> While the Egyptians were building the great pyramids of Giza around 2500 BC, the English constructed their most famous ancient monument, the stone circle at Stonehenge. Not bad by English standards, but not even large enough to have housed one of the ceremonial boats buried at the foot of King Khufu’s pyramid. England continued to lag behind and to borrow from the Middle East and the rest of Europe up to and including the Roman period.
So, the Great Pyramid of Giza: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza, versus Stonehenge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge.
Now it's completely different. The Middle East (largely), is far behind western civilization. What's happened since then? It's hard to comprehend how quickly nations and cultures can fall, as well how quickly they can rise.
The y-intercept generally doesn't matter. The slope does.
This reminds me of pg's Black Swan Farming: http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html. Black swans (e.g. Gutenburg's printing press) are the driving force for advancement in society. Since black swans beget more black swans (since one black swan in a certain society -> society supporting more of them), the effect is cumulative, and societies can rise and fall quickly. What does that mean today? Will Africa have their own black swans? Will South America?
(I suppose you could say that the current phase of western civilization falling, eventually, would be a bad thing. But isn't it inevitable that any single civilization will end, eventually?)
Similarly, it is very likely that we will find many of the general ideas we have about sexuality will be shown to be very destructive and unhealthy. Our research already shows that increasing sexual activity by any amount results in real measurable health benefits. And history can show us that we exist in the most non-sexually-active period in human history. We'll certainly correct that at some point, history pretty much guarantees it. Wherever our society is a freakish unique outlier on something as basic as that, I think it's safe to expect it to be shown to be folly later.
(Down-votes from PC folks welcome)
I'm pretty sure what you're trying to say is religion has no place in the 21st century.
Also fun fact, the early days of Islam saw huge steps forward for women's rights, more so than pretty much any other culture at the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_feminism#Early_reforms_...). I'm curious why you Mohammed was a misogynist and what that has to do with Islam?
He definitely was a misogynist and a pedophile according to Islamic texts. Would you like some links?
"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Interesting that your only other comment on this profile was a suggestion to someone else to read the guidelines.)
Also the link this whole thread is about on wikipedia is about a Scientist from Turkey, not Arabia.
> "Badi'al-Zaman Abū al-'Izz ibn Ismā'īl ibn al-Razāz al-Jazarī (1136–1206) (Arabic: بديع الزمان أَبُو اَلْعِزِ بْنُ إسْماعِيلِ بْنُ الرِّزاز الجزري) was a Muslim polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, craftsman, artist, and mathematician from Jazirat ibn Umar (current Cizre, Turkey), who lived during the Islamic Golden Age (Middle Ages)."
I'm aware that it is, but many people seem to like to use it for an (incorrect) generalization.
Much of the Islamic scholarship at the time revolved around gaining a greater understanding of the creation of God as a means to draw nearer to God.
In addition a lot of scholars in the major Islamic centres weren't even Muslim. For example, the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula (welcomed by the local Jewish population) ushered in a Jewish Golden Age which produced Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish scholars of the time.
Islam was the catalyst of change in the 7th century, I don't see how that could be denied. Yes, it was predominately Arabs that brought it outside the Peninsula but the scholarly achievements weren't Arab achievements, because, again, many of the scholars weren't Arabs. Heck, the most important book in Sunni Islam after the Qur'an was compiled by al-Bukhari, a non-Arab from Bukhara in modern-day Afghanistan.
If you look into it, Islamic scholarship didn't really kick off until the Abbasid Dynasty was established. Non-Arabs played a large role in allowing the Abbasids to come into power in the first place.
The jizya (tax on non-Muslims) was a higher fee than the zakat (religious tax on Muslims). As more and more non-Arabs started to embrace Islam, the Umayyads were getting less and less tax revenue because the new Muslims were playing zakat instead of jizya.
As such, they stated (against the laws of Islam) that non-Arab converts to Islam still need to pay the same amount as they were paying before they embraced Islam. Naturally, this led to a lot of resentment amongst the new non-Arab Muslims who would later support the Abbasid rebellion against the Umayyads.
The Abbasids would go on to employ many non-Arabs, especially Persians, into high positions in government.
First the Jizya was not a Tax payed because they weren't Muslims. It was payed for everyone who didn't participate in Islamic military. Think of it like a Latino living in the US and paying a fee (passport fees, green card fees..etc) for not participating in US military. Non-Muslim benefited from the same as Muslims in terms of public social help. Secondly, Zakat can be sometimes higher than the Tax paid by non-Muslims. Depending on how much you own.