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Nonsense, there were Muslim astronomers experimenting with heliocentric models back in the 13th century

Not according to wikipedia :

Nicolaus Copernicus (German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; Italian: Nicolò Copernico; Polish: Mikoaj Kopernik; in his youth, Niclas Koppernigk;[1] 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe.[2]

Unless "comprehensive" is the way to make this statement a technical lie, you're plain wrong.

BTW: my point is not that Christians were the sole caretakers of science, it's that they're the only caretakers that managed not to burn all their scientific knowledge and they also didn't get destroyed (btw : although not a certainty, it is extremely likely that all of the societies that did get destroyed burned their scientific knowledge first. A prime example of this would be the mayans : they possessed relatively advanced astronomic knowledge in their early period that was no longer present in their last period).

Another sidepoint is that muslims, and by that I mean all variants of muslim civilization, except the last one (let's called it "post-colonization islam" to illustrate that it's the one that uses the western (canonical) institutions that were created during colonization) destroyed all their scientific knowledge (and they're still at it). They did not just destroy it, they did so for this reason.

And here is a list of famous scientists of the middle ages, to illustrate how knowledge was really kept.

And while this is less true today due to the massive resources oil use has made available to the human race, making scientific research basically have insignificant budgets, these Catholic orders that did guard science during the dark ages invested huge amounts of their budgets into scientific research, copying books, and all sorts of necessary things ... I wouldn't be surprised if they invested 80% or more of their resources, that could have gone to luxury living, into science.

Today even the tiny science budgets we do allocate (sadly far less than 1% of govt. budgets) pay for a huge amount of research, thanks to oil allowing us to work and live at the scale that we do. But it's pretty obvious what would happen if we lost our abundant energy reserves, and no serious attention is put into it. Except of course, by the aforementioned orders who maintain huge paper libraries, and actually have a plan if funding dries up. Perhaps an illustration for how far this can go, how well it can work, see here.

i read somwhere that that the monastery owner of the oldest surviving coyp of the bible ( http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/ ) is asking for a fee...

I was just talking to a friend about the Codex Sinaiticus which was recently scanned and put online here.

Wikimedia Commons does not have high-res scans of it, but the Codex Sinaiticus website has some really high-res images. Unfortunately they're only accessible though a Flash interface, but I'm sure that with a little scripting one could easily suck-out the raw image data. Reproduction of those images on other websites, however, may be illegal according to the Codex Sinaiticus website:

Copyright

This electronic version of Codex Sinaiticus is provided only for non-commercial personal and educational use, by the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monaster at Sinai and the National Library of Russia.

The original item itself is in the public domain in most jurisdictions and therefore not protected by copyright under applicable laws. However rights in the electronic copy and certain associated metadata are owned by the holding institutions. If you wish to make use of this electronic copy or its metadata other than for non-commercial personal or educational use, you must first obtain the written permission of the relevant institution.

Those rules may make sense according to UK copyright law, but as others have pointed out in this thread, mere reproductions of 2D images are not inherently eligible for copyright protection as they are not novel. My friend warned me about trying to copy this data from the Codex site as it might open me up for legal liability in the UK, especially if I ever were to travel there again.

But now I don't have to bother: Someone else is already testing the waters! I eagerly await the results of this case.

I was just talking to a friend about the Codex Sinaiticus which was recently scanned and put online here.

Wikimedia Commons does not have high-res scans of it, but the Codex Sinaiticus website has some really high-res images. Unfortunately they're only accessible though a Flash interface, but I'm sure that with a little scripting one could easily suck-out the raw image data. Reproduction of those images on other websites, however, may be illegal according to the Codex Sinaiticus website:

Copyright

This electronic version of Codex Sinaiticus is provided only for non-commercial personal and educational use, by the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monaster at Sinai and the National Library of Russia.

The original item itself is in the public domain in most jurisdictions and therefore not protected by copyright under applicable laws. However rights in the electronic copy and certain associated metadata are owned by the holding institutions. If you wish to make use of this electronic copy or its metadata other than for non-commercial personal or educational use, you must first obtain the written permission of the relevant institution.

Those rules may make sense according to UK copyright law, but as others have pointed out in this thread, mere reproductions of 2D images are not inherently eligible for copyright protection as they are not novel. My friend warned me about trying to copy this data from the Codex site as it might open me up for legal liability in the UK, especially if I ever were to travel there again.

But now I don't have to bother: Someone else is already testing the waters! I eagerly await the results of this case.

Interesting, you must be reading a different Codex Sinaiticus to me. From the beginning of the book of Acts, on the direct English translation window of their website:

"The former discourse I made, O Theophilus, concerning all things that Jesus began both to do and to teach, till the day in which he was taken up, after he had, through the Holy Spirit, given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen: to whom he also showed himself alive, after he had suffered, by many infallible proofs, appearing to them for forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

Whether you believe in the resurrection is up to you, but this manuscript makes it clear that the early Church did, at least by about 400 AD.

Are you reading the same manuscript I am?

Resurrection is right here:
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=33&chapter=28&lid=en&side=r&zoomSlider=0

I'll bet the other synoptic gospels have similar accounts ;-)

If you have time, it's worth looking at the Codex Sinaiticus site to read what digitizing a collection like this is like. The Sinaiticus is nearly a 600 years newer than the dead sea scrolls, and printed on a more durable material. This isn't your simple kodak easy-share digitizing.

It's interesting to compare this discussion with the "How to store digital pictures for 25 years" question on Ask slashdot.

-ellie

(I'll take my historical document carved into a bronze tablet.)

Just look at the prototype. Unreadable. It's like it's in some other language or something!