(no subject)
Nov. 9th, 2004 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taratemimaPart of the beginning of the end of scientific innovation in the Islamic world (excluding individual achievements) was religious reformers seeking to oust leaders they saw as heretics and bring Islam as it was practiced by the Mohammad and his followers.
Here is the pertinent quotation from Cecil Adams explaining it better than me:
By the 18th century it was clear that the Ottomans (and the Muslim world in general) were in decline. The Islamic response was to turn inward. Reformist Muslim sects argued for a return to tradition, and what had once been a tolerant religion grew more and more conservative and xenophobic. European colonization of Muslim lands in the 19th century increased resentment of the West, which in turn contributed to Muslim isolationism in the postcolonial era. By the time oil was discovered it was too late--Muslim (and particularly Arab) countries lacked the ability to exploit their own wealth and had to rely on Europeans to do it for them. Oil money enabled small elites to become Westernized, but despite a sharp increase in literacy in the past few decades, it's fair to say that in many countries the Islamic masses remain comparatively backward and ignorant.
All of which is an object lesson, I guess. What did our Muslim brothers do wrong? Nothing. They just stopped doing a lot of the stuff they'd gotten right, and the world passed them by.
(from http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030606.html)
I am wondering if I am seeing a similar beginning of the end in America, with "values," contraception not being mentioned in sex education, and even biology books mentioning evolution coming with warnings, and all. Being part of those evil blue states, some of them have biotech research, I worry.
I find myself in the weird position of someone who was raised Catholic and saw nothing wrong with the theory of evolution, as, well, the theory that best fitted the vast amount of physical data out there. Perhaps because I am comfortable with the idea of allegory and not everything needing to be literal to be true. It is just weird that the message that everything was created 'good' and the price of free will being bent to make it 'OMG the earth must be created in 7 days 6000 years ago or the Bible is never true and there will be raping, killing and kicking of puppies!11111!'
"Intelligent design?' Well, it's not the idea that the universe was created for a purpose that I object to, it's that automatically, the purpose is still being shoe-horned into the creation story in the Bible, or some understanding of that story. If I set out to prove that the earth resembles the body of a large lizard, proving that Marduk did destroy Tiamiat to create the eart, how seriously will people take me? Speaking of Islam, how much work is being done to prove that human beings are made of the same substance as dust (OK, technically, carbon is in both substances)?
I look at the effects of beliefs in the physical world (OH NOES reality-based!). The idea that the earth was created 'good' brings about good things. The idea that creation must fit a very tight pattern as opposed to generalizing of the process from available evidence--I think it leads to curiosity being killed off. I think it makes both science and religion static.
Here is the pertinent quotation from Cecil Adams explaining it better than me:
By the 18th century it was clear that the Ottomans (and the Muslim world in general) were in decline. The Islamic response was to turn inward. Reformist Muslim sects argued for a return to tradition, and what had once been a tolerant religion grew more and more conservative and xenophobic. European colonization of Muslim lands in the 19th century increased resentment of the West, which in turn contributed to Muslim isolationism in the postcolonial era. By the time oil was discovered it was too late--Muslim (and particularly Arab) countries lacked the ability to exploit their own wealth and had to rely on Europeans to do it for them. Oil money enabled small elites to become Westernized, but despite a sharp increase in literacy in the past few decades, it's fair to say that in many countries the Islamic masses remain comparatively backward and ignorant.
All of which is an object lesson, I guess. What did our Muslim brothers do wrong? Nothing. They just stopped doing a lot of the stuff they'd gotten right, and the world passed them by.
(from http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030606.html)
I am wondering if I am seeing a similar beginning of the end in America, with "values," contraception not being mentioned in sex education, and even biology books mentioning evolution coming with warnings, and all. Being part of those evil blue states, some of them have biotech research, I worry.
I find myself in the weird position of someone who was raised Catholic and saw nothing wrong with the theory of evolution, as, well, the theory that best fitted the vast amount of physical data out there. Perhaps because I am comfortable with the idea of allegory and not everything needing to be literal to be true. It is just weird that the message that everything was created 'good' and the price of free will being bent to make it 'OMG the earth must be created in 7 days 6000 years ago or the Bible is never true and there will be raping, killing and kicking of puppies!11111!'
"Intelligent design?' Well, it's not the idea that the universe was created for a purpose that I object to, it's that automatically, the purpose is still being shoe-horned into the creation story in the Bible, or some understanding of that story. If I set out to prove that the earth resembles the body of a large lizard, proving that Marduk did destroy Tiamiat to create the eart, how seriously will people take me? Speaking of Islam, how much work is being done to prove that human beings are made of the same substance as dust (OK, technically, carbon is in both substances)?
I look at the effects of beliefs in the physical world (OH NOES reality-based!). The idea that the earth was created 'good' brings about good things. The idea that creation must fit a very tight pattern as opposed to generalizing of the process from available evidence--I think it leads to curiosity being killed off. I think it makes both science and religion static.
