Re: Interesting - Ukraine Missiles Use Open Source, Russians Use Pi-4s

On Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:40:03 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

>> Modern Islam (at least the current 'strict' reading by the
>> extremists) is what does not mesh well with science. Islam of yore
>> did mesh well. Something changed in the centries from then to now.

The interpretation changed.

When the Arabs conquered Alexandria, and found the pitiful remnants of
what had once been the Great Library (what was left after the
Christians had done with it), the conquering general sent a message
back to the Caliph, asking what to do with with the remaining books.

The message came back: “Either they agree with the Quran, in which
case they are superfluous, or they disagree with it, in which case
they are undesirable. In any case, destroy them.”

And then, just a couple centuries later, the thinking changed, and the
Islamic Golden Age of scholarship and learning -- the origins of
science as we know it today -- began. Then, a few centuries after
that, the thinking changed again, and the Golden Age ended.

And just about at this point, the thinking in the Christian world
changed, too. And so we got the Italian Renaissance -- founded on many
of the ideas from the older Islamic learning, don’t forget. It was the
Islamic world that had kept the old Greek learning alive (and was
busily adding to it), while the Christian idea of “learning” was
making endless over-decorated copies of their holy book.

Moral: You can take exactly the same holy teachings, and selectively
use parts of them to justify entirely opposite and contradictory
intellectual positions. We saw that happen with both the Muslims and
the Christians. And it happens with Jews as well.

Religous argument is circular argument.