DGDevin wrote:

Mike Dobony wrote:

If you were Ayatollah of the world you wouldn't care about science.
The history of Islam is one of repression of science, among other
things.

Man, you need to do some reading. Start with a fellow named Kitab
al-Manazir, who between 1011 and 1021 wrote the seven-volume Book Of Optics
that helped to establish the modern scientific method. That's not
surprising when you consider that while Europe was still mucking around in
the Dark Ages, science and art were flourishing in much of the Islamic
world. While that sadly changed over the centuries, it is foolish to
pretend that at one time the Islamic world wasn't ahead of the west in
scientific terms. And for that matter Christianity doesn't have such a
great record when it comes to suppressing science. Come to think of it, a
significant number of today's Christians seem to have some problems when it
comes to science, don't they.

I'm not a history buff, so I don't have exact dates, but wouldn't
1011-1021 be right around the time that islam was starting? Wouldn't
that make mr. kitab's work more of the "arab world" than the "islamic
world"? And wouldn't the decline of science in the "arab world" pretty
well track with the rise of the "islamic world"? As for the christians,
you are certainly correct there, they had their science repression
phase, violent crusade phase, a phase of relative calm and now seem to
be slipping back into both the science repression and violent crusade
phases at the same time.