(January 2, 2018 at 1:40 pm)AtlasS33 Wrote:(January 2, 2018 at 6:21 am)bennyboy Wrote: Let me say first of all that some of the first Muslim scholars (not Muhammad's generation maybe) were certainly very intellectual and advanced. I don't want to denigrate what astronomy or philosophy they may have delved into. At about 500-600 AD, obviously they were much more advanced than the writers of the Old Testament.
That being said, the things you've quoted are too general, and not supported by enough specific details to be sure that what you say they mean is really what their writers intended.
But I accused you not of a documentary fail, but of a logic fail. "We don't know, therefore Allah" is a poor argument. So is claiming to know that which cannot be observed.
Mohammed's generation was mainly composed of merchants; the scientific move began to show itself obviously with Persians, Indians and ex-Romans converting to Islam. Islam was never expanded by Arabs alone; long after the prophet's death other races carried the faith, like the Ottoman Turks.
But it's the leaders who hated the guts of science because it defied their rule in many cases; take the late Ottoman regime that banned the use of typewriters as an example. The only science left without touching from the ruling regime was military and economical science that would benefit the regime.
When I try to put the story of the universe in the context of models like the big bang; this is the only logical conclusion I get: we need a point of start. Just like my comment to SaStrike, I find the thought of the singularity a very exiting similarity to the idea of God. A mere label changing.
Here's the thing, though. God does not solve this philosophical problem-- in terms of philosophy, God is a philosophical cheat. You say we need a "point of start." Okay, but how was God brought to existence? Your answer must be: "Nono, God is special, He is the unstarted starting point, the one who always existed and never needed a start."
This is your philosophical problem-- you must say, "All things have a start. . . but not God." But we could just as easily speculate ANOTHER philosophical cheat: "All things have a start. . . but not the multiverse! All things have a start. . . but not the Big Bang singularity! All things have a start. . . but not the Universe!"
As for the last, it's an option-- since math breaks down as you approach the singularity (you end up with /0 broken math, I believe), it really can man that almost anything was going.
I'm not unsympathetic to the God idea, by the way. I have my own interest, especially in consciousness and in the fact that the Universe seems conscious to some degree. But the use of the God idea as a solution to the philosophical problem of infinite regress is obviously a cheat.
