Regards to all.
I came across a very very good documentry and I wanted to share it with you. Yes it was an Islamic one, made by Muslims, but it deals greatly with title of the current thread, but may not be with the current topic/posts or for which this thread was started for.
The best I could summarise it is as follows.
Before Islam, the Arabs were involved in tribal warfare and thought of killing as a justified/virtues act and were even involved in killing their own children. But after entering into Islam, they changed. They become very civilized and learned humanity, love, compation and many great things. Among that also came the scientific thinking.
Science can be regarded as a product of curiocity, want to know how it all works. Qur'an invites the Muslims to learn, look at how God created everything. For instance,
[ Do they not look at the Camels, how they are made?- And at the Sky, how it is raised high?- And at the Mountains, how they are fixed firm?- And at the Earth, how it is spread out? Therefore do remind, for you are only a reminder. Al-Qur'an(88:17-21) ]
Thus, according to the Qur'an, science is used to find the signs from Allah(the Almighty God). For instance,
[ There are certainly Signs in the earth for people with certainty; and in yourselves as well. Do you not then see? Al-Qur'an(51:20-21) ]
[ Most surely in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day, and the ships that run in the sea with that which profits men, and the water that Allah sends down from the cloud, then gives life with it to the earth after its death and spreads in it all (kinds of) animals, and the changing of the winds and the clouds made subservient between the heaven and the earth, there are signs for a people who understand.
Al-Qur'an(2:164) ]
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Islam helped the Muslims by getting them out of superstious beliefs. The Arabs who could not rule a small country, after entering into Islam became great rulers. The Muslims empire allowed the flurishment of science unlike in any other region. Muslims were more involved in practical science rather then theoratical one. It was rather a product of observations and experimentation by the Muslim scientists. This act is also described by Prof. Bernard Lewis, an expert in Middle eastern history in his book, The Middle East.
"The achievement of Medieval Islamic science is not limited to the preservation of Greek learning, nor to the incorporation in the corpus of elements from the more ancient and more distant East. This heritage which medieval Islamic scientists handed on to the modren world was immensely enriched by their own efforts and contributions. Greek science, on the whole rather tended to be theoretical. Medieval Middle Eastern science was much more practical, and in such fields as medicine, chemistry, astronomy and agronomy, the classical heritage was clarified and supplemented by the experiments and observations of the medieval Middle East."
(Bernard Lewis, The Middle East, 1998, p.266)
The secret was the scientific and mental dicipline taught by the Qur'an to the Muslim scientists. The lines written by a Muslim scientist of that period in his private diary strickingly demostrate how much alive the Qur'an based concept of science was.
"Then for a year and a half, I devoted myself to study. I resumed the study of logic and all parts of philosophy. During this time I never slept the whole night through and did nothing but study all day long. Whenever I was puzzled by a problem I would go to the mosque, pray, and beg the Creater of all to reveal me that which was hidden from me and make it easy for me that which was difficult. Then at night I would retuen home, put a lamp in front of me, and set to work reading and writting. I went on like this until I was firmly grounded in all sciences and mastered them as fas as humanly possible."
(John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, 1998, p.54)
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In the European history, Mideval Europe was ruled by Romans who did not allow any freedom of thought. They took scientists as going against religion, but it was NOT TRUE. They were actually against the dogma created by the Romans. The Church killed and rejected many scientists, but many of them were great believers.
The comments of Galileo, who proposed the idea of the movement of the earth, a scientist killed by the Church were as followed.
"I render infinite thanks to God for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries."
(Galileo Galilei, quoted in: Mike Wilson's "The Foolishness of the Cross," Focus Magazine)
Many other European scientist were also greated devoted to religion and thanked God for their discoveries. A few of them are as follows.
"I had the intention of becoming a theologian... but now I see how God is, by my endeavours, also glorified is astronomy for 'heavens declare the glory of God'."
(Johannes Kepler, quoted in: J.H. Tiner, Johannes Kepler- Giant of Faith and Science, Milford, Michigan: Mou Media, 1977, p.197)
"...He(God) is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity; He governs all things that are or can be done. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things. We reverence and adore Him as His servants..."
(Sir Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, William Benton, Chicago, 1952, pp.273-74)
"But by faith we know His(God's) existance; in glory we shall know His nature."
(Blaise Pascal, Pensecs, No.233)
Gregory Mendel (1822-1884) (He was also a Christian Monk)
With his discovery of the three laws of genetics, Mendel went down in history as the person who founded the principles of inheritance. Mendel's principles of inheritance have turned out to be the most compelling proofs exposing the fallacy of the theory of evolution, the part associated with natural selection.
Having refuted the theory of evolution(especially the part where everything is a product of chance) with his discovery of the principles of inheritance, Mendel further believed that God had created the world, and that blind chance could not be responsible for the outcome.
(Dan Graves, Scientists of Faith, Kregel Resources, 1996, p. 143)
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
Pasteur is one of the greatest figures in the history of science and medicine, chiefly because of his establishment of the germ theory of disease, and his strong opposition to the theory of evolution.
Pasteur, who was a firm believer in God, was the object of fierce opposition because of his resistance to Darwin's theory of evolution. He was a defender of the compatibility of science and religion, which he would often emphasize in his writings. As he put it:
The more I know, the more does my faith approach that of the Breton peasant (i.e., the faith which is serene, complete, unquestioning)
(
http://www.archimedesfoundation.org/quotes.html)
Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.
(Jean Guitton, Dieu et La Science: Vers Le Métaréalisme, Paris: Grasset, 1991, p. 5)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Albert Einstein, who is one of the most important scientists of the last century, was also known for his faith in God. He did not hesitate to defend that science could not exist without religion. As he put it:
I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame.
(Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941)
Einstein was convinced that the universe was too perfectly designed to have come into being by chance, and that it was created by a Creator with Superior Wisdom.
For Einstein, who often referred to his belief in God in his writings, wonder at the natural order in the universe was very important. In one of his writings he mentioned, "In every true searcher of Nature there is a kind of religious reverence".(Quoted in Moszkowski, Conversations with Einstein, p. 46)
Elsewhere, he wrote:
"Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man... In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort..."
(Letter to a child who asked if scientists pray, January 24, 1936; Einstein Archive 42-601)
(The list of such scientist is really long so I will end it here.)
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A book by the name The Messianic Legacy describes when things went wrong.
"For Isaac Newton, a century and a half before Darwin, science was not seperate from religion but, on the contrary, an aspect of religion, and ultimately subserviant to it... But the science of Darwin's time became precisely that, divorcing itself from the context in which it had previously existed and establishing itself as a rival absolute, an alternative repository of meaning. As a result, religion and science were no longer working in concert, but rather stood opposed to each other, and humanity was increasingly forced to choose between them."
(Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy. Gorgi Books, London. 1991, p.177-178)
Many field of science were twisted by materialists and the new aim of science was to confirm the materialiest philosophies(some of which date back to the ancient Greek philosophies). But on the contrary, it helped discover more signs from God.
In his book, Darwin's Black Box, where he discusses the scientific invalidity of Darwinism, noted American biochemist, Michael Behe, describes the psychology of the evolutionist scientists confronted by the reality of "design" apparent in the living cell:
"Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell. The progress has been hard won. It has required tens of thousands of people to dedicate the better parts of their lives to the tedious work of the laboratory… The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell - to investigate life at the molecular level - is a loud, clear, piercing cry of "design!" The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. This triumph of science should evoke cries of "Eureka" from ten thousand throats.
But, no bottles have been uncorked, no hands clapped. Instead, a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go like that. Why does the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling discovery? Why is the observation of design handled with intellectual gloves? The dilemma is that while one side of the [issue] is labeled intelligent design, the other side must be labeled God."
(Michael J.Behe, Darwin's Black Box, New York: Free Press, 1996, p.231-232)
Also, in the field of Astronomy, the researches are also showing greatly that there is a very very complex design.
Hugh Ross, who holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Toronto, is President of "Reasons to Believe", a creationist institute in the USA. He has written many works on the relationship between cosmology and creation. Some of these are: The Creator and the Cosmos, Creation and Time, and Beyond the Cosmos. Some of Ross' remarks about the creation of the universe by a Creator are as follows:
"If time's beginning is concurrent with the beginning of the universe, as the space-time theorem says, then the cause of the universe must be some entity operating in a time dimension completely independent of and pre-existent to the time dimension of the cosmos. …It tells us that the Creator is transcendent, operating beyond the dimensional limits of the universe."
(Hugh Ross, Creator and the Cosmos, p.112)
"An intelligent, transcendent Creator must have brought the universe into existence. An intelligent, transcendent Creator must have designed the universe. An intelligent, transcendent Creator must have designed planet Earth. An intelligent, transcendent Creator must have designed life."
(Hugh Ross, Design and the Anthropic Principle, Reasons to Believe, CA1988)
Also, a jokely comment:
"If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use."
(Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosoms, p.123)
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So, you might say that, as Einstine said, 'Science without religion is lame'. And also, a quote placed earlier, 'Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him'.
(To whom it may concern, and that does not necessarily means you. Too much, too quick, but this is how I think a summary of a long documentry should have been. You might hate me for the comments that I placed, but please take them rationally; as for me, I tend to be a really friendly person, at times
)
Regards,
Mohsin.
