Islam and science - continued

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball: The fact that I put "natural" in quotes is indicative of the fact that I am not enthused with the conceptualization. The "naturalist" arguement is one used to authorize types of behaviour, as unavoidable inate charachteristics.

---

No it doesn’t authorize anything. The fact that rape, murder and cannibalism has occurred for millions of years does not authorize that behavior. Those who do not know history are bound to repeat the past. We do not avoid the study of history because we think that will justify committing the same atrocities of the past and consider those unavoidable.

quote:

---

Read this in the context of much of the sociobiological anthropological work of the 60's and 70's that I directly referred to prior in this thread, such as Lionel Tiger, whose work was used to assert the "natural" (and therefore innate) social order among primates to justify patriarchy.

---

Yes, in any field there are some ass-bags like Lionel Tiger (who was an anthropologist and economist, not a sociobiologist anyways). So what? Any field will have those from the far right and those from the far left. Those who are bigots, racists, sexists etc and those who are not. For instance, while the rightwing sexist Tiger was as far as I am concerned a bit player, one the strongest influences on the field at that time and since was Robert Trivers (along with W. D. Hamilton and later E. O. Wilson, the well known environmentalist and humanist, and Richard Dawkins a social democrat and humanist) who was from the radical left, wrote about reciprocal altruism, was a member of the Black Panthers and a very close friend of Black Panthers leader Huey Newton.

Anyways, study what is the natural state among the animal kingdom for a while and you not think that it something to strive towards. When a male lemur for instance overtakes the dominant male of a group he kills all of the young, this brings the females back into heat within a day or two so that she can be impregnated by the new dominant male. So, the fact that baboons live in patriarchal societies to me doesn't indicate that we should, in fact to me it indicates the opposite.

quote:

---

We agree, yes, that anthropolgists assert their own culturally imbued understanding upon that which they study and that the "object" of study is never free of the "objectifiers" world view. But simply reframing this by saying that partiarchal and matriarchal social structures can be the naturally evolved "norm" is not to confront the issue that the applied norm is most often one set in the partiarchal frame.

---

I will be honest, I don’t care if the more often applied norm in the animal kingdom is a patriarchal one. Nor do I care if we evolved in a patriarchal society, although understanding our evolution allows us to understand much about ourselves. Simply put we are evolutionary creatures – physically, mentally, culturally etc. And there is no need, advantage or justification for our society, which has and is evolving, to be patriarchal. We still have a ways to go and stubborn patriarchy does still exist, but understanding how that patriarchy came to be does not justify its presence, in fact understanding where patriarchy came from and how it is no longer justified should lead to the ultimate death of it in mainstream society (and then hopefully on the fringes). We live in world which is rapidly evolving culturally. There is no evolutionary advantage and indeed hopefully a disadvantage towards those who have not evolved along the cultural lines (known as memes).

quote:

---

The idea that "natural" can be any existing social norm that flows from any set of biological factors, is reductionist and misses the point that "natural" as it is framed by people like Lionel Tiger, is meant as jusxtoposition against the what we might call the socially constructed reality. Anything can be construed as natural. So what? The distinction is being made between what is an innate, and therefore unchangeable social or biological proccess, against those that have conscious human intervention: the unatural.
If you are simply saying that any socially constructed realities are just a natural outcome of any given set of biological factors, you have deflected the point not met it, because that is not what Lionel Tiger is about. He is about reifying the "natural," as a reflection of the partriarchal norm.

---

I couldn’t care less what Lionel Tiger is about. If I rejected any field of study that could be used for ill by some people then I would have to reject all fields of study. I feel that Lionel Tiger is a very poor representation of current sociobiological thinking.

quote:

---

You may see different social structures in primate societies, he sees his own. This was the point. I suggest that your assertion that size is functional in determining a "natural" partriarchal state in Baboon society, is likely an assertion of exactly that kind of projection of patriarchal ideology upon a primate society, because, of course, "size" is really only functional as a tool in violent assertion of power in intraspecies social discourse. What other conclusion can we come to other than the implication that intraspecies violence is the norm, and that patriarchy "naturally" flows from that "biological" trait, as an outcome of the concept that the advantage goes to the bigger parties ability to use superior force.

---

Actually I don’t think that Tiger and I see the social structures in primate societies differently. He sees baboons as a patriarchal society based on the total domination of a group of females by a powerful male. I agree. However humans (indeed all primates) have evolved in a completely different way since our last common ancestor with baboons and although I haven’t spent time in baboon society, my suspicion is that our societies are quite different.

quote:

---

The idea that body mass and strength are key to determining social superiority, are key concepts that justify patriarchal relations in human society, and you have just repeated them in a defence of sociolbiology wherein you claim it is "credited" not "discredited." I should say your arguement is an example of why sociobiology is in my mind, largely discredited because you have just imposed a human patriarchal conceptual mode, as a common sense deduction based on what you see.

---

There are basically three choices. God influences and/or determines our behavior. We are born a blank slate (which has been thoroughly discredited). Or we are influenced by our genes through the process of evolution – sociobiology (or evolutionary psychology as it is often called) which is a science – a newer science which often follows false leads but is slowly finding the most evidence based natural explanations to our mind. If sociobiology is as you say discredited then which of the other two do you pick? (although technically the evolution of a blank slate mind – which doesn’t exist in other animals – would have to be explained by sociobiology, so I guess that leaves “god.”)

quote:

---

I ask, if it is the case that it is "natural" for Baboon society to be extremely patriarchal because male Baboons are substantially larger than female Baboons, would you also say that it is "natural" for human society to be somewhat patriarchal, even if much less patriarchal than Baboon society, because human females are slightly smaller than human males?

---

Female bonobos are about 15% smaller than the males but that is not the case for them. Elephants are matriarchal despite the males also being slightly larger.

Even it was the case, the environment (I am refering to our communites and societies here) in which humans currently live is entirely different than the one in which we evolved. That which is best suited for survival in the past is often not best suited (sometimes least suited) for survival in the present. This is common sense. We can see how the male dominated cultures of the past are not well suited to the present environment. That doesn't mean that sociobiology has no use. It actually has lots of use. Understanding why our instincts are telling us something that is no longer appropriate is very useful in functioning appropriately to situations which are very different now from the past.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Trevormkidd ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by adam stratton:
[b]unionist,
...
Anyway, I make this comment because I have the impression that you are picking on the easiest target (i.e, in the societal, martial and mediadic context), or to use your own words you are in a "crusade".
[/b]

---

What's wrong with picking on the easiest target before moving to the more difficult ones?

quote:

---

Originally posted by adam stratton:
[QB]unionist,

We have been discussing Islam in at least three threads simultaneously.

You say you are against all religions; here you had the opportunity to diversify and bring us something from another Book, religion, cult or whatever.

---

Unionist has consistently done so on babble. Go back over the previous months and years and I think that you will find that he has not been picking solely on Islam.

quote:

---

or to use your own words you are in a "crusade".

---

When Unionist wrote crusade [sic], I believe the use of [sic] indicated irony, but I could be wrong.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Trevormkidd ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by adam stratton:
[b]unionist, And you are a member of the clique. All are equal but some are mor equal than others.[/b]

---

No he isn't, we had a meeting down at clique central, found him wanting in many areas, and turned down his application.

I will go a step further, in fact, human societies that are under direct external threat, seem also to follow the same patern, they become more hierarchical, and indeed more patriarchal, when under threat.

For example Sanizadeh, related in the last thread how it was that Islamic society turned inward after the Mongol conquest of the 13th century, a signature moment in the evolution of Muslim identity that has been well worked over by Muslim scholars ever since. It resonates even today, and not a few Muslims have pointed out that the recent occupation of Baghdad, is the first time that city has been conquered by a non-Muslim power since the Caliph was rolled into carpets, so as to prevent his royal blood from being shed on the earth, when he was trampled to death by Mongol horsemen.

I would say that the apperance of ovewhelming western imperial might as a direct threat to the Islamic domains of the Ottoman Empire, in the mid 19th century, put an end to what had been a modest but steady secularization and liberalization of Islamic society, in the post-crusades era.

I will also pose the idea that though Sanizadeh is right in asserting that there was philosophical and social closure in Muslim society after the Mongol invasions, and during the crusades (its interesting to note here that Papal authorities believed prior to Gheghis Khan's invasion of Russia and Hungary that the Mongols were actually an Nestorian Christian army come to aid the Christians in reconquering the Holy Land -- Weatherford), this does not prove that scientifc investigation is antithetical to core Islamic doctrine, and that relative to Judaism and Christianity it is far more open to such.

What we would call scientific knowledge is quite readily incorporated into the Qu'ran, for example there is a very detailed accounting of the growth of a fetus in the womb.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

That's a very strange rendering of Turkish history.

Ataturk's primary objective was ridding Anatolia, and the core regions of the Turkish inhabitation, of foreign armies. Officially annulling the power of the Sultan, had more to do with his irrelevance to the issue at hand, and the problems of having a bi-polar power one in Ankara, and one in Istanbul, wherein the Sultan was essentially a captive prince of the British of questionable loyalty, and resolve.

British power was keen on keeping the Sultan in power, in a state of vassalage, any hand they had in removing the autorcracy was purely co-incidental, and unintentional. They went through great efforts to protect the Ottomans against their European enemies throughout the 19th century, and they viewed the temporary allignment of the Ottomans with Germany as a direct result of the interference of the reformist CUP, of which Mustafa Kemal was a member.

Similarly and more succesfully, the British were fundamental to imposing the Salafist monarchy of the house of Saud upon the people of the Arabian peninsula. "Fundamentalist" Islam is in no small part a direct creation of "civilizing" forces of the "rationalist" fundamentalists.

The possibility that the rise of fundamentalist conceptualization in Islamic society is linked to the exposure of Islam to "modernist" rationalism, is speculative, true, but not impossible to believe.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Trevormkidd:

However in the case of elephants it doesn’t really contradict my “thesis.” [b]The adult males are solitary so they are not part of the society.[/b] Groups of elephants consists of adult females and young of both sexes. It is a matriarchy where hierarchy is important and the largest animals in the group are the leaders.

---

I assert that definitions such matriarchal, and patriarchal may simply not apply.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

I assert that definitions such matriarchal, and patriarchal may simply not apply.
Really? Mountain Gorillas have a very stable food source all around them and almost no predation (except man). Furthermore they live in harmonious groups. They must not live in a male dominated society. Oh, but guess what? They do.

---

I am not quite getting you here, its "harmonious" but male dominanted? Aside from the obvious question, how is "dominance" of one particular group over another "harmonious," this indicates a question of evidence, if it is harmonious, how was it established that anyone group, or gender, is dominant?

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Most of these reforms were underway in one form or another under the Sultanate. And in fact, the Ottoman state was increasingly "secularized" over the course of its history. The Ottoman coins indicated that the Sultan was the king of Mulslims, and the King of Orthodox Christians.

There in fact was an existing civil code, seperate from Sharia way before Attaturk came along, and it was constantly being expanded, and some of these attempts to expand the civil code were made on the order of the Sultan and promoted by the Porte.

Again, Islam is pretty unique, in comparison to Christian societies in terms of recongnizing the rights of religious minorities. Certainly, to not be a Muslim was not to ones advantage, but it was not a death sentence, as it was to be a Protestant, under Mary in England.

There is nothing particularly moral about this, but there is a strain of Mohammed's thought that is especially real-politik in the Qu'ran. In the 8th Century Mohammed and his Muslim followers imposed their rule on a huge population of ubelievers, and in fact up until the 10th century some scholars say that Muslim people only made up about 20% of the population of the entire empire. Reacting to this obvious demographic problem, Mohammed opted for a policy of reconciliation, and relative tollerance, as opposed to conversion and extermination, as a means to hold together the diverse population of the empire.

This policy as advised directly by the Qu'ran was quite closely followed by most of the Islamic societies that followed.

Attaturk, on the other hand adopted a secularist mode of ethnic nationalism that is fundamentally fascist, adopting a European mode of defining the Turkish state as a state for Turks. He precided over one of the largest ethnic cleansings in the post WW1 period, in the population exchange of the Greeks of Smyrna for the Turks of Thesalonki. It seems he did not participate in the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians, because he had duties elsewhere. There is nothing to indicate he ever opposed it.

I can't believe that you are suggesting that his prejudice against Arabs, and his removal of Arabic words and script from the Turkish dictionary was because it is the language of the Qu'ran. And that you think this is some kind progressive-secular reform. Are you saying that Arabic itself is Qu'ranic?

He has gone further than we in Canada, I see you are saying. Do you recommend that Arabic be banned here because it is Qu'ranic?

Furthermore that is not why he did it. It had nothing to do with religion. He did it because he fomenting and independent Turkish identity, free of Arabic influences. He did not ban the call to prayer, he banned the call to prayer [i]in Arabic[/i].

It has nothing to do with secularism, it is about racism.

Many of his anti-religious reforms, and particular his vision of how language would be used to instill ethnic Turkish nationalism, are tainted with extreme prejudice, not secularism. They removed any Arabic references from the official dictionary of the new Turkish language. Kurds were deemed to be not Kurdish, and Kurdish language was prohibited in official discourse. Kurds were not a distinct people, and everything was, and is still being done to squash the notion of an indepedent Kurdish identity.

Attaturk's legacy continues today, just recently they changed the names of several animals that are identified with Turkey's national minorities, such as the "Armenian Cat." Armenia and Armenians don't exist officially in Turkey so they changed the name of the cat.

I don't believe veil wearing was ever made mandatory by the sultanate -- Greek Orthdox Christian women were made to wear the veil you are saying? Sorry, your western prejudices are showing, as well as you suceptibility to negative stereotyping of Islamic society that is all the rage these days. What he did do was explicitly prevent women from making their own religious choices by banning it. This issue persists today, where women who express their religious conviction by wearing the Hijab are explicitly prevented from enjoying the rights that other women share.

He was more than happy to serve under the Sultan, as long as the Sultan expressed a Turkish national identity, and though he was anti-religious there is no doubt, his abolision of the Sultanate was as much a practical decision to do with the solidifcation of a unitary Turkish identity directed by his movement.

Furthermore, his commitment to "democracy" while he was in power, was pro-forma at best, and he routinely exiled his opponents, and members of the Turkish parliment when they opposed his will.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Surely, but no European society evolved a modern "secular" civil code over night. Even today, remnants of traditional Christian law permeates Canadian law. US coinage is authorized by god.

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanizadeh:
[b]As Cueball said, reform in Ottoman empire started in early 19th centuries under [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selim_III]Sultan Selim III[/url] and then[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_II] Mahmud II[/url]. However IMO their reforms were more similar to Russian empire's reforms at the same time. Those were primarily social reforms, not reformation of religious teachings per se.

I am not aware of any specific religious reform in Islam yet, something that could be compared to reform Judaism or certain protestant churches.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: sanizadeh ][/b]

---

Well the diffussion of power within Sunni Islam might have something to with that, as such movements would not have an identifiable center of propogation, but be more of an undercurrent of thought.

This is interesting:

quote:

---

Moaddel undertakes a historical comparative analysis of the shaping of Islamic and secular ideologies over the last 300 years from the seventeenth century to the second half of the twentieth century. Moaddel challenges a binary view that situates Islamic politics between the pursuit of a universal conception of Western modernity emerging from the Enlightenment, and a local counter-reactionary project to that modernity on the basis of a claim for cultural difference. The author also refutes explanations of 'Islamic fundamentalism' as an anti-imperialist political force directed against Western dominance in the Islamic world. Rather, Moaddel demonstrates that Islam has been politicised only during the second half of the twentieth century as a discourse of opposition, not to Western domination in the state system, but to the ideas, practices, and arbitrary political interventions of a westernizing secularist political elite. This elite has established ideologically uniform, repressive states which have imposed a Western model and outlook in Muslim societies by coercive means. Islamic fundamentalism thus emerged as a competing narrative contending for state power against a secularist discourse. Its goal was to seize state power through an Islamization of all aspects of life in a Muslim society.

[SNIP]

According to the author, the colonial diffusion of Western culture was instrumental in the emergence of a modernist version of Islam in the Arab Middle East and India. This is because Western cultural encroachments constituted a dynamic part in the shaping of a plural discursive context. The interactive plurality of discourses among the European Enlightenment, British westernizing discourse, colonial administrations, the proselytizing discourse of the Evangelicals, and the discourse of the orthodox Islamic establishment gave way to the formulation of Islamic modernism as a discourse of social change for these Muslim societies. The weakness of European cultural influences in Iran, on the other hand, explains the historical roots of conservatism in that country.

Proponents of Islamic modernism assume that Islam is perfectly compatible with the instrumental reason of modern science and technology. In order to counter Western dominance in the world economy and the state system, Muslims must first recognize the scientific and economic dynamism of Western societies. They must then reinterpret the Koran's meaning in such a way that Muslims can catch up with European levels of development. Despite the intensity of cultural encounters in the nineteenth-century consolidation of British hegemony, the author argues that the colonialization of Islamic societies did not give way to Islamic fundamentalism directed against Western dominance, but to Islamic modernism. Islamic modernism was an ideology of Muslim restructuring according to the Western progress ideal, one which accommodated the secularization thesis.

The author shows that Islamic fundamentalism is a recent and a historically unique phenomenon. It was a response to the formation and consolidation of a monolithic ideological environment by a state-ruling elite following independence from European colonial rule. The author sees its genesis in the solidification of a secularist state by means of the undemocratic coercive means of exclusion. Although the influence of Western domination of the Muslim world is examined extensively for the emergence of Islamic modernism in the nineteenth century, internal political dynamics alone are analyzed for the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism in the twentieth century, with little justification. The only explanation provided is that foreign domination of Muslim societies is absent and Western hegemony has declined during the second half of the twentieth century. Since these societies gained their political independence from colonial rule and then established national states, fundamentalism cannot be explained as an ideology of opposition to imperialism. This is a puzzling conclusion in that the hegemonic position of the United States in the reorganization of the world economy and the state system during the Cold War disappears from the analysis without notice.

---

[url=http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/islamicmodernism.html]Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Episode and Discourse[/url]

quote:

---

Originally posted by unionist:
[b]
Thanks, Cueball, for letting me know Ataturk was a "fascist", but I do believe it was still the holy Ottoman Empire that carried out the Armenian genocide. I'm sure that was contrary to the real Islamic doctrine, though.[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide]Source.[/url][/b]

---

Your understanding of the situation is obviously very cursory. And your summary amounts to disinformation.

The CUP, which was in fact the organization to which Kemal Attaturk was a founding member, was functionally in charge of the government, via a palace coup. These were the "Young Turks." Mustafa Kemal was not in the upper echelons of the leadership of the CUP, but was one of its earliest members, and a mid level leadership figure.

For example, he was made Ambassador to Bulgaria.

quote:

---

The Young Turks (Turkish: Jцn Tьrkler (plural), from French: Jeunes Turcs) were a coalition of various groups favoring reforming the administration of the Ottoman Empire. Through the Young Turk Revolution, their movement brought about the second constitutional era. In 1889, starting first among military students and then extending to other sections, the movement initiated against the monarchy of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Establishing officially, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in 1906, gaining most of the Young Turks, the movement built a rich tradition of dissent that shaped the intellectual, political and artistic life of the late Ottoman period (decline, dissolution).

The Three Pashas of the Young Turks ruled the Ottoman Empire from the Coup of 1913 until the end of World War I. The Young Turks are said to be responsible for orchestrating the Armenian Genocide.

---

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Union_and_Progress]Committee of Union and Progress[/url]

They were the first group of Turks to really assert European style secularist ideas in Ottoman life, and were hence known in the west as the "constitutionalists." I am sorry if this is begining to sound like the secularist modinizers were the architechts of the Armenians gocide, but that is the fact.

Yet again this is another instance where your chersished notions about secularizerization are proven to be naive, as can be seen in this instance it is they who are the force behind this particular gross human rights violations, contrary to the naive conceptions you are propogating.

quote:

---

Mustafa Kemal graduated as a lieutenant in 1905 and was assigned to the 5th Army based in Damascus. There he soon joined a small secret revolutionary society of reformist officers called "Motherland and Liberty" (Turkish: Vatan ve Hьrriyet) and became an active opponent to the regime of Abdьlhamid II. In 1907, he was promoted to the rank of captain and assigned to the 3rd Army in Manastır. During this period he joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).

In 1908, the Young Turk Revolution seized power from the then reigning Sultan Abdьlhamid II and Mustafa Kemal became a senior military figure. [b]As one of the first members of the CUP, he played a role in the revolution of 1908.[/b] However, in later years he became known for his opposition to, and frequent criticism of, policies pursued by the CUP leadership. Soon thereafter, Mustafa Kemal's relationship with Enver Pasha deteriorated. As a result, when Enver Pasha emerged as the foremost military leader after 1913, Mustafa Kemal was excluded from the center of power.[1]

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal]Mustafa Kemal Atatьrk[/url]

---

Kemalist ideology directly inherits the CUP political legacy, not just in the fact that Mustafa Kemal was a founding member and an active operative of the CUP, but also because after the Young Turks were discredited (mostly because they lost the war) the junior leadership, of which Kemal was a member, took over the cause of secularist reform.

There is no smoking gun, but the facts that Kemal never deliberately addressed the Armenian genocide, nor admitted its occurence, or pursued criminal investigation of those responsible for it, on top of the fact that he had no compunction expelling Greek persons from Turkey when he was in power. Taken together there is nothing to suggest he opposed the policy of ethnic cleansing and supression of non-Turkish ethnicities in Anatolia. Quite the opposite.

I suggest you stop relying on your schoolboy rememberances of the facts, and instead read a detailed historical work on the subject of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the rise of the Kemalist faction in Turkish society, rather than littering the internet with half informed conclusions.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

No one is saying Islam is not just as problematic as any other religion, but if you are going to take this topic on seriously, and do serious study of history and comparative religion, you can not simply package it up and say "Meh! All religions are equally evil, and essentially the same" and then look for examples to prove how the religions you do not know, are the same as religions you are familiar with.

This is an "Orientalist" imposition, even if you are not specifically singling out Islam for particular ridicule.

And yes perpetrating the myth that the Armenian genocide was not an act of the CUP, anti-religious secular reformers, and instead a crime perpetrated in the name of Islam is a total distortion that amounts to a blood libel.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Sorry, I guess I missed the point of this therad Unionist. I thought it was supposed to be about Islam and Science, I did not realize that talking about actual examples from Muslim history was a diversion from the actual topic, which seems to be "lets talk about Islam completely seperate from its past, so that we can prove its just the same as Judaism and Christianity."

I should think that someone truly interested in "scientific" enquirey would appreciate the introduction of evidence, as a means of understanding and answering the question. But lets just make up shit, about the Armenian genocide and then go from there.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Why not spend a little time Unionist, and inform yourself:

[url=http://www.islamicity.com/islamiTV/?ref=3130]http://www.islamicity.com/i...

Here is an Islamic video describing how the big bang was Allah's will, and uses Hubble and Einstein to verify the the Qu'ran. Simply put, as I have been trying to point out, most mainstream Muslims are not spending a whole lot of time trying to assert that science is wrong, but the opposite, that science proves the Qu'ran. The creationist arguement is simply not a great big deal to most Muslim people, because the Qu'ran is vague enough that it is not going to conflict with empirical evidence.

As was pointed out earlier:

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanizadeh:
Thankfully now people have got better things to do with their time.[/QB]

---

There is not a lot that conflicts with direct empirical observation, so it is simple enough to incorporate new discoveries into the existing textual framework.

quote:

---

021.030
PICKTHAL: Have not those who disbelieve known [b]that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them,[/b] and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?

---

Can be interpretted as being a rudimentary description of "big bang" theory.

Its a big difficulty for Christians because the Bibles creation theory directly conflicts with present day scientific discovery, so they have to oppose science or abandon parts of their doctrine. Few such conflicts arise with the Qu'ran. For example there is no timeline provided for creation of the universe.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Try your literal interpretation skills on these Einstein quotes:

quote:

---

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

---

quote:

---

From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest, I am, of course, and always have been, an atheist. . . .We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world -- as far as we can grasp it. And that is all.

---

quote:

---

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere...Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

---

quote:

---

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.

---

quote:

---

I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.

---

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]