(April 15, 2022 at 12:09 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Muslim scholars did preserve many ancient texts; Western scholars owe them a debt on that one. Also some thoughtful commentaries on Aristotle and some early work on medicine that found its way into the Florentine renaissance.
P.S. Agriculture, too; Muslims brought cotton & rice to Spain.
That was during the so-called golden age which Neal mentions, but then they started interpreting the Quran as they did and it all went down the hill.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"