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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:30 am Post subject: Why Science and Islam don't mix |
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The following critique of Islam is theological, not personal.
Hirsi Ali, atheism, and Islam
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Allah is no more subject to laws of nature than the nature-spirits of the pagan world who infest every tree, rock and stream, and make magic according to their own whimsy. The "carried-forward idea of the unity of God" to which Rosenzweig refers, of course, is the monotheism carried forward in outward form from Judaism, but dashed to pieces against the competing notion of absolute transcendence.
As Rosenzweig observes, "An atheist can say, 'There is no God but God'." If God is everywhere and in all things, he is nowhere and in nothing. If there are no natural laws, there need be no law-giver, and the world is an arbitrary and desolate place, a Hobbesian war of each aspect of nature against all. Contemplation of nature in Islam is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. It is not surprising that Islamic science died out a generation or two after al-Ghazali. |
The argument: Islamic theology, as accepted today, is by its nature hostile to personal freedom and scientific inquiry. A completely transcendent Allah can have use for neither. |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:52 pm Post subject: |
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What's interesting is that Baghdad used to be the city with the world's premier universities. Indeed, Islam's early days brought us scientific process and thought. Pity the same culture that brought us algebra has fallen so far.
Early Muslims were curious to see how the world, and the entire Universe, works. I wonder what has happened, since nowadays they think that Mars will start doing figure eights around the sun only because Allah wills it. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Pluto wrote: |
What's interesting is that Baghdad used to be the city with the world's premier universities. Indeed, Islam's early days brought us scientific process and thought. Pity the same culture that brought us algebra has fallen so far.
Early Muslims were curious to see how the world, and the entire Universe, works. I wonder what has happened, since nowadays they think that Mars will start doing figure eights around the sun only because Allah wills it. |
My (limited) understanding on the matter is that Islamic theology was up for debate during that period.
Just to illustrate how non-expert I am on the subject, I'm going to delve into wiki on Islam.
It appears at first glance this Al-Ghazali would be the first culprit in steering Islam towards what is called occasionalism.
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| Occasionalism is a philosophical theory about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God Himself. (A related theory, which has been called 'occasional causation', also denies a link of efficient causation between mundane events, but may differ as to the identity of the true cause that replaces them).[1] The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of a constant conjunction that God had instituted, such that every instance where the cause is present will constitute an 'occasion' for the effect to occur as an expression of the aforementioned power. This 'occasioning' relation, however, fell short of efficient causation. It was not that the first event caused God to cause the second event: rather, God first caused one and then caused the other, but He chose to regulate such behaviour in accordance with general laws of nature. |
The ramifications of this relationship of God to man is radical. For Allah, what would love of man mean?
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| The ninth century theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari defended the notion of an utterly omnipotent God who could will absolutely anything (even that a perfectly good man could be sent to hell), and that nothing can endure for more than one instant without being recreated by God. |
Of course, certainly in the Old Testament, the biblical story of Job approaches this sort of occasionalism. As you may remember, Job is the holiest of men, whom God allows to be stricken and cursed by Satan (but not killed) on a wager. Eventually, after Job's friends tell Job to repent, God himself speaks to Job.
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YHVH describes, in evocative and lyrical language, what the experience of being responsible for the world is like, and asks if Job has ever had the experiences that YHVH has had.
YHVH's answer underscores that Job shares the world with numerous powerful and remarkable creatures, creatures with lives and needs of their own, whom God must provide for, and the young of some hunger in a way that can only be satisfied by taking the lives of others. Does Job even have any experience of the world he lives in? Does he understand what it means to be responsible for such a world? Job admits that he does not.
YHVH's speech also emphasizes his sovereignty in creating and maintaining the world. The thrust is not merely that God has experiences that Job does not, but also that God is King over the world and is not necessarily subject to questions from his creatures, including men. He declines to answer any of Job's questions or challenges with anything except "I am the Lord." |
So, we see that al-Ghazali is hardly completely responsible for Islam's occasionalism. And there are hints in the wiki entry that his works have been subject to various interpretations. One is reminded of the contortions of Aristotlian philosophy by Thomas Aquinas (one of al-Ghazali's near contemporaries).
Nevertheless, Islamic theology as it stands today still recognizes the truth of occasionalist philosophy. Spengler seems to suggest that occasionalism could Islam's last and greatest stumbling block. Should Islam be able to get past it, it would join kaffir philosophy in recognizing the role of reason in faith. But could a rationalized Islamic theology also recognize God's love? And what would a loving Allah look like?
Hoping for an Islamic reformation/renaissance is high optimism, to say the least. Such a reformation/renaissance would have much more to overcome than the same movements did in Christianity over 500 years ago. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Pluto wrote: |
What's interesting is that Baghdad used to be the city with the world's premier universities. Indeed, Islam's early days brought us scientific process and thought. Pity the same culture that brought us algebra has fallen so far.
Early Muslims were curious to see how the world, and the entire Universe, works. I wonder what has happened, since nowadays they think that Mars will start doing figure eights around the sun only because Allah wills it. |
When the muslims conquered territory they claimed the ideas and knowledge of the civilization they had just destroyed as their own. Saying that muslims/islam contributed meaningfully to the world's body of knowledge is like me running into a library, killing or converting everybody to the church of Peel and then claiming I/we wrote all the books. |
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loose_ends
Joined: 23 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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thepeel write:
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| Saying that muslims/islam contributed meaningfully to the world's body of knowledge is like me running into a library, killing or converting everybody to the church of Peel and then claiming I/we wrote all the books. |
are you saying ALL contributions by muslims have at one time or another just been stolen from someone else?
certainly not, right?
so why post such a bold statement? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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| I used the word 'meaningfully'. The overall contributions to science, medicine etc etc has been insignificant compared to the West and NE Asia. Also, much of what they claim as theirs only became theirs when they destroyed the culture of original origin. To this day, they only survive beyond iron-age technology because they borrow from (or more properly, buy from) other more successful civilizations. Take away the oil in the Arab world, or the ethnic Chinese and oil in SE Asia and they are right back at square one. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
What's interesting is that Baghdad used to be the city with the world's premier universities. Indeed, Islam's early days brought us scientific process and thought. Pity the same culture that brought us algebra has fallen so far.
Early Muslims were curious to see how the world, and the entire Universe, works. I wonder what has happened, since nowadays they think that Mars will start doing figure eights around the sun only because Allah wills it. |
When the muslims conquered territory they claimed the ideas and knowledge of the civilization they had just destroyed as their own. Saying that muslims/islam contributed meaningfully to the world's body of knowledge is like me running into a library, killing or converting everybody to the church of Peel and then claiming I/we wrote all the books. |
Aren't you skipping a few years?
Yes, the conquests were just that, conquests. But afterwards, Islam were heirs to the throne of vanguard civilization as the Byzantine Empire crumbled. Even accepting the traditional historical version (there is a more modern line that suggests that both the Byzantine and Parthian Empires mostly were in collapse, like the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th Century, and Muhammed's troops came in), eventually Islamic civilization (so to speak) forged trade routes from Hangzhou to the African Horn. In the meantime, Avicenna and al-Farabi promoted the sciences, and gathered the wisdom of the Greeks, Persians, Cappadocians, Indian Vedas, etc.
The already precarious balance of Islamic belief combined with jurisprudence overtook such free thought after occasionalism took root. By the time of the Crusades, the Assassins, and the Mongols, occasionalism had festered so much that Islamic civilization was rotted from the inside out.
But, my understanding is there was a genuine flourishing during a genuine Golden Age. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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| So, you agree that they basically aggregated the ideas of formerly non-muslim lands but add that they also added ideas of still non-muslim lands? |
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