KWED
Scratching head, scratching knee
Being imprisoned under house arrest would be torture for one who needs to roam freely.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Credulous skeptics
- Thread starter Hop_David
- Start date
exchemist
Veteran Member
All true enough, but that does not really address my question of what evidence there is for the claim that religion "stifles innovation".
It could be an excuse for the lack of such evidence, I suppose. But if there is no evidence, the claim should not be made - at least if one is applying scientific standards of scrutiny.
Augustus
…
While he believed God was the underlying cause of all actions, he still believed you could make predictions that would generally be true.
Basically God created rules but he can suspend them if he wants to
Careful now. Because Ghazali is not generally considered to be the sole cause of the decline of the Golden Age, you may find yourself being accused of being "very wrong" yourself.
Told you @Subduction Zone
(he's not generally considered to be a major cause either)
exchemist
Veteran Member
This is utter rubbish. If Tyson said the Catholic Church tortured Galileo, he is even more irresponsibly ignorant than I had thought. Here is what your own UCLA link has to say about that:
"Kelly also noted that by the practice of the time, Galileo’s guilty plea, which denied actual belief in the heresy, triggered an automatic examination of his private beliefs under torture, a new procedure adopted by the church around the turn of the 17th century. Galileo was never tortured, however. The pope decreed that the interrogation should stop short with the mere threat of torture. This was a routine kind of limitation for people of advanced age and ill health like Galileo, and it should not be attributed to the influence of the scientist’s supporters."
KWED
Scratching head, scratching knee
Because that is the basis of the religion.
The problem there is that you end up in a morass of conflicting interpretations and claims of truth. If I want to know what god really wants from us, should I observe the claims of a thousand different scholars and the behaviour of millions of different believers, or should I consult his revelation?
Augustus
…
The church was the major funder of scientific research, educational institutions, translation and preservation of scientific texts, and clerics were disproportionately influential in scientific discoveries.
Of course it held back science. Have you not heard of Galileo?!
exchemist
Veteran Member
Who says "holy scripture" is the basis of a religion, though? Only the teaching of the religion in question can specify what texts are considered to apply.
And even then, as I say, there is a lot of teaching about how to interpret all these words from thousands of years ago, with all their inconsistencies and internal contradictions. If you ignore all that and insist on simply reading ancient scripture for yourself, you will get completely wrong idea about what these scriptures are held to signify.
Furthermore in some religions, for instance the original branches of Christianity (Catholicism, Orthodox etc), the teaching encompasses not just scripture but subsequent pronouncements of the priestly hierarchy, through whom God is held to continue to speak to mankind. In other words, it didn't all stop when the scriptures were written, but goes on.
I'm afraid with your approach you will get a great deal wrong about what religions actually consist of.
exchemist
Veteran Member
And, er, er, er, er....what about Galileo?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I had to see where the quote about al Ghazali came from. It was not an actual quote but a paraphrase from this speech by Tyson if you want to hear the quote go to the 6:45 mark:
He actually says "So out of his work, you get the philosophy that Mathematics is the work of the devil".
It is not 100% accurate, but it is definitely not 100% wrong. He then goes on to say that that was the beginning of the collapse of "what Islam was and would become the entire philosophical enterprise collapse and it has not recovered since." He was saying that in context of how the Islamic world had gone from being the major leader in intellectual thought in the sciences to almost being a total nonparticipant. He was not wrong in that regard.
He actually says "So out of his work, you get the philosophy that Mathematics is the work of the devil".
It is not 100% accurate, but it is definitely not 100% wrong. He then goes on to say that that was the beginning of the collapse of "what Islam was and would become the entire philosophical enterprise collapse and it has not recovered since." He was saying that in context of how the Islamic world had gone from being the major leader in intellectual thought in the sciences to almost being a total nonparticipant. He was not wrong in that regard.
Augustus
…
What is remotely accurate about it?
But other than a completely made up quote, he makes no case that it had anything to do with AG and ignores that fact that the Islamic world was making scientific advances for centuries after AG's death.
What precisely do you think AG did and how did it influence the entire Islamic world?
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
And clearly, this quote means that Tyson is expressing his interpretation of AG.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
It also seems to be the belief of some scholars. That Al changed the direction of Islamic intellectualism.
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
Sure. I wasn't disputing that. I was just reaffirming that Tyson was NOT saying that X was definitely true, just that it looks like, to him (and others), like X is true.
Augustus
…
"Falling a prey to their passions, to a besotted vanity, and the wish to pass for learned men, they persist in maintaining the preeminence of mathematicians in all branches of knowledge. This is a serious evil..."
He's not talking about maths, but saying "just because you are good at topic A doesn't mean you are good at topic B" (such as the astrophysicist Tyson should not necessarily be trusted on history).
It does not follow that a man who excels in one branch of knowledge excels in all others, nor that he should be equally versed in jurisprudence, theology, and medicine. It is possible to be entirely ignorant of metaphysics, and yet to be an excellent grammarian. There are past masters in every science who are entirely ignorant of other branches of knowledge.
Strangely Tyson did not quote this from the same text, I wonder why...
The second evil comes from the sincere but ignorant Muslims who thinks the best way to defend religion is by rejecting all the exact sciences. Accusing their professors of being astray, he rejects their theories of the eclipses of the sun and moon, and condemns them in the name of religion.
It is therefore a great injury to religion to suppose that the defense of Islam involves the condemnation of the exact sciences. The religious law contains nothing which approves them or condemns them, and in their turn they make no attack on religion
Full text of "Al Ghazali Munkidh Min Al Dalal ( Deliverance From Error"
aG also notes that maths, far from being the 'devil's work' is not really relevant to the question of religion:
Mathematics comprises the knowledge of calculation, geometry, and cosmography: it has no connection with the religious sciences, and proves nothing for or against religion; it rests on a foundation of proofs which, once known and understood, can not be refuted.
Also worth noting the context of the discussion, which is explained in the preamble to the linked text:
In philosophy, Ghazali upheld the approach of mathematics and exact sciences as essentially correct. However, he adopted the techniques of Aristotelian logic and the Neoplatonic procedures and employed these very tools to lay bare the flaws and lacunas of the then prevalent Neoplatonic philosophy and to diminish the negative influences of Aristotelianism and excessive rationalism.
So what about this do you think was a major cause of the decline in Islamic science?
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
Because he didn't quote him at all?
Augustus
…
He doesn't seem to have read the text at all...
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Al Ghazali appears to have taken a "creationist" turn late in his life where he was willing to accept some science but not all. He became a Sufi, or a mystic. Which is pretty much a rejection of the sciences.
AL-GHAZALI, ABU HAMID (1058-1111)
One can always put a spin one one's interpretations of one's works but to understand the impact of a person one needs to look at what the followers of that man believed and it appears that those that followed him did not seem to be following the sciences any longer. What happened to the Golden Age? Was it just the break down of an overstretched empire or did the fall begin from within?
AL-GHAZALI, ABU HAMID (1058-1111)
One can always put a spin one one's interpretations of one's works but to understand the impact of a person one needs to look at what the followers of that man believed and it appears that those that followed him did not seem to be following the sciences any longer. What happened to the Golden Age? Was it just the break down of an overstretched empire or did the fall begin from within?
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
He gave you his impression. You have yours. So? This isn't dishonesty.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Or he did not put your spin on it
Ella S.
Well-Known Member
I find it interesting that the only people I ever see passionately arguing about how the Catholic Church didn't stifle scientific progress are Catholics.