Muslim students less likely to be awarded top class degrees.

[The Grand Nudger]

It might not be possible to faithfully believe in iron age myths and still achieve in a silicon based economy.

Anywho, ofc we can separate people who believe in those myths literally from people who believe in them....metaphorically. These two groups don't actually believe the same things. No more than you..Bel..a clear cultural christian...believe that the crackers and the grape juice turn into body and flesh.

One would hope that the number of metaphorical believers was (and was becoming) greater than the portion of the other. Insomuch as faithful islam actively denies metaphoric interpretations - it would not be surprising for muslims to underperform relative to their metaphorically faithful peers.

In western parlance, one group is Catholic...the other is culturally catholic. Religious nutters don't do well here, either. Here again we (potentially) validate the data. 3% can't absorb a single muslim nutter any more than it can absorb a single dumb muslim...which is fucking redundant.

[Fake Messiah]

Recently, Neil Tyson made a video where he talked about that secularization of Judaism, of how Spinoza (who was Jewish) realized that magical thinking is no thinking at all, and to be a scientist (academic) you have to reject that, and he rejected the Bible, its fairytales, miracles, and superstitions, and therefore influenced many other Jews who became scientists (like Einstein).
video:




But, let's face it, something like that is yet to come to Islam.

[Belacqua]

Recently, Neil Tyson made a video where he talked about that secularization of Judaism, of how Spinoza (who was Jewish) realized that magical thinking is no thinking at all, and to be a scientist (academic) you have to reject that, and he rejected the Bible, its fairytales, miracles, and superstitions, and therefore influenced many other Jews who became scientists (like Einstein).
video:


But, let's face it, something like that is yet to come to Islam.

Spinoza's theology is fascinating. It shows how many people who believe in God do not believe in talking snakes, etc. It's true that his theology appealed to Einstein and other important thinkers. 

This is from the Wikipedia page on Spinoza:

Spinoza's system also envisages a God that does not rule over the universe by Providence, by which it can and does make changes, but a God that is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Spinoza argues that "things could not have been produced by God in any other way or in any other order than is the case,";[95] he directly challenges a transcendental God that actively responds to events in the universe. Everything that has and will happen is a part of a long chain of cause-and-effect, which, at a metaphysical level, humans are unable to change. No amount of prayer or ritual will sway God. Only knowledge of God provides the best response to the world around them.

So, as I said, it shows that many Jews who are religious do not believe in stupid stuff. 

I'm skeptical, though, that anyone here agrees that "only knowledge of God provides the best response..."

No doubt there are a lot of Muslims who have read Spinoza. It would be dangerous to assert that his kind of thinking has had no influence among them. And we know there are various kinds of thinking among practicing Muslims, with various approaches to interpretation, literalism, etc. Blanket statements about what all Muslims think would risk oversimplifying.

[Belacqua]

Interesting article here about parallels between Spinoza and his near-contemporary Mulla Sadra. It's no surprise that in any age, there are similar ideas in the air like this.

http://muslimphilosophy.com/ip/kni.htm

Sadra:

In general, the more powerful and the more intense the being becomes, the more perfect it is in essence, the more completely comprehensive of all notions and quiddities, and the more (capable) in its activities and efforts.

Spinoza:

…[T]he power of any thing, or the conatus with which it acts or endeavours to act…, that is, the power or conatus by which it perseveres in its own being, is nothing but the given or actual essence of the thing.

There is a difference of emphasis in the passages. Sadra asserts of a thing that is increasing in power that it is becoming more perfect in its essence; Spinoza asserts of essences that they confers the power of action and perseverence. Yet both writers are making an equation that is not dissimilar. They might not have agreed with each others’s precise formulations of the identity, but there is no doubt they would have understood them as meaningful and important assertions.

No doubt there are many differences as well as similarities.

I don't know how well known Mulla Sadra is among Muslims now. No doubt somebody like Nader El-Bizri knows his work. Whether his ideas have percolated into people with less specialized knowledge I have no idea. There are English speakers today who have taken on Spinoza's ideas without knowing they came from Spinoza.

Fake, is Sadra known at all among the Muslims you discuss theology with? Would you say he's less well known than Spinoza is among contemporary Jewish scientists?

I confess I had never heard of him before today. Islamic thought has never been my specialty, and I'm not going to pass judgment until I know a lot more.

Given the historical errors in the first episode of Tyson's Cosmos series, I would want to double check anything he says outside of his own field before I accepted it.

[WinterHold]

As a Muslim, our region is drenched in pure poverty, lack of future, etc. We mainly look forward to an immigration chance to a western country so we live. I don't think academics would be our concern, but how to get work so we gain cash enough for us to survive.

You can see a glimpse of that in the immigrants boarding the death-boats to the borders of Europe, or the Millions of Syrians crossing to Turkey then Europe.

But yes. Rich, well-rest students are of course at an advantage. Only bigots would fail to see due to bigotry and ignoring of facts.

Yes, I think there's no doubt about this at all. Western colonization has worked diligently to keep Muslim regions poor in order to extract the resources cheaply.

It's certain that a great deal of Western antipathy to Islam is manufactured by the media to distract us from our own government's evil policies, and pretend that there is something intrinsically bad about people in those countries. As if their desire to hit us back is due only to irrational religion. 

I read an article a while back about Britain's need for cotton in the 18th century. Most of it came from the American colonies, and the war for independence was fought at least in part for control of the cotton. Instead of shipping it to England to be woven and therefore have most of the value added, the colonies wanted to weave it themselves and derive the whole benefit. When England lost this resource after 1776, they turned to Egyptian cotton and made sure not to repeat the mistake they'd made in North America: they made absolutely sure that Egyptians themselves would never be able to benefit from the profits of the cotton, and to do this required keeping Egyptian education and its economy as primitive as possible. And then of course they blamed the Egyptians for not being an advanced country.

Here is where the useful idiots like Hitchens and Dawkins serve as spokespeople for empire. By blaming religion for what can much more fairly be attributed to their own countries' economic policies, they scapegoat others and exonerate themselves.

Well, you usually meet the Middle Eastern who is self-hating; trying to copy-cat westerners in everything to appear more civil. So many people in here got their self-esteem destroyed for good and instead of it a complex of deification for almost everything westerner settled.
You guessed it right: propaganda's effects in its best form. People here are taught to hate themselves, hate their religion, hate their heritage, hate their history. And any attempt to break through would be met with pointing fingers and news about 9/11 and ISIS -as if that is Islam-. 

The Islamic terrorism scapegoat is being milked over and over to destroy the self-esteem of any Muslim and justify the robbing of natural resources in their lands.

Just like destroying the Egyptian's self-esteem by the British Empire; the same is being repeated over and over.

[Belacqua]

Well, you usually meet the Middle Eastern who is self-hating; trying to copy-cat westerners in everything to appear more civil. So many people in here got their self-esteem destroyed for good and instead of it a complex of deification for almost everything westerner settled.
You guessed it right: propaganda's effects in its best form. 

People here are taught to hate themselves, hate their religion, hate their heritage, hate their history.

[...]

The Islamic terrorism scapegoat is being milked over and over to destroy the self-esteem of any Muslim and justify the robbing of natural resources in their lands.

Just like destroying the Egyptian's self-esteem by the British Empire; the same is being repeated over and over.

You know, I had never thought about this before -- but that just shows how provincial I am. It makes perfect sense once you talk about it.

All the mass media pretty much shows that America is unquestionably the greatest and most desirable place. Even for people who know a little history and know that's not true, the constant propaganda value is bound to have an effect. The media invariably show Muslim countries as colorless and oppressed. And Americans abroad often behave as if their superiority is to be assumed. 

There are aspects in which America really does have the advantage, of course -- for the time being, anyway, a US graduate school is still probably a better stepping stone to a career than one in most Muslim countries. The carrot and stick approach, attracting the best students by wrecking the economies of the places they want to get out of, will lead to complicated reactions in people's feelings. 

Here in Japan, US occupation is still a living memory. For the most part everyone's views of America are positive (except about the air bases), but it's still clear that media propaganda is powerful. Japanese people almost invariably assume that Americans are freer and more capable of individual expression than they are. Even Americans believe this about themselves, though the truth is more complicated. 

any attempt to break through would be met with pointing fingers and news about 9/11 and ISIS -as if that is Islam-. 

This is the definition of bigotry that I've been prompted to come up with recently: looking at a huge and diverse group of people and pretending that the very worst members of that group are its essence. It's as widespread as ever, I think.

I wonder if things will start to change as America continues its downward slide. The rich are busily turning it into a "Third World" nation, life expectancy is declining, Bernie Sanders' centrist government goals are prevented by election cheating, universities are dumbing down to save money, science is suffering a "crisis of reproducibility" etc. etc. The current health thing is showing that the rest of the world can't count on us any more. At some point even Hollywood won't be able to persuade people that the US is superior. It might mean that oppression will lighten up -- or maybe America will just bomb everything to hell to prevent that from happening.

[WinterHold]

Well, you usually meet the Middle Eastern who is self-hating; trying to copy-cat westerners in everything to appear more civil. So many people in here got their self-esteem destroyed for good and instead of it a complex of deification for almost everything westerner settled.
You guessed it right: propaganda's effects in its best form. 

People here are taught to hate themselves, hate their religion, hate their heritage, hate their history.

[...]

The Islamic terrorism scapegoat is being milked over and over to destroy the self-esteem of any Muslim and justify the robbing of natural resources in their lands.

Just like destroying the Egyptian's self-esteem by the British Empire; the same is being repeated over and over.

You know, I had never thought about this before -- but that just shows how provincial I am. It makes perfect sense once you talk about it.

All the mass media pretty much shows that America is unquestionably the greatest and most desirable place. Even for people who know a little history and know that's not true, the constant propaganda value is bound to have an effect. The media invariably show Muslim countries as colorless and oppressed. And Americans abroad often behave as if their superiority is to be assumed. 

There are aspects in which America really does have the advantage, of course -- for the time being, anyway, a US graduate school is still probably a better stepping stone to a career than one in most Muslim countries. The carrot and stick approach, attracting the best students by wrecking the economies of the places they want to get out of, will lead to complicated reactions in people's feelings. 

Here in Japan, US occupation is still a living memory. For the most part everyone's views of America are positive (except about the air bases), but it's still clear that media propaganda is powerful. Japanese people almost invariably assume that Americans are freer and more capable of individual expression than they are. Even Americans believe this about themselves, though the truth is more complicated. 

Humanity except American citizens+ western citizens in general,  were emptied from any sense of self-esteem, with some regions worse than the other -like the Middle East-; the starting point of this fate was the World Wars which decided who shall be the boss in our world.
Simply civilizations took their rank in this world depending on their efforts in the 2 wars: the victorious became first world countries, and the defeated inherited the shame of defeat like Japan.
Americans won the war and came at the top in it; so everybody else looked up to them as "super humans" with "super values" with "super freedom"; you are not free unless you are an American.
Inferiority complex and post-war shock in its best form.

any attempt to break through would be met with pointing fingers and news about 9/11 and ISIS -as if that is Islam-. 

This is the definition of bigotry that I've been prompted to come up with recently: looking at a huge and diverse group of people and pretending that the very worst members of that group are its essence. It's as widespread as ever, I think.

I wonder if things will start to change as America continues its downward slide. The rich are busily turning it into a "Third World" nation, life expectancy is declining, Bernie Sanders' centrist government goals are prevented by election cheating, universities are dumbing down to save money, science is suffering a "crisis of reproducibility" etc. etc. The current health thing is showing that the rest of the world can't count on us any more. At some point even Hollywood won't be able to persuade people that the US is superior. It might mean that oppression will lighten up -- or maybe America will just bomb everything to hell to prevent that from happening.

America will fall and it became obvious after the election of Trump and the failure in impeaching him last year. The culture in the country is falling drastically and an American is not the American of yesterday.
It's becoming a third world nations, that's what you get when you give the keys of your house to Oligarchs.

[Abaddon_ire]

An observation. Years ago, when I was teaching we had foreign students. The muslims of those were not some monolith of faith. There were those who insisted on taking time out of class to kowtow to Mecca. Prayer mats and the whole nine yards. There were also those who didn't care. They wanted to learn and had no interest in praying to Mecca. There were those who had a political agenda. Right up to outright fraudsters. All human life was there.

Frankly, they were just people with as much variation as any other group. Like christians.

There is only one distinction for the muslims that I have ever found. While the fundies of whatever religion might propose in faith, only the fundie muslims were willing to go the whole nine yards and actually do it. Those folks were rather scary, but vastly in a minority. Most of them did not give a rats about whatever Islam claimed.

But part of the course dealt with the traditional 555 timer. and it's time cycle and how to control it. Given the sudden excitement of certain students, I chose to curtail that part of the curriculum in short order.

I was young at the time, but even then I was smart enough to realise that when certain lethargic student start asking question after no participation, they have a motivation. And It does not much help if they are islamic fundies and only wake up when one is teaching something that can be used to make bombs.

Now, for those unaware, the 555 timer is an entirely innocent time chip. it merely times events. But ask yourself what is it timing? The delay before a rocket launch to the moon? The delay before I wake and leave my home in the morning? The time to which I happened to set my alarm? The time it takes to rightly boil an egg? The delay before detonation? It can do all of those things, given correct connections and components.

To me, I was not willing to teach wingnuts to make bombs.

[Belacqua]

America will fall and it became obvious after the election of Trump and the failure in impeaching him last year. The culture in the country is falling drastically and an American is not the American of yesterday.
It's becoming a third world nations, that's what you get when you give the keys of your house to Oligarchs.

Yes, Trump makes it obvious. He's aesthetically horrible, which makes the decline more obvious. I'd put the turning point back with Reagan, however. He's the one who started the bipartisan effort to dismantle the New Deal and switch the economy over to pure Wall Street amorality. It's commonplace among us lefties to point out that many of Nixon's policies were more left-wing than Obama's were. The so-called progressives, Hillary and Elizabeth Warren, started out as Republicans and didn't really change their policies. They just waited for everybody else to move right.

But I think this is becoming obvious everywhere, and recent events will put paid to Americans' reputation as supermen. For example, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US troops, but the troops refused to go, making this a Nazi-level occupation. The US is still bombing ineffectually within the country. Meanwhile China is sending humanitarian aid.

Next door in Iran people are dying in droves because the US won't lift sanctions on medical supplies. This is just evil.

China is willing to play the long game, relies on economic aid more than military, and isn't crumbling internally. Not to say it's a fair and friendly government, but I think it's going to own the rest of the century.