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rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,010 posts)
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,010 posts)al-jebra
Muslims carried the zero from Hindus to Europe in the late middle ages. Vitally important.
Muslims saved Euclid's geometry and other Greek learning so that it was ready for the Europeans to rediscover in the Renaissance.
al-chemi became Alchemy became Chemistry.
Moostache
(9,895 posts)Today's Muslims would just as likely burned the books alongside their then Christian enemies.
Fundamentalist and literal interpretations of ANY religious dogma is antithetical to reason. That which rejects reason and debate in favor of passion and certainty is damaging to the human condition.
The sooner religion dies out entirely, the better the chances of man sustaining civilization for another century, because on the current trajectory, civilization's "sell-by date" is not making it out of this one...
SouthernDemLinda
(182 posts)For Fleeing Germans, Hungary is the “Last Bastion of the Christian West”
Posted on May 30, 2016 by Baron Bodissey
"The English word “algebra” derives from the Arabic. So does “sugar” (from the Arabic “sukkar”) but that doesn’t mean that Muslims invented sugar.
The word “algebra” stems from the Arabic word “al-jabr”, from the name of the treatise Book on Addition and Subtraction after the Method of the Indians written by the 9th-century Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, who translated, formalized and commented on ancient Indian and Greek works.
It is even doubtful whether al-Khwarizmi was really a Muslim.
The Wikipedia entry on him says:
In all likelihood he was a Zoroastrian who was forced to convert (or die) by Muslim rulers because Persia had been conquered by the Islamic armies, and that was what Muslims did (and still do wherever they can). That could easily explain the “pious preface to al-Khwarizmi’s Algebra”.
Regarding al-Khwārizmī’s religion, Toomer writes:
Another epithet given to him by al-Ṭabarī, “al-Majūsī,” would seem to indicate that he was an adherent of the old Zoroastrian religion.
Wikipedia also says:
In Renaissance Europe, he [al-Khwarizmi] was considered the original inventor of algebra, although it is now known that his work is based on older Indian or Greek sources.
There is archaeological evidence that the roots of algebra date back to the ancient Babylonians, and were then developed in Egypt and Greece. The Chinese and especially the Indians also advanced algebra and wrote important works on the subject.
The Alexandrian Greek mathematician Diophantus (3rd century AD), sometimes called “the father of algebra”, wrote a series of books, called Arithmetica, dealing with solving algebraic equations.
Another Hellenistic mathematician who contributed to the progress of algebra was Hero of Alexandria, as did the Indian Brahmagupta in his book Brahmasphutasiddhanta.
With the Italian Leonardo Pisano (known as Leonardo Fibonacci, as he was the son of Bonacci) in the 13th century, another Italian mathematician, Girolamo Cardano, author in 1545 of the 40-chapter masterpiece Ars magna (“The great art”), and the late-16th-century French mathematician François Viète, we move from the prehistory of algebra to the beginning of the classical discipline of algebra.
Even Bertrand Russell, who in no way is a critic of the Islamic world, writes in the Second Volume of The History of Western Philosophy:
Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and in chemistry — in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches.
Mohammedans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization — education, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West when it emerged from barbarism — the Mohammedans chiefly in the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In each case the stimulus produced new thought better than any produced by the transmitters — in the one case scholasticism, in the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also).
You can see that to say that Muslims invented or pioneered algebra is a gross misrepresentation.
In conclusion, there have been various attempts at historical revisionism concerning Islamic contributions to the world. These attempts are more political propaganda than academic scholarship. After all, lying to the infidels to advance Allah’s cause, is permitted, and even prescribed, to Muslims. Jihad does not consist only of violent aggression or terror attacks: it can be gradual, by stealth, through indoctrination and false reassurance."
My Favorite
REAL MUSLIM INVENTIONS:
1. THE BUTT BOMB
Al Qaeda’s magazine Inspire gives step-by-step instructions on how to build a bomb designed to be hidden inside the anus to beat airport security. It was conceived by by the brilliant Muslim inventor, Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, who earlier had also invented the underpants bomb.
firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/25/al-qaeda-claims-perfected-hidden-bomb/
4. CARTOONOPHOBIA
Death threats for cartoons were received on the following dates. December 1999: Der Spiegel; July 4, 2001: South Park, “Super Best Friends” episode; September 2005: Jyllands-Posten; August 2007: Lars Vilks; September 2007: Bangladeshi cartoonist Arifur Rahman; April 2010: South Park episode “200”, “201”; January 2015: Charlie Hebdo. The Islamic phobia of cartoons extends to “soldier of Satan” Mickey Mouse, who was issued a fatwa by Islamic thinker, Muhammad Al-Munajid, a former Saudi diplomat.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/9-controversial-portrayals-mohammed-spurred-backlash-article-1.2068915
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/2963744/Mickey-Mouse-must-die-says-Saudi-Arabian-cleric.html
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,010 posts)I made clear that much of what they did was transmission.
No thanks for your smear of Muslims with the actions of a radical few.
SouthernDemLinda
(182 posts)Bernardo de La Paz "Thanks for the background info, but ...
I made clear that much of what they did was transmission."
SouthernDemLinda - I made it clearer.
Bernardo de La Paz "No thanks for your smear of Muslims with the actions of a radical few."
SouthernDemLinda - Another exaggeration Bernardo? I said, "they are my favorite inventions", I didn't say it involved all of Islam.
Igel
(35,320 posts)And causation.
Most of the Greek learning was in monasteries and such in N. Africa. They were threatened as much by Muslim conquest as by ignorance. In fact, the Eastern Roman Empire was restoring stability across the area until it came undone. What would have happened without the Muslim conquest is anybody's guess; most of the extreme narrow-mindedness occurred under duress.
The claim's been made, and not without some justification, that a lot of Gk mss were taken from Asia Minor as Byzantium fell. Those mss were often later turned to in conjunction with, in addition to, before, or after they were taken from Muslims. More than one "Islamic" ms was captured, not just turned over.
Even the 0 took centuries to get from where the Muslims pillaged it to the West, and that was only because it was useful in bookkeeping. A lot of "Muslim" inventions like that were first made practical by scholars who believed in hands-on work and decided that they could work smarter instead of harder. Those particular scholars went by the name of "monks."
As for the Dark Ages themselves, there's a reasonable claim that they weren't as dark as painted. A lot of stuff was going on in individual locales, the problem being that warfare, disease, migrations kept disrupting things. Of course, a lot of the disruption was caused by ... the Islamic Conquest. Just as Muslim depredations in Ukraine undermined Rus' so that it was fairly helpless against the Horde, so Muslim depredations in the Mediterranean made attempts to restore order nearly impossible and prolonged the Dark Ages.
WYSIATI is a crappy mode of thinking.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,010 posts)
lastlib
(23,248 posts)Religion flies men into buildings.
that pretty well nails it.
I won't think in your church if you won't pray in my school.
Urchin
(248 posts)And atheists and agnostics never did a bad thing, right?
SouthernDemLinda
(182 posts)I think there should be an organization supporting atheists instead of idiots proselyting their religion by asking idiotic questions they think you can't answer.
"If religious people could be reasoned with there would be no religious people."
The Early Christians were persecuting the Jews and any other religion, and burning books from it's inception. Hitler was a Catholic.
And of course we are writing off the Salem Witch Hunts.
I'm sure theists believe in all kinds of silly things like the boogie man! They believe every absolutely ridiculous story they have been spoon fed, like, "all the animals in the world two by two into Noah's ark for 40 days and 40 nights," imagine the smell of dung alone.
And who thinks that there was never a rainbow before Noah's flood? And wasn't drowning all those people a little cruel?
bvf
(6,604 posts)I finished re-reading "Letters from the Earth," by Mark Twain.
A truly great and funny read--Clemens obviously knew the bible well enough to eviscerate the flood account as thoroughly (and comically) as he did.
Urchin
(248 posts)you are cut from the same cloth as those religious fanatics you're against.
You're just as biased, dogmatic, and blinded by your own cherished beliefs as those very people you criticize.
When the Christian right criticizes Muslims, they sound like you.
Those people who perpetrated the Salem witch hunts, who conflate religion with patriotism and then fight wars claiming god is on their side, are, at least when it comes to Christianity, not Christians. They are heretics.
(And being born to Roman Catholic parents does not make you a good Christian in the eyes of the Christian god. Nor does it mean Hitler was a religious Christian, because if he were, he either didn't listen to what the New Testament preaches or he chose to ignore those parts he didn't agree with, like those other Christian heretics. After all, whom would Jesus bomb? Whom would Jesus put in concentration camps?).
I am on the fence when it comes to religion, but I am also on the fence when it comes to putting faith in "reason" and science.
Science is empirical: if something happens a few times, make a rule. Then make a new rule if in happening in the future, an exception emerges.
As for "reason"--the science of psychology itself tells us that people are not primarily beings of reason.
And anyway, you can reason all you want, but you must base your reasons on assumptions, which are themselves debatable.
Most or all of human history shows evidence of people having a reverence and respect for that which they do not understand.
On that basis alone, I suspect that it is right and natural for people to believe in some kind of god (even if their kind of god or any god does not exist), if only because humans who believe have been selected as fit by Darwinian natural selection.
I do not see all atheists as evil nor do I see all religious people as evil. But if you think you're so smart and that science and reason has all the answers, that's your dogma.
Bill USA
(6,436 posts)