Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[Ahriman]

Well if there were so many stupid Christians, those stupid people would be Christian extremists, and there aren't many of those. And you never hear about extremist Jews.

You mean YOU never hear about extremist Jews. And only because you don’t pay attention - there are plenty of them.

Boru

I'll take your word for it. But how do you explain that all of my friends from Catholic school went to college? (something I envy them for, just as an aside) Is going to college really something stupid people do?

[polymath257]

Well, there is no doubt about the Islamic aspects of the qibla and spherical trigonometry. There is no doubt that the development of the 'arabic' number system, especially how computations were done, was an Islamic achievement. For a while, there was a very active Islamic philosophical tradition.

This came crashing down when Al Ghazali started to argue against philosophical discussion in general and anything 'non-Islamic' more generally. Whether you want to label Al Ghazali as a fundamentalist, his position became dominant and shut down the investigations that had been done up to that point, severely restricting what could and what could not be discussed. Fortunately, the centers at Cordoba were not as swayed by his arguments and continued to engage in intellectual activity long enough for the translation movement in Europe to copy the most important texts into Latin so they could be discussed in European universities.

As for the battle of Tours, I am not familiar enough with the details to say whether it was a 'raiding party' or not. But it is clear that the Islamic advances in territory stopped rather soon after that battle.

No one (including me) is doubting that Islam had amazing scholars; all that I am claiming is that Islam succeeded where Western Catholicism failed, namely, in suppressing the logical outcome of Greek science, which laid the foundations of the Italian Renaissance ultimately leading to the Enlightenment.

I do not know enough about Al Ghazali; if he led a "revolution", it was certainly a quiet one; even The Glorious Revolution centuries later in England was well remembered,  even though it was bloodless, something quite atypical of the power struggles all throughout medieval Islam.

As for the Battle of Tours, such was not a raiding party.  Two armies of 20 to 30K men each stared at each other for 8 days straight, with the Muslims having men on horseback with the Franks on foot.  On the 8th day the former charged 3 times, each time being repelled, before the Franks got into gear before killing thousands.  A decisive battle for Western Europe concluded shortly thereafter.

Hmmm... the 'logical outcome' of Greek mathematics was something that needed to be changed. The Greeks, after the discovery of irrational ratios, had a split between numbers and geometry that was a significant hindrance to the development of mathematics. It was Islamic scholars that *started* the reunification of those two subjects (the simple example of a 'number line' is one that no Greek mathematician would have allowed and is due to an Islamic scholar). the Italian renaissance and subsequent enlightenment relied heavily on texts that were translated from Arabic and the ideas elaborated from those texts by Islamic scholars.

Al Ghazali was anything but quiet. His arguments were the prime ones that lead to the suppression of the philosophers and those willing to integrate 'foreign science' into their system.

Again, I am not an expert on the battle of Tours, but what you relate seems plausible given what I do know. But it is impossible to claim that the Islamic culture of Cordoba was not highly intellectual, free to scholars of other faiths, and immensely important to the subsequent rise of learning in Christian Europe.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think the salient point, about Al ghazali, is that he was a malcontent and detractor (of then-contemporary islam) from the persian culture..that same culture that the islamic horse raiders had enslaved and appropriated in subjugation and from which the vast majority of islams claimed scientific prowess came from both before..and after..conquest.

I see it as a similar irony to how, in the end, the savages that the greeks and romans derided and subjugated militarily and culturally..break loose...becoming western europe, and ushering in the scientific revolution, even under the repressive aegis of roman christianity.

-I think I misread the bit about the battle of tours being a raiding party - jehenne is talking numbers, and using the low end. It's clear that the half a million combatants or so (in some retellings) would have been a logistical impossibility, but that the battle of tours was a raiding party gone wrong is not actually founded on the numbers of combatants on either side. It -was- a raiding party, as raids are a tactic employed by large armies as well as small. Both to capture material, to injure the enemies resolve, to recon their positions and response.... and to goad them into a disadvantaged fighting position in a so-called culminatory battle. That all backfired for the ummayads at Tours. It happened...just not to their enemies......

The trouble is that they had committed and then lost too many men in the failed raid - and with winter at their backs, they had to stay and fight the battle they picked, not the one they would have preferred. Martel had prepared for this (and exactly this-for years), they.... had not. Martel had built a meatgrinder, and the ummayads lead their horses into it believing themselves immune to defeat from such kafir rabble (and not for no reason, they'd been bullying the shit out of any and all comers prior to this). Al-rahman is redeemed by later islamic scholars, despite his failure in this regard, because his successors proved even less capable than he was to navigate the social and political and military realities of the andulusian territory. The period following was nothing less than the retreat of an entire culture, and the complete loss of flanking continental salients. The european savages were, as far as they were concerned..ungovernable at that point. It was a well prepared insurgency.

[Jehanne]

No one (including me) is doubting that Islam had amazing scholars; all that I am claiming is that Islam succeeded where Western Catholicism failed, namely, in suppressing the logical outcome of Greek science, which laid the foundations of the Italian Renaissance ultimately leading to the Enlightenment.

I do not know enough about Al Ghazali; if he led a "revolution", it was certainly a quiet one; even The Glorious Revolution centuries later in England was well remembered,  even though it was bloodless, something quite atypical of the power struggles all throughout medieval Islam.

As for the Battle of Tours, such was not a raiding party.  Two armies of 20 to 30K men each stared at each other for 8 days straight, with the Muslims having men on horseback with the Franks on foot.  On the 8th day the former charged 3 times, each time being repelled, before the Franks got into gear before killing thousands.  A decisive battle for Western Europe concluded shortly thereafter.

Hmmm... the 'logical outcome' of Greek mathematics was something that needed to be changed. The Greeks, after the discovery of irrational ratios, had a split between numbers and geometry that was a significant hindrance to the development of mathematics. It was Islamic scholars that *started* the reunification of those two subjects (the simple example of a 'number line' is one that no Greek mathematician would have allowed and is due to an Islamic scholar). the Italian renaissance and subsequent enlightenment relied heavily on texts that were translated from Arabic and the ideas elaborated from those texts by Islamic scholars.

Al Ghazali was anything but quiet. His arguments were the prime ones that lead to the suppression of the philosophers and those willing to integrate 'foreign science' into their system.

Again, I am not an expert on the battle of Tours, but what you relate seems plausible given what I do know. But it is impossible to claim that the Islamic culture of Cordoba was not highly intellectual, free to scholars of other faiths, and immensely important to the subsequent rise of learning in Christian Europe.

To an extent, you're pounding on an open door.  As I posted before, the reaction in the West failed:

Condemnations of 1210–1277

No one whatsoever doubts the many and marvelous contributions of Early to High Middle Ages Islamic scholars; to cast doubt on such tremendous contributions, such as those that occurred at Al-Andalus, is to doubt the curvature of the Earth.

My point is that their contributions fizzled, not because of one man, Al ghazali (who, if he was a true revolutionary would have ended up dead), but, because of his religion, Islam, whose adherents turned their backs on their own magnificent scholars.

During the High Middle Ages, Islam did not change; it just got around to conquering its intellectuals after completing its geographical conquests.

[R00tKiT]

Hmmm... the 'logical outcome' of Greek mathematics was something that needed to be changed. The Greeks, after the discovery of irrational ratios, had a split between numbers and geometry that was a significant hindrance to the development of mathematics. It was Islamic scholars that *started* the reunification of those two subjects (the simple example of a 'number line' is one that no Greek mathematician would have allowed and is due to an Islamic scholar). the Italian renaissance and subsequent enlightenment relied heavily on texts that were translated from Arabic and the ideas elaborated from those texts by Islamic scholars.

Al Ghazali was anything but quiet. His arguments were the prime ones that lead to the suppression of the philosophers and those willing to integrate 'foreign science' into their system.

Al Ghazali, in his famous the incoherence of the philosophers, grew tired of too much speculation about metaphysical issues related to religious belief, which is to say that many thinkers chose to invent their own philosophical system instead of relying on scripture (the Qur'an and the prophet's saying), his reaction was very understandable.

We know now that must philosophical arguments about divine foreknowledge, predestination, free will, whether the Qur'an is created or eternal, etc that were presented in medieval times are simply wrong -that's why you have modern philosophy of religion-. Al Ghazali understood that skirmishing about these issues is a dead end, and that the solution really is a correct understanding of the Qur'an, instead of trying to replace the Qur'an because you think you're a smart-ass

[The Grand Nudger]

-and that was his blindside, like any other great thinker. He knew that the (then-current) bugbears were wrong, but assumed that some version of his own theology wasn't.

womp womp

The commander at tours probably knew (personally, from some experience) that the frankish (read western) savages weren't as easy to subdue as the shamans would imply - some of us are goddamned berserkers (martel focused heavily on recruitment from those provinces of the frankish empire).........that victory against them was not assured by some stupid fucking god....but went along with it anyway - and many of his men died for that mistake, the entire andulaisan subjugate crumbled because of it - just as we're watching the implosion of shamanistic islamism in the here and now from the same overconfidence in the promises of djinn as told then-and-now by assholes who shake rattles at guys like you.

[Jehanne]

Al Ghazali understood that skirmishing about these issues is a dead end, and that the solution really is a correct understanding of the Qur'an, instead of trying to replace the Qur'an because you think you're a smart-ass.

A view that is hardly "revolutionary", at least among devout Muslims. A nice summation, by the way

[The Grand Nudger]

-and yet, jackass shows up here talking about aristotelian quranic miracles as proof of magic book. Exactly the thing thing al ghazali understood was trash.......

[R00tKiT]

-and yet, jackass shows up here talking about aristotelian quranic miracles as proof of magic book.  Exactly the thing thing al ghazali understood was trash.......

You really must have read a lot of Al-Ghazali's books. 

I have the original book in arabic of his critique of philosophers, and I can tell with complete confidence that you don't have the foggiest idea of what you're talking about.

[The Grand Nudger]

You say alot of stupid shit, the above is just another example of the same. I think it's a shame if you've got some work on your bookshelf and have read it, and enjoyed it, and still managed to miss it..all the same.

Is that what's happened to you?