Did Early Islam Promote Science?

Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | 12/16/2004 | Creation-Evolution Headlines

[Publius6961]

< ahem >

He did say through. Which is accurate. A slick trick by the muslim apologists...

[risk]

The Founding Fathers were mostly Christian but not all. Their ideas about liberty were more eclectic than Christian in particular, despite what your televangelists will say. (Historic revisionism works both ways!) Benjamin Franklin is one of the more notorious Deists, and George Washington supported Thomas Paine after he wrote Age of Reason.

[Publius6961]

Zero came from the Mayans

Quite a trick, since the zero was used by the rest of the scientific world for almost a milenium before anyone else knew that Mayans existed.
But thank you for playing.

[BullDog108]

He did say through. Which is accurate.

Though to who? Not me. I received it from the source. ;^)

[7.62 x 51mm]

"Islam is", Khataw preaches, "a peaceful religion that is focused on charity and goodwill toward others."

~ and ~

"Not to mention that Islam came to save humanity from ignorance and oppression. Islam is not a threat to any society. Islam calls for harmony and peaceful co-existence with other religions. It does not permit aggression, violence, injustice, or oppression. At the same time, it calls to morality, justice, tolerance, and peace."

Ummmm, no; no it's not. I won't go into *what it is*, as I'd probably get in trouble... aw, what the heck:

Islam, The Cult of Murder™.

Islam, The Cult of Terror™.

Islam, The Cult of Boy-Buggering™.

Islam, The Cult of Women-Chattelling™.

Islam, The Cult of Horror™.

Islam, The Cult of Rape™.

Islam, The Cult of Ritual Killing™.

Islam, The Cult of Beheading™.

Islam, The Cult of Deviants™.

Islam, The Cult of Hate™.

Islam, The Cult of Lies™.

Islam, The Cult of Female Mutilation™.

Islam, The Cult of Death™.

Islam, The Cult of Christian & Jew Killing™.

Islam, The Cult of Infidel Murder™.

Islam, The Cult of The Mentally-Ill™.

Islam, the Cult of Evil™.

Islam, the Cult of Poverty™.

Islam, the Cult of Illiteracy™.

Islam, the Religion of Peace™, and THEY'LL KILL YOU TO PROVE IT!

[JCBurton]

The Islamic world acted as the west's library during the dark ages yet did alomst nothing with that knowledge themselves.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Excellent book. I had hoped he would do a sequel.

I'm not sure most people (especially in the West) get the devastation caused by the Mongols, especially in TransOxonia.

[bondserv]

I won't even recognize them as human!

I know some former Muslims who have responded to the Gospel and become Children of God. Many are hungry for the truth. Much of our personal failing lies in the fact that we haven't been persuasive in that area of the world. I believe Bush's main agenda is to change that.

The American people are becoming more fed up with the Liberal influence projecting from our Universities and Hollywood. We must continue to persuade those of the truth, no matter how evil their systems are.

Islam's biggest evil is that it diverts people from the truth by using half truths mixed with outright lies regarding God. Any belief system that is absent the veritably Almighty God of the Old and New Testament's, can only lead to destruction.

Thanks for your comments and I agree evil needs to be despised.

[bondserv]

Excellent book. I had hoped he would do a sequel.

I am hoping one of his children puts together his manuscripts and completes the sequel. I had read that he was working on it when he died.

I'm not sure most people (especially in the West) get the devastation caused by the Mongol's, especially in TransOxonia.

My wife is from Romania (moved to California when she was 7); so I have had the Romanian perspective on the Mongols, from her Dad and Uncles. The Islamic extremists seem to have adopted many of the Mongols methods.

[alloysteel]

Islam was founded on an earlier religion in the readion, Zoroastrianism, a monotheistic religion that was the state religion of Persia, and dates back to several centuries before Christ. This religion survives in much diminished numbers in India today, but all the historic records of high learning were created in the days when this religion was ascendent. The three wise men, the Magi, traveled from the East bearing gifts, and almost certainly they were of this practice.

The Qu'ran was written by a hothead reactionary, and was the equivalent in its day of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Like Luddites, the Islamic movement was determined to smash the existing culture and centers of learning, and are at base very anti-intellectual. The Zoroastrianists were driven out, and what few remained in Persia and Mesopotamia expired when the hordes of Genghis Khan swept in out of the east. As is known today, this probably forged for all time the determination of the jihadists of Islam to take no prisoners, the only choice offered is convert or die.

[fastattacksailor]

SURE it does!

The science of making explosives---and detonating them.

[agere_contra]

I'm not sure most people (especially in the West) get the devastation caused by the Mongols

True. The destruction of the Hordes changed the psyche of Russia, China, Japan and Mesopotamia for ever. Western Europe got off unscathed, but the Caliph of Baghdad got trampled to death by about a thousand horsemen, didn't he?

[conserv13]

Another Islamic invention is distilled alcohol.

Beer and wine have been around forever, but it was Islamic chemists who first distilled pure alcohol.

[NathanR]

In the fifteenth century, the Islamic world shrank under military pressure from western Europe – the last Muslim forces were forced out of Spain in 1492, the year Christopher Columbus reached America. By this time, the European Renaissance was under way and Islamic knowledge was sucked up by powers on the rise, such as Spain and France.

This guy has quite a different view of the Islamic world than I do. What of the final conquest of Constantinople during the same time period. Much of Greek science came from them, not the Arabs. In fact, what Greek science the Arabs got, they got from the conquest of the Roman (Byzantine) empire over the centuries.

[alloysteel]

"Al cohol", the spirit of life, is itself a word taken for Arabic. Like "al kali" the ashes, the source of potassium, which has the chemical symbol K (from "kalium", the Latin form of the Arabic word).

[Cicero]

Oh, yes. We have a slanted picture of the middle ages. But once you read Thorndike, it becomes pretty clear.

Take the water mill. The Romans knew about it, but never did anything with it. During the middle ages, the water mill was used to power all sorts of machinery, including most familiarly to grind flour for bread. If you read Homer, you'll find references to 50 slave women grinding bread in the palace, using mortars and pestles. Basically, the water mill made it possible to gradually do away with slavery in the Christian west.

Until the development of the steam engine, the water mill powered all industrial development in the West. We have a 19th century sawmill across the road from us in Vermont which was powered by a water mill, as just one example. Water mills were used in the middle ages to full cloth, make horseshoe nails, and for all sorts of labor saving purposes.

Interestingly, much of this development took place in Cistercian monasteries. Similarly printing appeared at about the same time as the Reformation, but significantly it appeared in a monastery.

[jpsb]

Islam conquered the dirt own by three of the greatest civilization of the ancient world. Hellenistic Greece/Eastern Roman Empire, Perisa and Egypt. They also conquered much of ancient India, another of the worlds great civilizations. The only great civilization that escaped Islamic conquest was China. Now having the benefit of almost the entire learning of the ancient world for many centuries, what did Islam contribute? NOTHING! Not a damn thing. Now what would those civilizations have contributed were they not slaughtered by Islam? We will never know but it sure would be a hell of alot more then NOTHING.

[bowzer313]

"...The value of zero was first conceived in Ancient India. From there it went to Greece..."

According to "Mathematics for the Millions", the classic historical work by Oxford don Lawrence Hogben, the Greeks knew of the concept of zero, which was a Hindu development, but discounted its logical validity. The Greeks' tremendous mathematical achievements (primarily in Geometry) were thus accomplished using a number system that never included the use of zero in any description or calculation. And the Greeks were the first to use the "stones" in calculating machines. In fact, the term "Calculus" refers to the "stones", as in "hard".

Everything the Arabs claim for themselves was ripped off from the victims of their savagery. Including their bogus claims of scientific contributions.

[RightWhale]

Arabic for some of it, but Persian for some of the best.

[Publius6961]

BUMP!