Science In Islamic Countries

biohack sends us to Physics Today for a thought-provoking article on the status of and prospects for science in Islamic countries. The author, a Pakistani physicist, posits that 'Internal causes led to the decline of Islam's scientific greatness long before the era of mercantile imperialism. To contribute once again, Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong.' The author makes a few strong conclusions, many of which are relevant to the general debate between science and religion. From the article: "Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or 'butterfly-collecting' activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked."

Comments

interesting

[rucs_hack]

Wow, for the first time ever, an article linked off a slashdot story that I find completely fascinating. As a scientist myself I find it utterly tragic that the past greatness of Islamic scholars is apparently largely forgotten outside of the work of science historians.

One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.

Re:interesting

[CodeBuster]

One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.

It will not happen as long as the clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars are in charge. The average level of non-religious education in these countries is now so poor that many muslims call anyone who can read and write Arabic, with knowledge of the Koran and the Hadith, a great scholar even though the poor chap probably never completed the equivalent of Western grade school in other areas of non-religious study such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, but part of the problem in the Islamic world is that the people equate religious knowledge with all the truth that is worth knowing and are suspicious or even hostile to secular ideas in general and scientific ideas, especially those which bring into question dogmatic "truths" from religion, in particular. This becomes dangerous when an "educated man" (i.e. the mullah) tells the people that they should kill all of non-believers, for example, because the people base the "truth" of the mullah's statements or interpretation of the religious texts based upon his perceived authority and scholarship, the appeal to authority (i.e. if the mullah, an educated man, says that it is so then it must be true...end of discussion), instead of the logic of what the mullah is actually saying.

There is a lesson here for the fundamentalists here in the United States. Hopefully we will be wise enough to learn it, but unfortunately it seems that we, as a society, are taking the same long road to stagnation in science that others have in the past.

Re:interesting

[lixee]

One can only hope that this current poverty of science in the islamic world is reversed.

Until a few decades back, most of the Islamic world was still colonized. And ever since, they've all been spending all their money militarizing. Poverty of science in this case stems from poverty (with a couple of exceptions).

Re:interesting

[DragonWriter]

It will not happen as long as the clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars are in charge.

In most of the "Islamic" world, the "clerics, mullahs, and religious scholars" (the second being strictly redundant with the first; a mullah is a kind of cleric) aren't in charge now.

Iran, of course, is a theocracy, and Saudi Arabia exhibits a religion-state entanglement that might be described as a brand of caesaropapism, but most of the regimes throughout the Islamic world are secular, though often quite authoritarian, regimes. It is, I would think, the authoritarianism of the regimes in question that is the biggest factor in suppressing inquiry than the regimes' religious character.

The relation between the external political/economic context and the religious character of society (and I do think the kind of fundamentalist religious orientation that is common throughout Islamic world does inhibit science) is complex, but my personal belief is that the external forces which promote durable authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world also are involved in maintaining the kind of religious fundamentalism seen there.

Re:interesting

[Xonstantine]

course, is a theocracy, and Saudi Arabia exhibits a religion-state entanglement that might be described as a brand of caesaropapism, but most of the regimes throughout the Islamic world are secular, though often quite authoritarian, regimes. It is, I would think, the authoritarianism of the regimes in question that is the biggest factor in suppressing inquiry than the regimes' religious character. You might think so, but you'd probably be wrong. Authoritarian regimes aren't necessarily anti-science or scientific inquiry. The Germans under Hitler, for example, were quite good at pushing the technological envelope in some areas. But then again, the Germans themselves were fairly innovative before and after Hitler. You can overlay a despot on a culture and the culture remains. The bottom line is that Islamic society, in so far as it's Islamic, is simply anti-science. The few areas you've had successes in science in Islamic countries has largely arisen in spite of, not because of, Islam. Even in Egypt, which is nominally secular, professors routinely have to flee the country in fear of their life because they say something that supposedly profanes the Prophet, Allah, or some other token feature of Islam. I suspect that Islamic societies will remain backwards until the day comes when an Islamic artist can carry out the Islamic equivilent of putting the cross in a jar of piss and not worry about getting killed in reprisal.

I'm an entomologist...

[pseudorand]

> In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or 'butterfly-collecting' activity. ...you insensitive clod.

Re:I'm an entomologist...

[Tibor the Hun]

Your dates are imperfect indeed, but simply because you're using an inferior number system. Had you written the dates in their original, true, and proper form, i.e. XVII and XVIII century they would be correct. Your post truly needs to be modded down to .

Now then, on to the discussion: Really, what has arab world contributed to the science world?

Re:I'm an entomologist...

[TemporalBeing]

I believe he is referring to the 17th and 18th century European pre Darwinian 'scientific' approach (there were of course no scientists then, the name didn't exist), which was to catalog and classify, but not to investigate how or why things were the way they were.

You mean the scientific method pioneered by 5th Century B.C. Ancient Greece, and others?

The same on used and improved by Galileo, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, or even Da Vinci?

(Yes, some of them lived into the 1600's, and those that did were about 40 yrs old in 1600 at that - all were born before the 1600's, if not earlier.)

Re:I'm an entomologist...

[metlin]

Actually, that numeric system was not invented by the Arabs.

They originally evolved in India as the Hindu-Arabic Numeral system and were borrowed and spread by the Arabs.

They are derived from the decimal Indian numeral system.

I was told this in College:

[beckerist]

While Charlemagne, an illiterate barbarian was converting the masses to Christianity (and brutally, I might add,) Middle Eastern doctors were actually successfully performing neurosurgery. Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents...at least I learned something for the student loans I still owe!

Re:I was told this in College:

[Das Modell]

Posted by me earlier:

Much of that "past greatness" is just historical revisionism. Islam's "Golden Age" was just a fading echo of the cultures Muslims had conquered, and the scientific achievements were mostly done by non-Muslims, heretics and unorthodox Muslims. The Golden Age existed in spite of Islam, not because of it.

That same historical revisionism also means that anything good in Europe's history is downplayed or ignored (while Islamic culture is glorified to no end).

Re:I was told this in College:

[Trifthen]

Who modded this insightful?

The whole God Damn point of the article and the scientist's questioning, is that Islam once contributed to a golden age of human progress, and now actively campaigns against such endeavors. The scientist wonders—as well he should—why this is the case. It's even in the first stanza, for Christ's sake. From TFA:

Internal causes led to the decline of Islam's scientific greatness long before the era of mercantile imperialism. To contribute once again, Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong.

Directly to the grandparent's point, it only proves just how far Islam has fallen from greatness, and how ahead everyone could have been, save for the whim of religious interpretation. From neurosurgery way back in the 13th century to outright intellectual intolerance and xenophobia currently? That's pretty damning, especially if you're an Islamic scientist trying to reverse the trend. In order to understand how to affect a renaissance, one must learn the history of the opposition, and in this case, seven hundred years of strict interpretation of Islam is significant, even now.

God Damn lazy mods.

Re:I was told this in College:

[Gruuk]

In the same wikipedia article about Charlemagne, there is this gem in the Education reforms section:

"His reign and the era it ushered in are often referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance because of the flowering of scholarship, literature, art, and architecture which characterise it"

True, while he was hardly what anyone in this day and age would call "nice" ("brutal" would probably be more accurate), he seems to have done a lot with regards to knowledge, culture and art while he reigned. Not bad for an illiterate barbarian.

Ooops, did I say illiterate? (from the same article):

"Charlemagne took a serious interest in his and others' scholarship and had learned to read in his adulthood, although he never quite learned how to write, he used to keep a slate and stylus underneath his pillow, according to Einhard. His handwriting was bad, from which grew the legend that he could not write. Even learning to read was quite an achievement for kings at this time, most of whom were illiterate."

freedom of speech

[Lord Ender]

Freedom of speech and science are directly related. Both islamic and stalinist countries violently suppress free speech, consequently having almost no scientific breakthrough.

The best scientific advancements come when someone declares "everything we know about this is wrong" and formulates, tests, and publishes some bold new idea. The tendency to question established "knowledge"--which is often backed by the church or the government--is never encouraged in non-free states.

If you want a great example of this in western history, look at Galileo.

Re:freedom of speech

[gowen]

Really? Stalin's Soviet Union launched the first satellite, and put the first man in space. Under Stalin's rule, Cerenkov and Tamm won the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics, as did Landau in 1962 for work carried out under Stalin, and Basov and Prokhorov in 1964.

Stalin was an evil murdering bastard, but to suggest that Soviet physical scientists were prevented from doing good work under his reign is just claptrap. Even under Stalin, scientific free thought was encouraged, it was economic and political free thought that was curtailed. You'll notice they didn't win many Nobel prizes for Economics over that time, and their most notable literary laureate (Pasternak) turned it down out of fear of his government.

Communists have dogma that infringes artistic and economic thought, but it requires a fundamentalist theist to have dogma that infringes scientific thought.

Re:freedom of speech

[cartman]

independent discovery of the atom bomb, first orbital probe, first pictures of the far side of the moon, etc.

Although the Soviet Union had many important scientific discoveries, the independent discovery of the atom bomb wasn't among them. The soviets made their first atom bomb by stealing US designs through espionage. The earliest soviet bombs closely resembled early US bombs.

Re:freedom of speech

[alan_dershowitz]

Even under Stalin, scientific free thought was encouraged[...]

This is TOTALLY FALSE. First of all, you need to look up Lysenkoism.

but to suggest that Soviet physical scientists were prevented from doing good work under his reign is just claptrap.

Scientists were hated by politicians and because of their advanced knowledge were by default suspected of being a dangerous spy risk. It was almost impossible to do most tasks because work was broken up for security reasons so that no one could know fully what they were working on. Scientists working on secret projects were kept in distant Siberian outposts and treated nearly identically to political and criminal exiles. Scientists were routinely prevented from travelling overseas to important scientific conferences and as a matter of course were obligated to deny all politically inconvenient scientific discoveries made by state enemies.

That any science was accomplished at all during the majority of the Soviet era is a testament to the amazing people actually doing it, the Soviet system was actively against them.

Re:freedom of speech

[Highrollr]

Under Stalin's rule, Cerenkov and Tamm won the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics, as did Landau in 1962 for work carried out under Stalin, and Basov and Prokhorov in 1964.

Was it for time travel?

Economics

[El Lobo]

You don't need to be Einstein to understand that scientific advances are proportional to the economical status of the land. And I'm not talking about the economical status of the elite of the country but about the MEDIUM economical status of the population. Good economics is almost always equal to good education, good universities, quality investigations, cooperation projects, etc. I don't see any direct connection between ideology or religion and science.Many good scientific have been religious in some form ot believe in god: Newton, Einstein, Bohr, etc.

Re:Economics

[nuzak]

> Many good scientific have been religious in some form ot believe in god: Newton, Einstein, Bohr, etc.

Newton also believed in alchemy. Newton was a freaky little nut.

Einstein was a pantheist, and specifically rejected the idea of an anthropomorphic god that intervenes directly in the universe.

No idea about Bohr.

Re:Economics

[Beetle B.]

Yes, but if you actually read the article, the author dispels the "lack of resources" argument. To address your specific point, the average person in the oil rich countries is well enough off to afford a good education. Yet those countries' output pales in comparison to much poorer places around the world.

Frankly, I think the author is tackling too much at once. Life in Malaysia is very different from that in Pakistan, which is very different from that in Iran, which is very different from that in Saudi Arabia, which is very different from that in Turkey. It'll be hard to find unifying reasons that apply well to all those countries. Each country has different reasons for their lack of scientific output.

Re:The Arab World...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and usually put on trial for heresy by their compatriots.

Re:The Arab World...

[rucs_hack]

Islam had it fair share of brilliant scholars, the problem was it had its fair share of fundamentalist religious types, and they won.

Did you know that there is a good deal of evidence that the western renaissance was started using Islamic knowledge taken from libraries in spain?

simplified yes, but basically true.

Applies to more than Islam.

[ErikTheRed]

"If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or 'butterfly-collecting' activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked."

For a minute there I though he was talking about Global Warming.

Re:The Arab World...

[Beetle B.]

...was once the height of scientific enlightenment. Then along came Islam, and since then very little has progressed (without outside influence). Quite the contrary. The Muslim Scientific Enlightenment began and declined after Islam came about. (I avoided saying Arab as many of the well known scientists, while living in the Middle East, were not Arab).

Nice try, though.

Re:The USA

[Anonymous Coward]

...was once the height of scientific enlightenment. Then along came fundamentalist Christianism, extreme patriotism, and since then very little has progressed (without outside influence).

One can only imagine what civilization would be like today if religion (of all stripes, mind you) hadn't stifled scientific progress since man first walked upright.

I see differences

[SIIHP]

"It's the exact same thing that's going on in America. The Jesus freaks utterly reject anything that might come into conflict with their preconception of GOD MADE THE EARTH IN SEVEN DAYS AND IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE YOU'RE GOING TO BURN IN HELL FOREVER."

While the muslims do the same but actually set you on fire. In the street. Right now.

So no, it's not the exact same thing that's going on in America. Others will chime in with their opinions of why it is, but they'll have a hard time finding comparable behavior amongst religiosos in the US.

the question is lost the moment it is posed

[circletimessquare]

the problem is the question itself because the question involves islam. if the question had involved christianity or judaism or buddhism the problem would be the same. the problem being, to think that science and religion have anything to do with each other at all, in a negative or positive way. they are simply oil and water, science and religion. they don't mix. at all

this in fact is not a call to abandon religion to embrace science, nor is it an assertion that there is a conflict between religion and science. they merely have nothing to do with each other. there can be no conflict between two systems that don't speak the same language or investigate the same phenomena. one has to do with fact based inquiries, the other has to do with transcendental thought. the aspect of scientific knowledge simply cannot involve, touch, comment on or otherwise involve the aspect of religious knowledge. and visa versa

once you realize this, all of the "problems" involving science and religion disappear. problems only appear when, mistakenly, someone tries to comment on science from the point of view of religion, or someone tries to comment on religion from the point of view of science. this represents instant failure of an ability to understand the subject matter you are concerning yourself with

Re:the question is lost the moment it is posed

[nasor]

"this in fact is not a call to abandon religion to embrace science, nor is it an assertion that there is a conflict between religion and science. they merely have nothing to do with each other. there can be no conflict between two systems that don't speak the same language or investigate the same phenomena. one has to do with fact based inquiries, the other has to do with transcendental thought."

Regardless of what you think religion should or shouldn't be used for, a huge chunk of the world's population does use religion to explain physical phenomena. You can say "science and religion address different domains!" as much as you like, but it won't make it true.

Re:the question is lost the moment it is posed

[hanshotfirst]

And me without mod points. Mod parent up. I would have still commented, so I couldn't have modded anyway.

You raise good points that people on both sides of the argument overlook - everyone seems to focus on the conflict of science v religion, trying to get one to meld with the other, or use one to disprove the other, when they are really tangential topics to each other. Now I come at this from the "Christian" point of view, but s/Christian/religionX/g and I think my points still work

(As I read my own PREVIEW I realize I don't add much substance to what the parent poster said. The process of writing it was a personal epiphany for me, so I'll submit it anyway.)

Science is about Facts. Religion is about Faith. Science, by definition, is based on observation. Faith, by definition (Hebrews 11) is based on the unobservable. Science addresses questions of WHAT? and HOW? of the world and events. It cannot assign meaning beyond physical description, laws, understanding the cause-and-effect. Science shows me "I am here. This rock is here." but cannot assign a "value" or "importance" to me or the rock - our influence on each other is irrelevant to Science other than explaining or predicting cause and effect. Religion addresses what science cannot - RIGHT and WRONG, GOOD and BAD, (and the debate rages over the definition of those terms). Morals, Spiritual understanding, things which cannot be defined or observed in the physical world. Faith is able to assign more "value" to a person than to a rock, such that I should be concerned about how my actions affect other people, and how I treat a rock only matters as it affects other people. (Or other religions do assign a value for the rock as well, such that it should influence my interactions with the rock)

Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of my God, or any other religion's God. It does not have to. When Science leaves gaps in explanation, Religion fills them in. Science can disprove Religion's explanation - geocentric theory for example. But religion can also embolden people to explore science - If I am secure in my eternal destiny I do not have to fear engaging in scientific endeavors such as sailing to the "edge of the world" or taking a possibly-one-way-trip to mars. (Admittedly weak analogy there - many people are not deterred by "certain death" exploration)

This brings up another point Truth is Truth and must be discovered, regardless of belief. Either geocentric theory is true or it is not, not matter what I believe - Science conveniently offers evidence to support/proove one answer in this case. God exists or God does not exist, no matter what I believe. If God does not exist, by definition, he cannot be observed. If God does exist he , again by definition, cannot be observed physically - so either way Science cannot offer the same level of proof/disproof for God that it can for physical phenomena. Therefore, Faith is the only other mechanism to discover God. Religion comes in to compare whose Faith is accurate regarding unobservable truth in the same way that Science came in to compare whose Observations were accurate regarding physical truth.

To mix the two, as the parent mentions, is meaningless. Like using a car repair manual to find the answer to a CowboyNeal poll. *duck and cover*

Re:The Arab World...

[mikael]

Wikipedia has information on .


One reason for the scientific decline can be traced back to the 10th century, when the orthodox school of Ash'ari theology challenged the more rational school of Mu'tazili theology. Other reasons include conflicts between the Sunni and Shia Muslims, and invasions by Crusaders and Mongols on Islamic lands between the 11th and 13th centuries, especially the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The Mongols destroyed Muslim libraries, observatories, hospitals, and universities, culminating in the destruction of Baghdad, the Abbasid capital and intellectual centre, in 1258, which marked end of the Islamic Golden Age.[20]

The near-absence of democracy in Muslim countries

[tyroneking]

The following sentence from the article troubles me greatly: "The near-absence of democracy in Muslim countries is also not an especially important reason for slow scientific development. "

It should be clear to any human being in this world that democracy (and the rule of secular law), though not perfect by any means, leads to a populace who have a moral investment in the country in which they live - and this leads them to think of greater things, such as science, and not the day-to-day issues like how to not be killed for wearing the wrong clothes.

Religion and science have nothing to do with each other and anyone who even suggests that is making a grave mistake and fool out him/herself and the science s/he studies.

Al-Ghazali is the reason Islam lost it's lead

[SengirV]

Yeah, yeah, I know. But this is the most concise summary. FACTS can be found elsewhere - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali

The Incoherence also marked a turning point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of Aristotle and Plato. The book took aim at the falasifa, a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries (most notable among them Avicenna and Al-Farabi) who drew intellectually upon the Ancient Greeks. Ghazali bitterly denounced Aristotle, Socrates and other Greek writers as non-believers and labeled those who employed their methods and ideas as corrupters of the Islamic faith.

Thanks to Al-Ghazali, REAL science has been anathema to Islam for almost a thousand years.

Re:Al-Ghazali is the reason Islam lost it's lead

[langelgjm]

I haven't read al-Ghazali, but I have read quite a bit of al-Farabi. He seems to have made a valiant, though ultimately doomed, effort to justify philosophical inquiry in the face of Islam. If you're interested in reading some of his more accessible work, the "Book of Religion" (Kitaab al-Milla) is a good place to start. Very little of the literature from this time period is widely read, yet some of it is fascinating - I have several books in a (as yet unpublished, I believe) series on the origins of cryptology in the medieval Arabic world.

Interestingly, ibn Rushd, known as Averroes in the West, wrote a reply to al-Ghazali's "Incoherence of the Philosophers" entitled "Incoherence of the Incoherence."

An error in the article

[aneeshm]

When the author mentions the "extreme Hindu group", he misquotes its name as the "Vishnu Hindu Parishad". It's correct name is the "Vishwa Hindu Parishad".

Also, as far as I am aware, it has not asked for the ethnic cleansing of anybody, though many of its members are of a very extreme bent, and may well hold such opinions.

Thirdly, they have also not, to my knowledge, ever acted to block any piece of scientific research. It's an organisation concerned mostly with the social aspects of religion, and they don't bother with what goes on in the laboratories.

Probably the only thing they care about in regard to science and research is that we have bigger and better nukes than the Pakistanis.

Why Islamic countries are not progressing

[dskoll]

Islamic societies are horribly backward in terms of economic and scientific development. It doesn't require a genius to figure out why:

• A society that takes away rights from 50% of its population cannot prosper. Societies that oppress women are invariably under-developed, strife-riven and backward.
• Any system that proclaims a monopoly on truth and mandates severe punishments for those who question the system cannot produce scientific progress.
• Any society that produces riots in response to satirical cartoons cannot progress in the modern world.
• Any society that always blames outsiders for its troubles will forever wallow in its own backwardness.

Re:Why Islamic countries are not progressing

[yoprst]

A society that takes away rights from 50% of its population cannot prosper. Societies that oppress women are invariably under-developed, strife-riven and backward.
Ancient Greece
Any system that proclaims a monopoly on truth and mandates severe punishments for those who question the system cannot produce scientific progress.
Soviet Union
Any society that produces riots in response to satirical cartoons cannot progress in the modern world.
You've got me there...
Seriously, life is tad more complicated than moralists would like it to be...

Re:The Arab World...

[mr_e_cat]

"Then along came Islam, and since then very little has progressed"

I'm sorry, but you have your time line wrong. The scientific enlightenment came along as a consequence of Islam.

From Wikipedia:

"A number of modern scholars, notably Robert Briffault, Will Durant, Fielding H. Garrison, Alexander von Humboldt, Muhammad Iqbal, Abdus Salam, and Hossein Nasr, consider modern science to have begun from Muslim scientists, who were pioneers of the scientific method and introduced a modern empirical, experimental and quantitative approach to scientific inquiry."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science/)

Obviously things have gone horribly wrong in the last thousand years. But then again we seem to be going in the same direction in the United States, with intelligent design etc. In fact in the article "Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world" sounds a lot like the United States, where over 50% of the population doesn't accept the theory of evolution (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml).

Re:Unfortunately...

[cayenne8]

Well, another thing is, the only physics they seem intent on studying, are those concerned with 'blowing things up'.

It is a limited field of study, and it seems most of the 'scientist' studying this phenomena are consumed along with their first experiment. Few papers are written post-experiment.

Re:The Arab World...

[ianare]

False. Islam was already well established when the arabic world was more advanced then the europeans. When the christians were burning roman and greek science (philosophy, medicine, etc) books, the muslims were preserving them in great libraries. Similarly for greek and roman art, the christians destroyed countless statues, the muslims decorated their palaces with them. They also created their own art, music, poetry, architecture, some of the most beautiful things ever created by man. They made advancedments in medicine, mathematics (we get our number system from them), philosophy, even early forms of robotics. Later, the ottomans were one of the most powerful and technologically advanced empires the world has ever seen, yet they allowed their people to keep their local customs and religions.

further reading

BTW, I am a staunch supporter of atheism, and while I do think all religions in essence, are bullshit, it doesn't mean that great things can't come from them, or at the very least, despite them.

Re:The Arab World...

[drakaan]

*total* crap?

I submit to you that Islam and Christianity both did plenty to stifle scientific progress simply because some scientific discovery was at odds with the religion in some way.

You're right, the scientific establishment has plenty of religion in its family tree (Copernicus, Georges Lemaître, and countless others were entrenched in both camps), but that's beside the point.

The fact that the Islamic world was ahead of the west for quite some time isn't a refutation of the original argument (that Islam ended up hampering scientific progress). Likewise, the argument that the Christian world is ahead of the east (man, I have writing that) isn't an affirmation of Christianity enabling scientific discovery.

What, pray tell, do you believe led to the decline of scientific progress in that part of the world, if not oppressive religion in the form of (in this case) Islam?

Bernard Lewis

[Saint Stephen]

Bernard Lewis wrote a book "What Went Wrong?" which described precisely (in his opinion) how Islam became the backward group when during the Dark Ages they were the advanced group and Europeans were the backwards ones.

After the Muslims started to lose battles to Vienna, one of the caliphates ordered his advisors to come up with a report on why they were losing. The two reasons given were (1) The Mullahs refused to allow "new" science to be researched, Muslim science was pretty much based on Greek science and they considered all the major problems solved and (2) not using 50% of their resources (women).

Ahmadinejad on Science and Islam

[SuperKendall]

Here's the Iranian leaders take on science is in the Islamic world:

Speaking as "an academic," Ahmadinejad said that from his perspective, the role of science is to serve Islam and that any science that does not serve Islamic goals is corrupt. As he put it, "Science is the light, and scientists must be pure and pious. If humanity achieves the highest level of physical and spiritual knowledge but its scholars and scientists are not pure, then this knowledge cannot serve the interests of humanity." Elaborating on this notion, he argued that Western scientists serve corrupt governments who reject the pure and pious path of Islam and therefore are used as agents for corruption.

From a Caroline Glick article on Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia.

Islam/Christianity/Judaism == "All the same" to me

[erroneus]

Religion and serious scientific discovery have always been at odds with each other and the reason boils down to "believe without evidence" or "faith." "Science" isn't always right but it's not about being right... it's about the continual pursuit of learning and understanding reality as we know it based on available evidence and the ability to prove through testing.

Religion is simply the opposite. It is based on the idea that what you were told is the truth. "Rumor" fits this description... as does "myth" and "gossip." But the fact is, religious belief cannot be admissible in a court of law with any reasonable rules for evidence and discovery. (Unless that court of law is based on religion... and we see what happens to 'rule of law' when it's based on religion... chaos and rather unjust proceedings.)

I think it's interesting that they are trying to make some connection between Islam and advanced knowledge. I'm probably wrong, but I believe things like advanced mathematics were developed in the "Islamic" part of the world, but predates Islam itself. It's more likely that Islam itself is responsible for the intellectual decline in that area just as it's often responsible for intellectual decline elsewhere.

"Here's your problem"

[Moryath]

From the article:

The Qur'an, being the unaltered word of God, cannot be at fault: Muslims believe that if there is a problem, it must come from their inability to properly interpret and implement the Qur'an's divine instructions.

The Qu'ran, far from being "the unaltered word of God", is actually an horrific and savage compilation of distilled hatred. Work on collecting the verses wasn't even begun until long after Mohammed was dead, and it was pieced together from people who claimed to have known him or known people who knew him. Thus it's put together out of chronological order (already one alteration) and to try to claim "Mohammed" wrote it is laughable.

The same is true for the other Muslim "holy books", the various collections of hadith (sayings of the so-called "prophet") that various factions believe are more or less authentic (the Sunni and Shi'a have their own favored set each, same for other sects).

Islam is not simply a religion; it is a design guidebook for the creation of a totalitarian state in which the "supreme leader" (Caliph) and his stooges get to use religion as an excuse to be really crappy to everyone else. And it's a lot easier to keep your population under control if they're too stupid to know better and terrified that a revolt might stop them from reaching "heaven."

And Mohammed, far from being a prophet, was an opportunist who figured like Akenaten, Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard that he could use religion as a tool and scam. Look at the various things he was "exempted" from. He "limited" other men to only 4 wives (already a mysoginistic bastard but we'll move on), but he himself got at least an even dozen, plus he fucked a 5 year old (Aisha) just because he got bored with adults. He raped a girl who had just seen her entire family slaughtered (Safiya) and then retroactively declared it a "marriage" the next day when his troops started complaining.

Muslims like to try to rewrite history to hide embarassing details - such as the nature of the Ka'aba, their "holy box", which predates Mohammed. Mohammed's grandfather was a pagan priest of a specific deity of the Quraish tribe. He named his son (Mohammed's dad) "Abd'allah", literally "Slave of Allah."

This was before the monotheistic "Allah" was cooked up by Mohammed.

Question: Which pagan deity is Allah? Or else who was Abd'allah named for?

Islam is a joke. The more educated Muslims you get, the more educated ex-Muslims you'll have as they wake up to the utter absurdity of this bullshit. That's why Muslim leaders hate education so much.

Hell, that's why the Muslim religion has a standing death threat for converting away.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Moryath]

Anyone whose mind is worthlessly closed will be unable to grasp simple truths that challenge them.

That includes bible literalists (amazingly enough, no mainstream church actually insists that its followers take the Bible literally, since they acknowledge that any possible divine revelations made within are colored by the point of view of the person doing the transcribing to paper and any subsequent translation from the original language).

It's also really fun dealing with Mormons on "mission" and hopelessely brainwashed $cientologists.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[toriver]

I guess for your next trick you are going for another Jack Chick impersonation and prove that Catholics are traitors loyal to the Pope who worship a Babylonian godess.

Or you could try to promote your own beliefs instead of focusing on hating others like that.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[heinousjay]

I give you props for speaking the hard truths, sir. Unfortunately, around here you can only talk bad about Christians and get away with it. The poor Muslims apparently need protecting from big bad reality.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[amRadioHed]

What do you mean no mainstream church insists that its followers take the Bible literally? Every church that teaches creationism insists on a literal interpretation, and sadly they aren't insignificant in number.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[thegnu]

(amazingly enough, no mainstream church actually insists that its followers take the Bible literally, since they acknowledge that any possible divine revelations made within are colored by the point of view of the person doing the transcribing to paper and any subsequent translation from the original language).

Also, no mainstream Christian church exists in the harsh climate--both social and environmental--of the middle east. The old testamenteers were big on the Word, and it was only when the whole focal point of the religion moved to the happy land of Europe that things got a little softer.

Then the Catholic Church happened. Happens. Really, it's interesting to watch judeochristians begrudge the muslim world one good crusade. I mean, without ever owning up to the wholesale murder of the ENTIRE American continent, north and south. Not that people should be involved in a religious war. Even if the Lord calls to them, as he so clearly has done to our dear President.

and hopelessely brainwashed $cientologi$t$.

There. Fixed that for you. If I could've fit some more dollar signs in there, I would have. :)

And to GGP, I think Allah is almost the exact same pagan deity as Yahweh. Except his beard is black.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[John Betonschaar]

Condemn him as much as you want, but If you'd actually take the time to read the Qu'ran, you'd find out that he is right. I don't want to start a discussion on Catholics or religion in general, because it is my personal belief that *any* religion is based on bullshit and stems from peoples fears and failures to manage their own misery, and I know in advance that it is no use arguing with religious people about this. But of all religions I know, the Islam is without any doubt the one that spreads and provokes the most hatred. The main cause for this is the Qu'ran and the fact that Muslims can only interpret it literally.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Kadin2048]

What do you mean no mainstream church insists that its followers take the Bible literally? Every church that teaches creationism insists on a literal interpretation, and sadly they aren't insignificant in number. The literalist Churches make a lot of noise, but in terms of hard numbers -- either as a fraction of U.S. population as a whole, or even as fractions of practicing Christians -- they're actually not that big. They have a political and social voice that's completely out of line with their numbers (the reasons for this I'll leave to others, or for another day).

Baptist churches as a whole, most of which are not literalists/textualists but where most of the literalists fall, together comprise about ~15% of U.S. Christians. Pentecostals, Mormons, and other sects which take radically different views of Christianity are somewhere down between 1-3%, I think.

There are some communities that are significantly or overwhelmingly populated by Biblical literalists, which is where they get a lot of press, but there's no valid comparison between literalist Christians in the U.S. and literalist Muslims in Saudi Arabia or Iran. There's a huge gulf there.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[everphilski]

amazingly enough, no mainstream church actually insists that its followers take the Bible literally, since they acknowledge that any possible divine revelations made within are colored by the point of view of the person doing the transcribing to paper and any subsequent translation from the original language

As a conservative Christian (Lutheran) who believes the Bible is the inspired word of God (I guess that would make me a literalist), I do believe every word in there. Creation, divinity of Christ, Real Presence of Christ in communion (not transubstantiation), etc. Like Limp Bizkit said, "you gotta have faaaaaith!" There are some things I can't explain, but I hold them to be true.

I wouldn't say my mind is closed. I have challenged my beliefs. I've left and I've returned. My mind is open but I keep coming back.

It's also really fun dealing with Mormons on "mission" and hopelessely brainwashed $cientologists.

Now there is a horse of a different color. My parents used to invite in Jehovah's Witnesses and have serious biblical discussions. It always ended the same way: some fatal flaw was picked out in the JW's doctrine, and they tend to get hostile, because there's nothing left, they don't have scripture to back them. Same with the Mormons. Camping one year with my grandfather (a retired pastor of many years) we had dinner with some nice mormons camping next to us who then decided to lay on the religion. He kept running in circles about how to attain salvation, he actually pulled out a sheet of paper and started drawing a diagram. It gets to be sad.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[thegnu]

Muslims like to try to rewrite history to hide embarassing details

This isn't any different than the consolidation and edition of the works of the bible for internal consistency by the council of Nicea and others. I'm not advocating this, but let's not artificially narrow the scope of the conversation.

Question: Which pagan deity is Allah? Or else who was Abd'allah named for?

Counterquestion: Which pagan deity is Yahweh? Which pagan deity is Jesus? Which pagan deity, pray tell, is Mary?

Q: Why did the Catholic church accept the divinity of Mary in the middle of the 20th century?
A: Catholicism wasn't taking hold in Latin America, where people were unwilling to give up their earth mother goddess.

Islam is a joke. The more educated Muslims you get, the more educated ex-Muslims you'll have as they wake up to the utter absurdity of this bullshit. That's why Muslim leaders hate education so much.

I think the same can be said for Christianity. I think the Christian leaders aren't too keen on proper education, given their stance on evolution. An educated person can take a symbolic work, interpret it in terms that apply to his or her life, and discard sections of the text that clearly only apply to specific environments (for example, a desert in 600BCE). Religion mostly serves as symbolic anchors for people on a spiritual path, giving you pictures of God creating mountains and such so you get what they're talking about until you're mature enough to appreciate more esoteric internal spiritual development. But that doesn't mean a spiritually developed person can't use symbolism that suits them.

Hell, that's why the Muslim religion has a standing death threat for converting away

In tribal, violent parts of the world. I've been to some Muslim events and gatherings here in the United States, and they seem generally more conscious, open-minded, and kind than their Christian counterparts. Of course, in the US they're an underclass, so being conscious behooves them greatly.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Ender_Wiggin]

That's not true, its a myth fomented by Christian missionaries.

Allah is the Arabic word for God. "Al-Lah" means The God. The Arabs at the time believed that Allah created the universe, then had daughters and other gods to intercede for Him. If you read islamic history, you'll see that the polytheists already believed in God, but also in others as well.

As for the "moon" hoax, that never existed. The Quran specifically says not to worship the sun or the moon, but to the One God that made all of creation. The crescent is a pre-islamic symbol, and made popular by the Ottoman empire. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) never used the crescent, instead using flags that said the Kalimah ("No god but God") writen on them.

Allah is how you say God in Arabic. Even the Arab Christians and Jews of the time never disputed that Allah was the real God. The Arabic translation of the Bible uses "Allah" as it is how you say God. The Pope and other religious leaders of Christianity and Judaism and Islam even agree on this.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[thegnu]

but there's no valid comparison between literalist Christians in the U.S. and literalist Muslims in Saudi Arabia or Iran. There's a huge gulf there.

I'll say!

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Maxo-Texas]

A person who believes in one religion easily sees the follies of other religions while remaining amazingly ignorant of how sad their own faith seems to unbelievers.

To me, it feels like you had a part of your brain damaged and turned off when you were a child by your parents before you could protect yourself.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Kadin2048]

If it wasn't any of these things, the horrible truths you have already noticed about it would have led to its destruction long ago. That's not much of a compelling argument. By that notion, if the government of the United States launched its missiles tomorrow and glassed all the predominantly Muslim countries in the world, and then followed up with land forces to finish the genocide, until any trace of Islam had been wiped off the Earth, then secularism would be provably a better philosophy than Islam, as evidenced by the fact that Islam would not longer exist.

That seems rather hollow. Using social success as a measure for the superiority of a meme only works if you can control for external factors; if that meme is the only thing differentiating two groups. Since that's almost never the case, you need to consider other factors.

A belief system might be helpful at one point in social evolution, but unhelpful, even harmful, at a later state; or one society might just be luckier in terms of access to natural resources, allowing itself to build faster and conquer its neighbors, even though it carries the weight of a harmful belief system like a terminal disease, waiting to erupt later.

Using outcomes from inequal start conditions as a measure of objective superiority only works on infinitely long timescales. In the real world, it's a poor metric.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[jedidiah]

> Really, it's interesting to watch judeochristians begrudge the muslim world one good crusade.

They had at least "one good crusade".

That's why North Africa and Asia Minor is muslim to begin with.

Islam started out by trying to convert the rest of the world at the end of a sword. This aspect of Islam tends to be conveniently forgotten. There's a REASON that there's historical animosity between the east and west.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Moryath]

Christians, Jews, Hindus, Shinto, Confucians, Asa, Sikhs, Baha'i, Jainists, Rastafarians, Unitarians, and Buddhists don't try to suicide-bomb me for not converting to Islam.

I'm sure there's a few religions I missed in there - I apologize to all of you except the Satanists (then again, at least the Satanists are honest about what their religion says).

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Eli Gottlieb]

To confirm his words, Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians used the word "Allah" to refer to their own gods. It's just like saying "God" in English -- it can refer to whoever you speak of.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[nuzak]

> Jews and Judaism have never crusaded against anyone or instituted any forced conversions ever.

I think the Canaanites might beg to differ. But I guess back then, everybody really was doing that sort of thing, and I'll grant that the Jews have probably gone the longest without doing any of that crap, so kudos for that.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[aichpvee]

Secularism is a better philosophy than Islam in the same way that rationality is superior to delusion. I'm not sure what you think that has to do with The United States though.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Anonymous Coward]

A person who believes in one religion easily sees the follies of other religions while remaining amazingly ignorant of how sad their own faith seems to unbelievers.

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Roberts

Re:"Here's your problem"

[jstott]

Q: Why did the Catholic church accept the divinity of Mary in the middle of the 20th century? A: Catholicism wasn't taking hold in Latin America, where people were unwilling to give up their earth mother goddess.

The Catholic church, does not, has not, and never will accept the divinity of Mary. According to the Catholic Church, Mary is a human being. Period. Full stop.

The most (only?) significant statement about Mary the Church made in the middle of the 20th century was the declaration by Pope Pius XII that, at the end of her life, Mary was bodily assumed into heaven by the grace of God. This, BTW, was the second of only two ex cathedra statements ever made by a pope and reflected a Christian tradition going back more than 1500 years. It also has absolutely nothing to do with a supposed divinity of Mary.

-JS

Re:"Here's your problem"

[LinuxIsRetarded]

A person who believes in one religion easily sees the follies of other religions while remaining amazingly ignorant of how sad their own faith seems to unbelievers.

My faith (Christianity) teaches me to love everyone, regardless of their economic status, race, or faith. Because I am completely ignorant as to how someone could regard such teachings as "sad," please educate me.

To me, it feels like you had a part of your brain damaged and turned off when you were a child by your parents before you could protect yourself.

I can't speak for the person to whom you are replying, but I actually didn't believe in God for the first 25 years of my life.

Re:"Here's your problem"

[Carthag]

He's right you know. I'm atheist and I've killed myself already because I didn't have any reason to live in a world without meaning.

evading the issue

[sentientbrendan]

>this in fact is not a call to abandon religion to embrace science, nor is it an assertion
>that there is a conflict between religion and science. they merely have nothing to do with
>each other.

You evade the problem by being too abstract. There is no conflict between "religion" and "science" but there is clearly a conflict between specific established scientific views and specific established religious views.

Many sects dogmatically proclaim that the world was created in 7 days. You can say that "this is a metaphor, and so not at odds with science," but the problem, the conflict is that the people who say that don't *mean* it as a metaphor. They mean it as a factual statement about the world.

Saying there is no conflict between something abstract like "religion" and "science" is missing there point. There are concrete conflicts between various religious dogmas many specific scientific views.

Furthermore, it is well historically established that societies that accept dogmatic modes of thought are not conducive to scientific development. If scientists must do all of their important research in secret, for fear of public reprisal, they will get little done and their work will not be widely disseminated. This is a historical and ongoing problem in our society.

The problem isn't that "religion is bad," although I think an argument could be made for that, but that certain social institutions, especially some hard line religious sects, do much to harm the advancement of science by establishing dogmatic views that they refuse to accept rational challenges to.

Re:Necessary presumption

[burndive]

The "there is no God" notion isn't really a conclusion of science. It isn't even a hypothesis. It is a "metaphysical presupposition."

This presupposition must be made in order for scientific investigation to be possible. If one assumes that some phenomena (whatever it may be) is simply "the work of God," then there is no incentive to do controlled tests of it. If, however, one assumes that the phenomena has a physical (non-miraculous, non-conscious) mechanism behind it, then it makes sense to to tests aimed at uncovering and modeling the mechanism.

I agree that it's a "metaphysical presupposition", and that metaphysical presuppositions are necessary to engage in scientific study, but I don't think that it is necessary to assume that God "doesn't exist" in order to engage in scientific study. I think a better, more general way to put it would be "All other things being equal", or "in a closed system": basically, you need to assume that God is not actively (abnormally) "interfering" with your experiments as you conduct them: whether he exists or not.

Re:yes

[nasor]

If you want to propose that anyone who uses religion to explain nature is "missing the point of religion," then the vast majority of people throughout history from every religion around the world were "missing the point". In fact, it's arguable that the original purpose of religion was to provide explanations for natural phenomena that were unexplainable at the time. The idea that religion isn't supposed to provide explanations for natural phenomena is a relatively new one. If you want to try to re-invent religion as something that has nothing to do with empirical fact, then I wish you luck; but realize that you are trying to reinvent it.

Economic and philosophical...

[ChePibe]

Much of the problem is economic, not religious.

The prototypical state for the economic problem in this case is Saudi Arabia. Saudis obviously are not lacking for money - they pump it from the ground at alarming rates - and this is part of their problem.

The Saudi state distributes oil wealth among its people, and these distributions are a big problem.

When people receive fairly large amounts of money for doing nothing, they have little incentive for improving their technical skills. Subsequently, there is little reason for young Saudi men - who, incidentally, were likely raised by largely uneducated women - to go beyond what they already do and know. A great many will also not seek out employment of any kind (the CIA World Factbook puts unemployment in Saudi Arabia at between 13% and 25% - not to mention the massive hole women have left in the workforce). Living off of oil subsidies, there is little need for students to prepare to compete in the global economy - they already have a resource the rest of the world needs for survival and receive an annual cut sufficient to live quite nicely off of.

Pakistan is another example. With the state generally unwilling to invest serious amounts of money in education - and with teachers rightfully afraid for their lives in many areas - parents are given the terrible choice of choosing to provide little to no education at all for their children or sending them to a madrasa where their child will at least learn to read, write, as well as likely learn some basic math. The religious knowledge they will acquire will also help instill positive morals (they hope) and make them a beacon in the community as they grow older (also, they hope). While the later is admirable, it is when the religion overtakes ALL subject areas - as it does in many of these schools - that it becomes a problem.

I received my undergraduate degree at a religious university - BYU - in the U.S. Evolution was accepted as fact and discussed as such. I studied Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and other great philosophers. I took classes on deductive logic. I studied Islam and Judaism. I learned the laws of thermodynamics. Majors were offered in Biology, Chemistry, various engineering disciplines, and other quite scientific fields. There were, of course, religion classes as well, but the requirement to complete these - 12 credits - was a fairly minor part of the overall curriculum and I cannot recall any instance of religion being extensively mentioned in secular classes (the vast majority) with the exception of ethical issues - particularly in a National Security class and on the subject of war. If the Arab world could make a system like that work, it would be better than what they have now.

I wonder how much of this divergence has to do with the embracing or refusal of logic. Christianity, after the dark ages, made various attempts to reconcile its beliefs with logic with varying and certainly debatable results. St. Thomas Acquians and Pascal are good examples. But the idea that things should conform to logic and reason has been deep seated for centuries now, even though it is certainly not universal. As Christianity embraced reason, Muslims philosophers such as Al-Ghazali sought to move away from it for whatever reason. The courses I took on logic and philosophy, although somewhat infuriating at the time (professor's fault, not the material) have been the most useful to me by far in life. I cannot imagine a life - or a culture - without these ideas.

...INVALID PREMISE!!!

[Xodmoe]

"One can only imagine what civilizsation would be like today if religion (of all stripes, mind you) hadn't stifled scientific progress since man first walked upright."

Religion and science are NOT diametric opposites! ...nor are faith and reason.

Forget the fact that some of this nations best schools and hospitals are run by religious organizations. Never mind that Gandhi, Dr. King and even Pythagoras were men of faith AND reason.

There is room for more than one way to make sense out of the world around us. By now we should have reached the point where we can accept diverse paths to truth and the idea that not all questions have satisfying, simple answers that one and all can understand. ...at least not right away.

...and if we can't agree with each other about the questions and answers, we shouldn't have to be so disagreeable in that regard. We shouldn't need to demean others who don't believe what we believe or think the way we think.

I didn't need all that excess karma anyway.

Re:The Arab World...

[be-fan]

Bettle B made a good point, but I also want to add something. I think in general it's better to look at religion as a reflection of society, than something that molds society. Ostensibly, societies derive their values from religion, but to be completely realistic, more often society leverages religion to enforce the values that they already hold. So in the context of the Arab period of enlightenment, it is useful to look at not the religious angle, but the political and economic events that underly them.

The Islamic Empire (a political phenomenon) brought civilization and urbanization to a region that had been largely nomadic. It brought, at least for a time, stability, security, and wealth. The culture of Islam was, at the time, more contemporary and metropolitan than its contemporaries (remember, we're talking about a period when Europe was in the Dark Ages). These ingredients were all important for the cultural renaissance that occurred in the period. As the civilization declined, wealth, stability, and security were lost, and at that point Islam was used to enforce the conservative social order that naturally arises from such an impoverished state.

Neither Islam nor Christianity have changed substantially in the last 500-1000 years. Neither the Bible nor the Quran have gone through a new edition. What has changed is how literally followers of the religion adhere to the now antiquated doctrines. The vast majority of Western Christians aren't really all that Christian. They don't attend Church regularly, they don't follow most of the teachings of the Bible, etc. They have a vague belief in God and Christ and doing good work, but for all their specificity such beliefs are probably closer to those of a modern, progressive Muslim than to the beliefs of the more ardent believers within their own religion. The litmus test for me is really the whole issue with the Catholic Church and birth control. The Pope, the designated representative of God on Earth, says that contraception is wrong yet most Catholics still use it. This is a very fundamental test of belief. If you honestly believe that there is an all-powerful being who controls heaven and earth and that Jesus died for your sins and left Peter as his successor, and that the current Pope is the spiritual successor of Peter and speaks with all of his authority, then you cannot possibly rationalize the use of birth control. LIke it or not, most modern Catholics do not really believe in Catholicism --- they believe in something similar, but diluted enough for modern sensibilities.

It is this "dilution" that is desperately missing from the Islamic world. We have a population that feels at most mild guilt for skipping Church, and they have a population that fears for their eternal soul for missing prayers, and that's the problem.

Re:like i said

[Coryoth]

this is just a retarded pissing contest about word definitions Which you started. Reading some of your other replies, it seems that any set of ideas that anyone "believes" is a "religion"; which is stretching the definition well beyond common discourse. Excuse me for confusing your personal definition of religion (of which any philosophy whatsoever, involving absolutely no "spiritual" concept or otherwise, would qualify as) with the generally accepted one which refers to established schools of thought with specific spiritual beliefs. Saying "Religion and Science are not in conflict" and retorting, whenever anyone calls you on it, with "that's not what I mean by religion" and pointing to what actually just amounts to philosophy is rather disingenuous. The reality is that you mean that philosophy and science are not in conflict. Religion, as in specific actual schools of thought that call themselves religions, are very much in conflict with science. Sure "religion" needn't be in conflict with science if it gives up all its dogma and beliefs and becomes philosophy, but then its hardly religion anymore is it? Well, it is for you when you play word games.

That's not much of a point.

[Kadin2048]

Well, until fairly recently in the Western tradition, it was fairly dangerous to be openly non-religious or anti-religious. It only makes sense that a smart person would, at the very least, adopt the correct appearances.

Who's to say what those individuals would have thought did they not exist in an environment which more or less required religion in order to be taken seriously (or not be harassed or killed)? It's difficult, probably impossible, to pull any of them out from their environment.

But you're giving religion a ridiculous amount of credit to say, simply because a lot of people who were smart also were religious, that their being religious led to their being smart. A lot of criminals were also religious; do we lay them at the Church's doorstep, too?

Re:The near-absence of democracy in Muslim countri

[Bodrius]

It should be clear to any human being in this world that democracy (and the rule of secular law), though not perfect by any means, leads to a populace who have a moral investment in the country in which they live - and this leads them to think of greater things, such as science, and not the day-to-day issues like how to not be killed for wearing the wrong clothes

Whoa. This is a logic leap of Olympic proportions.

Democracy is a powerful means to its ends (e.g.: those typically described in democratic constitutions), but it inherited the lamentable romantic habit of taking strong assertions for rational arguments.

- Democracy does not, per se, lead to a moral investment of the population in politics.
It's remarkably difficult to get even minimal participation (voting on the most important elections) on mature democracies, much less 'moral investment'.

- Democracy does not lead the population to think of 'higher, greater things'.
On the contrary, participatory government focuses on concrete improvements to the way of life of the constituents. That IS one its main virtues - the resources of the state are to be invested into the happiness of the population, rather than the aspirations (however idealistic) of an autocrat.

- Democracies tend to worry, more than anything, about day-to-day issues.
Not being killed for wearing the wrong clothes is a central preocupation of citizens and politicians on most modern democracies - personal security is expensive to maintain, and a function of prosperity, not (directly) of constitutional freedom.
Even if the most secure and prosperous democracies, day-to-day issues are the center of popular thought and political action. People worry more about their job security, schools for their children, their parking situation, or whether there is too much fat in french fries.

Historically, worrying about "greater things" rather than the menial day-to-day problems of life is a very aristocratic feeling, not a democratic one; and the romantic rethoric of democratic documents has a lot to do with the aristocratic antecedents of those who wrote the seminal documents, and rethorical tradition.

Even when democratic nations do spend great effort and emotional investment in a "greater thing" (e.g.: space exploration, fundamental scientific research, solving world hunger, etc) it is typically a result of unilateral top-down leadership, whether motivated by national needs (war, foreign competition, etc) or by a strong push from a charismatic executive leadership.
In other words, the efforts are fundamentally 'dictatorial', in the original Roman sense of the word.

The causal chain that leads democracy to achieve 'greater things' is powerful but indirect. Leisure is the parent of such worries, and prosperity leads to leisure. The power of democratic societies lies on their capacity to best achieve and sustain prosperity, and reduce the number of worries of survival a citizen needs to deal with daily.
But it is human nature that, for the overwhelming majority of the population, even the most menial daily worries will take a higher priority than "greater things" in their political opinion.

Re:No surprise

[mrpeebles]

I believe it was Karl Popper (a famous philosopher of science) who wrote that he believed that Christianity was instrumental in the formation of science in the West. The Christian God creates a rational world that can be understood through reason. However, the world is not contingent, so we must observe it to know it. Even math started out as religion - the Pythagorians had a religion based on rational numbers. So I completely disagree with you that science and religion are incompatible.

From an atheist who actually lives in the ME

[PtrToNull]

I'm an astronomer from Kuwait. Let me tell you that while many of the reasons mentioned as valid, they're overly simplified.You'll be surprised that many long held notions are utterly false.

• Lack of Democracy: While this is indeed true, democracy will bring havoc to the middle east. We have a decent partial-democracy in Kuwait with a freely elected parliament and it's already a nightmare. If democracy ever to become wide spread in Kuwait, I'll immediately migrate! Remember that democracy can be like two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. In Kuwait case at least, the fanatics won the greatest number of seats, and all their legislations are geared toward making Kuwait an Islamic state. Our "dictatorship" thankfully blocked a number of bills, forcibly, like the bill to implement full Shria'a Law (think flogging and chopping hands). It would have been much worse than Saudi Arabia. The fanatics were successful in passing bills to limit freedom of speech, even to go as far as to imprison those who dare to criticize not prophet Muhammad, but his friends. They were able to pass laws to segregate the university, and now instead of one university they're building TWO next to each other DOUBLE the cost and with a small river running between them to complete separate. If you think creationists and neo-cons are fanatics, you haven't experienced the mental terrorism here, we take it to another level.
• Suppression of women: Again, it's an over simplification. In Kuwait, 70% of university graduates are women, about half the working force are women. Most technical jobs & especially IT in the government are headed by women (our IT department has about 5 males and 17 females engineers). My boss is a woman in fact, and so is her director! Also, women, by convention, come to work half an hour late, and leave work half an hour earlier, and this applies everywhere where.
  
  The 'elected' parliament refused to grant women their right to vote up until 2005 where, again, the 'dictatorship' government forced the law on the parliament and threated to dissolve it if it didn't pass. My sister completely covers up her face, if somebody saw me with her, they'd think "Oh look at that Arab suppression his wife/family", while in fact, I tried many time to convince her to take it off and how ridiculous it is but with no success, she's a devout Muslim and she doesn't want to do that and she thinks hideously of any thing western. While it is true that a lot wear it forcibly, it's mostly due to culture "oh everyone is wearing it so I'll do that". On many instances, I've seen women become more conservative by their own will. What's ironic is that in the last parliamentary elections where women got the right to run for office and vote, an Islamic MP (Daif-Allah bu Ramiah) who worked so hard to devoid women of their rights by launching numerous campaigns, actually won the race mostly due to the overwhelming votes he got from women voters (Women voters represent more than 50% of the total vote, despite that fact, no women MP was elected). It's completely insane and I truly don't understand it.
• Economy: This is a joke too, at least in my case where the whole country pretty much runs on a welfare-like system. Education, health, utilities, housing..etc if not subsidized heavily (and I do mean heavily) then they're basically free. And with the huge multi billion surpluses we've been lucky to get in the last few years, what's preventing us from advancing in science???

The country lives in a horrendous bureaucracy, most people are so lazy to work in an ethical manner, and most scientific institutions are run by zealot Islamic creationists who are wasting research money on 'scientific miracles of the Quran' and producing more books on why 'Evolution is a lie'. Their influence is heavy in education where kids are actually taught evolution, and how to 'disapprove it', not to mention the hatred driven religious classes which, thanks aga

Challenge this

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say my mind is closed.

Of course you wouldn't. That doesn't mean it's not true.

In my experience most people (religious or otherwise) get irrational when their core beliefs are challenged. Not always hostile, but definitely irrational. They will spout logical fallacies left and right, seeming to have suddenly lost their ability to detect them, when only moments before they were pointing them out (as fallacies) in rival belief systems.

This seems to be a psychological defense mechanism that serves to protect one from the very disturbing feelings of uncertainty that arise in such discussions.

The people I've known who don't get irrational when their core beliefs are challenged were usually philosophers (by formal study). Also, they seemed to like it when they suddenly realized that the issues were deeper and less clear than previously thought. In other words, they didn't find uncertainty disturbing, hence they didn't need defense mechanisms, and hence they could remain rational when being challenged, and hence they could actually authentically be considered open minded.

My challenge to you: Humans are not perfect; in fact they often mess things up pretty good. Every single word in the Bible was written by a human. God himself didn't manifest before you and hand you a copy; a human did. Your belief that God used his divine power to preserve the accuracy of the Bible was also taught to you by a human (and, ultimately, cooked up by a human). You simply cannot escape the element of human fallibility present in the Bible, and in all arguments made to it's final authority.

So your faith isn't actually in God. It is in humans. That is to say, you have placed your faith in the specific humans who wrote the Bible, and the specific humans who gave you teachings about it.

In that light, what rational reason can you give me for believing that the (very strange) stories in the Bible (the ones about heaven, hell, superhuman powers, talking animals, and so on) are concretely and historically accurate?

Re:un-scientific post from a troll

[bckrispi]

"God is a fairy tale."

Prove it.

You're the one making silly claims of an invisible sky-daddy who doles out arbitrary rewards and punishments based on his own random whims that you try to interpret by reading book authored (and reauthored) over the span of several millenia. I'd have to say that the burden of proof is on your shoulders.

Re:UNIX explains the singular triune God

[oatworm]

They have the same UID, but they're on three different boxes... something about NFS, load balancing, and redundancy or something like that. I'm still trying to figure out why He deleted his "Jesus" account and then recreated it three days later. Very strange. Perhaps He was rootkitted? I'll go check the logs...

# tail bible.log

22:17And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely.
22:18I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book:
22:19and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.
22:20He who testifieth these things saith, Yea: I come quickly. Amen: come, Lord Jesus.
22:21The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the saints. Amen.

Hmm... going to need to go farther back... this could take a while. I'll come back to you, 'k?

Nonsense.

[jotaeleemeese]

Mexico (the country from which most immigrants to the US come) has separated church and state for 140 years.

In Mexico, unlike in the US, you don't pray in public schools where religious symbols are forbidden, all public servants swear their charges using the Mexican constitution, not the Bible, and many women ignore advice from the Pope regarding contraception (the Pope will not provide for my unwanted children - they say wisely).

Most Mexicans are catholic alright, but we have learned to live and let live, so your fears are unfounded (if anything, the exaggerated religiosity in the US may erode such healthy attitudes towards religion from Hispanic immigrants).

Re:The near-absence of democracy in Muslim countri

[xPsi]

Religion and science have nothing to do with each other and anyone who even suggests that is making a grave mistake and fool out him/herself and the science s/he studies.

I get the sense I misinterpreted the main message of your last statement. Based on the context of your post, I believe you are saying culturally and politically science and religion have nothing to do with each other. In this sense, I agree: religion and science are basically culturally orthogonal.

However, one must be careful not to overstate the point with this non-overlapping Magisteria cartoon. Tacitly and overtly, religion makes many claims about the way the world works physically. When this happens, like it or not, religion is treading in the domain of science. There is an afterlife, or there isn't. Either someone rose from the dead, or didn't. Someone turned water into wine, or didn't. Created the world in 7 days, or didn't. Born of a virgin, or wasn't. And so on. If these things happened, then there had to be a mechanism. These claims are not just symbolic abstractions for most believers but real physical claims about the way the universe works at its most fundamental level. Science has a lot to say about the physical possibilities of these claims (usually not siding with the original claim). If religion were to stick to only unfalsifiable, untestable, unphysical claims, then non-overlapping Magisteria works fine.