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2007-08-10 Science & Technology
Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement
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Posted by tipper 2007-08-10 04:02|| || Front Page|| [4 views ]  Top

#1 Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
Posted by gromgoru 2007-08-10 08:31||   2007-08-10 08:31|| Front Page Top

#2 In the current epoch of growing antagonism between the Islamic and the Western worlds, most Muslims reject such charges with angry indignation.

Most Muslims reject everything but the Koran and goats with angry indignation.
Posted by The Doctor 2007-08-10 09:01||   2007-08-10 09:01|| Front Page Top

#3 Did they ever get that satellite they were working on up so they could figure out where Mecca was, or where the moon was, or whatever goofy shit they were trying to figure out that all us dumbass infidels figured out a long time ago?
Posted by tu3031 2007-08-10 09:09||   2007-08-10 09:09|| Front Page Top

#4 The muzz - making luddites look like sci-fi aficionados since the 7th century...
Posted by M. Murcek">M. Murcek  2007-08-10 09:58||   2007-08-10 09:58|| Front Page Top

#5 As someone suggested recently, it's not the religion, it's the culture. More precisely, I guess, is the culture that insists on defining the world in 7th Century terms. (Except for the Internet and EFP's and AK-47's, etc.)

So if we are fighting a cult (from the word culture, no doubt?) that allows for the possibility that not all members of the religion belong to the cult.

But as the cult gains power, more and more will be attracted to it. So if we just run away from the cult, let them declare victory in Iraq, then everything will be all rosy? Let's ask San Fran Nan!
Posted by Bobby 2007-08-10 10:18||   2007-08-10 10:18|| Front Page Top

#6 Science and fundamental islam are words that don't go together. What, did they re-invent fire or the wheel?
Posted by JohnQC 2007-08-10 10:41||   2007-08-10 10:41|| Front Page Top

#7 "The struggle to usher in science will have to go side-by-side with a much wider campaign to elbow out rigid orthodoxy and bring in modern thought, arts, philosophy, democracy, and pluralism."
Oops. Fatwa time.

"Some scholars calculated the temperature of Hell, others the chemical composition of heavenly djinnis."
Which were? Inquiring minds want to know...
Posted by James">James  2007-08-10 10:53|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]  2007-08-10 10:53|| Front Page Top

#8 As someone suggested recently, it's not the religion, it's the culture.

Though in fairness the religion is also offensive, garbled nonsense.
Posted by Excalibur 2007-08-10 11:20||   2007-08-10 11:20|| Front Page Top

#9 The author of the article is a muslim teaching at a Pakistani University.

He probably would be executed if he admitted that in the golden age of Science in the Islamic world almost all the scientists were infidels or apostates. He might be executed anyway since he is anti veil.
Posted by mhw">mhw  2007-08-10 11:44|| http://hypocrisy-incorporated.blogspot.com/]">[http://hypocrisy-incorporated.blogspot.com/]  2007-08-10 11:44|| Front Page Top

#10 As someone suggested recently, it's not the religion, it's the culture.

Indeed, there is a case to be made about how Islam—as a repressive, retrograde, narrow and manipulative credo—is the distinct byproduct of traditionally high context Middle Eastern culture. However, it is much like language and consciousness. While consciousness certainly drove the development of high order verbal communication, today it is language that more often shapes consciousness.

So it is with Muslims but without any of the beneficial aspects that language's complex thought structures confer upon its users. Islam has overtaken—what was once relatively enlightened—Middle Eastern culture to dominate the intellectual and spiritual footrace. Like fruit of the poisoned tree, the region's fixation upon strong-man style leadership has borne them the ultimate in rigid tyrannous rule. The utter inimicality of Islam and science is merely one of many smaller fissures that radiate from the yawning chasm separating Muslims and reality.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-08-10 11:59||   2007-08-10 11:59|| Front Page Top

#11 "seek knowledge even if it is in China,"
where do you think THE MOST powerful and advanced civilization existed and had existed for thousands of years prior to Allens appearence.
Posted by Chiter Dark Lord of the Geats7878 2007-08-10 12:39||   2007-08-10 12:39|| Front Page Top

#12 Indeed.

You only have to think about how "Insh'allah," or some spelling variant upon the phrase, is ingrained into their speech. "Allah willing this," "Allah willing that." The only room there for free will is occupied by the imams and mullahs who tell everybody else what to think and, more importantly, do.
Posted by The Doctor 2007-08-10 12:42||   2007-08-10 12:42|| Front Page Top

#13 First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let us look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you.", and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze."
Posted by OldSpook 2007-08-10 14:52||   2007-08-10 14:52|| Front Page Top

#14 (thats a repost of course)
Posted by OldSpook 2007-08-10 14:53||   2007-08-10 14:53|| Front Page Top

#15 OS, there are a few other possibilities:
1) Hell is expanding at exactly the rate that souls are entering Hell; thus the temperature and pressure of Hell remain constant
2) Souls have zero volume, so an infinite number could be added without changing the volume of Hell
Posted by Rambler">Rambler  2007-08-10 14:58||   2007-08-10 14:58|| Front Page Top

#16 As an atheist I do not believe hell exists.

Therefore Hell = NULL;

x {operator} NULL = NULL

therefore the temperature of hell is NULL.
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2007-08-10 15:28||   2007-08-10 15:28|| Front Page Top

#17 HELL=Global Warming.
Posted by JohnQC 2007-08-10 15:44||   2007-08-10 15:44|| Front Page Top

#18 HELL = Being a Muslim. All that remains is for us to make it entirely so.
Posted by Eohippus Whalet8571 2007-08-10 16:11||   2007-08-10 16:11|| Front Page Top

#19 Doh! Dratted Cookie Monster. Post #18 is mine.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-08-10 16:42||   2007-08-10 16:42|| Front Page Top

#20 The campus has three mosques with a fourth one planned, but no bookstore. No Pakistani university, including QAU, allowed Abdus Salam to set foot on its campus, although he had received the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his role in formulating the standard model of particle physics. The Ahmedi sect to which he belonged, and which had earlier been considered to be Muslim, was officially declared heretical in 1974 by the Pakistani government.

After the great scientist was buried in Chenab Nagar, his tombstone said “Abdus Salam the First Muslim Nobel Laureate”. Needless to say, the police arrived with a magistrate and rubbed off the ‘Muslim’ part of the katba. Now the tombstone says: Abdus Salam the First Nobel Laureate.

It was a most embarrassing moment for General Zia who had “supplemented” the Second Amendment to the constitution with further comic disabilities against the Ahmedis. He had to welcome the great scientist and had to be seen with him on TV. Since the clerical part of his government was already bristling, he took care to clip those sections of Dr Salam’s speech where he had said the kalima or otherwise used an Islamic expression. It was Dr Salam’s good luck that one of the believers did not go to court under Zia’s own laws to get the country’s only Nobel laureate sent to prison for six months of rigorous imprisonment.

While visiting India he was treated as a hero. Indira Gandhi was so in awe of him that she refused to sit at the same level as Dr Salam, instead sitting beside him on the floor.
Posted by john frum 2007-08-10 18:13||   2007-08-10 18:13|| Front Page Top

#21  Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

WOOF! LOL! WOOF!
Posted by Thomas Woof 2007-08-10 18:40||   2007-08-10 18:40|| Front Page Top

#22 No Pakistani university, including QAU, allowed Abdus Salam to set foot on its campus, although he had received the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his role in formulating the standard model of particle physics. The Ahmedi sect to which he belonged, and which had earlier been considered to be Muslim, was officially declared heretical in 1974 by the Pakistani government.

The Ahmedi or Ahmadiyya sect is one of the few benevolent sects of Islam and for that they are declared total apostates. That Abdus Salam's name is cheerfully expunged—despite his having earned the first Muslim Nobel prize—is indicative of just how self-defeating Islam really is.

Leaving his effaced tombstone to read "Abdus Salam the First—Nobel Laureate" in total contradiction of how Wilhelm C. Röntgen was the true recipient of the first Nobel Physics Prize is emblematic of just how self-delusional Islam remains to this very day.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-08-10 19:56||   2007-08-10 19:56|| Front Page Top

#23 They were still bigoted enough that the Ahmadiyya Jamaat was at the forefront for the creation of Pakistan. They could not tolerate a state where they would be equal. Instead they claimed that Muslims constituted a distinctive, ideological nation - Pakistan "the land of the pure", where they would rule.
Well.... they got their state, but they were not pure enough....
Posted by john frum 2007-08-10 20:32||   2007-08-10 20:32|| Front Page Top

#24 STUNNING. Thank you, john frum. If this one—supposedly benevolent sect—is of equal malevolence then they need to go the way of the Islamic dodo. I cannot be grateful enough for your having imported so many vital insights, john frum, (or you too, Fred). Thank you so much.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-08-10 22:54||   2007-08-10 22:54|| Front Page Top

23:59 Super Hose
23:39 Secret Master
23:38 Zenster
23:27 Secret Master
22:56 bigjim-ky
22:54 Zenster
22:32 James
21:44 Nimble Spemble
21:44 BA
21:33 Zenster
21:32 BA
21:31 Danking70
21:29 Danking70
21:22 Nimble Spemble
21:21 BA
21:12 twobyfour
21:11 Zenster
21:05 Old Patriot
20:49 OyVey1
20:44 Zenster
20:42 OyVey1
20:37 Lone Ranger
20:36 Redneck Jim
20:32 john frum









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