Ethnocentric racism ...
or ... eating camel instead of turkey on Thanksgiving makes them incredibly belligerent and very, very stupid.
Posted on 12/27/2008 1:47:44 PM PST by WesternCulture
- And so many Christian ones?
The institution of the Nobel Prize is one of the few things that's just as big outside Scandinavia as it is within the old land of the Vikings.
(There will probably never be a McLutefisk, I guess..)
In similarity with most members of this forum, I don't think people like Al Gore belong in the company of (other Nobel laureates) like Einstein, Fermi, Wałęsa, Hemingway, Marconi, Bohr, and Churchill.
The older and wiser I have become, the more I've realized we Europeans often look up to the wrong kind of Americans (- but we Europeans are, slowly, beginning to understand what a great American Reagan was for instance).
We Europeans pride ourselves with being the best educated continent on Earth, but I fear we are not exactly the most clearsighted inhabitants of the planet.
However, even though especially The Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature have become something of a (bad) joke in later years, I consider the Nobel Prize as such to be a noble/Nobel expression of the human spirit of progress, discovery and improvement.
Alfred Nobel was a unique man. 355 worldwide patents and establishing an institution that is widely regarded as an authority that actually defines "greatness of mind" rather speak for themselves.
But back to the issue of Muslim Nobel laurates.
Why are there so few of them?
Hardly because the Nobel Foundation is politically incorrect.
The Nobel Foundation is one of the most PI institutions of the most PI country (Sweden - my country) in the most PI part of the world (Scandinavia). Even Norwegians and Danes often find Swedish PI attempts at denying reality for the sake of "neutrality" laughable, if not sickening.
Don't get me wrong, I love my country, but I hate political corectness for the sake of political correctness itself.
Islam is not about tolerance and political corectness, so there's no reason to treat it in a diplomatic fashion from a Western point of view.
Islam is a "religion" that keeps scores of people of underdeveloped parts of the world in an iron grip - not by merely accepting barbarism, but even more so by PROMOTING it!
It is true that Muslim scholars aided Western Civilization in rediscovering (Classical Roman and Greek) Antiquity some 500 years ago during the Renaissance, but apart from that, Islam has contributed very little to true civilization.
The world of Islam is definitely not a homogeneous one. But there must be some reason why it, evidently, is so hard to foster great minds as well as true democracy in Muslim countries.
It's not a question of economical resources.
India is very poor compared to the West but has remained a democracy for decades.
Saudi Arabia is rich, Muslim, anti-democratic and boasts thousands upon thousands of dollar millionaires who wear tons of gold but can't sign the cheques they write by themselves (simply because of illiteracy/analphabetism).
In order to understand why Christianity ever since the Renaissance, in similarity with Roman and (especially) Greek Antiquity, has produced so much of genuine progress and innovation, one has to look to the image of man in these societal and cultural contexts.
During the Renaissance, (educated) Westerners rediscovered the cocky, seemingly blasphemous, although fruitful idea of "challenging" God. A great Renaissance intellectual like Pico della Mirandola even claimed Man to be at the very centre of creation even though God, so to say, encompassed the whole Universe.
In my eyes, this is not about blasphemy at all. The idea Pico della Mirandola and many other true geniuses have nurtured is that of a God who loves Man so much he has even bestowed him with a free will and freedom of choice.
In 1486 Pico della Mirandola wrote:
"We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very centre of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine."
(From "Oration on the Dignity of Man")
In fact, these words were even written as a response to the fact that Muslim scholars, according to Pico della Mirandola, had FAILED to define in what WAY the human soul actually is godlike, even though these Muslims acknowledged the idea of Man being created "Imagio Dei" - in God's image.
Why are there so few Muslim Nobel Laurates?
A major reason is that Islam as a culture simply does not allow human beings to fully develop as human beings.
Related:
http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2008/05/muslim_nobel_prize_winner_ahmed_hassan_zewail.html
http://www.plancksconstant.org/blog1/2006/03/how_many_muslims_have_won_nobe.html
There is no prize category for “beheading”.
No prize for best suicide bomber either...
Correction:
I wrote “The Nobel Foundation is one of the most PI institutions “ and so on. Naturally, I meant PC and not PI.
Sorry..
Bah the Byzantines preserved as much or more as those saracens did.
The Koran is the perfect book. Any other book, or study, takes away from Allah.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
That’s the ticket.... They need to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden.
Because they are too busy buggering their family members, sometimes extending as far outside the home to their cousins.
“That’s the ticket.... They need to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden.”
- Arafat received one, so why not?
“That’s the ticket.... They need to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden.”
- Arafat received one, so why not?
Everything scientific was created by Muslims. They don’t need no stinkin prize.
WRONG! Challenge God? Hardly!
Christians believe that God is rational and that His creations are rational. It is not only the right, but **duty**, of the Christian to understand the mind of God and the order and workings of His creations.
Also...Christians believe that all men are equal before God. If equal before God, then Christianity demands tha all men be equal before the law.
It is these concepts ( a rational God, and equality before the law) that laid the foundation for the flowering of scientific discovery and a civilization in which men have the freedom to create wealth and health for all to enjoy.
Not a problem.
Muslims are maximizing use of Nobel’s prime invention.
Dynamite!
Not entirely correct.
People that Muslisms conquered and forced into Islam preserved these Antiquities. That these Greek and Roman writings were preserved was entirely due to the persistence of their pre-Islam cultural values.
Ethnocentric racism ...
or ... eating camel instead of turkey on Thanksgiving makes them incredibly belligerent and very, very stupid.
Yep.
Two pages for each wipe-o-the-arse.
Better than any Sears catalog.
I think he meant to say PC....
Read “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray or “IQ and the Wealth of Nations” by Richard Lynn and Vanhannen.
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