A Tunisian PhD student's submitted thesis claims the Earth is flat

[Dazey]

19 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

I hope you are going to admit that scientific achievement occurred in Europe before the Enlightenment, unless you disregard Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon and Descartes?

Your argument, that religion impedes scientific growth, is looking flakier by the second! 

Errrr, wasn't Galileo imprisoned by the church precisely because of his scientific achievements?

[The Glow Inc.]

This should settle it :

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

9 scientists per thousand people and this decline can be traced back to the rise of anti-rationalism and inquisition in Sunni islam, 750 years ago.

How is OP wrong then ?

 

[DieselDaisy]

12 minutes ago, Dazey said:

Errrr, wasn't Galileo imprisoned by the church precisely because of his scientific achievements?

Not really relevant on a discussion on whether their environment was sufficiently religions/non-religion to have made that scientific breakthrough.

[Dazey]

Just now, DieselDaisy said:

Not really relevant on a discussion on whether their environment was sufficiently religions/non-religion to have made that scientific breakthrough.

Pretty relevant actually when you claim that the religious environment at the time didn't impede scientific progress.

I'd say that jailing scientists for doing science is a pretty fucking big impediment to science. 

[Graeme]

39 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Are you discounting scientific discoveries made before the Enlightenment?

Here, let us summarise thus far,

- You admit that scientific brilliance occurred under the Caliphates?

- You admit scientific achievement occurred when Europe was a more fervently religious place?

- I hope you are going to admit that scientific achievement occurred in Europe before the Enlightenment, unless you disregard Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon and Descartes?

Your argument, that religion impedes scientific growth, is looking flakier by the second!

...standing on the shoulder of giants, religious giants in fact.

That's not really relevant though, considering that religion was the standard explanation for all observed phenomena in those cultures at the time and scientific discovery frequently ran contrary to received religious wisdom. Those scientific achievements occurred despite the religious environment in which they were made, not because of it. There was no equivalent contemporary society that relied predominantly on scientific method to conduct a comparison with, but there's a reason that the societies with the most advanced scientific achievements and capacities now tend to be secular in the main. 

[DieselDaisy]

Here is a theory I was going to raise when Soul replied to my above post. Scientific impediment has next to nothing to do with religion. Since the collapse of the caliphates, the Middle East/Arabic world has endured invasion (by the Turkic Ottomans), war, poverty, racial/tribal tension, colonisation (the French, British and Italians), de-colonisation/state-formation, dictatorship and (American) western interventionism.

How would one establish a successful place of scientific inquiry one may ask, under the aforementioned?

[DieselDaisy]

10 minutes ago, Dazey said:

Pretty relevant actually when you claim that the religious environment at the time didn't impede scientific progress.

I'd say that jailing scientists for doing science is a pretty fucking big impediment to science. 

He established the scientific breakthrough in the Europe of his day which was religious. If Galileo never even reached the theory through religious impediment, and in affect drifted off into history as a 'nobody', then your point would be valid, but we would not have the example before us today so it is a rather circular argument.

[The Glow Inc.]

3 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

He established the scientific breakthrough in the Europe of his day which was religious. If Galileo never even reached the theory through religious impediment, and in affect drifted off into history as a 'nobody', then your point would be valid, but we would not have the example before us today so it is a rather circular argument.

It took 123 years for his theory to be accepted and only after it was finally authorized by the Pope...
 

[DieselDaisy]

6 minutes ago, Graeme said:

That's not really relevant though, considering that religion was the standard explanation for all observed phenomena in those cultures at the time and scientific discovery frequently ran contrary to received religious wisdom. Those scientific achievements occurred despite the religious environment in which they were made, not because of it. There was no equivalent contemporary society that relied predominantly on scientific method to conduct a comparison with, but there's a reason that the societies with the most advanced scientific achievements and capacities now tend to be secular in the main. 

I didn't say 'because of it'. So far as Soul is in error, it suffices to say that Europe in the thralls of religion was an environment in which science did make headway despite being antithetical to religious orthodoxy. Further, men of the (early particular) Enlightenment saw no contradiction in being profoundly religious and investigating natural sciences. 

One would have to look to atheistic states for comparison, e.g. Nazi Germany and the Communist world; as it happens there were a few scientific breakthroughs in the former which I'll not bore you people with (I'll just cite opiates and computing).

Just now, The Glow Inc. said:

It took 123 years for his theory to be accepted and only after it was finally authorized by the Pope...
 

And Darwin faced an 'ape joke' backclash in Victorian England - yes but you are missing the point entirely. The fact he arrived at his theory in the Europe of that age is what is pertinent, regardless of what religious resistance existed.

 

[Dazey]

7 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

He established the scientific breakthrough in the Europe of his day which was religious. 

And promptly spent the rest of his life incarcerated for his efforts. 

[DieselDaisy]

1 minute ago, Dazey said:

And promptly spent the rest of his life incarcerated for his efforts. 

But still arrived at it. What sort of environment did he produce it in if not a fervently religious one, an atheist one? Again, missing the point.

Edited August 23, 2017 by DieselDaisy

[Dazey]

Just now, DieselDaisy said:

But still arrived at it. What sort of environment did he produce it in if not a fervently religious one, an atheist one? Again, missing the point.

Yes, you are. 

[The Glow Inc.]

So what about all the scientific conclusions he could have reached had he not been incarcerated for the rest of his life ? Was his sentence not a way to silence his views and to slow his efforts ?

[Dazey]

Just now, The Glow Inc. said:

So what about all the scientific conclusions he could have reached had he not been incarcerated for the rest of his life ? Was his sentence not a way to silence his views and to slow his efforts ?

Not to mention the countless others who we have never heard of for precisely that reason. 

[DieselDaisy]

I will try and make it as clear as possible,

Did Galileo produce his theories amidst a religious environment, a 'religious Europe', yes or no?

If the answer is 'yes' it contradicts Soul's gibberish. If no - well, the answer is not no...

1 minute ago, The Glow Inc. said:

So what about all the scientific conclusions he could have reached had he not been incarcerated for the rest of his life ? Was his sentence not a way to silence his views and to slow his efforts ?

Speculative. He might have, or he might have not even ventured into sciences. He would have been a completely different person if we remove his historic environment. He was brought up in a pious Catholic household - his sisters were nuns. To remove that background would produce a historic ricochet effect. You are in Back to the Future territory here I'm afraid.

 

[Dazey]

6 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

I will try and make it as clear as possible,

Did Galileo produce his theories amidst a religious environment, a 'religious Europe', yes or no?

If the answer is 'yes' it contradicts Soul's gibberish. If no - well, the answer is not no...

Speculative. He might have, or he might have not even ventured into sciences. He would have been a completely different person if we remove his historic environment. He was brought up in a pious Catholic household - his sisters were nuns. To remove that background would produce a historic ricochet effect. You are in Back to the Future territory here I'm afraid.

 

You're just taking complete nonsense. Your argument is basically that if something happens then in no way could it have been impeded by external forces. 

It's Ike sticking lead weights in a marathon runners pockets and then claiming that you were doing them a favour as long as they still cross the finish line. 

[The Glow Inc.]

Going to use a retarded yet real example :

Muslim leaders have launched a fatwa against whoever will go on Mars because "there is no righteous reason to go there"...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2562957/Muslim-leaders-issue-fatwa-against-living-MARS-no-righteous-reason-there.html

Do you think said fatwa encourages people to work on a muslim space program in the long run ?

If the answer is 'no' then how does a religious environment not impact scientific research in general ?

[DieselDaisy]

3 hours ago, Dazey said:

You're just taking complete nonsense. Your argument is basically that if something happens then in no way could it have been impeded by external forces. 

I haven't said that all!

[SoulMonster]

8 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

So far as Soul is in error, it suffices to say that Europe in the thralls of religion was an environment in which science did make headway despite being antithetical to religious orthodoxy.

Diesel seems to think I believe science didn't happen before the industrial revolution What I am saying is that science would have progressed further if religion wasn't there as an impediment. Sure, lots of breakthroughs took place when the Western world was a highly religious place, but that was not because of the religions but despite them. We would have come a lot further if religion wasn't there slowing us down. Today, free of the shackles of religion, science moves at breakneck speed. It's fantastic.

But this thread wasn't meant to lament how poorly science fared back in the old days, it was to point out that this tragedy is happening now, too, in many muslim countries. Not to the same extent perhaps, but enough so that 1.8 billion people are not pulling their weight when it comes to the greatest endavour of humankind: to expand our understanding of the natural world. That is a tragedy and it is happening right now. Where is our modern day equivalents to Hassan Ibn Al-Haitham, the founder of optics, Omar Khayyam (who measured the length of the solar year), Al-Battani (a great trigonometrist) or Al-Kvarismi from whom we own our numbers? The current islam world is NOT supportive of science, and just like in Medieveal Europe, any progress will come despite the effect of Islam and not because of it.

[Graeme]

19 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Diesel seems to think I believe science didn't happen before the industrial revolution What I am saying is that science would have progressed further if religion wasn't there as an impediment. Sure, lots of breakthroughs took place when the Western world was a highly religious place, but that was not because of the religions but despite them. We would have come a lot further if religion wasn't there slowing us down. Today, free of the shackles of religion, science moves at breakneck speed. It's fantastic.

But this thread wasn't meant to lament how poorly science fared back in the old days, it was to point out that this tragedy is happening now, too, in many muslim countries. Not to the same extent perhaps, but enough so that 1.8 billion people are not pulling their weight when it comes to the greatest endavour of humankind: to expand our understanding of the natural world. That is a tragedy and it is happening right now. Where is our modern day equivalents to Hassan Ibn Al-Haitham, the founder of optics, Omar Khayyam (who measured the length of the solar year), Al-Battani (a great trigonometrist) or Al-Kvarismi from whom we own our numbers? The current islam world is NOT supportive of science, and just like in Medieveal Europe, any progress will come despite the effect of Islam and not because of it.

/thread.

[Len Cnut]

10 hours ago, Dazey said:

You're just taking complete nonsense. Your argument is basically that if something happens then in no way could it have been impeded by external forces. 

It's Ike sticking lead weights in a marathon runners pockets and then claiming that you were doing them a favour as long as they still cross the finish line. 

He makes perfect sense actually, you cant seriously guesstimate what would have occured in an entirely alternate reality cuz the applicable agents would not have been in place for shit to unfold as it did.  

[Lio]

37 minutes ago, Oldest Goat said:

I am astounded you are needing to explain this lol.

I have the feeling DD dislikes SoulMonster so much he just feels the need to argue with hem about anything.

The whole thing seems pretty straightforward to me too. Not a lot of controversy, I would think. Religious people who take their holy book as the ultimate truth and not as a book written by men for specific reasons centuries ago, don't mix well with science. If said people rule a country, of course science won't be supported.

I find it concerning. Not only this case of people arguing the world is flat (LOL, I can hardly believe I'm having to type this in 2017), but just as well the fact that people still teach kids that God made the world singlehandedly, a few thousand years back.

[DieselDaisy]

This place is full of rampant atheists!

 

[The Glow Inc.]

Not an atheist at all but I do find western islamophilia laughable sometimes.

I mean it took literally three posts for Soulmonster to be called a nazi because he dared making an observation about a religion.

Wtf...

[action]

i'm a believer, in that i believe in a creator. you can call that religion, but i'm not religious. I'm wary of any religion, be it catholicism, christianity, islam, judaism etc...

religion is just a means to control a large population of people (western europe in the middle ages, saudi arabia now etc). prevent the dumb masses to overthrow the system. "you're going to hell if you don't work for the landlord and vote catholic"

if religion doesn't work, they'll use tyrannicy to oppress the people (north korea, turkey, russia)

i like guns n roses, but i didnt join the fanclub (if you get my drift). cos you see, the fanclub may dictate me what i have to wear and if i can listen to nirvana, for example. a silly comparison, but it's kind of my point why i dislike religion.

there are people who think the earth is flat, in all cultures. there are scientists in all cultures. i really, really don't care if the muslim culture believes one or the other. i dont even care what my culture thinks, for the matter. I'm never alone cos i got myself, and i imitate myself all of the time.

Edited August 24, 2017 by action