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| Olde Tyme Religion |
| Science and Islam in conflict |
| 2007-06-26 |
| Posted by:Gary and the Samoyeds |
| #15 I gave up on SciAm soon after Martin Gardner left. Discovery is too fuzzy. The New Scientist was ruined when the Daedalus column left. Now, let's give credit where it's due: we got algebra and algorithms from the Arabs. But, what have they done with them since? |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2007-06-26 22:55 |
| #14 ahhh but what is the velocity and frequency of Djinns?? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-06-26 22:15 |
| #13 Anyone seriously interested in Islam and Science needs to reference the Pakistani Physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy... Although genuine scientific achievement is rare in the contemporary Muslim world, pseudo-science is in generous supply. A former chairman of my physics department in Islamabad has calculated the speed of heaven. He maintains it is receding from Earth at one centimetre per second less than the speed of light. His ingenious method relies upon a verse in the Islamic holy book, which says that worship on the night on which the book was revealed is worth a thousand nights of ordinary worship. He states that this amounts to a time-dilation factor of 1,000, which he puts into a formula of Einstein's theory of special relativity. A more public example: One of the two Pakistani nuclear engineers who was recently arrested on suspicion of passing nuclear secrets to the Taleban had earlier proposed to solve Pakistan's energy problems by harnessing the power of genies. He relied on the Islamic belief that God created man from clay, and angels and genies from fire; so this high-placed engineer proposed to capture the genies and extract their energy. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-06-26 21:18 |
| #12 That's the one, tw. Some of the broadest and most concise science writing available on a weekly basis. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-06-26 20:00 |
| #11 I haven't read SciAm in years. I like my science without politics. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2007-06-26 16:15 |
| #10 I'll take that on faith, Zenster dear. Lots of changes in twenty-five years, it seems. Daddy used to get a weekly that may have been the Science News, but I don't recall being excited by it. Probably because it didn't have glossy pages and gorgeous, coloured pictures. ;-) But if this is the one you mean, it's rather amusing. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-06-26 15:29 |
| #9 The readership of Discover is the scientifically literate layman who wants a broad overview of the field, but less stuffed with ads on every page There, fixed that for ya, tw. I grew up with Sci-Am and it is now but a pale shadow of its former glory. It's pretty easy to tell as Questar no longer advertises in their pages. One of the best runs for your money is Science News. This weekly rag beats most other popular scientific journals to the scoop by two or three weeks. The $50 per year is a pittance and the writing is easy to read and technically correct. gg, as tw notes, read the whole article. The writer lets his subjects slip on the noose all by themselves. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-06-26 14:14 |
| #8 The Prophet Muhammad said to seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. The very first verse came down: ‘Read |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-06-26 14:04 |
| #7 An MSM varmint fawning on Islamic vermin. Nope. The readership of Discover is the scientifically literate layman who wants a broad overview of the field, but less challenging than Scientific American. The readers will laugh to scorn every one of Zenster's examples, and then FOTSGreg's. I grew up with Sci.Am., but we've had a subscription to Discover for the last two years... and Mr. Wife is by training a chemical engineer and medical researcher, now heavily involved in new developments in chemical production. The journalist very cleverly let Dr. El-Naggar's own words damn him, his fellow Muslims, and the entire religion as it's practiced these days. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-06-26 13:01 |
| #6 El-Naggar has no doubts. “We are not behind because of Islam,” he says. “We are behind because of what the Americans and the British have done to us.” ROTFLMAO!!! That's why you educate your kids over here where they can get legitimate PhDs and a decent education instead of in your own doctrinally-infested hellholes and so-called "universities", right? I see that great big wonderful Islamic space station, the space shuttle, and those Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, and other planetary probes, that wonderful little gem of a medical miracle called vaccination, heart transplants, MRI's, refrigeration, the internal combustion engine, heck, even that dog n' pony show called the Airbus - yeah, all those were Islamic inventions and ideas. How's that science thing goin' for ya'll these days? |
| Posted by: FOTSGreg 2007-06-26 10:51 |
| #5 Islam will never get anywhere in the world as long as it embraces the 7th century barbarianism that it so loves. Take away their oil wealth, and the ME will fall like a deck of cards in a gale. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-06-26 10:07 |
| #4 An MSM varmint fawning on Islamic vermin. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-06-26 06:20 |
| #3 Hmmm...according to my Koran copy, Alexander the Great reached the spot where the Sun sets, and it was a swamp (Sura 18:83-98). The Koran is the central dogma of Islam, with which no Muslim may contradict. Muslims MUST believe that the end of the universe is on this earth. The fact that they have to at least assert belief in untenable dogma, reveals that coercion is central to the Muslim cult. No conflict between Islam and Science? The fact that Muslims cannot accept reasoned conclusions that run counter to revelations - as recorded by Mohammed without witnesses - manifests total war against reason. One Roman Catholic Pope (Pius 9) challenged reason (Syllabus of Errors), and was humiliated into silence by church members. Generally, Muslims are conditioned into holding opinions contra to the entire corpus of the post-Renaissance era. Islam is the plague of the second millenia. |
| Posted by: McZoid 2007-06-26 05:43 |
| #2 The usual goldmine of Islamic crapulence. “There is no conflict between Islam and science,” Absolutely not! Any scientist with conflicting views gets beheaded. Science is inquisition. Nobody was expecting that! What people call the scientific method, he explains, is really the Islamic method: “All the wealth of knowledge in the world has actually emanated from Muslim civilization. Sho'nuff, that's why they invented the light bulb, automobile, transistor and Chatty Cathy doll. In residential neighborhoods, beautiful old buildings crumble, and the people who live in them pile debris onto rooftops because there is no public service to take it away. In strict accordance with Islamic science and engineering, they also never hesitate to add extra stories onto buildings whose original design specs cannot possibly bear them. El-Naggar has no doubts. “We are not behind because of Islam,” he says. “We are behind because of what the Americans and the British have done to us.” Strange, for some odd reason he left out the Jews. “As a scientist, I see the danger coming from the West, not the East.” That’s because if ya’ll piss in our ear one more time and try to tell us it’s raining, you’re gonna hurt real bad. Critics are quick to point out that Islamic scientists tend to use each other as sources, creating an illusion that the work has been validated by research. Just like with the doctrine of their Researchers who don’t agree with Islamic thinking “avoid questions or research agendas” that could put them in opposition to authorities—thus steering clear of intellectual debate. In other words, if you are a scientist who is not an Islamic extremist, you simply direct your work toward what is useful. Scientists who contradict the Koran “would have to keep a low profile.” When pressed for examples, Soltan does not elaborate. For fear of compromising his "low profile". Sheesh, talk about an atmosphere conducive to free thought and inquiry. In Soltan’s view, the twin forces of Islamization and government policy have inadvertently worked together to blunt scientific curiosity. “We are in a period of transition,” he says. “I think we are going to be in transition for a long time.” There's nothing "inadvertant" about it. Islam's attempt to re-enter the 7th century requires exceeding the speed of light and that transition is always a lengthy one. “Nobody can just write what he thinks without proof. But we have real proof that the story of Adam as the first man is true.” “What proof?” He looks at me with disbelief: “It’s written in the Koran.” Allah said it, I believe it, that settles it. Chaabouni recalls the early days of her career, in the mid-1970s, when she saw children afflicted with disfiguring diseases. “It was very sad,” she says. “I met families with two, three, four affected siblings. Might have something to do with poking your cousins. For all that, Chaabouni still sees how her advice sometimes clashes with her patients’ beliefs. Like many Arab and Muslim countries, Tunisia has a high incidence of congenital diseases, including adrenal and blood disorders, that Chaabouni has traced to consanguinity. No kidding! In fact, since most of the water from the Jordan River’s tributaries has been diverted and no longer flows to the Dead Sea, even the Dead Sea is dying. There are plans for resuscitating it, but they will require a delicate process of regional cooperation, including the Israelis and the Palestinians, and most likely Western aid. I'll bet nobody saw that one coming. “Science needs stability, democracy, freedom of expression,” says Senator Adnan Badran, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Michigan State University, as we drink Turkish coffee at his office. “You must have an environment that’s conducive to free thinking, to inquiry. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to release the mind’s potential. It’s a very bleak story, a very disappointing story, about the state of science and technology in the Arab region.” “I wanted to destroy every vested interest, to get rid of cronyism, to build accountability and transparency by freeing the press,” Badran says. The circumstances of Badran’s term were difficult, however. “He was an excellent academic and scientist,” a journalist tells me, “but an ineffective politician.” Given Badran’s aims, that’s no surprise. Something tells me he wasn't much of a soft touch and that's a real career killer in the MME (Muslim Middle East). |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-06-26 01:56 |
| #1 What people call the scientific method, he explains, is really the Islamic method: “All the wealth of knowledge in the world has actually emanated from Muslim civilization. Name one thing. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-06-26 01:08 |