Dear Constance,

Many like Sylvain Gouguenheim deny the influence of one culture on another.

You referred to the "so called Islamic Golden Age." It was a real Golden Age.

You referred to the Christian Bible. My King James Bible is 1078 pages. The Jewish Bible or as Christians call it the Old Testament takes up the first 815 pages or 76%. Jews wrote it without thought of Christianity. Mistranslation of Isaiah served the Christian mythology. In the Hebrew almah (a young woman) shall give birth. The Greek version has parthenos (a virgin) giving birth. The rest of the Bible was all written by Jews with the possible exception of Luke. Luke takes up 35 pages. About 3% of what you called the Christian Bible was actually written by Christians. However, I won't call it the so called Christian Bible. Christians have made it theirs.

Likewise the Muslims made the ancient knowledge theirs. The Christian scholars who translated the ancient Greek works into Syriac and then into Arabic did not do it alone. Jewish scholars worked at the same time and in some cases together with the Melkites to convert the Greek works into Arabic. However the Arabs developed their own scientific vocabulary to add to the translations. Algebra (from al-jabr) and algorithm (from the al-Kwarizmi, the name of the Arab who developed the idea), azimuth, perigee and zenith are words of Arab origin in astronomy or mathematics. Even the beautiful names of many of the stars are from Arabs watching the heavens. Deneb, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Zubenelgenubi.

The Crusades also involved trading and cultural transmission. The knowledge of the ancients along with the contributions of the Muslim civilisation found its way back into Europe to spark the Renaissance.

I never contended that The Golden Age was the product of Islamic scripture. People accept Scripture as truth and forbid questioning. Both the Koran and Bible have been used this way.

Charles Freeman’s "The Closing of the Western Mind" described how the adoption of Christianity as the Roman state religion caused Europe to replace the classical spirit of enquiry with Christian dogmas.

David f
I say so called Islamic Golden Age because it had nothing to do with Islam.
According to the American Thinker, Dr. Jonathan David Carson, "The 'Islamic scholars' who translated 'ancient Greece's natural philosophy' were a curious group of Muslims, since all or almost all of the translators from Greek to Arabic were Christians or Jews." Read Philip Tang’s post.) Besides, all the ancient luminaries like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Euclid, Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius and Aristarchus et al. were born long before Prophet Muhammad and his Islam but they all had direct and profound influence in laying the foundation of today’s world of science, education, politics, human rights and justice.
Another interesting point is most of those renowned Muslim scientists were non-Arab. Such as: Al-Khwarizmi (Uzbekistan); Al-Razi (Tehran); Al-Ghazzali (Khorman, Iran); Al-Tabari (Tabristan); Al-Farabi (Turkistan); Al-Biruni (Khwarizm, Uzbekistan); Ibn Sina (Bukhara, Central Asia); Ibn Rushd (Cordoba, Spain); amongst the non-muslim scientists and philosophers were such as: Albategnius (al-Battani, 853–929)who belonged to the star-worshipping Sabian sect of Northern Mesopotamia, alchemist Stephanus of Alexandria (d. 641 CE), Christian monk of Syria named Morieus Romanus, Ibn Butlan (d. 1066) and Ibn Tilmid (d. 1065) of Baghdad; Gregorius Barhebreus (d. 1286) (aka Abul Faraj), and Ibn Ali Isa (d. 1290 and so on. All those scientists/philosophers happened to be sons of Muslim.

david f,
Ancient Greeks left the greatest scientific heritage of all the ancient peoples. Most scientific successes were achieved during the Hellenistic period who established world's largest ancient library at Alexandria (Egypt), where half a million books were kept. No one can think about ancient science without naming Hippocrates, Aristotle, Thales, Pythagoras, Euclid, Galen, etc., and obviously, those scientists did not learn science from Islamic Allah or Judeo-Christian’s God. Another very interesting factor is-all the above mentioned civilizations, somehow or rather, came in contact with each other (overlapping one by the other) at the Middle Eastern region. Had there been no ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, etc., there could be no science available to Arab to transmit them to the west. Just as, had there been no Judaism, Paganism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Bahaism was existed in the Middle east-there could be no Islam or no Qur'an written/produced (copied) by Muhammad.

Also following your previous post, yeh, Arab-named planets and there are at least 35 lunar craters named after Jesuit Scientists, not to mention their ongoing work in Astronomy. Go figure.

Science started its journey right from the day when ancient cave peoples made their first weapon from the stone. Necessities and human curiosities were the engine of all sciences. Science never dropped from the sky for anybody. Science is the continuous product of human civilizations. Not by one or two, but by all civilizations of the world such as: Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese, Indian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek (Hellenistic), Roman, Islamic Arab, etc, etc. All of this civilization took part in the "RELAY RACE" of shaping up ancient science, which was the building block of modern science. Ancient Egyptians (3000 BC) studied the heavens to forecast seasons, used advanced geometry to build Pyramids. They also learned human anatomy, physiology, surgery and medicine, etc. All of the above mentioned ancient pre-Arab civilizations were very advanced in medicine, astronomy, geometry, mathematics and other scientific fields much before the arrival of Islamic-Arab civilization.

Dear Constance,

I really don't understand what your most recent posts were about. Science is a way of knowing which really has little to do with any religious belief. It is called the Islamic Golden Age because scientific advances were made in Islamic controlled territory. At that time Islamic controlled territory was much more open to intellectual speculation than was Christian controlled. Some time later the Christian world emerged from the Christian dominated Dark Ages, and the Islamic world entered the Muslim dominated Dark Ages.

The ancient civilisations had the knowledge of their times. Science builds on the knowledge of past science. Newton said, "If I can see so far it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants."

Religion often takes in ideas and then calls them their own as Christianity has done with the so-called Christian Bible. Sometimes religion replaces past unprovable propositions with new unprovable propositions.

To talk about Judeo-Christian’s God is nonsense. Christianity is centred around Jesus, the incarnation of God. In Judaism Jesus is no more significant than any other person. Judaism and Islam are strictly monotheistic holding that there is only one indivisible God. Although Christians have hijacked the Jewish Bible it makes more sense to refer to the Judeo-Islamic God than the Judeo-Christian God.

You wrote: "Science is the continuous product of human civilizations."

I agree with that.

Okay David,
Can you please name another religion that is more charitable (which you have been ignoring in my posts) than Christianity, especially Catholic (including towards other faiths) for a start. Goodness David, I’m no theologist . Actions speak louder than words as I have said before, and I am living in the present which you seem to dismiss and are forever obsessed with the past, however true or untrue the historical statements are that you choose to bring up. I was brought up Catholic so did not inherit literalism – more symbolism and mysticism. Heck, don’t ask me anything about any bible. I learnt more in my Catholic schooling about social justice issues. And I had a lot of respect with all the selfless charity work my father did when he already had a full life with a large family and demanding changing careers. I do not go to Church but I tell you it stays with me. Also,I wish to add that a lot of Catholic women clergy have their own power and do their selfless charitable work autonomously.

You come across as another John Pilger, ie. self loathing of their Christian western (white!) heritage and forever ranting very narrowly, of which any balanced western person would have to wonder and be totally put off. Although I do admire him being the first to bring up the Cambodian issues. An extremist, like a lot of loony lefties these days who are now siding with Islamists, have now become. As Nick Cohen (you should read his book) – an enlightened ex-leftist who has now despaired and left the Left because of this. Human rights activists these days have lost the plot.

I sent my last post as a reaction to your glorified statement of Western culture owing all to Islam, of which you don’t seem to have fully read anyway, and have also ignored some specific cultural western references I have mentioned. And how about the lack of science terminology and Arabic script with Christian origin I mentioned.

Dear David,
In a lecture intended for delivery at La Sapienza University in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI undertook to address this issue of protest of him speaking, and to show that faith cannot exist without reason and that reason itself cannot flourish without the faith. His whole argument is based on the concept of the Western university, whose emergence in the Middle Ages was not some sheer historical fluke, but an outgrowth of the intellectual requirements of the Christian faith itself -- a point which suggests why universities did not develop in Asia, Africa or the Middle-East.

The pope first notes that "the true, intimate origin of the university lies in man's craving for knowledge". In this sense, "the Socratic questioning is the impulse that gave birth to the Western university". He then explains that it is precisely as a response to this kind of questioning that the Christians of the first centuries embraced the faith: "They accepted their faith as a way of dissolving the cloud that was mythological religion so as to discover the God that is creative Reason as well as Reason-as-Love.