M
Montalban
Guest
Does anyone know of some good titles that debunk the notion that Islam gave science back to the West?
I’ve only found some stuff on the web.
I’ve only found some stuff on the web.
- Status
L
Lepanto
Guest
“How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization” by Thomas Woods.
“Thr Politically-Incorrect Guide to Science”
And many books by Robert Spencer.
M
Montalban
Guest
Excellent, thanks!
From what I’ve read on-line many of the so-called Moslem scientists were in fact Jews or Assyrians. And other Moselms objects of culture, such as Omar Khayaam were hated by Islam
D
Dirk_Skene
Guest
I’ll be the last one to defend that false religon, but they did have good medical & astronomical research going on at a time when the west had slowed in both areas.
L
Lepanto
Guest
The Chinese and Meso-Americans, among others had “advanced” science at one point, but little of it bore any fruit to the present day. It is not an accident that modern science comes out of the Catholic tradition.
G
Greg27
Guest
Islamic civilisation did in fact make substantial progress in science, philosophy and theology roughly between the 8th century of our era and the 13th century A.D. After this progress in these fields slowed down a great deal due to several factors, including a more rigid religious line of orthodoxy as well as catastrophes such as the Mongol Invasions, which destroyed many key Muslim cities and universities (the House of Wisdom in Baghdad for example, which was the Islamic equivalent of Oxford or Harvard today, was destroyed in the Mongol Conquest of that city). The leaders then became the West, after the West recovered from the plagues and upheavals in the 14th century.
The West’s triumph in science and technology because of the Industrial Revolution can’t be attributed to religion, at least in whole. In fact, religion held back science in a number of ways (for example in the actions of the Inquisition towards scientists like Galileo), and still is retarding the progress of science today even as we speak (for example the fundamentalist Christian movement against Earth science, biology, cosmology and astronomy which contradicts a certain reading of the Bible). Religion though also helped the progress of science, especially through the founding of universities and monastaries dedicated to preserving ancient learning and discovering new things about the world, the notion the universe was God’s handiwork and expressed wisdom and a path to God, and also in the curiosity fostered by the search for truth in an eternal sense. However the breakthroughs of the scientific revolution are a combination of historical accident, good fortune, and critical precursors which lay in several other world civilisations, but the West reached first of all (India, the Islamic world, and China could have beaten us to it had several chance factors and precurors been different.)
The West’s triumph in science and technology because of the Industrial Revolution can’t be attributed to religion, at least in whole. In fact, religion held back science in a number of ways (for example in the actions of the Inquisition towards scientists like Galileo), and still is retarding the progress of science today even as we speak (for example the fundamentalist Christian movement against Earth science, biology, cosmology and astronomy which contradicts a certain reading of the Bible). Religion though also helped the progress of science, especially through the founding of universities and monastaries dedicated to preserving ancient learning and discovering new things about the world, the notion the universe was God’s handiwork and expressed wisdom and a path to God, and also in the curiosity fostered by the search for truth in an eternal sense. However the breakthroughs of the scientific revolution are a combination of historical accident, good fortune, and critical precursors which lay in several other world civilisations, but the West reached first of all (India, the Islamic world, and China could have beaten us to it had several chance factors and precurors been different.)
M
Montalban
Guest
How did Islam pass this knowledge onto us before the Mongol Invasions?
The west recovered due to religion. The search to find God in the universe lead to a great many science breakthroughs. Newton is a great example of someone seeking to understand the laws God put into place. Actually you touch upon this below…
Gailieo was forbidden from teaching per se
Galileo
Under the sentence of imprisonment Galileo remained till his death in 1642. It is, however, untrue to speak of him as in any proper sense a “prisoner”. As his Protestant biographer, von Gebler, tells us, “One glance at the truest historical source for the famous trial, would convince any one that Galileo spent altogether twenty-two days in the buildings of the Holy Office (i.e. the Inquisition), and even then not in a prison cell with barred windows, but in the handsome and commodious apartment of an official of the Inquisition.” For the rest, he was allowed to use as his places of confinement the houses of friends, always comfortable and usually luxurious. It is wholly untrue that he was… either tortured or blinded by his persecutors – though in 1637, five years before his death, he became totally blind – or that he was refused burial in consecrated ground. On the contrary, although the pope (Urban VIII) did not allow a monument to be erected over his tomb, he sent his special blessing to the dying man, who was interred not only in consecrated ground, but within the church of Santa Croce at Florence.
newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm
And here’s another…
Bruno
In the spring of 1599, the trial was begun before a commission of the Roman Inquisition, and, after the accused had been granted several terms of respite in which to retract his errors, he was finally condemned (January, 1600), handed over to the secular power (8 February), and burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome (17 February). Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skilful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.
newadvent.org/cathen/03016a.htm
Which is to go against your previous position
Which is the case still!
Explain why China or India didn’t ‘make it’
C
Contarini
Guest
Contacts in Spain and Sicily led to Aristotle’s philosophy and other material being translated into Latin.
Edwin
D
Dirk_Skene
Guest
A
Abraxsis
Guest
I hate ever having to defend Islam but in the Dark Ages Muslim countries were far more advanced. Medicine, math, and science were all furthered because of Islam. We still use Algebra which was discovered by them and we even use the numbers (Arabic numerals), and a decimal system for all our mathmatics.The problem is Islam never advanced beyond the 8th century. But back then they gave the world a lot as far as science goes.
M
Montalban
Guest
They weren’t “Arabic numbers” but Indian - the Arabs got ‘zero’ from India.
The symbols for 1 to 9 in the Hindu-Arabic numeral system evolved from the Brahmi numeral
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numbers#Origins
They were a bit like the Japanese now in taking ideas from everyone else. This is not to say that they contributed nothing
M
Montalban
Guest
“What was valued in the {Assyrian} community was religion - Christianity from early in the first century forward. The apparent goal of literacy and knowledge became the perpetuation and expansion of the faith. An exception was the knowledge and copying of Greek scientific texts which became the basis for Islamic science through Syriac translation, and by Syriac-speaking Christians.”
nineveh.com/AssyriansSyriansandSyriacNotesandHistoricalFacts.html
nineveh.com/AssyriansSyriansandSyriacNotesandHistoricalFacts.html
M
Montalban
Guest
-Many Muslims boast about the golden age of Islam when they ruled a vast part of the world, but actually this was due as noted above by other influences and not the religion of Islam. The religion of Islam only influenced the conquering and killing of people and spreading the religion all over the world. Once conquered, the influence of other cultures and sciences influenced the Arabs. Warraq writes: "We might distinguish three Islam’s: Islam 1, Islam 2, and Islam 3. Islam 1 is what the prophet taught, that is, his teachings as contained in the Koran. Islam 2 is the religion as expounded, interpreted, and developed by the theologians through the traditions (Hadith); it includes the sharia and Islamic law. Islam 3 is what Muslims actually did do and achieved, that is to say Islamic civilization.
“If any general thesis emerges in this book it is that Islam 3, Islamic civilization, often reached magnificent heights DESPITE Islam 1 and Islam 2, and NOT because of them. Islamic philosophy…science…literature, and Islamic art would not have attained those heights had they rested on Islam 1 and Islam 2. Take poetry for example. At least early on, Muhammad despised the poets: ‘Those who go astray follow the poets’ (sura 26:224)…As for Islamic art, the Dictionary of Islam (DOI) says, Muhammad cursed the painter or the drawer of men and animals (Mishkat, 7, ch. 1, pt. 1), and consequently they are held to be unlawful…the Hadiths are full of condemnation for ‘makers of figured pictures,’ who are called the ‘worst of men.’…Mercifully contact with older civilizations with rich artistic traditions induced converted Muslims to flout the orthodox position, and was responsible for such masterpieces of representational art…Thus the creative impulse underlying Islamic art…philosophy…science and …literature came from outside Islam 1 and Islam 2 from contact with older civilizations with a richer heritage…[these] were totally lacking in Arabia…Without Byzantine art and Sussanian art there would have been no Islamic art, Islam 1 and 2 were hostile to its development. Similarly without the influence of Greek art and science there would not have been Islamic art and science, for Islam 1 and 2 were certainly ill-disposed to these ‘foreign sciences.’ For the orthodox, Islamic philosophy was a contradiction in terms, and Islamic science futile…Some of the greatest representatives in these fields, or those who played a crucial role in their development were either non-Muslim or actually hostile to some or even all of the tenets of Islam 1 and 2” (Why I am not a Muslim, pp.1-02, emphasis added)
british-israel.ca/Islam.htm
“If any general thesis emerges in this book it is that Islam 3, Islamic civilization, often reached magnificent heights DESPITE Islam 1 and Islam 2, and NOT because of them. Islamic philosophy…science…literature, and Islamic art would not have attained those heights had they rested on Islam 1 and Islam 2. Take poetry for example. At least early on, Muhammad despised the poets: ‘Those who go astray follow the poets’ (sura 26:224)…As for Islamic art, the Dictionary of Islam (DOI) says, Muhammad cursed the painter or the drawer of men and animals (Mishkat, 7, ch. 1, pt. 1), and consequently they are held to be unlawful…the Hadiths are full of condemnation for ‘makers of figured pictures,’ who are called the ‘worst of men.’…Mercifully contact with older civilizations with rich artistic traditions induced converted Muslims to flout the orthodox position, and was responsible for such masterpieces of representational art…Thus the creative impulse underlying Islamic art…philosophy…science and …literature came from outside Islam 1 and Islam 2 from contact with older civilizations with a richer heritage…[these] were totally lacking in Arabia…Without Byzantine art and Sussanian art there would have been no Islamic art, Islam 1 and 2 were hostile to its development. Similarly without the influence of Greek art and science there would not have been Islamic art and science, for Islam 1 and 2 were certainly ill-disposed to these ‘foreign sciences.’ For the orthodox, Islamic philosophy was a contradiction in terms, and Islamic science futile…Some of the greatest representatives in these fields, or those who played a crucial role in their development were either non-Muslim or actually hostile to some or even all of the tenets of Islam 1 and 2” (Why I am not a Muslim, pp.1-02, emphasis added)
british-israel.ca/Islam.htm
C
Charlie_Zeaiter
Guest
There was a debate regarding the Qur’an and science: Nadir Ahmed vs. Denis Giron
examinethetruth.com/ahmed-giron.htm
examinethetruth.com/ahmed-giron.htm
M
Montalban
Guest
many many thanks:thumbsup:
- Status