Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
It seems to me that evolution HAS worked over the last thousand or so years: their culture has frozen, as you say, or gone backwards. Our culture has advanced. But cultural evolution and biological evolution work under different rules. And I believe cultural evolution works a lot faster.


My point exactly. One facet of the extremist Islamic beliefs seems to be that change is bad. Therefore, no progress.
I'm not an historian, so maybe my facts are off a bit, but I think one can safely say that the beginning of the fall of Arab culture began with the rise of Mohammadism. Once again faith degenerated into religion and the common man suffers while the priests/medicine men/Imams/what-have-you flourish.


The fall of Arab culture sis not begin with the rise of Islam. IN fact for 2-4 centuries following the death of Mohammed, Baghdad was the cultural and technoligical capital of the world in many ways..Many of the ancient texts have reached us through Islamic scholars who preserved Arabic copies when the originals were burent in Constantinople.It's only later with the rise of the Seljuk Turks and other factions that Islam underwent a change and became more and moe xenophobic.Some Islamic scholars are of the opinion that this happened due to influence of the Crusaders,but I don;t think that would be an accurate description. But one thing I have to admit is tha tIslam does give out very conflicting signals,broadmindedness in some ways and extreme narrowmindedness in others.