ISIL, Taliban = True Islam??

[Azrael Antilla]

This one of course



No idea what point you think you are replying to but it's got nothing to do with anything I said

My point was that empathy, a "good" characteristic can drive harmful behaviour.

There is scientific evidence to support this, an overview:

Empathy seems like a good quality in human beings. Pure and simple.

It allows us to consider the perspective of others — to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine their experiences. From that empathetic vantage point, only good things can come, right?

Not necessarily, according to author Fritz Breithaupt. "Sometimes we commit atrocities not out of a failure of empathy but rather as a direct consequence of successful, even overly successful, empathy,"

Does Empathy Have A Dark Side?




There is no such thing as a "default" means of settling issues. One measure of settling issues that is still common throughout the world is violence though and that violence is often justified as being 'noble' and humanistic such as the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars.




If you are willing to excuse the waging of aggressive wars based on lies that had no chance of achieving their objectives and resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths as being acceptable then you probably shouldn't be criticising the ethics of other people imo...



From the post-French Revolutionary violence, to colonialism, to communism to the Iraq War, Libyan regime change etc.



It amazes me how many 'rationalists' uncritically repeat such an obvious fallacy that they could fact check themselves in 5 mins.

They were considered perfectly scientific at the time by people from right across the political spectrum.

Unless we use hindsight to rewrite the past, which is certainly not rational, eugenics etc were supported by the equivalent of scientific rationalists.

An example of the latter would be this 'Eugenics Manifesto' published in the prestigious journal Nature (one notable signature: founding President of the British Humanist Society, Julian Huxley).

Obviously the issue is far more complicated than saying "eugenics = evil" given things like birth control fell under the umbrella of eugenics, but the idea it wasn't viewed as scientific, including the more controversial forms of eugenics is pure fantasy.



Malthus was a major influence on people such as Charles Darwin etc. and also a major influence on the colonial administrators in India as a Professor of Political Economy who taught East India Company officials.

His view lead to the idea that subsidising the poor was harmful, and thus the rational, utilitarian view of things was to 'let nature take its course'.

This directly impacted famine policies, for example:

In the first two decades after Britain assumed direct responsibility for the administration of India, parts of the country were subject to devastating famine, particularly in Orissa in 1866 and Bengal in 1874. Ambirajan found that during these critical years many in the administration were con- verted to a Malthusian view of the situation. Lord Edward Lytton, Gover- nor-General during 1876-80, was convinced that famine should be solved by the market, telling the Legislative Council in 1877 that the Indian popu- lation "has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil" ... An 1881 report concluded that 80 percent of famine victims were drawn from the poorest 20 percent
of the population, and if such deaths were prevented this stratum of the population would still be unable to adopt prudential restraint. Thus, if the government spent more of its revenue on famine relief, an even larger proportion of the population would become penurious. Ambirajan (1976: 7-1 1) concluded that, although the administration was divided about the value of famine relief, these Malthusian views undoubtedly affected its volume and timing.

Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India - John C. Caldwell

Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India on JSTOR



My claim was that people of good faith acting in the spirit of scientific rationalism can get good people to do evil things, and this is pretty much an established historical fact whether you choose to remain ignorant of it or not. Can lead a horse to water and all that.

It's perfectly obvious that a combination of utilitarianism and a certain kind of "scientific" belief could easily lead people to support or at least be indifferent to eugenics, Malthusian approaches to famine, the replacement of "inferior" races, etc.

Look at the views of Darwin himself:

In the Origin of Species Darwin had avoided a direct discussion of the significance of the theory of natural selection for human history. But in his letters he was more candid.

He wrote to Alfred Wallace in 1864: "Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous according to a Chinese or Negro) than the middle classes, from [having the] pick of the women; but oh, what a shame is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection!"37 In his Descent of Man (1871), Darwin came directly to the point: "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."38 Darwin added, however, that even if men could restrain their sympathy for the less fortunate members of society, it would only be by a deterioration of the most noble part of their nature.

But Darwin did not expect all men to act in such a noble manner. This and the increase in human population meant that men would never escape the evils arising from the struggle for existence. But this was not a bad thing, Darwin assured his readers: if men had not been subject to natural selection in former times, they would not have attained their present eminence in the world.39 Darwin's strong belief in the importance of natural selection for the development of human society by eliminating the "unfit" continued to the end of his life.

A year before his death, he complained to W. Graham that natural selection did more for the progress of civilization than Graham wanted to admit: "Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so- called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an end- less number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."

Rogers, JA, Darwinism and Social Darwinism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(2)

Although certainly a product of his time, Darwin himself was a fairly moral and liberal fellow who wasn't maliciously bigoted, but it is pretty obvious that the views he held could easily be used to justify all kinds of terrible behaviour and fed directly into the common 'Social Darwinistic' views of the day championed by the likes of Herbert Spencer (although even thinking that people back then neatly differentiated Darwinian evolution from Social Dawinism could be seen as misleading).

Without the benefit of hindsight, for the adherents in the late 19th early 20th C this was not the 'misuse' of scientific ideas, but a good faith, rational application of them towards the social issues of the day with a goal of contributing to the greater good.

That much of the science turned out to be wrong and that our moral sensibilities have thankfully changed doesn't alter the clear fact that scientific rationalists acting in good faith supported policies we would today deem evil.

TLDR. Until I noticed your anti science attack at the end.

Science was wrong about what precisely?

Hopefully you are aware that "social Darwinism" is not a science nor ever was considered a scientific discipline.

Neither is or was Eugenics. A pseudoscientific attempt to misguidedly redirect the course of human evolution. Underpinned by non scientific ideas about superiority and desirable traits. In humans.

The scientific method is not a political position nor offers one. Whatever individual scientists believe politically and ideologically. Has nothing to do with the scientific method. Which is above all reproach. Since it is a tool.

You don't bad mouth spanners as well do you?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

This one of course



No idea what point you think you are replying to but it's got nothing to do with anything I said

My point was that empathy, a "good" characteristic can drive harmful behaviour.

...

Here is a current example from a Danish textbook teaching social workers to spot good doing harm. You are now working in a sheltered living facility for special needs adults. You are told that you have to start taking all the residents on travels, because that is good. You observe that traveling and going on vacation actually harms some of the residents. You then have to fight the "system", because of course it is a fact, that traveling and going on vacation is good.

The theme of the book is the everyday little "evil". Now what I have learned as a high functioning special needs human and by having a wife that works as such as a social worker and nursing assistant by reading her textbooks and other literature, listening to her tell about the little "evil" by her colleagues and the "system"; and experiencing it myself, is this:
Some people are "blind" to the harm that they do, because to them it is good and they can't understand that they are projecting their good onto others as it actually harm other humans. How is it that they can't understand? Well, it is good for them and thus it must be good for all humans.
That one can even by hard for some skeptics and critical thinkers to learn, because they are not taught to spot that. They excel in objective evidence and are thus in some cases "blind" to subjective harm, because they take their subjective standard to be "objective" in effect.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[KWED]

The verse does not say that.

I never claimed it did.
I know you can't/won't answer the question. I merely posed it to see you deflect and obfuscate.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

TLDR. Until noticed your anti science attack at the end.

Science was wrong about what precisely?

Hopefully you are aware that "social Darwinism" is not a science nor ever was considered a scientific discipline.

Neither is or was Eugenics. A pseudoscientific attempt to misguidedly redirect the course of human evolution. Underpinned by non scientific ideas about superiority and desirable traits. In humans.

The scientific method is not a political position nor offers one. Whatever individual scientists believe politically and ideologically. Has nothing to do with the scientific method. Which is above all reproach. Since it is a tool.

You don't bad mouth spanners as well do you?

Just use this one from the real world.
ISIL, Taliban = True Islam??

 

[KWED]

As I said, it goes beyond that.

Also, one cannot be a Rabb. All over the Qur'an.

So you admit that there are no passages in the Quran or sunnah that imply that slavery is wrong and should be abolished

 

[KWED]

Oh. So they are not addressed with anything? Read the verses again.

Lol. "None" was your answer.

WADR, you read it again. The passage in question refers to the women with a pronoun. (A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun).

 

[Azrael Antilla]

Here is a current example from a Danish textbook teaching social workers to spot good doing harm. You are now working in a sheltered living facility for special needs adults. You are told that you have to start taking all the residents on travels, because that is good. You observe that traveling and going on vacation actually harms some of the residents. You then have to fight the "system", because of course it is a fact, that traveling and going on vacation is good.

The theme of the book is the everyday little "evil". Now what I have learned as a high functioning special needs human and by having a wife that works as such as a social worker and nursing assistant by reading her textbooks and other literature, listening to her tell about the little "evil" by her colleagues and the "system"; and experiencing it myself, is this:
Some people are "blind" to the harm that they do, because to them it is good and they can't understand that they are projecting their good onto others as it actually harm other humans. How is it that they can't understand? Well, it is good for them and thus it must be good for all humans.
That one can even by hard for some skeptics and critical thinkers to learn, because they are not taught to spot that. They excel in objective evidence and are thus in some cases "blind" to subjective harm, because they take their subjective standard to be "objective" in effect.

Regards
Mikkel

Some people think empathy is connected with a particular vworldview. It really isn't. It's merely the capacity to identify with and/or feel what other creatures may be experiencing. That doesn't necessarily make you a good person.

I've met sadistic psychopaths before. Empathy they can do. Guilt, not so much.

 

[firedragon]

You haven't argued that they are wrong. You have just claimed it. The words speak for themselves. He provided four examples explaining that the reference is to prepubertal girls. They specifically referred to girls too young to have menstruated yet. Rather than explaining why those words don't mean what they plainly mean, you wave them away by using the phrase "cherry picking." That phrase, like "you took it out of context," implies that there is other text that shows that those words don't have their apparent meaning. If that's not what you mean, the objection is empty, and if it is what you mean, it is incumbent on you if you want to be believed to provide the missing textual evidence that demonstrates that you are correct. You didn't do that. You just have an unsupported claim. You know how those are treated by skeptics.



There would be if you had a convincing case you could present. You're posting to a skeptical audience that is open to you making a compelling case and teaching them something new. Of course, to do that, you have to play on their field and by their rules, since they are the ones who decide if you have made your case according to the standards of critical analysis. Look at how the Muslims on this thread are posting. You're hoping to be believed by assertion. Another is giving us his theology, which is also not an argument. And a third is busy trying to disqualify opinions he doesn't like with claims that others don't know enough Arabic to have an opinion. None of you are making arguments at all, much less fallacy-free chains of reasoning leading to sound conclusions. You all just give your opinions about what Islam is and then repeat them when they are countered with conflicting evidence. Nothing less has persuasive power on the skeptics' field.



Not your call. You don't define what writing is valid. I find @KWED 's arguments compelling, and you haven't done a thing to refute them.



It must frustrate you that you cannot stop it.

What might frustrate you even more is recognizing that what you have actually accomplished with this thread is the opposite of your apparent intent - to make Islam look better in the eyes of non-Muslims. The reason for that is that you don't understand your target audience. You don't know what their standards for processing information and deciding what is true are, so you bring what apparently works for you in other settings, perhaps when interacting with other faith-based believers also unskilled in the critical analysis of arguments, people who also make empty claims (unsupported) claims and fallacious arguments that they expect will be believed. You're on an even footing there.

The problem for you there is that you actually have the opposite effect of that which you intended when you make the same comments to critical thinkers. What do you think you have actually accomplished? Do you think that others see Islam and Muslims more favorably, less so, or the same because of this thread?

As I've told you before (and you've misunderstood), much of my understanding of these things comes directly from Muslims like you in venues like this. You claim that all we know about Islam is what lying, Islamophobic media indoctrinate us to believe. Wrong. There are many sources of information about Islam.

One such source is the people who disagree with you, and who post compelling evidence and arguments about Islam and its writings, evidence that contradicts you that no Muslim on this thread has successfully rebutted. I value the input of well-informed outsiders much more than that of the faithful trying to sanitize their religion. Their agenda is to get to the truth that reason applied properly to relevant evidence produces.

Yours is to counter that and perpetuate an illusion - a sanitized Islam - and you do that with techniques that are unpersuasive to your audience. So, your meta-message (ethos) is much different than your intended message (logos), and it is the latter which penetrates. Unfortunately, your meta-message is that you have no case and are willing to use the kind of tactics you do to promote your faith and disqualify any dissent with fiats of irrelevance or the lack of qualification to comment.

Once again, are you completely unaware of the message you actually send doing that? Maybe. I've been coming more and more to the conclusion that there simply are no people who both know what critical thought is and don't use it themselves. It seems that one can safely conclude that when he sees all of this other kind of thing - reaching for every tool in the persuasion box except a sound, evidenced argument - it's because he is unaware that such things exist, that there are others who respect the power of fallacy-free thought and have learned to think that way, and reject all other approaches. Why else would they keep bringing that stuff to these discussions? Why else would you think this could be effective rather than counterproductive except that you just aren't aware of this other way of deciding what is true about the world?

Anyway, as long as you misjudge your audience, your posting will continue to reinforce in them that their way of thinking is preferable to the alternative, and that the output of their way of thinking is more reliable than that of one who can't make or recognize a sound argument not merely because they aren't quite proficient enough yet in argumentation, but because they don't know that such a thing exists, much less how powerful the method is.



You've got it wrong. There is no intention of spreading hatred coming from those disagreeing with you. And how quickly you resort to that kind of demeaning of those who disagree with you. They can't just be dissenters in search of truth using standards you cannot meet. These people don't frame you in analogous terms. When you misrepresented my words earlier, I asked you if you had a reading comprehension issue or were lying, a question you refused to consider or answer, hand-waving it away with a declaration of "ad hominem."

Incidentally, when you choose to not have any input into a question such as the one I asked you, you help with the non-answer. I have to ask myself is it more likely that you really didn't know that you had misrepresented my words, or that you did know that, i.e., that you were lying. What does it mean that you didn't show any interest in correcting an error if you had made one, or apologizing for so doing. I'm pretty sure that if I had accidentally misrepresented you, and you pointed it out to me, I would go back to the text in question, reexamine it, and either show you why I disagreed with you or apologize for my error (dialectic).

I would be anxious to let you know that I was not knowingly misrepresenting you, because that's a behavior I object to in others, and a reputation that I don't want to have. You don't seem to have that same concern about how you are perceived, nor any desire to make things right if you are wrong. Why? Probably because we are very different kinds of people with different values, different methods, and a different agenda. Yours seems to be the same as the Christian apologists.

This, too, is how we can learn about Islam. This is the lab part, the practical education.

And you can learn about secular humanism from reading what humanists write rather than from people with an agenda to discredit them. That's the lab for you, if you are a student. Or, just go on projecting hatred and Islamophobia onto such people as you have likely been taught through indoctrination, a belief clearly contradicted by the gentle, even manner, reasonableness, and eminent fairness of those people.

It's actually you who is spreading the hatred, as when you call others haters for disagreeing with you..



Nice work. Thanks for the education.

You did not give exegesis, so I was not addressing you.

Cheers.

 

[firedragon]

WADR, you read it again. The passage in question refers to the women with a pronoun. (A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun).

Ill cut to the chase. The only word that refers to all of them mentioned in that verse is Annisaa. Women.

 

[firedragon]

So you admit that there are no passages in the Quran or sunnah that imply that slavery is wrong and should be abolished

Many.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Some people think empathy is connected with a particular vworldview. It really isn't. It's merely the capacity to identify with and/or feel what other creatures may be experiencing. That doesn't necessarily make you a good person.

I've met sadistic psychopaths before. Empathy they can do. Guilt, not so much.

Yeah, that is a part of it but not all in my opinion.

 

[KWED]

But all of these ladies are after marriage and are referred in the Quran as annisaa. Young girls are not referred to as annisaa. This is flat and bottomline.

The passage is referring to women who have already been married. Therefore Allah would naturally use a term that denotes a married women. Hardly rocket science.

But the problem is you cannot explain this to some one who intends to demonise the Quran. Just look at these so called atheists who are citing arabic words as if they are experts and making exegesis with absolutely no knowledge. Its truly pathetic. I know where they are getting their knowledge from being in this for too many years. You will see that none can answer simple questions.

lol. Loving the irony here.

What ever the intention of these people is, its fallacious.

Classic question begging.

This verse is speaking about married women, who are Shadad, or fully grown,

Here you are showing your dishonesty or ignorance.
Muhammad himself married a young girl when she was six and had sex with her when she was 9. Therefore there cannot be a requirement for women to be "fully grown" etc, before marriage.
Unless you are claiming that six years old is "fully grown"?

Balaghul Nikaaha or of marital age, defined by maturity, ability manage their inheritances, so old enough to do all of that, and they are called women which is not a word referred to young girls.

A little bit of humility would do. But when underlying intentions of spreading hatred take over, none of this matter.

So, what makes you more qualified to comment on that passage than Ibn Abbas, Al Jalalayn, Ibn Kathir and All Maududi?

What are your qualifications? Which sheykhs did you study under? You're not even fluent in Classical Arabic. Yet you think you are more knowledgeable than some of the most renowned scholars in Islamic history.

 

[firedragon]

The passage is referring to women who have already been married.

Yes. Women. Not children.

 

[firedragon]

Muhammad himself married a young girl when she was six and had sex with her when she was 9.

Why do you believe that?

 

[Augustus]

TLDR. Until I noticed your anti science attack at the end.

Maybe you should have read it properly then as there is no "anti-science" attack at the end.

If you think it is "anti-science" to point out that commonly held scientific beliefs have later turned out to be wrong then you probably aren't the best person to comment on what is or is not an "anti-science attack."

Hopefully you are aware that "social Darwinism" is not a science nor ever was considered a scientific discipline.

Neither is or was Eugenics. A pseudoscientific attempt to misguidedly redirect the course of human evolution. Underpinned by non scientific ideas about superiority and desirable traits. In humans.

Hopefully you are aware that they were indeed deemed scientific at the time.

If not, read more.

The scientific method is not a political position nor offers one. Whatever individual scientists believe politically and ideologically. Has nothing to do with the scientific method. Which is above all reproach. Since it is a tool.

You don't bad mouth spanners as well do you?

Cool story. Nothing to do with anything I said, but thanks for sharing.

Again it helps to read posts before commenting on them so you don't end up arguing against figments of your imagination

 

[KWED]

This one of course



No idea what point you think you are replying to but it's got nothing to do with anything I said

My point was that empathy, a "good" characteristic can drive harmful behaviour.

There is scientific evidence to support this, an overview:

Empathy seems like a good quality in human beings. Pure and simple.

It allows us to consider the perspective of others — to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine their experiences. From that empathetic vantage point, only good things can come, right?

Not necessarily, according to author Fritz Breithaupt. "Sometimes we commit atrocities not out of a failure of empathy but rather as a direct consequence of successful, even overly successful, empathy,"

Does Empathy Have A Dark Side?




There is no such thing as a "default" means of settling issues. One measure of settling issues that is still common throughout the world is violence though and that violence is often justified as being 'noble' and humanistic such as the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars.




If you are willing to excuse the waging of aggressive wars based on lies that had no chance of achieving their objectives and resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths as being acceptable then you probably shouldn't be criticising the ethics of other people imo...



From the post-French Revolutionary violence, to colonialism, to communism to the Iraq War, Libyan regime change etc.



It amazes me how many 'rationalists' uncritically repeat such an obvious fallacy that they could fact check themselves in 5 mins.

They were considered perfectly scientific at the time by people from right across the political spectrum.

Unless we use hindsight to rewrite the past, which is certainly not rational, eugenics etc were supported by the equivalent of scientific rationalists.

An example of the latter would be this 'Eugenics Manifesto' published in the prestigious journal Nature (one notable signature: founding President of the British Humanist Society, Julian Huxley).

Obviously the issue is far more complicated than saying "eugenics = evil" given things like birth control fell under the umbrella of eugenics, but the idea it wasn't viewed as scientific, including the more controversial forms of eugenics is pure fantasy.



Malthus was a major influence on people such as Charles Darwin etc. and also a major influence on the colonial administrators in India as a Professor of Political Economy who taught East India Company officials.

His view lead to the idea that subsidising the poor was harmful, and thus the rational, utilitarian view of things was to 'let nature take its course'.

This directly impacted famine policies, for example:

In the first two decades after Britain assumed direct responsibility for the administration of India, parts of the country were subject to devastating famine, particularly in Orissa in 1866 and Bengal in 1874. Ambirajan found that during these critical years many in the administration were con- verted to a Malthusian view of the situation. Lord Edward Lytton, Gover- nor-General during 1876-80, was convinced that famine should be solved by the market, telling the Legislative Council in 1877 that the Indian popu- lation "has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil" ... An 1881 report concluded that 80 percent of famine victims were drawn from the poorest 20 percent
of the population, and if such deaths were prevented this stratum of the population would still be unable to adopt prudential restraint. Thus, if the government spent more of its revenue on famine relief, an even larger proportion of the population would become penurious. Ambirajan (1976: 7-1 1) concluded that, although the administration was divided about the value of famine relief, these Malthusian views undoubtedly affected its volume and timing.

Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India - John C. Caldwell

Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India on JSTOR



My claim was that people of good faith acting in the spirit of scientific rationalism can get good people to do evil things, and this is pretty much an established historical fact whether you choose to remain ignorant of it or not. Can lead a horse to water and all that.

It's perfectly obvious that a combination of utilitarianism and a certain kind of "scientific" belief could easily lead people to support or at least be indifferent to eugenics, Malthusian approaches to famine, the replacement of "inferior" races, etc.

Look at the views of Darwin himself:

In the Origin of Species Darwin had avoided a direct discussion of the significance of the theory of natural selection for human history. But in his letters he was more candid.

He wrote to Alfred Wallace in 1864: "Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous according to a Chinese or Negro) than the middle classes, from [having the] pick of the women; but oh, what a shame is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection!"37 In his Descent of Man (1871), Darwin came directly to the point: "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."38 Darwin added, however, that even if men could restrain their sympathy for the less fortunate members of society, it would only be by a deterioration of the most noble part of their nature.

But Darwin did not expect all men to act in such a noble manner. This and the increase in human population meant that men would never escape the evils arising from the struggle for existence. But this was not a bad thing, Darwin assured his readers: if men had not been subject to natural selection in former times, they would not have attained their present eminence in the world.39 Darwin's strong belief in the importance of natural selection for the development of human society by eliminating the "unfit" continued to the end of his life.

A year before his death, he complained to W. Graham that natural selection did more for the progress of civilization than Graham wanted to admit: "Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so- called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an end- less number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."

Rogers, JA, Darwinism and Social Darwinism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(2)

Although certainly a product of his time, Darwin himself was a fairly moral and liberal fellow who wasn't maliciously bigoted, but it is pretty obvious that the views he held could easily be used to justify all kinds of terrible behaviour and fed directly into the common 'Social Darwinistic' views of the day championed by the likes of Herbert Spencer (although even thinking that people back then neatly differentiated Darwinian evolution from Social Dawinism could be seen as misleading).

Without the benefit of hindsight, for the adherents in the late 19th early 20th C this was not the 'misuse' of scientific ideas, but a good faith, rational application of them towards the social issues of the day with a goal of contributing to the greater good.

That much of the science turned out to be wrong and that our moral sensibilities have thankfully changed doesn't alter the clear fact that scientific rationalists acting in good faith supported policies we would today deem evil.

Is there a tl;dr?

 

[KWED]

Why do you believe that?

I accept it as an accurate account in the context of Islamic belief because it is reported in multiple sahih hadith.

Do you not accept it as such?

 

[firedragon]

So, what makes you more qualified to comment on that passage than Ibn Abbas, Al Jalalayn, Ibn Kathir and All Maududi?

What are your qualifications? Which sheykhs did you study under? You're not even fluent in Classical Arabic. Yet you think you are more knowledgeable than some of the most renowned scholars in Islamic history.

Prior to appealing to authority, tell me, what is the Classical Arabic word for prepubescent girls? Since you are an expert in Classical Arabic, this should be easy for you.

 

[firedragon]

I accept it as an accurate account in the context of Islamic belief because it is reported in multiple sahih hadith.

So you accept ahadith as valid history? All of them or just the ones reported in multiple ahadith?

 

[KWED]

You don't bad mouth spanners as well do you?

I have seen them used to inflict pain and injury.
Down with spanners!