Slashdot Mirror
Computer Network Piecing Together a Jigsaw of Ancient Jewish Lore
First time accepted submitter aravenwood writes "The New York Times and the Times of Israel report today that artificial intelligence and a network of 100 computers in a basement in Tel Aviv University are being used to match 320,000 fragments of documents dating as far back as the 9th century in an attempt to reassemble the original documents. Since the trove of documents from the Jewish community of Cairo was discovered in 1896 only about 4000 of them have been pieced together, and the hope is that the new technique, which involves taking photographs of the fragments and using image recognition and other algorithms to match the language, spacing, and handwriting style of the text along with the shape of the fragment to other fragments could revolutionize not only the study of this trove documents, which has been split up into 67 different collections around the world since its discovery, but also how humanities disciplines study documents like these. They expect to make 12 billion comparisons of different fragments before the project is completed — they have already performed 2.8 billion. Among the documents, some dating from 950, was the discovery of letters by Moses Maimonides and that Cairene Jews were involved in the import of flax, linen, and sheep cheese from Sicily."
Except that they both use the same original scriptures.
Again, this is another claim of Islam that simply is not true. There are *numerous* differences between Islam and the Torah & Christianity. The evil warlord Mohammed used Arian Christian heretics to base some of the superstiton in the Qur'an on - but these guys plagiarized several *major* things incorrectly. Here, please allow me to enlighten you with numerous additional sources that show that the Qur'an is not the direct and eternal word of God (another bold yet provably false claim, even when you don't consider the Sa'ana Qur'an), because it is plagarised from material written 500 - 1000 years earlier, gets it wrong, and then throws in a bunch of anti-scientific stuff to boot (that is, modern science *proves* statements in the Qur'an to be *false* - its claim to be *perfect* is simply rubbish):
http://www.1000mistakes.com/1000mistakes/index.php?Page=007_003_001_001
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Main_Page
Now, you can choose to believe in an anti-scientific falsehood if you like. I'd rather not. It is clear that Islam makes many claims. Upon close examination those claims are *simply not true*. You can deny the sources I've given, but that is simply denial of reality because you would rather cling to the lie of the mythology you were born into. Making that choice is perfectly valid, (although stupid in the 21st Century, IMHO) - you just have to understand that you are choosing to deny all the evidence that shows the various claims of your superstition as false. Fortunately, as the wikiislam site shows, many people are realising the falsehood of religions and choosing to live a Free People (not slaves under Islam) and having to be virtuous because they want to be - not because they fear the nightmares of Bronze Age desert barbarians.