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Cake day: October 6th, 2023

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  • It was the 8th century - cut him some slack lol. Of course his views are going to seem antiquated. My point was that you are throwing the baby out the the bath water by condemning an entire civilisation.

    Edit: you are falling prey to the same fallacy of judging ancient thinkers by modern standard that led to Edinburgh University students calling for David Hume to be cancelled for an “offensive” footnote.




  • 8th century Islamic scholars like Al-Ghazali made huge contributions to philosophy with their cosmological arguments for the existence of God. These are still discussed to this day in philosophy classes. In the grand scheme of things it’s only relatively recently that there has been this strain of iconoclasm and anti-intellectualism emerging amongst the most hardline islamists. It’s pretty similar to modern day evangelical christians. Seems strange to single them out.

    Since we’re on the atheism subreddit I’d like to say personally I’m a hard agnostic. In the sense that I think it is impossible to prove definitively whether God exists or not. At the same time I don’t act like there is one because I’ve not yet been convinced by any theological argument. I think the new atheism movement led by Dawkins et al from the noughties made a mistake focusing on individual religions. Religions are essentially an anthropological curiousity and failing to attempt to understand them is a handicap with regards to trying to understand other human societies.