The Noor Foundation: Can Islam and Science coexist?
I find the premise to be a little bogus. The threat to the scientific method from American political conservatism is far more a concern, especially since arguably scientific illiteracy in the US affects US policy, which has disproportionate global impact (ex. global warming)
This is interesting. Anyone care to comment? And by anyone I mean anyone other than Shams who I know will leave 100,000 unreadable comments…!
More controversially, the authors go on to argue that, where there is robust cross-cultural research, WEIRD subjects tend to be outliers on a range of measurable traits that do vary, including visual perception, sense of fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, and a host of other basic psychological traits. They don’t ignore universals – discussing them in several places – but they do highlight human variation and its implications for psychological theory.
(Via Andrew Sullivan.)
Stephen Hawking says ‘God did not create the universe’:
The Grand Design, part serialised in the Times, says there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going.
“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something,” he concluded.
This has provoked a response from the Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, who seems to be invoking Gould’s ‘non-overlapping magisteria’:
But his findings were described by Sacks as an “elementary fallacy” of logic.
Channel 4 News had a discussion between Jon Butterworth and Alister McGrath.
And as The New Scientist notes, Hawking hasn’t really ‘changed’ his mind over God anyway:
Paul Davies adds his view on this too, as does Salman Hameed.
Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni was discussed by In Our Time earlier this summer.
Religious people are ‘less likely to drink heavily’, but those with ‘religious delusions’ are harder to cure.
I think Barack Obama’s science outreach to the Muslim world is actually a reasonably good idea.
I’m not quite sure this is though:
According to Fox News, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera, that although international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA”s orbit, but strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama has assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.
It’s fine to point out the diplomacy and prestige angle, but I am sure the ‘Muslim world’ has more pressing concerns with respect to science and technology.
well…..Ibn Arabi and al-Ghazali pioneered the many worlds theory…roughly four centuries before the cristofascists tried to burn Galileo …perhaps giving mathematics grants to work on string theory or cosmology would be more appropriate.
The New Scientist has a short piece on the revival of science in Muslim countries, concentrating on the investment by the Gulf oil states. The article doesn’t really expand on what constitutes this revival (merely chucking billions of dollars on huge projects is not a revival), but it did contain this noteworthy fact:
I think others have previously noted how science-education in the US seems particularly gendered, at the very least in the views of popular culture, even if not so much in actual stats. I remember Fatima Mernissi making a comparison with Iran on this point in her book Scheherazade Goes West,
We know about Christian and Muslim variants of creationism. But what of the other great monotheistic tradition, Judaism?
Is there such a thing as ‘Jewish creationism’? If not, why not?
Hmm…I thought creationism is part of old testament, no?
(As an aside, the “Old Testament” is a Christian book. The Torah, Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible are Jewish books. The words in them are similar, though not the same. More importantly, the tradition of “how to read” them is very different, so that some of the passages mean very, very different things to each group. “An eye for an eye” is a classic example, which in Christianity is about vengeance – and bolsters a Christian belief that Jews are vengeful – but in Judaism is actually about lenience.)
You just saved me typing the same thing!
The text itself isn’t the whole tradition. ‘Reading’ the text and practice are just as important.
Thanks. It makes sense. I was only referring to the six-days creation story which I believe has its roots in Judaism? (and I wouldn’t even be surprised if the roots go prior to monotheism altogether).
The story is in Exodus, which is part of the Hebrew Bible and also included in the Old Testament. Of course, the Jewish tradition for reading the text is very nuanced and complicated, since that’s the personality of Judaism — which says that the text is very complicated and difficult to understand. My own belief is, though there obviously is “fundamentalism” among Jews, that Judaism doesn’t lend itself well to fundamentalism.
You’re right, though, that similar stories do exist in many religions from the same area. And less similar stories that are still pretty similar exist in all sorts of religions. One of the basic functions of religion is to answer the question, “Why are we here?” There’s a Hindu story of the gods churning the milky ocean.
To continue asides, Judaism predates monotheism. Originally, there was one higher G-d and many lesser gods. Over time, the other gods disappeared from the stories we tell and the Jewish G-d, orignially one of the lesser gods, became the G-d of all. In 5,000 years, of course, change happens.
The creation story is in Genesis/Bereshith.
Totally agree. But I am not clear on the hierarchy the term lessor/higher implies. If G-d is transcendent and if other gods symbolize that transcendent G-d (as in Hinduism) than that doesn’t really make the transcendent G-d any higher (he’s already declared as such, the One above all else).
Anyways, in Ismaili Muslim theology and according to the Nasir Kusraw tradition, as per Shafique Virani….”genesis of the cosmos, shared by the Abrahamic faiths, does not concern the creation of the physical universe. Rather, the tradition refers to the genesis of a spiritual cosmos governed by God’s emissaries. This creation commenced with Adam, who represented the first day…and continued with Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus….The cycles of creation were brought to their completion by Muhammad”
Just sharing one of the many interpretations, in case if you’re not aware.
D’uh! Genesis. Yeah. The one I meant. Thanks
Matt, what are your experiences on this question? I’m less interested in the validity of either side of the argument (though feel free to debate it in here), more on how different religious groups respond to certain issues — in this case evolution.
Of course, there are different ways of reading the bible not just between Jews and Christians but between different trends within both Judaism and Christianity.
Oh, of course. Protestantism and Catholicism are pretty different. Catholicism is a religion for “deep thinkers” interested in stuff like precedent in theological writing. Jesuit schools where they believe in creationism also teach evolution, because they’d rather have people with strong faith than a brainwashed flock. Protestants (though Protestant sects are more diverse than the unitary Catholic Church, so I’m more hesitant to make crude generalizations) are mostly into personal revelation. (Strikes me as “truthiness,” but I don’t judge.) And when you look at Reform versus Orthodox Judaism, well, Reform views the Bible as the creation of humanity with a bunch of good ideas in it. So they’re very different there. But I think it’s safe to say that only the fringiest of Jews reject that the Oral Law, together with study and debate, is necessary to understand the Written Law. I’m sure that goes back way before the Talmuds, but that stuff was certainly codified in the Talmud by at least 300 AD.
But, as far as my experience, thabet, I can really only cite very broadly shared theology in Judaism (and some historical context). I can even confuse Genesis and Exodus from time to time. My experience was being raised a deeply assimilated Jew and growing up to realize there was very basic stuff about me I never thought about, as if I’d never looked in a mirror. Today I practice Buddhism. I just don’t like seeing Judaism folded into Christianity. It’s a form of erasure, making us invisible, which is kinda how I got to where I am.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “creationism” here Thabet. Do you just mean rejection of evolution as commonly understood in the scientific community or something broader. There is opposition to evolution among many Orthodox Jewish scholars (less so among Conservative and Reform Jews for obvious reasons). Although some Modern Orthodox or other individual thinkers have tried to advocate for theistic understanding of evolution along with non-literal readings of Genesis. Here’s Wikipedia on Jewish views of evolution.
Here’s an interesting article which relates a survey taken of those who identified as orthodox Jews who were found sitting in a Kosher section of a New York city public college cafeteria.
The survey found Creationist belief to be extremely widespread among this population. Also, as the author points out, this survey would not have included the most ‘conservative’ aspects of the Orthodox population which would shun secular education altogether or at least reserve the daytime for Talmud study.
Thanks, this is more what I was interested in: the reception amongst Jewish groups to evolution and the surrounding baggage; and whether they had developed a response (e.g. the creationist ‘movements’ amongst Muslims and Christians).
By the way, I think there’s a lot of information in the article I linked to relevant to Thabet’s question but no doubt the source is biased and intends to cast doubt upon orthodox belief and practice of religion by showing it is not compatible with science, which to the authors of the magazine is obviously the highest truth.
I obviously reject their attempts to do so and even more so the tone with which they do it, regardless of my own views on evolution.
I agree, abunoor, about the bias of the article. Saying that “By definition Jews who accept evolution are not Orthodox.” is simply wrong. What he’s saying can be applied to ultra-orthodox Jews, but definitely not to orthodox ones.
Creationism does exist in Judaism in various forms. I think it’s not widely talked about because the majority of Jews in the US and in general are not orthodox and hence see no conflict between evolution and a book that was created by humans with limited knowledge, as Matt mentioned.
As for those who do see a conflict (orthodox and ultra-orthodox) there are three major trends, as far as I see it. Both of these communities accept the Torah as the word of God, yet none interpret it literally as Evangelical Christians do. It is accepted that some of the things written in the Torah are allegorical, including the creation of the world (Ramban, Maimonides and others accepted this centuries ago).
The more extreme way of dealing with evolution is to dismiss it outright, forbid teaching it and look at it as a sinful secular doctrine. This is an approach taken by some ultra-Orthodox rabbis, which is evident in ultra-orthodox schools in Israel (don’t know about the US), which don’t teach science at all. Another approach is to deal with the arguments of evolution and try to disprove them, often relying on criticism by gentiles (creationists or not) and even post-modernists.
The third approach, which I find the most interesting, is an attempt to use the latitude in interpreting the Torah to try and combine some elements of evolution into the biblical description of creation. However, all those who seek to combine them state that the basic proposition of evolution that the world was created with a big bang in a random fashion is incompatible with the Jewish doctrine (God created the world for a purpose) and often use the argument from design to make their point. The people who wish to make evolution (and science in general) compatible with Judaism state that while evolution is just a theory that has many holes in it, the proven scientific facts about mutations of genes and selection do not go against the scripture and some even go as far as to state that they’re hinted to in the scripture.
Many thanks, Elizabeth.
Shukran, Elizabeth that was interesting.
The third approach seems sort of ghazalian.
A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences, seeing that there is nothing in revealed truth opposed to these sciences by way of either negation or affirmation, and nothing in these sciences opposed to the truth of religion.
Ghazali’s many worlds model arose as a refutation of the Aristotelian eternal universe.
I agree, shams. Very nice quote, and as you know Maimonides (among others) was greatly influenced by al-Ghazali.
1,0001 Islamic inventions: a new website devoted to chronicling Islamic science. It’s partly run by the UK-based Foundation for Science, technology and Civilization, which also runs the related website MuslimHeritage.com.
Intriguingly, one of the themes seems to be the assertion that it was Islamic civilization that actually invented empirical experimentation (the forerunner of the scientific method). Is that true, or a “black Jesus” kind of thing?
No idea on that, but I do know that some of the great works of Greek philosophy only became known in the late Medieval and Renaissance West because of their Arabic copies (cf. Wikipedia).
aziz, i think it is a black jesus kind of thing. it is no doubt that some muslim scholars did do a combination of empirical and rational investigation and system building. but so did the pro-socratics. and the term ‘emprical’ comes from sextus empiricus, who was no muslim. additionally, some western scholastics were doing the same during the ‘aristotelian renaissance’ of the 13th century (though this was triggered by translations of aristotle via spain). i think you can see some of the same in china before the modern era too.
i think the take home here is that basic building blocks of science as an enterprise existed in many different civilized cultures. some take this to mean that science, as we understand it, is a human universal (or at least for advanced literate societies). i take a ‘narrow church’ view in asserting that science as we understand is the product of 17th century europe, whose republic of letters in the domain of natural philosophy hit a demographic critical mass so that science did not need to rely on one or two brilliant individuals working alone at a given time, but rather a huge subculture with its own norms and mores. once this started i believe that science was self-perpetuating as one generation of scientists mentored and inspired the next generation.
one could argue that particular scientific ideas and texts which were necessary preconditions for the emergence of european science were transmitted through islamic civilization, making islam a necessary precondition of science. first, i believe that very few ancient scientific works were found ONLY in the muslim empire. the byzantines also had many, but the influence of byzantines on the renaissance was more striking in italy. by contrast, england and france were more directly influenced by the spanish texts (that is, muslim spain). i believe mostly through the university of paris and its aristotelian scholastics. so though muslim civilization as transmitters were critical, they may not have been necessary.
secondarily, if islam had not emerged, it seems likely that the ancient libraries and scholarly institutions of egypt and syria, and also mesopatamia, would have retained copies. the original translation works which went into the house of wisdom had the heavily involvement initially of christians and sabians.
though in general i tend to think that the “black jesus” type stuff is not too harmful if it actually encourages group X to study science.
I agree that the 17th century was the critical period, a confluenvce of factors including the colonial enterprise. In fact that was the focus of Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, which blew my mind (and his subsequent novel Anathem has to be seen in context as a sequel).
But arent we talking about a much earlier period? You could argue that the “intellectual critical mass” for empirical science to be self-perpetuating is a different entity than the actual empirical ethos of the individuals – the “Alchemists” vs the “Philosophers” divide. Once Science became an established Method then it did become not just self-perpetuating but also (like any institution) self-preserving. In some ways the lone geniuses did more to bring us out of the wilderness than the Institution of Science as a whole – the latter coopting teh former once it really got going.
Im just speculating and musing aloud here and am not really quibbling with anything you’ve written, aside from the contention that the ancient libraries would have fouund some other vecctor to survive had Islam not emerged. I dont think history works that way (unlike science!). Whats lost is lost, whats saved is saved.
Im just speculating and musing aloud here and am not really quibbling with anything you’ve written, aside from the contention that the ancient libraries would have fouund some other vecctor to survive had Islam not emerged. I dont think history works that way (unlike science!). Whats lost is lost, whats saved is saved.
why do you think the works would have been lost without islam? presumably the lands of eastern christianity would have remained christian. additionally, the byzantine empire’s copying efforts tracks really closely with periods of economic growth due to its territorial expansion (10th century), so i assume that without being marginalized by the islamic empires it would have had more surplus to invest in these sorts of efforts. as it is, there are many humanistic works, such as the plays of sophocles and euripides, which were preserved only through the byzantines (the abbassids were focused mostly on pure philosophy).
I may be remembering wrongly, but the Library at Alexandria wasnt torched by muslims. So the asence of Islam = irrelevant to the alternate history under spec here.
The reason I assume that the works would have been lost without Islam is because they were lost witithout Islam. Islam was irrelevant in losing them – to suggest that the works would not have been lost in Islam’s absence is to imply Islam was causal in that loss, which is obviously chronologically impossible.
Unless theres a muslim Time Lord out there, of course.
i think you’re misunderstanding what i’m saying.
99% of ancient works were lost. the reason is simple: before the printing press copying is the of the essence, and you need complex and motivated societies which have patrons to copy works. the period between 500 and 1000 were choke points, and we have three major copying efforts to thank
1) the abbassid one in the 9th century
2) the byzantine one in the 10th
3) the frankish in the 9th century
each had their own strengths and biases. but they were exceptional. i don’t think christianity or islam had much to do with any of them as such, i think the fact that the societies which patronized the copying were wealth, sophisticated, and their and peak of prestige, pride and self-confidence, were key.
so what are you disagreeing about again?
ah, so you are saying that had Islam hadnt existed, the Abbasid socity would have been a non-muslim equivalent, and the infrastructure for copying wouuld still be the same (or at least, 2/3 same) ?
not sure then if I am disagreeing. I confess my historical knowledge limits me here.
the Abbasid socity would have been a non-muslim equivalent, and the infrastructure for copying wouuld still be the same (or at least, 2/3 same) ?
perhaps. basically for ancient western (greek and latin) learning we have an N = 3. i’m not saying there were other periods and places in the west where copying occurred, but my understand is that 90% of the greek and latin works we have today go no further than these 3 periods & places. that is, the earliest physical copy dates to this period & place. but that’s a real small N, and lots of random events could have made it smaller or larger. one could argue that the abassid size and cultural diversity made them particularly congenial to the translation effort. if the byzantines had kept the levant and egypt, it is likely that persia would have remained politically and culturally distinct. they were brought under the same umbrella by the abassids, whose origins were in khorasan, but could not ignore the greek and other oriental cultures in the fertile crescent and egypt.
basically i think any advanced civilization will have an advanced religion. whether it is islam, buddhism, hinduism, etc., the religion will obvious influence cultural production. but all of that rests on economic foundations (witnessed by the collapse of the christian church in parts of the roman empire where the germans culturally and politically destroyed the old older in totality).
(hey. no griefing on my threads. — aziz)
lawl, ah’m jus’ trollin’ a little.
don’t be so touchy.
You thought that was griefing?
O scrub, you don’t know what griefing is. You can see my griefing and motie engineering on display at TAS, where I blow up or re-engineer every single stupid conservative failmeme they trot out.
/wicked grin
…and i’m not sorry….and it won’t stop….
—Samara Morgan
Does al-Islam get credit for quantum entanglement and spacetime?
Because Ibn Arabi speculated about those things.
I think….the New Metaphysicians are working in Social Brain Hypothesis and cosmology and q-maths….and the contributions of buddhist and islamic cultures to SBH will not be understood for some years.
Who knows where we would be today if Big Anglo-saxon Christian Bwana had stayed out of MENA?
historical hypotheticals are a waste of time – you’d have WEC versions of ourselves lamenting the Big Brown Bwana and pondering where Christianity would be today if only the Moors had stayed out of Angleterre.
I am highly curious to see your argument for ibn Arabi’s speculations mapping coherently onto our modern concepts of quantum entangelent and spacetime. Journal fodder!
alas, it is unlikely that the Muhyyidin was a Time Lord, since both Hawking and Carroll agree that time travel into the past is unlikely because of closed form time curves. 
“I may be remembering wrongly, but the Library at Alexandria wasnt torched by muslims” – no, it wasn’t torched by Muzzies — that myth was slapped down by, you might be surprised to learn, Bernard Lewis!
Hitch is discussing. 
thabet is discussing. 
shams is discussing. 
Elizabeth, 
I’d say this isn’t really new. And it’s not just WEIRD, it’s even more specific. It’s 18-23 year old white US American males who managed to get admission at a research university, which is a highly selected pool.