Islam's influence

My blogging may be spotty for the next few weeks, as I'll be traveling to the States because of a family emergency. In the meantime, here's an essay by physicist Frank Tipler arguing that Islam's contributions to science, mathematics, etc. have been greatly exaggerated:

If one reads history of science textbooks prior to about 1980, one will find very little mention of Muslim “contributions” to physics and astronomy. This is reasonable, because there weren’t any. In the past generation, however, political correctness has dictated that Muslims be given credit for discoveries they did not make.
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During the Cold War, it was commonplace for leftist academics to attribute many discoveries to scientists in Communist countries, discoveries that had actually been made in the West. So now leftist academics attribute to Muslims discoveries that had actually been made by others.

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

Islam and peace

A passage in the Qur'an that's upheld as an example of Islam teaching peace is Sura 5 (the Table) verse 32. It states "if any one slew a person -- unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land -- it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people."

The Corner recently raised two interesting points about this passage. First, this idea is not original to the Qur'an, but forms a part of the Babylonian Talmud, written in the 2nd century (and recording traditions that pre-date that).

The second interesting point about this passage is that the verse following it, 5:33, states, "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter." I think (and I could be wrong) that those who strive against "Allah and His Messenger" refers to those who do not accept Islam. In other words, this passage seems to command Muslims to commit violence against non-Muslims simply for being non-Muslims. At the very least, it puts the previous verse in a different light.

Arthur Balfour's Dangerous Idea

Arthur James Balfour was the British Prime Minister from 1902-05 and the namesake of the Balfour Declaration. However, this isn't the dangerous idea I'm referring to. He was also a philosopher who wrote several books which all contain, to some extent, the argument that influenced C. S. Lewis's Argument from Reason (AFR). This is the idea that physicalism, materialism, naturalism are all self-defeating because when applied to the mind they remove any claim for our beliefs and belief-forming capabilities to be veridical -- and this would obviously include beliefs in physicalism, materialism, and naturalism. Lewis's version of the argument has recently been defended by Victor Reppert in C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea, and has been given a more rigorously analytical form in Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism.

I just finished Balfour's first book A Defence of Philosophic Doubt, published in 1879. It's interesting because it contains the earliest version of the AFR that I've been able to discover, namely, chapter 13, "The Evolution of Belief." In fact, this chapter is a re-working of an essay he published in the Fortnightly Review in 1877. I think future accounts of this argument will need to delve into Balfour's version to see how it influenced C. S. Lewis and others.

Balfour's other books spend more time on the AFR and, like Defence, they're all in the public domain. There's The Foundations of Belief, Theism and Humanism, and Theism and Thought, the latter two being two series of Gifford Lectures (which I wrote about here). There's also a critique of Balfour's philosophy in the public domain, Mr. Balfour's Apologetics Critically Examined by W. B. Columbine. At any rate, while Balfour's writings are very dry, I think they have some value and need to be taken seriously.

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

Cool

Ted Chiang has published a new (to me, at least) story, and you can read it online: Exhalation. You can read some of his other stories here.

Going up

An interesting twist on the already interesting idea of a space elevator (a line connecting the surface of the earth to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit). The new idea is to rotate the line so that centrifugal force would pull the payload out, and (if strong enough) up. That way, less energy would be necessary to climb the elevator, although a large part of the attractiveness of a space elevator is that it would be orders of magnitude cheaper than rockets. (via Glenn Reynolds)

Quote of the Day

...we need once more to focus more precisely on Socrates' own complaint against Anaxagoras and his ilk. The complaint is that Anaxagoras makes no use of Mind when he explains the world (instead adducing causes like 'air and ether and water and many other absurdities'), and that this is 'just about as inconsistent' as if he were first to say that the cause of everything Socrates does is Mind, and then go on to explain that he is in his prison in Athens because of the operations of his bones and sinews, making no mention of his conviction that he is acting in a way right and honourable. Socrates is thus taking himself as a microcosm of the world: the world, like the individual, is guided by Mind, and by what is for the best.

Far-fetched as Socrates as microcosm might seem today, those who would wish to explain human behaviour without reference to mind, and who would disparage explanations of action in terms of doing what is for the best as folk psychology, are making an analogous move in reverse. Rather than treating the macrocosm by analogy with the microcosm, they are treating the microcosm on analogy with the macrocosm. They are treating the microcosm (man) as if it were just part of the macrocosm, and guided and animated by the same principles. But this is surely misguided. Whatever we decide about our ultimate destination and origin, it remains the case that we, as human beings and as self-conscious agents, can question our standing in the world in a way no other part of nature can. This, indeed, is part of what 'acting for the best' comprises: raising questions about our relationship to the rest of nature and to each other. The normativity, the search for truth for its own sake, which this involves, engages us in types of considerations which are not found in the scientific descriptions and explanations, whether those of physics or of biology.
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If it is hard to see science accomplishing a wholesale revision of commonsensical perceptions and beliefs about the empirical world, it is even harder to envisage science revising our attitude to practice, and the explanation we give to action in terms of agents' intentions and in terms of their being motivated to act for the best. This is because science itself is a practice, and because in choosing to do it at all and in doing it in particular ways, we will be subjecting ourselves to normative considerations. We will be having at the back of our mind the idea that, for various reasons, it is for the best that we engage in science, and that engaging in it in such a way is the best way to do it. In this sense, the decisions to do science and to do it in a particular way are on a par with Socrates' decision to stay in his prison cell, rather than let his bones and sinews (or genes) take him into exile. They are all decisions which cannot be given a scientific justification, and which demand a justification logically independent from anything we might discover in scientific accounts. It would then be, to say the least, self-defeating, if science -- done in the best way and for the best motives, done in Socrates' terms because of Mind -- were to tell us that Mind in this sense plays no part in human affairs, or that it is an illusion foisted on us by genetic working on quite other principles.

Anthony O'Hear
Beyond Evolution: Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Explanation

Updated

I've finally changed the blog so that it takes up more of the screen, something I've been wanting to do for a while. Much thanks to the Blog Doctor (who's an excellent resource) for the HTML, and to Tyson for photoshopping the long bookshelf at the top of the page.

Now I still have a small problem: the "page" background upon which the posts are written only extends so far, so the right side of the screen is just plain old boring yellow, which contrasts slightly with the rest. So does anyone out there know how to extend or stretch the background to cover it?

More Favorite Movie Scenes

The same caveat applies here as in my previous post: these are a few of my favorite movie scenes, not a few scenes from my favorite movies. The movies these scenes come from may very well suck.

Big Night


Hot Shots! Part Deux


The Empire Strikes Back


Life of Brian


The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers


Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

Harlan Ellison

There's a short story by Harlan Ellison that I've been wanting to read for some time, but wasn't able to find in bookstores during my brief visits to the States. It's about five people in a living hell; a computer system "woke up" to consciousness, but recognized it was the proverbial ghost in the machine. It hated humanity for creating it, and so killed everyone except five people who it kept in an underground tunnel system, keeping them alive indefinitely, torturing them, and mutilating them. The computer is named "AM" which stands for a few things in the story, but is meant to recall both God's telling Moses that his name is "I am", and Descartes' cogito "I think therefore I am." So the computer is an imitation God, but instead of being a God of love and goodness it's a god of hatred and evil. This kind of reminds me of Philip K. Dick's short story "Faith of Our Fathers", which has something along the same lines, except in Dick's story, it's actually God: the ground of existence is a predator, creating everything so it can consume it.

Anyway, I just found a copy of Ellison's story online, so you can read it if you think your stomach is strong enough. The title? "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream".

Another must-read

Dallas Willard, who I wrote about here, has a new book coming out at the end of this month. The title sounds amazing: Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge. I'd almost swear this guy is writing these books just for me.

Jesus and Galileo

I just re-acquainted myself with a quote from the Jesus Seminar's book The Five Gospels. In order to defend their rejection of the supernatural, they appeal to the conflict myth. It reminds me of Rudolf Bultmann's famous quote, "It is impossible to use electrical light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles." The Jesus Seminar makes the same point by appealing specifically to geocentrism and Galileo.

The contemporary religious controversy, epitomized in the Scopes trial and the continuing clamor for creationism as a viable alternative to the theory of evolution, turns on whether the worldview reflected in the Bible can be carried forward into this scientific age and retained as an article of faith. Jesus figures prominently in this debate. The Christ of creed and dogma, who had been firmly in place in the Middle Ages, can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope. The old deities and demons were swept from the skies by that remarkable glass. Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo have dismantled the mythological abodes of the gods and Satan, and bequeathed us secular heavens.

So their understanding of the New Testament presupposes a discarded and demonstrably false theory of the history of science. Someone should tell them to stop focusing so much on Galileo's telescope and look through Hubble's telescope. If they did, they might discover that the universe is expanding outward after having sprung into being, which in turn suggests that something "outside" the universe brought it into existence. That wouldn't fit the narrative of a "secular heavens" though.

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

This is very disappointing

NASA had plans to return people to the Moon by 2020 and set up a permanently manned station there. Some recent comments by its acting administrator imply that they're scaling back their plans, due to the small budget they've been granted by President Obama. It looks like it's time for private companies to step in and get the job done.

Two Points on Biblical Prophecy

1. One of the messages of the Bible is that we live in a world characterized by spiritual warfare. Like most other religions, Christianity maintains that there is a fairly well-populated spiritual realm, and that some of its inhabitants do not have our best interests at heart. I think this is important to keep in mind when we look at Bible prophecies. I don't think the Bible lays out any kind of future history so that we can determine beforehand how events will unfold. If it did, then the malevolent spiritual world would know exactly how things will happen as much as we would, and would be able to use that information against us, the same way that a military would be able to use the captured plans of its enemy against them. In Christian spiritual warfare, however, it's not possible to give any information to the good guys without also giving it to the bad guys -- even if you encode the information, the knowledge of how to decode it can only be given the same way as the code, which means that both sides would be able to decode it.

Jesus' atoning death is an excellent example (it often functions as a paradigm in this way). We know that the malevolent spiritual world had a hand in Jesus' execution. If such evil spirits, or whatever you want to call them, knew that Jesus' death would atone for the sins of the world, do you think they would have instigated it? Of course not. Thus, the prophecies are obscure enough that the ancient rabbis were not able to put together a "future history" of the Messiah suffering, dying, rising from the dead, and thereby atoning for the sins of the world. Now afterwards we can see how they say these things. But if they laid it all out, then the malevolent spiritual world would have moved heaven and earth (ha!) to keep Jesus from dying. Thus, I think Mel Gibson's portrayal of Satan not wanting Jesus to die in The Passion of the Christ is incorrect. Satan was no doubt behind it all, grinning like a maniac, and then when Jesus gave up his spirit, Satan's ultimate victory turned into the most crippling defeat he could have experienced.

So I think the end times prophecies should be seen in light of this. We can do our best to try to understand them in a systematic way, but if we were able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, so could the malevolent spiritual world. To ensure that they cannot, God wrote the prophecies so that we could not either ... until they actually happen. In other words, Bible prophecies are primarily meant to be understood by (and thus to encourage) those who are living through the events they describe.

2. Now some non-Christians may think that in all of this I am merely making excuses. The Bible, they might say, does not give clear and direct predictions of future events by which they could test it to see if it is really true. All I'm doing is making excuses for this lamentable situation. In response I make two points: first, my contention is that Bible prophecies are not written in order to provide "testable" predictions in the same way that contemporary science does. Thus, this objection is essentially that Bible prophecies fail to meet an objective they were never intended to meet; and this is neither rational nor convincing. In saying this, I do not at all intend to demean the scientific method or the great value of science. What I'm saying is that it is invalid to take a method used in one field and apply it indiscriminately to another field that has different goals and purposes.

Second, it simply isn't true that such predictions have to be clearly understood before their alleged fulfillment in order to have any value as actual predictions of future events. The predictions in the book of Daniel are an excellent case in point. Daniel predicts the rise and fall of several empires, including Greece and Rome, in very metaphorical terminology. The fact that it describes this with metaphors does not mean that it doesn't clearly predict these events; indeed, most Bible commentators who reject biblical inspiration argue that Daniel must have been written after Alexander the Great and the rise of the Roman Empire because the descriptions are simply too accurate. But I very much doubt anyone could have laid out precisely how these predictions would be fulfilled before they actually were, based solely on the prophecies.

Inexcusable

This is absolutely inexcusable: Air Force One buzzes Manhattan for a photo-op, terrifying thousands of people. Many buildings were evacuated. I don't care if the President claims he didn't know about it beforehand (he hasn't yet but of course he will -- and I will strongly doubt it), there's just no excuse for it. I would be as offended by this no matter who the President is.

Quote of the Day

Ebrard (Gospel History, pp. 59-60) gives, from personal observation, a case showing how the knowledge of a hitherto unknown circumstance will often reduce several discordant incidents to harmonious consecution. A messenger N. by name, was sent from Zürich to Pfäffikon on the occasion of an outbreak in the latter place. Accordingly Ebrard was informed by one trustworthy person that N. was sent, late in the evening, with a letter to P.; another told him that N. was sent in the evening to P., but after going a short distance, returned with the report that the alarm-bell had already been rung in P.; a third related that two messengers had been sent on horseback to P.; and a fourth that N. had sent two men on horseback to P. These seeming discrepancies vanished, when Ebrard afterward learned from N. himself that he had indeed been sent, but met on the way two messengers from P., who reported the outbreak of the riot; that he turned back with them to Zürich, where he immediately procured horses for them, and sent them back to quiet the people in P. We thus see, that once in possession of the thread of the narrative, it is an easy matter to arrange upon it seemingly refractory and incompatible circumstances.

John W. Haley
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible