
>> It is simply not accurate to say that science is dead in Islamic countries.
>> Insisting on that non-fact is as bad as when McClueless carries on about
>> moon
>> pools in large barges.
>
> really? compare the number of jewish nobel prize winners to muslim
> prize winners, for starters...OK?
A smaller number is not zero. You say it's zero. This is not the case. No
doubt there aren't that many Hindu or Buddhist Nobel Prize winners, either.
(Though I can think of at least one Hindu...) Is science dead in Hindu
countries, too? Be really careful answering this, as India is a majority
Hindu country. Most of the rest of that billion, you know. And Japan and a
large section of China are Buddhist.
>
>>
>> And, oh, yeah, that point about female literacy rates... it should be noted
>> that the US only just managed to get a female speaker of one part of its
>> equivalent of a parliament, and has never had a female head of state,
>> something at least one Muslim country has done... twice. Yep, them thar
>> towelheads, they're too busy oppressing women and building suicide vests to
>> do any real science. Ayup.
>
> you need to start with something more basic...like your belief that 12%
> of anything makes a majority...
Like the way that you're ignoring the 120 million... and the way you suddenly
stopped refering to Singapore. And the way you cut out all mention of a
certain Muslim -country developed item...
>
> and, yes, muslim countries often do oppress women. if you disagree,
> perhaps you can explain by a dozen girls were murdered last year by the
> saudi mutaween for running out of a burning building w/o their head
> scarves. the cops were afraid they'd be seen by men, and chased them
> back into the burning building.
And yet those evil, anti-female Muslims have _elected_ female rulers in the
late 20th century. Twice in one particular country. Meanwhile, that bastion
of civil rights, the United States of America, has _never_ come anywhere
close to doing that.
Robert Grumbine
TomS <TomS_...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>"On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:07:16 -0600, in article
><MPG.201c2452c...@news.cc.umanitoba.ca>, Mujin stated..."
>[...snip...]
>>So your statement of "fact" regarding science in muslim countries
>>after al Ghazali was a lie. Muslim academic progress continued in
>>several fields up until the 1400s - coincidentally the very same
>>period in which Europe began its meteoric rise to the top. Al
>>Ghazzali's ideas weren't the end of intellectual progress in the
>>middle east - a complex sequence of economic and political events
>>from the mid 14th Century on caused the Muslim "dark age" from 1500
>>to the late 1800s.
>[...snip...]
>
>This is an interesting subject. Do you have some references where
>we can read about it?
In addition to the books Mujin replied with, you might take a
look at the Muqqadimah (sp?) by the previously mentioned Ibn Khaldun.
My mother read it and was calling me up fairly routinely to see what
Europe knew at the time in comparison. Ans: (for the ones she
asked about) was typically another 1-4 centuries before Europe
had caught up.
--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
Free Lunch
"J.J. O'Shea" <try.n...@but.see.sig> wrote in
<0001HW.C1D86D13...@news1.news.adelphia.net>:
Not true. You've become too used to discussing things with creationists.
Basically I've learned what's going on from the media. On occasion, I
draw an invalid inference or am misinformed. I make an effort to correct
such errors.
As I understand it, the leaders in Khartoum and the rest of the north
consider themselves to be Arabic -- though it was my mistake to assume
that they were Arabic looking from our point of view. The war in Darfur
appears to be culturally based, triggered in part by desertification,
but not merely a conflict between pastoralists and agriculturalists,
more a continuing tribal conflict that can be laid, in part, at the feet
of European colonialism and the world's continuing obsession with the
idea that the boundaries of countries should not change. All of the
parties appear to be herders to some degree. The problem is that the
central government and neighboring Chad have taken sides rather than
made an attempt to resolve the conflict. It's not clear to me if the
Central African Republic has taken sides or is just suffering from some
of the overflow.
Mujin
says...
> In article <eots9...@drn.newsguy.com>,
> TomS <TomS_...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> >"On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:07:16 -0600, in article
> ><MPG.201c2452c...@news.cc.umanitoba.ca>, Mujin stated..."
> >[...snip...]
> >>So your statement of "fact" regarding science in muslim countries
> >>after al Ghazali was a lie. Muslim academic progress continued in
> >>several fields up until the 1400s - coincidentally the very same
> >>period in which Europe began its meteoric rise to the top. Al
> >>Ghazzali's ideas weren't the end of intellectual progress in the
> >>middle east - a complex sequence of economic and political events
> >>from the mid 14th Century on caused the Muslim "dark age" from 1500
> >>to the late 1800s.
> >[...snip...]
> >
> >This is an interesting subject. Do you have some references where
> >we can read about it?
>
> In addition to the books Mujin replied with, you might take a
> look at the Muqqadimah (sp?) by the previously mentioned Ibn Khaldun.
Available online here:
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/
[snip]
--
Mujin
Chris Devol
>
> Chris Devol wrote:
>>>
>> Since all religions concern themselves with re-connecting us to our
>> spiritual (non-material) source, they must be anti-materialistic. This is
>> quite proper And since all religions profess to have real knowledge
>> (science) of that spiritual source and real procedures (experiment) to
>> re-connect with it, they must be inherently scientific. This is also
>> quite
>> proper.
>
> what experiments can confirm the virgin birth?
The practice of artificial insemination confirms that a virgin can become
pregnant, give birth, and remain a virgin afterwards.
>the resurrection?
A coroner's report, numerous eyewitness accounts, DNA testing on someone who
is alleged to have been resurrected. Of course, if you can't locate the
person, that's your problem, not science's problem. And if you arbitrarily
or out of prejudice refuse to accept the eyewitness testimony or the
coroner's report, then you would be the one who is anti-rational.
> many
> claims of religions are antirational and not subject to any
> experimentation at all. there can be no 'science' to check these claims
> because these claims are, by definition, uncheckable.
No enduring claim of religion is anti-rational. If an argument follows from
its premises, it is rational, not irrational.
Besides, you were talking about religion being anti-science, not
anti-reason.
Your beef seems to be with premises, not arguments. But anyone can simply
refuse to accept the premises and thereby reject any conclusion he likes.
> science is a recent invention of the human race. religion is not.
Science is as old as thought. People have been testing, and accepting or
rejecting, hypotheses forever.
And even if it were true it wouldn't really help your case, if you think
about it.
TomS
<MPG.201d5d471...@news.cc.umanitoba.ca>, Mujin stated..."
Thank you.
--
---Tom S.
"...when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and
in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it."
GK Chesterton, Doubts About Darwinism (1920)
wf3h
Chris Devol wrote:
> "wf3h" <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote in message
> news:1169358813.7...@s34g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Chris Devol wrote:
> >>>> >
> > what experiments can confirm the virgin birth?
>
> The practice of artificial insemination confirms that a virgin can become
> pregnant, give birth, and remain a virgin afterwards.
that's true. the technology of artificial insemination was quite
developed 2000 years ago. your point is well taken.
>
> >the resurrection?
>
> A coroner's report,
i got no problem with that. if you're willing to tell xtians their god
just needed CPR 3 days after he was crucified and that he wasn't
dead?...no problem with me.
numerous eyewitness accounts, DNA testing on someone who
> is alleged to have been resurrected. Of course, if you can't locate the
> person, that's your problem, not science's problem. And if you arbitrarily
> or out of prejudice refuse to accept the eyewitness testimony or the
> coroner's report, then you would be the one who is anti-rational.
well let's see. my wife is a public defense attorney...you know what
the least reliable source of information is?
eyewitness testimony.
>
> > many
> > claims of religions are antirational and not subject to any
> > experimentation at all. there can be no 'science' to check these claims
> > because these claims are, by definition, uncheckable.
>
> No enduring claim of religion is anti-rational.
exactly the opposite. the more enduring it is, the MORE it's
antirational because it convinces folks like you to stop thinking about
it.
If an argument follows from
> its premises, it is rational, not irrational.
> Besides, you were talking about religion being anti-science, not
> anti-reason.
there's a large degree of overlap between rationality and science. and,
yes, religion can be, and is, antirational. check the debate between
ambrose and symmachus over whether or not an altar should have been
replaced in a pagan temple. ambrose was against it, not because of
logic, but because he knew god's truth...and that was all the proof he
needed.
>
> Your beef seems to be with premises, not arguments. But anyone can simply
> refuse to accept the premises and thereby reject any conclusion he likes.
only if you think AED's were available 2000 years ago.
>
> > science is a recent invention of the human race. religion is not.
>
> Science is as old as thought. People have been testing, and accepting or
> rejecting, hypotheses forever.
no, science is a relatively recent invention. that's why it didn't
transform the world 2000 years ago, while religion did...
>
> And even if it were true it wouldn't really help your case, if you think
> about it.
science may not be true, but religion isn't a replacement for it. if
you think about it...
Baron Bodissey
'Why Do They Hate Us?'." is NOT anti-Western propaganda?
I concede the details but you are missing the larger point, which I
will repeat: "...nobody is blameless."
To pretend otherwise is nothing but propaganda.
Perplexed in Peoria
"Free Lunch" <lu...@nofreelunch.us> wrote in message news:2i77r25i3tnt06u0i...@4ax.com...
The word Arab, in modern parlance, means someone who speaks Arabic as
their native language. It is not a racial grouping. It is 'national'
or cultural. The Arabs of Egypt and the Sudan are darker skinned than
the 'pure-blooded' Arabs of the Arabian peninsula. There surely are
north-south and east-west racial differences in the Sudan, but they are
not as important in the politics as linguistic, religious, and cultural
differences.
Stuart
Jeffrey Turner wrote:
> Lexington Victoria-Rice wrote:
>
> > Qualia wrote:
> >
> >> "Mujin" <umwi...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in message
> > actions of the jihadists are being justified by religious
> > interpretation. Perhaps Harris glossed over the contribution of western
> > powers; but the point of his book is that as long as the jihadists use
> > Islam to inspire terrorists we aren't going to find a political solution
> > to the problem.
>
> What about the role played by the CIA, in the interests of the Cold War,
> along with the Saudis and Pakistan's ISI, in fostering jihadist
> madrassas in Afghanistan in the 1980s?
>
> > The influence of the western powers can't explain the extreme level of
> > Jew-hating in even our "friendly" countries such as Egypt and Saudi
> > Arabia, can it?
>
> The Wahabbis, in Saudi Arabia, are fundamentalists. The Shi'as there
> are a despised minority. Why would one expect better for the Jews?
> Surely Egypt's experience with "the Jewish State" has something to do
> with popular Jew-hating there.
You mean getting their ass kicked in four wars they started?
And certainly believe that rampid anti-semitism didn't exist in Egypt
before 1947?
You know Turner, you should keep your mouth shut. That way people will
have to guess if you're an imbecile, rather than simply know it for a
fact.
Stuart
Alexander
It's not an unreasonable point either. However it is a bit like saying
''killing people ... is that really a good idea?'
>
> To pretend otherwise is nothing but propaganda.
For a sufficiently broad definition of the term sure. I think it's a
tad on the hyperbolic side to make this particular claim however. I'd
also point out that the poster was slagging off the US specifically in
its attitudes toward these things. So anti-american perhaps I'd say -
but only in the regard of certain narrow views of world politics. I'd
say it was stereotypical and from my experience not necessarily true,
but not propaganda.
Also, the last I heard was that the US is not the entire western world.
Maybe that's just the propaganda talking though.
Baron Bodissey
"It's not an unreasonable point either." Okay, I'll accept that and
retire, bloodied but unbowed.
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu
[...]
> sigh...i'm right. his figures show that almost no scientific research
> is being done in muslim countries,
This is an exaggeration. There are notable research programs in
high energy physics, for example, in bothe Iran and Turkey. In
the past six years, for example, physicists in Iran have published
more than 100 papers that have received ten or more citations,
and ten with 50 or more citations. I personally know of research
institutes in Tehran and in Istanbul with significant research
programs, and with a good deal of international contact. (Look
up the School of Physics at the IPM in Tehran, for example.)
> as did the UN report i cited
> earlier. arab countries devote about 0.4% of GDP to scientific
> research. the US, israel, the EU, etc. devote about 6X as much.
Are you talking about "Muslin countries" or "Arab countries"? The
two aren't equivalent.
Steve Carlip
wf3h
Jeffrey Turner wrote:
> Vend wrote:
> >
> >
> > Of course, try to demonstrate against Hamas in Gaza and see what
> > happens to you.
>
> Considering the treatment Hamas is getting from the West, and the
> poverty that's been called down on their heads, I really can't blame
> them for being a bit defensive.
>
they brought it on themselves. they started the civil war in palestine,
they're terrorists, killing not only israelis, but other palestinians.
wf3h
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu wrote:
> wf3h <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
> > sigh...i'm right. his figures show that almost no scientific research
> > is being done in muslim countries,
>
> This is an exaggeration. There are notable research programs in
> high energy physics, for example, in bothe Iran and Turkey. In
> the past six years, for example, physicists in Iran have published
> more than 100 papers that have received ten or more citations,
> and ten with 50 or more citations. I personally know of research
> institutes in Tehran and in Istanbul with significant research
> programs, and with a good deal of international contact. (Look
> up the School of Physics at the IPM in Tehran, for example.)
yes, there is some limited scientific research being done, especially
in the most secular, western muslim country, turkey (which is, after
all, an applicant for the EU).
>
> > as did the UN report i cited
> > earlier. arab countries devote about 0.4% of GDP to scientific
> > research. the US, israel, the EU, etc. devote about 6X as much.
>
> Are you talking about "Muslin countries" or "Arab countries"? The
> two aren't equivalent.
that is true. primarily i'm addressing the arab countries which tend to
be wealthier than other muslim countries.
Free Lunch
Yes, I don't know if I made that mistake from drawing unwarranted
conclusions from news reports or because that is what I had thought I
had read.
Ye Old One
<jtu...@localnet.com> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>Vend wrote:
>>
>>
>> Of course, try to demonstrate against Hamas in Gaza and see what
>> happens to you.
>
>Considering the treatment Hamas is getting from the West,
That is their own fault, nobody else's.
>and the
>poverty that's been called down on their heads,
Again, they can end that very easily.
> I really can't blame
>them for being a bit defensive.
They are not defensive. They are the ones killing innocent people.
>
>--Jeff
--
Bob.
Alexander
On Jan 21, 8:00 pm, "Baron Bodissey" <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Alexander wrote:
> > On Jan 21, 6:29 pm, "Baron Bodissey" <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Alexander wrote:
> > > > On Jan 21, 1:27 am, "Baron Bodissey" <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > > Alexander wrote:
> > > > > > On Jan 20, 1:17 pm, "Baron Bodissey" <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > > > > Qualia wrote:
> > > > > > > > "Mujin" <umwin...@seesee.umanitoba.ca> wrote in message
> > > > > > > >news:MPG.201b5c79b...@news.cc.
>>>>SCHNIPPITY
>
> > > Baron Bodissey
> > > They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see
> > > nothing but sea.
> > > - Francis Bacon
>"It's not an unreasonable point either." Okay, I'll accept that and
> retire, bloodied but unbowed.
Fair enough :)
Chris Devol
>
> Chris Devol wrote:
>> "wf3h" <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote in message
>> news:1169358813.7...@s34g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> >
>> > Chris Devol wrote:
>> >>>> >
>> > what experiments can confirm the virgin birth?
>>
>> The practice of artificial insemination confirms that a virgin can become
>> pregnant, give birth, and remain a virgin afterwards.
>
> that's true. the technology of artificial insemination was quite
> developed 2000 years ago. your point is well taken.
>>
>> >the resurrection?
>>
>> A coroner's report,
>
> i got no problem with that. if you're willing to tell xtians their god
> just needed CPR 3 days after he was crucified and that he wasn't
> dead?...no problem with me.
There are reports, documented in recent medical literature, of people who
were certified by expert physicians to be dead, but who suddenly "came to
life" many hours or even days later in the morgue, without any type of
medical intervention. I'm sure you know about these kinds of cases.
Your "science" thus confirms the possibility of virgin birth and
resurrection. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the goal of your
"science" is to produce the same "miraculous" phenomena mentioned in the
scriptures of the world. Your "science" is trying to do it in one particular
way, but cannot possibly demonstrate that other methods are impossible.
> numerous eyewitness accounts, DNA testing on someone who
>> is alleged to have been resurrected. Of course, if you can't locate the
>> person, that's your problem, not science's problem. And if you
>> arbitrarily
>> or out of prejudice refuse to accept the eyewitness testimony or the
>> coroner's report, then you would be the one who is anti-rational.
>
> well let's see. my wife is a public defense attorney...you know what
> the least reliable source of information is?
>
> eyewitness testimony.
But if eyewitness testimony is all that is available, and enough of the
eyewitnesses survive deposition, it will frequently be sufficient to produce
a conviction beyond reasonable doubt.
>> > many
>> > claims of religions are antirational and not subject to any
>> > experimentation at all. there can be no 'science' to check these claims
>> > because these claims are, by definition, uncheckable.
>>
>> No enduring claim of religion is anti-rational.
>
> exactly the opposite. the more enduring it is, the MORE it's
> antirational because it convinces folks like you to stop thinking about
> it.
>
> If an argument follows from
>> its premises, it is rational, not irrational.
>> Besides, you were talking about religion being anti-science, not
>> anti-reason.
>
> there's a large degree of overlap between rationality and science. and,
> yes, religion can be, and is, antirational. check the debate between
> ambrose and symmachus over whether or not an altar should have been
> replaced in a pagan temple. ambrose was against it, not because of
> logic, but because he knew god's truth...and that was all the proof he
> needed.
You say "because". That means that Ambrose had premises from which his
argument logically followed. So did Symmachus. They simply rejected one
another's premises. That's all.
>> Your beef seems to be with premises, not arguments. But anyone can simply
>> refuse to accept the premises and thereby reject any conclusion he likes.
>
> only if you think AED's were available 2000 years ago.
>>
>> > science is a recent invention of the human race. religion is not.
>>
>> Science is as old as thought. People have been testing, and accepting or
>> rejecting, hypotheses forever.
>
> no, science is a relatively recent invention. that's why it didn't
> transform the world 2000 years ago, while religion did...
What you call "science" has certainly speeded up the transformation of
useful matter into useless garbage. But thermodynamics - not a recent
invention - does that already. And nobody is really any happier for it.
>> And even if it were true it wouldn't really help your case, if you think
>> about it.
>
> science may not be true, but religion isn't a replacement for it. if
> you think about it...
Religion is not inherently anti-reason nor anti-science. It inherently
rejects the premises of materialism, that's all.
Robert Carnegie
> In article <1169326099....@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
> rja.ca...@excite.com says...
> > Mujin wrote:
> > > And other sects of Christianity would rightly point out that whatever
> > > sect was doing the bombing wasn't representative, or wasn't actually
> > > Christian at all - as has happened every time in recent history when
> > > a group claiming to be Christian committed acts of violence in the
> > > name of their religion.
> >
> > Lucky, that...I call "No True Scotsman", though.
>
> That's my point - The majority of Christians try to distance
> themselves from extremists, and (except when they actually try to
> deny that the extremists are Christian at all) this is accepted as
> quite reasonable by most - but when muslims try to distance
> themselves from muslim extremists the argument is suddenly
> unreasonable.
Since I think I didn't post this already - I'm not sure we're in
accord. I wouldn't say that Christians can fairly divorce themselves
from what other Christians do claiming to serve their religion, unless
they are very scrupulous. On the other hand, it isn't really fair for
outsiders to demand an accounting only because people have the same
religion, or a religion of the same name. Responsibility is firstly
individual, and shared or communal only where communication between the
parties takes place.
When you used the word "rightly", I thought you were arguing for the
position "If they were truly of our religion, they would not have done
this terrible thing" as a valid defence. Now... in the secular world,
you can hold an opinion with greater or lesser certainty - who's going
to win the election, whether your house roof will stay on through
hurricane season. But in religion, Christianity in particular but
others as well, typically you're either in or out and and notnin
between and usually it's the gods who decide in the end, emphatically.
I personally consider this a defect of religions.
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <1169414474.2...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
A-ha. I _will_ say that science has problems in _Arab_ countries... but not
in _Muslim_ countries. Or in countries where there are a lot of Muslims. It's
not an _Islamic_ problem, it's an _Arab_ problem... and mostly it's a _Saudi_
problem, 'cause they are the ones with the serious cash. Jordan, Egypt, and
Syria don't have any oil. Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait have oil, but lack the
population required to get the job done. Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan are all
majority Muslim no matter how you count it, and science lives there.
Particularly rocketry and nuclear science.
Robert Carnegie
> Alexander wrote:
> "After all, even the most elementary historical, moral or geopolitical
> realism will stop a book selling well in a
> demented America whose response to a mere token reprisal is to bleat
> 'Why Do They Hate Us?'." is NOT anti-Western propaganda?
>
> I concede the details but you are missing the larger point, which I
> will repeat: "...nobody is blameless."
>
> To pretend otherwise is nothing but propaganda.
On the whole I absolve preschoolers. But in any case, "nobody is
blameless" does not imply that there is no blame, or equal blame, or
that you can do whatever you like (pillage rape slaughter etc) because
everyone's guilty anyway. Now as an atheist I believe you /can/ do
whatever you like, but you shouldn't.
Robert Carnegie
Your understanding of virginity seems to be focussed on the hymen, and
I don't think that wouldstill be there after a birth, unless you go for
Caesarean. For that matter, your artificial insemination doctor would
probably wreck it.
As for premature funerals, tall tales are fine, but I think consensus
is that the person in a real case was not dead, still had a pulse and
brain electrical activity and some respiration, and the expert
physicians were not so expert after all - however, the signs might be
indistinct. But perhaps a better example for your argument is
resuscitation when pulse and consciousness have stopped.
Jeffrey Turner
Then how come Palestinian children are getting killed at four
times the rate of Israeli children? You're marvelous at
parooting right-wing Israeli propaganda.
--Jeff
--
I believe I found the missing link between animal
and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz
Jeffrey Turner
Ah, our t.o Likudnik.
I’m going to read you a very brief paragraph by Winston Churchill, not
about the Battle of Britain. It is Churchill prophesying the future from
1937, eleven years before the Nakba. This is Winston Churchill writing
in a totally forgotten essay. He reflected upon the future and wrote of
the impossibility of a partitioned Palestine. And he talked of how, I
quote -- this is Winston Churchill in 1937 -- “The wealthy, crowded,
progressive Jewish state” -- see, it doesn’t exist yet, but he’s already
getting it right -- “lies in the plains and on the sea coast of
Palestine. Around it, in the hills and the uplands, stretching far and
wide into the illimitable deserts, the warlike Arabs of Syria of
Transjordania, of Arabia, backed by the armed forces of Iraq, offer the
ceaseless menace of war. To maintain itself,” -- 1937, remember, -- “To
maintain itself, the Jewish state will have to be armed to the teeth and
must bring in every able-bodied man to strengthen its army. But how long
will this process be allowed to continue by the great Arab populations
in Iraq and Palestine? Can it be expected that the Arabs would stand by
impassively and watch the building up, with Jewish world capital and
resources, of a Jewish army, equipped with the most deadly weapons of
war until it was strong enough not to be afraid of them? And if ever the
Jewish army reached that point, who can be sure,” Churchill asked,
“that, cramped within their narrow limits, they would not plunge out
into the new undeveloped lands that lay around them?”
“Ouch,” I said when I read that. 1937.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/20/1443230&mode=thread&tid=25
Jeffrey Turner
>
> And, oh, yeah, that point about female literacy rates... it should be noted
> that the US only just managed to get a female speaker of one part of its
> equivalent of a parliament, and has never had a female head of state,
> something at least one Muslim country has done... twice. Yep, them thar
> towelheads, they're too busy oppressing women and building suicide vests to
> do any real science. Ayup.
Two, Pakistan and Indonesia. Turkey and Bangladesh have had female
prime ministers.
Mujin
My thinking is that if some sect of a religious group commits atrocities, it is fair
to accept the majority's attempt to distance themselves from that sect if they are
also willing to call the splinter group to task and do some serious soul searching.
I don't think it's fair for outsiders to *prevent* them from effectively divorcing
themselves from extremists, since after all that's the only way for the religion to
rid itself of undesirable subgroups.
> When you used the word "rightly", I thought you were arguing for the
> position "If they were truly of our religion, they would not have done
> this terrible thing" as a valid defence.
Absolutely not. I think that's a weak defence. However, just as mainstream
Christian sects distance themselves from Christian White Supremist groups
without necessarily claiming that the WS groups aren't Christian, I think it's
possible for any religion to distance itself from undesirable elements without
actually claiming they're not really members of the religion. In such a case, the
mainstream sects should take an apologetic and publically admonishing position
wrt the "heretics."
> Now... in the secular world,
> you can hold an opinion with greater or lesser certainty - who's going
> to win the election, whether your house roof will stay on through
> hurricane season. But in religion, Christianity in particular but
> others as well, typically you're either in or out and and notnin
> between and usually it's the gods who decide in the end, emphatically.
> I personally consider this a defect of religions.
I think that depends - there can certainly be differences in dogma which don't
necessarily exclude one from the religion entirely. Not all Christian sects
consider all other sects to be not really Christians, for example. Any religion
which takes this position is definitely in trouble, though.
--
Mujin
wf3h
Jeffrey Turner wrote:
> Ye Old One wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:38:28 -> >
> >
> > > >
>
> Then how come Palestinian children are getting killed at four
> times the rate of Israeli children? You're marvelous at
> parooting right-wing Israeli propaganda.
>
let me type this slowly so you can read it:
palestinian children are being murdered by their own leaders. it is
they who refuse peace with israel. it is they who foment civil war in
their own country. it is they who spend money they don't have on
weapons they don't need.
you shed crocodile tears for palestinian children w/o realizing the
leading killers of palestinians are other palestinians.
grow up
wf3h
J.J. O'Shea wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:21:14 -0500, wf3h wrote
> > >>
> >>> sigh...i'm right. his figures show that almost no scientific research
> >>> is being done in muslim countries,
> >> > >
> > in the most secular, western muslim country, turkey (which is, after
> > all, an applicant for the EU).
> >>
> >>> as did the UN report i cited
> >>> earlier. arab countries devote about 0.4% of GDP to scientific
> >>> research. the US, israel, the EU, etc. devote about 6X as much.
> >>
> >> Are you talking about "Muslin countries" or "Arab countries"? The
> >> two aren't equivalent.
> >
> > that is true. primarily i'm addressing the arab countries which tend to
> > be wealthier than other muslim countries.
> >
>
> A-ha. I _will_ say that science has problems in _Arab_ countries... but not
> in _Muslim_ countries. Or in countries where there are a lot of Muslims. It's
> not an _Islamic_ problem, it's an _Arab_ problem... and mostly it's a _Saudi_
> problem, 'cause they are the ones with the serious cash. Jordan, Egypt, and
> Syria don't have any oil. Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait have oil, but lack the
> population required to get the job done. Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan are all
> majority Muslim no matter how you count it, and science lives there.
> Particularly rocketry and nuclear science.
certainly the muslim world is rife with destructive technology...that
brings me back to my original point. much of islam is ideologically
aligned with terrorism, war and death.
not ALL of it certainly; but a substantial minority. even you, as you
typed those words above had to realize the connection.
and AQ Khan did not develop, but stole the technology for weapons.
wf3h
> > developed 2000 years ago. your point is well taken.
> >>
> >> >the resurrection?
> >>
> >> A coroner's report,
> >
> > i got no problem with that. if you're willing to tell xtians their god
> > just needed CPR 3 days after he was crucified and that he wasn't
> > dead?...no problem with me.
>
> There are reports, documented in recent medical literature, of people who
> were certified by expert physicians to be dead, but who suddenly "came to
> life" many hours or even days later in the morgue, without any type of
> medical intervention. I'm sure you know about these kinds of cases.
and, again, if you can get this accepted by xtians, fine. i'm sure,
however, they're gonna insist christ was dead, dead, stone cold D E A
D.
>
> Your "science" thus confirms the possibility of virgin birth and
> resurrection.
uh, no it doesn't. it confirms the limits of our knowledge. YOU are the
one who is recasting xtian doctrine to fit YOUR idea of spirituality.
xtian doctrine...the nicene creed..does not say christ APPEARED to be
dead. it says he WAS dead. so if you have a problem with their
theology, go argue with them
In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the goal of your
> "science" is to produce the same "miraculous" phenomena mentioned in the
> scriptures of the world. Your "science" is trying to do it in one particular
> way, but cannot possibly demonstrate that other methods are impossible.
which is a meaningless statement. you can't prove that you're not a
killer. proving a negative is not possible. and religion has, for
thousands of years, tried, and failed to explain the natural
world...with no success at all.
>
> >
> > well let's see. my wife is a public defense attorney...you know what
> > the least reliable source of information is?
> >
> > eyewitness testimony.
>
> But if eyewitness testimony is all that is available, and enough of the
> eyewitnesses survive deposition, it will frequently be sufficient to produce
> a conviction beyond reasonable doubt.
which is meaningless in the context of miracles. every religion has
eyewitnesses to miracles.
> >> >
> > there's a large degree of overlap between rationality and science. and,
> > yes, religion can be, and is, antirational. check the debate between
> > ambrose and symmachus over whether or not an altar should have been
> > replaced in a pagan temple. ambrose was against it, not because of
> > logic, but because he knew god's truth...and that was all the proof he
> > needed.
>
> You say "because". That means that Ambrose had premises from which his
> argument logically followed. So did Symmachus. They simply rejected one
> another's premises. That's all.
?? saying 'i know my god is superior' is a syllogism? for 2800 years,
logicians have argued exactly the opposite.
> > >
> > no, science is a relatively recent invention. that's why it didn't
> > transform the world 2000 years ago, while religion did...
>
> What you call "science" has certainly speeded up the transformation of
> useful matter into useless garbage. But thermodynamics - not a recent
> invention - does that already. And nobody is really any happier for it.
irrelevant. the job of science is not to produce happiness. there is no
'happiness' meter in science. sorry.
and, yes, thermo is about 300 years old.
>
> >> And even if it were true it wouldn't really help your case, if you think
> >> about it.
> >
> > science may not be true, but religion isn't a replacement for it. if
> > you think about it...
>
> Religion is not inherently anti-reason nor anti-science. It inherently
> rejects the premises of materialism, that's all.
which does not make it a valid method of explaining the natural world.
Stuart
Jeffrey Turner wrote:
> Ye Old One wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:38:28 -0500, Jeffrey Turner
> > <jtu...@localnet.com> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Vend wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>Of course, try to demonstrate against Hamas in Gaza and see what
> >>>happens to you.
> >>
> >>Considering the treatment Hamas is getting from the West,
> >
> >
> > That is their own fault, nobody else's.
> >
> >
> >>and the
> >>poverty that's been called down on their heads,
> >
> >
> > Again, they can end that very easily.
> >
> >
> >>I really can't blame
> >>them for being a bit defensive.
> >
> >
> > They are not defensive. They are the ones killing innocent people.
>
> Then how come Palestinian children are getting killed at four
> times the rate of Israeli children?
Indeed, no doubt Turner is crying for the Taliban. Its what gutter
liberals do. After all, they are being killed off
at ten times the rate of coalition soldiers.
>You're marvelous at
> parooting right-wing Israeli propaganda.
Coming from a far left stooge like yourself, who thinks Zyklon-B jokes
are funny, such an insult is laughable.
Israel is better at protecting its children. Hamas excels at
encouringing palestinian children to blow themselves up.
Of course, Haniyeh doesn't encourage his own children to do this.
Moreover, two of his nephews actually served in the IDF. Rather, he
brain washes other impressionable youths to do so, and that includes
youths of diminished mental capacity. If Hamas cares about Palestinain
children it will stop using them human shields or bombs.
However, so long as the world contains a number of dumbasses like
yourself, he will continue to do so,since it seems to garner the
sympathies of the terminally stupid like yourself. When it fails to get
a sympathetic ear, it will stop.
Stuart
Walter Bushell
"Douglas Clark" <dgdc...@NOSPAMdgdclynx.plus.com> wrote:
> "John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote in message
> news:1hsahrg.i4s6vlk3zo8fN%j.wil...@uq.edu.au...
> >
> > And the revival of Islamic antimodernism, so to speak, after the fall of
> > the University of Toledo and of the Baghdad Caliphate, led to the
> > demolition of the Islamic Enlightenment.
> >>
> > --
> > John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
> > University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
>
> John
> The fall of the Caliphate to the Mongols of Hulagu directly caused the
> teachings of Ibn Taymiyya on jihad which gave rise to that of Al-Wahhab from
> whom come the Wahhabis. (see Charles Allen's book 'God's Terrorists). I dont
> know about the University of Toledo although the translators there did so
> much for the Renaissance.
>
> So we are effectively seeing a conservative backlash in Islam after 1258
> which meant that science was not welcome. In the UK there is a current
> problem with Moslem medical students refusing to accept training contrary to
> their faith.
>
>
Next it will be pilots who insist the world is flat.
--
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any
charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his
peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totali-
tarian government whether Nazi or Communist." -- W. Churchill, Nov 21, 1943
Chris Devol
>
> Chris Devol wrote:
>> "wf3h" <wf...@vsswireless.net> wrote in message
>> > >
>> > that's true. the technology of artificial insemination was quite
>> > developed 2000 years ago. your point is well taken.
>> >>
>> >> >the resurrection?
>> >>
>> >> A coroner's report,
>> >
>> > i got no problem with that. if you're willing to tell xtians their god
>> > just needed CPR 3 days after he was crucified and that he wasn't
>> > dead?...no problem with me.
>>
>> There are reports, documented in recent medical literature, of people who
>> were certified by expert physicians to be dead, but who suddenly "came to
>> life" many hours or even days later in the morgue, without any type of
>> medical intervention. I'm sure you know about these kinds of cases.
>
> and, again, if you can get this accepted by xtians, fine. i'm sure,
> however, they're gonna insist christ was dead, dead, stone cold D E A
> D.
Just as the physicians insisted that the patient was dead, dead, dead. In
fact, some of the Lazarus syndrome cases were about to be buried when they
revived.
>> Your "science" thus confirms the possibility of virgin birth and
>> resurrection.
>
> uh, no it doesn't. it confirms the limits of our knowledge. YOU are the
> one who is recasting xtian doctrine to fit YOUR idea of spirituality.
I'm not "recasting" anything. You are claiming, apparently, that the
"Christian" idea of resurrection and virgin births contradicts natural law.
It doesn't.
> xtian doctrine...the nicene creed..does not say christ APPEARED to be
> dead. it says he WAS dead. so if you have a problem with their
> theology, go argue with them
Just as the death certificates in the Lazarus syndrome cases said that the
patient was really, not apparently, dead. You don't try to bury someone who
is "apparently" dead.
> In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the goal of your
>> "science" is to produce the same "miraculous" phenomena mentioned in the
>> scriptures of the world. Your "science" is trying to do it in one
>> particular
>> way, but cannot possibly demonstrate that other methods are impossible.
>
> which is a meaningless statement. you can't prove that you're not a
> killer. proving a negative is not possible. and religion has, for
> thousands of years, tried, and failed to explain the natural
> world...with no success at all.
Religion has not tried very hard at all to "explain" what is essentially
uninteresting to it. Remember that religion is inherently anti-materialism.
It is persons like you who are enamored with the flickering temporary
material world and its deluding allurements. Religion is concerned with
getting out of such a bad bargain.
People have been surviving quite well for thousands of years without your
"science". As a matter of fact, thanks in large part to the foolish attempt
to replace religion with materialism (which you call "science"), there is
more death, disease, and old age on the planet than ever before in your
recorded "history". Thanks a bunch!
>> > well let's see. my wife is a public defense attorney...you know what
>> > the least reliable source of information is?
>> >
>> > eyewitness testimony.
>>
>> But if eyewitness testimony is all that is available, and enough of the
>> eyewitnesses survive deposition, it will frequently be sufficient to
>> produce
>> a conviction beyond reasonable doubt.
>
> which is meaningless in the context of miracles. every religion has
> eyewitnesses to miracles.
That certainly helps the case for religion.
>> > there's a large degree of overlap between rationality and science. and,
>> > yes, religion can be, and is, antirational. check the debate between
>> > ambrose and symmachus over whether or not an altar should have been
>> > replaced in a pagan temple. ambrose was against it, not because of
>> > logic, but because he knew god's truth...and that was all the proof he
>> > needed.
>>
>> You say "because". That means that Ambrose had premises from which his
>> argument logically followed. So did Symmachus. They simply rejected one
>> another's premises. That's all.
>
> ?? saying 'i know my god is superior' is a syllogism? for 2800 years,
> logicians have argued exactly the opposite.
I'm beginning to think that you are just stupid. Too bad.
>> > no, science is a relatively recent invention. that's why it didn't
>> > transform the world 2000 years ago, while religion did...
>>
>> What you call "science" has certainly speeded up the transformation of
>> useful matter into useless garbage. But thermodynamics - not a recent
>> invention - does that already. And nobody is really any happier for it.
>
> irrelevant. the job of science is not to produce happiness. there is no
> 'happiness' meter in science. sorry.
I'm sure the taxpayers, who have been propagandized for decades about the
glorious future that scientific "advancement" promises to bring to a
suffereing humanity, will be very interested to hear that.
> and, yes, thermo is about 300 years old.
Really? So before 1700 AD there was no entropy?
>> >> And even if it were true it wouldn't really help your case, if you
>> >> think
>> >> about it.
>> >
>> > science may not be true, but religion isn't a replacement for it. if
>> > you think about it...
>>
>> Religion is not inherently anti-reason nor anti-science. It inherently
>> rejects the premises of materialism, that's all.
>
> which does not make it a valid method of explaining the natural world.
Yes, it's confirmed. You are stupid. Too bad.
Douglas Clark
news:proto-2C7071....@reader2.panix.com...
This is serious re abortion and homosexuality.
Vend
wf3h wrote:
> palestinian children are being murdered by their own leaders. it is
> they who refuse peace with israel. it is they who foment civil war in
> their own country. it is they who spend money they don't have on
> weapons they don't need.
Why do you think Hamas is ruling Palestine?
Remember what the Israeli did to Arafat and the Palestinian governemt?
Ye Old One
<jtu...@localnet.com> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>Ye Old One wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:38:28 -0500, Jeffrey Turner
>> <jtu...@localnet.com> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Vend wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>Of course, try to demonstrate against Hamas in Gaza and see what
>>>>happens to you.
>>>
>>>Considering the treatment Hamas is getting from the West,
>>
>>
>> That is their own fault, nobody else's.
>>
>>
>>>and the
>>>poverty that's been called down on their heads,
>>
>>
>> Again, they can end that very easily.
>>
>>
>>>I really can't blame
>>>them for being a bit defensive.
>>
>>
>> They are not defensive. They are the ones killing innocent people.
>
>Then how come Palestinian children are getting killed at four
>times the rate of Israeli children?
Easy one to answer. Israeli children do not have terrorists hiding
behind them.
> You're marvelous at
>parooting right-wing Israeli propaganda.
I'm marvelous at facing up to reality - you should try it. There is
only one group of people responsible for the Palestinian problem - the
Palestinian terrorists.
>
>--Jeff
--
Bob.
Vend
Ye Old One wrote:
> I'm marvelous at facing up to reality - you should try it. There is
> only one group of people responsible for the Palestinian problem - the
> Palestinian terrorists.
There is a confilct for land between Arabs (Palestinians, in
particular) and Israeli. No single party can be considered to be
uniquely responsable for that.
You should note that the terrorists are the only armed force of
Palestinians. They are ruthless and harm their own people, but they are
in some sense needed to resist the Israeli. I'm not trying to justify
anyone. It's war and war is always amoral.
Chemical Pete
news:45b46cd9$0$8747$ed26...@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
Catholic doctors have problems with these and contraception. How do they
cope?
Pete
>
>
Stuart
On Jan 21, 10:52 pm, "Vend" <ven...@virgilio.it> wrote:
> wf3h wrote:
> > palestinian children are being murdered by their own leaders. it is
> > they who refuse peace with israel. it is they who foment civil war in
> > their own country. it is they who spend money they don't have on
> > weapons they don't need.Why do you think Hamas is ruling Palestine?
> Remember what the Israeli did to Arafat and the Palestinian governemt?
Um no. Any number of opinion polls in the territories show that Hamas
was voted
in because Fatah was considered to be corrupt.
By hastening Arafat;s demise, Israel did them a favor. The looting of
Palestine has stopped for now.
Stuart