Posted on 08/08/2013 9:43:35 PM PDT by Kip Russell
Richard Dawkins has been forced to defend controversial comments he made online after saying the last time Muslims contributed something worthwhile was during the Middle Ages.
Prof Dawkins, the bestselling author of The God Delusion, wrote on Twitter that all the world's Muslims had won fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. He went on to argue that although Muslims were responsible for many achievements during the Dark Ages, including alchemy and algebra, their contribution since then was questionable.
His comments sparked outrage from many high-profile writers and journalists including author Caitlin Moran and Channel 4 News Economics Editor Faisal Islam.
Moran tweeted: "it's time someone turned Richard Dawkins off and then on again. Something's gone weird." Writing on Twitter on Thursday, Prof Dawkins said: "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."
While in response to another Twitter user who wrote that Muslims were responsible for alchemy and algebra, he replied: "Indeed, where would we be without alchemy? Dark Age achievements undoubted. But since then?"
He later tried to justify his comments by saying he talked about the number of Muslim prize winners because we often hear "boasts about their total numbers".
He wrote: "Why mention Muslim Nobels rather than any other group? Because we so often hear boasts about (a) their total numbers and (b) their science."
He added: "A statement of simple fact is not bigotry".
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Regarding “journalists” - watch an old movie from the 30’s or 40’s, and you’ll recall how journalists used to be viewed - not as “professionals,” but as excitable, boorish, mid-brow, boozing, cigar-chomping scribblers who were basically making a living off of skills they learned in the fifth grade.
But, but, but just think about all their contributions to astronomy!
Good to see an atheist actually take a shot at the folks that would decapitate him for being an atheist.
Lets not forget what Pastor Niemoller said about “first they came for” and “I did nothing”..........
EVERYBODY’S FREEDOM IS EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS
Dawkins should not be demonized for speaking his mind although I disagree with much of what he says.
I believe in freedom of speech for all and it is under attack right now. I don’t if Dawkins would defend my freedom to disagree with his views but I want to demonstrate my belief in his freedom to speak.
Silence is not an option in this situation.
“Muslims STOLE algebra, they didn’t invent it.”
That’s absolutely the message I got from my Indian students in my high school classes. One gave me an essay she had written proving the case. But I’ve lost it.
Journalism used to be a trade.
Now, it's a profession. And is the worse for it.
Jews, Arabs, Nobel Prize
The Global Islamic population is approximately 2,000,000,000 or 33% of
the world’s population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1990 - Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
Economics: (zero)
Physics: (zero)
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad
TOTAL: SEVEN
HOWEVER:
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000, or about 0.02% of the world’s population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pa sternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phil lips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Joseph son
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Mil ton Friedman
1978 - Herb ert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1 990 - Merton Miller
199220- Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herb ert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abra ham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Ed elman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Ed ward B. Lewis
TOTAL: 129
The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training
camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths
of Jews and other non Muslims!
The Jews don’t hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow
themselves upin German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew that
has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew that protests by
killing people.
The Jews don’t traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and
death to all the Infidels.
Perhaps the world’s Muslims should consider investing more in standard
education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
Muslims must ask ‘what can they do for humankind’ before they demand
that humankind respects them!!
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the
Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more
culpability on Israel ‘s part, the following two sentences really say it
all:
‘If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more
violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel’ -Benjamin Netanyahu
Even in the middle ages many of the accomplishments of Islamic “scientist” were done by non-Muslims living in Muslim lands.
If you actually look at what practicing Muslims achieved not what non-Muslims living in Muslim lands did the list gets very short indeed
And it's just the same thing between blacks and whites.
Good one: +1
“There is not one Jew that protests by killing people.”
Read up on the Stern gang and the Irgun. They conducted the terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel - killing 91 civilians and soldiers, hung a captured British soldier and buried a land mine under his hanging body to kill whoever cut him down and massacred 100+ inhabitants of an Arab village - Dayr Yasin.
Nobel Prizes?
Look at the list of people (critters) who have received them. That is a questionable index of brilliance.
Didn’t Yassar Arafat win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Thanks for that info!
ping
what did Dawkins have to say about Allah?
(crickets)
He’d better get some track shoes, errr
He’d better turbocharge that chair. He’s gonna be wheeling for his life.
And He’s correct as to the Muslims. They are the stuck in the Middle Ages.
Dawkins may want to remember Theo Van Gogh at this point
Amen
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.