sharma-arke451;754874 wrote: if you mean atheism, may be it holds. What do you mean? :confused:

As stories in religion go, I find neither really that fascinating or imaginative. There are far better ones in both the Bible and the Koran, and in elsewhere of course. A drift off but the Ancient Greeks, those guys created some of the greatest supernatural tales ever told.

Abtigiis;751501 wrote: I am still of the opinion that a man cannot be raped by a woman, biologically speaking. A man gives his consent the moment he gets an erection. If he is not interested, it simply wont rise up to the occasion. So where there is an erection there is consent. So lets not waste our time and resources on these men rape cases and concentrate on solving the real cases of men who are raping minors and women. :D I don't know whether I should, but I've found that pretty funny. Anyway, it's called 'reflex arousal' -- female victims get it too. Certain parts of our body are programmed to make a physical response to external stimuli regardless of the emotional state of the person.

Boom Boom;750350 wrote: Why are we the only muslim community that makes these kind of problems? There was a situation with Minnesota taxi drivers and dogs and people not wanting to touch meat. There was this other ridiculous story in Toronto were suing because they couldn't wear a jilbab. That's exactly what came to my mind when I was reading the article.

For me, it's too sad to be funny.

Abu-Salman;749686 wrote: If I were you, I would not get bogged down on the finer details of hududs or other secondary Fiqh issues before thoroughly adressing the 6pillars of faith and your position vis-a-vis them (ie Iman in Allah, his prophets, books or revelations, angels, the Qadr or predestination and the day of judgement). The validity/truth-value of these pillars is not independent from these secondary teachings, so I would say getting bogged down on their finer details is not an unreasonable endeavour. Apart from proceeding coherently and letting emotions and other influences aside (easier said than done I reckon), my other point is that, just as you would not wait for further diagnostics and tests before adopting precautions, this inquisitive period should not be an excuse to neglect or give up your prayers not only because time is not on our side but also because performing your spiritual duties lead you better than anything to clearer thinking as well as reduced stress (exactely what we all need the most, particularly in this age, and precisely what will assist you most in your quest for the truth)... I'm not sure as to how praying leads to clearer thinking; if anything, in this case, it would probably mess-up the objectivity of the OP's judgement. Similarly, your suggestion that it will reduce stress cries pseudoscience.

The Zack;749209 wrote: That baby looks so Somali. STFU yaa poster! Ditto!

To be honest, if I were the OP, I would find most of the replies unnecessarily patronising and even insulting.

As the scientific spirit is, here is some back up for some of the things that I've stated in the last two posts: I got this from the book Energy and Mass in Relativity Theory by Lev B. Okun, where the paper got republished in 2009. It explains what I've been trying to explain about the loss of gauge invariance (i.e. replacing c with α) more succinctly.

sharma-arke451;749086 wrote: It is perspicacious to think, that science is imperfect, as its source is limited. That's a non-point -- one that's often made in the theological folly of mistaking absolutist dogma for epistemological perfection. the coming up of this theory ''that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos can travel faster than light,'' is a major blow to the Einstein's theory of relativity. That's not true. As I've said in the above post, to say this would be a blow to relativity amounts to say, among other things, that relativity wouldn't hold if the so-called gauge invariance is lost, which is ridiculous. I'm sure most physicists would agree with me. "If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics," said CERN research director Sergio Bertolucci. since when will your views on physics keep changing?????????? For as long as we have that wonderful procedure called the scientific method. If our views would remain stagnant, physics would be dull, boring, and unenlightening that it would, in fact, border religion. Lack of changing views is really tantamount to lack of progress. so, there's no point for physics student's (a noble assumption i am making) to shun the opinion of others and take positions,as if they are scientist. The finding could force scientists to rethink the fundamentals of physics. When the scientifically illiterate try to throw around baseless and outlandish claims of the implications on an experiment in science, I would go so far as to say there is moral obligation on all students of science and scientifically literate laypeople to shun such claims.

What most people don't realise is that what Boodhari really died of was 'hargab'.

I'm surprised that no one mentioned the greatest TV series in the entire history of the universe: Dr Who.

It happens to the best of us. ;)

Carafaat;748827 wrote: Good initiative for a society where most people still are illeterate and are used to listing to to Radio BBC. Sarcasm, right?

It took you a month of tutoring by several members to learn how to post a picture! That's worrying!

Prometheus, that made me laugh! I'm not surprised that I have been trying to be reasonable with someone who believes that Mecca is the centre of the Universe. It was weird when he started talking about donkeys with books and science donkeys, but that explains it. AYOUB;748945 wrote: ^ So the BBC's Science web page is sensationalist pop media? If it's BBC itself you have issues with, why did you post its video clip in the first place? Hypocrisy at its worse. Pop media or not, the people quoted in hundreds of articles are not "faithful" nobodies as I'm happily branded by the Godless. I'm not relying on the video to support a point of mine, so it's not hypocrisy; on the other hand, you relied on the concerned articles in your futile attempt to make the state of affairs look as if the foundations of physics would go bonkers if this result gets confirmed. Most of the experts questioned expressed shock and surprise (which they should) and how big deal this is (and it is); however, pop media articles really blew it out of proportion. For example, in the BBC article Dr Ereditato says the result would have 'a potentially great impact on physics', but the article began with the ridiculous premise of one of the pillars of modern science tumbling down. It's extraordinary to claim that special relativity -- a theory that, as Prometheus said earlier, was supported by hundreds of experiments, many of which were far more sensitive than this one -- will simply tumble down. The idea that light might have a mystery mass, the one that I was referring to earlier, and the one that neutrinos might after all be tachyonic particles, are all far more likely than special relativity simply 'tumbling' down. In speaking of the last one -- surprise! -- modern physics allows particles that travel at faster than light-speed -- that's exactly what tachyons are. It was, in fact, posited that neutrinos are tachyons as far back as in 1986. If this result is true, theory of relativity, like many other theories in physics, will have to be 'revised', but it's unlikely that these theories are 'wrong' in the very sense of the word. For example, if it's that photons have an undetected mass, then the revision suffices to replace c by some large enough number, call it α, such that the speed of all massless subatomic particles is invariant in all inertial frames of reference at α. On the other hand, if it turns out that neutrinos are in fact tachyonic particles, then you don't need to do anything at all -- relativity stands untouched. The only time I can imagine relativity being torn apart is the event of α turning out not to exist at all, a suggestion over which the world waking tomorrow on Helios driving the chariot of the sun across the sky is more likely. So I was probably unkind to relativity earlier when I suggested that this might limit the domain of validity of the theory, which is what you mistook for, strange enough, 'down-playing' the significance of the discovery. That being said, it's clear that explaining all this is a pointless exercise in futility, as it will probably go over your head, as it has been for a page and half of this thread. Hence I think it's best of interest for you to abandon this and find something you understand and are good at -- if there really is such a thing! If that happens, then I don't have to waste time trying to explain physics to someone with theocratic agenda who lacks the very basics.

AYOUB;748496 wrote: I'm prepared to wait for further research without making my mind either way, why is your buddy Qarnaqsi (ms noma iyo nus) already saying "it won't shatter anything; even if it turns out that neutrinos do travel faster than the speed of light"? Is this not blind faith? At least have the courtesy to quote the entire sentence. I wrote: 'And no, it won't shatter anything; even if it turns out that neutrinos do travel faster than the speed of light, this might only impose dimensional limit of validity on special relativity in the same way that special relativity itself imposed limits of validity on Newtonian/classical mechanics.' I know exactly what I'm talking about in here; and so would you, if you knew anything about physics. Quoting sensationalist pop media articles with remarks as meaningless as 'the beeb and time for you' only serves to make you look ridiculous.

Here is a review of a very good book that I remembered as a result of the neutrinos story. I hope you like it. Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science by Jim al-Khalili – review The 'bubbling invention' of the Islamic world lit up the dark ages. By Tim Radford (Guardian). The relay-race model of intellectual history is simple enough: a go-ahead culture picks up the torch, runs as far as it can, and hands the light of learning to a younger contender before sinking into exhaustion. The ancient Greeks fan the flame of rational inquiry and surrender it to the Romans, who leave it to flicker. The Vandals and Visigoths snuff it out. But embers of scholarship still glow in the eastern empire of Byzantium, and when the Arabs emerge from the desert darkness and establish the fabulous empire of Islam, inquiring minds in Baghdad and Isfahan translate, preserve and annotate the wisdom of Ptolemy and Aristotle for the next six centuries. The sultans and satraps storm Europe with the sword, but with them too arrives the astrolabe, algebra and the glory that was Greece. This is enough to light up the dark ages, ignite the Renaissance, and inflame modern science. The evidence is in the nouns: algebra, alchemy, alcohol and even the capital letters of astronomy and history, Aldebaran and Avicenna and the Almagest of Ptolemy. So far, so familiar. But Jim al-Khalili's book does more than just enrich a familiar narrative: it brings alive the bubbling invention and delighted curiosity of the Islamic world. The Greeks certainly provide the thread for the story, but from such thread the Ummayyads and Abbasids wove their own astonishing fabric of discovery and enlightenment. Empires are built on bloodshed but survive on know-how. "The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr," said the prophet Muhammad, and the empire founded in his name had a communication problem to solve before it could build its knowledge economy. Persian or Pahlavi texts had to be translated into Arabic, among them studies of astrology, which may originally have been based on mathematics texts in Sanskrit. The new empire also needed Arabic versions of texts on geometry, engineering and arithmetic; it clashed with the Chinese, and from prisoners learned the art of papermaking. The first paper mills were established in Baghdad at the end of the eighth century: dyes, inks, glues and bindings followed. During and after the reign of Harun al-Rashid, the fabulous caliph of the so-called Arabian Nights, Persian, Arab, Christian and Jewish scholars all began to translate and publish medical and mathematical texts from Greek and Syriac as well as Persian and Indian scripts. Around this time, Geber or Jabir ibn Hayyan the alchemist composed the Kitab al-Kimiya, a systematic examination of the nature of matter, which in 1144 would be translated into Latin by Robert of Chester as the Liber de compositione alchimiae. From Jabir we gain the word alkali, the distilling apparatus known as an alembic and – says Al-Khalili – perhaps even the word gibberish. Later Arabic texts delivered words we still use today: amalgam, borax, camphor, elixir. Whether Jabir counts as scientist or alchemist is an open question: within a generation, real science, intense scholarship and a palpable curiosity about the physical world began to emerge. Harun's successor Al-Ma'mun is linked with the founding of the House of Wisdom, a library, academy and translation factory that may have become at the time the largest repository of books in the world. Polymaths produced maps that showed the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic as open bodies of water, and tried to crack the meaning of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs; they composed star charts, and adapted the Hindu number system to deliver the numerals we now use every day. Not all Al-Khalili's heroes were Arabs: Omar Khayyam calculated the length of the solar year to 11 decimal places and composed in his native Persian a famous Treatise on Demonstration of Problems in Algebra, as well, of course, as those lines about the jug of wine, the loaf of bread and thou. Aristotle, too, lives on in this story: he appears in a dream to a caliph's son, and he fascinates generations of Islamic scholars. They were also people of their time. They accepted the theories of the four humours and the geocentric universe. But Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics pioneered the study of refraction and applied mathematics to a theory of vision; his successor Ibn Mu'adh used Euclidian geometry to calculate the height of the atmosphere at 52 miles (it is about 62 miles). The tradition of inquiry and scholarship reaches far beyond Baghdad: to Samarkand and Bokhara, to Cairo and Cordoba. In the 10th century, in Andalusia, Al-Zahrawi devised the forceps, speculum and bonesaw, pioneered inhalant anaesthetics in the form of sponges soaked with cannabis and opium, and even described the first syringe. Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century anticipated Harvey and described the pulmonary transit of the blood from the right side of the heart, via the lungs, to the left. Al-Khalili is a Baghdad-born British physicist: his command of Arabic and mathematical physics invests his story with sympathy as well as authority. He is careful to put Arabic science in its context; he tries not to claim too much for his heroes and his attention to detail and fairness is rewarding. The metaphor of science as a relay race is exposed as unsatisfactory: cultures overlap, enrich and stimulate each other, and 10th-century Arab scholars greedy for understanding form a community with 16th-century Elizabethans or 21st-century Cambridge dons. The easy equation of Islam and wilful ignorance never made sense – empires are not sustained by ignorance – but even in the 11th century, the rationalists felt it necessary to defend reason. The Persian Al-Biruni, who measured the height of a mountain and the angle of dip of the horizon to calculate the circumference of the planet to within an accuracy of 1%, warned that the extremist "would stamp the sciences as atheistic and would proclaim that they led people astray, in order to make ignoramuses of them, and to hate the sciences. For this will help him conceal his own ignorance, and to open the door to the complete destruction of the sciences and the scientists." He might have been talking about the mullahs of modern Tehran, or the ranters of the US religious right. In the end, Arabic science did falter. The flame was picked up by Copernicus and Galileo, by William Harvey and Isaac Newton. In 2005, scientists from 17 Arab countries produced 13,444 scientific publications. Harvard University alone that year produced 15,455.

I'm actually hoping that this turns out to be true. It would probably be the most shocking discovery ever made. I was following the story Jim Al-khalili, the professor who said he will eat his shorts if this turns out to be true, and he said, if confirmed, eating his shorts willl be a small price to pay for such an exciting discovery! By the way, Jim is a legend! He wrote the first ever book I read on quantum mechanics - Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed - a book that's literally accessible to everyone. He also published 'Pathfinders' last year, a truly fascinating account of the 'golden age of Arabic science' (I might post a good review I've seen of the book somewhere). Prometheus;747755 wrote: ... I'm impressed by your knowledge on these matters! Not many people know of the ideas of Kuhn, Popper, Feyerabend etc!

AYOUB;747773 wrote: ^ Legjar ferenji iyo been baa mise waa cilmi? Don't try to downplay your mullahs. Their Fatawa of nature will be torn to shreads if this discovery is confirmed. It's not just knowledge; it's the most precise form of knowledge ever invented! Take the caesium clocks used in this very experiment. They can measure time to an accuracy of one second in about 30 million years. It's an act of injustice to speak of it in the same tone as one might for inferior modes of knowledge, specially those which rely on things as simplistic and as naïve as 'faith'. And no, it won't shatter anything; even if it turns out that neutrinos do travel faster than the speed of light, this might only impose dimensional limit of validity on special relativity in the same way that special relativity itself imposed limits of validity on Newtonian/classical mechanics.

Professor Jim Al-khalili was on the news saying he will eat his shorts live on TV if this result turns out to be true! What do you think? Do you want this result to be true, or have anything to say on this? It's pretty interesting!

Chocolate and Honey;746942 wrote: A good piece of writing. Interesting response! What was the last one that made you smile then?

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens Brown paper packages tied up with strings ... Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings ... Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes Silver white winters that melt into springs. ....

Som@li;746856 wrote: This is not Sheikh, He should be held in mental hospital These days sheikhs do the darndest things! You know the word 'wadaad' used to have a touch of an almost mystic grace to it. These days it's associated with all sorts of misdeeds and encomposses the sort of horrible things that one usually saves one's spleen for.

A_Khadar;746371 wrote: For example, while the Quran calls for Muslim Unity, he preaches to his congregation the virtues of a separate Somali enclave known as Somaliland: an enclave that is based on defunct colonial borders. He always manages to find verses from the Quran that justify his distorted and divisive stands that may sometimes be against the main pillars of Islam. I find the implication in these two sentences absurd and even dangerous!