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tumble-log » And you thought the millenium bug would be bad!

Back to chickerinoDOTcom Written on 21-Apr-2008 by chickerino

BBC reports on world first religion-attempts-to-create-biggest-ever-computer-legacy-issue special.

Muslim scientists [wtf!] and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Do they have any idea how much hassle this would cause. So their point about the colonial British imposing GMT as the +0 timezone on the whole world is probably reasonably valid. But, like it or not, that's just the way it is and the even older legacy that they are attempting to impose won't really help. It's like trying to change the number of hours in a day to 10 (which makes much more sense btw). It's simply NOT going to happen.

But the movement is not without its critics, who say that the notion that modern science was revealed in the Koran confuses spiritual truth, which is constant, and empirical truth, which depends on the state of science at any given point in time.

Call me a cynic, but I'm not entirely convinced that there's such a thing as constant and spiritual truth since someone clearly just made it all up in the first place.

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Tags: religion,truth,islam,gmt,saudi arabia,timezones

Comments

written on 22-Apr-2008

Paul says:

I generally strongly agree with your comments, though one could aruge that a Muslim could be a scientist. Therefore, your critique is more ideological than it is based on reasoning from ´rhetoric´or ´logic´. ... Fair enough ...

Your third point regarding "the spiritual faith which is constant" appeared as insightful to me. The BBC is possibly, depending on their motive, being quite cunning in wrting the two ajectives apart. Linguistically you would say that "spiritual" was "attribution", i.e. was adjacent to the noun "faith", but "constant" which was placed in a sub-clause "predicated" the same noun "faith". The separatioin of the adjectives, it could be argued, serves to distract attention away from the fact that both refer to the same noun. The BBC does seem to make a lot of hedged statements in its reporting in general and avoids stating things as certain fact and thus as a irreputable. Plausibly, the BBC is over-pampering to those voices who call for a "neutral" presentation of news events.
written on 22-Apr-2008

chickerino says:

As Karl Popper puts it: Science is about the proof in the disproof. It's the proof of falsification rather than the verification of theories.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/12/reviews ... .html

This is where we have a bit of a contradiction with religion. Indeed, whilst there may well be Muslim 'scientists', their 'Muslim' part in my opinion by definition contradicts their 'science' since religion is all about the constant truths - which to be honest are extremely easily (scientifically) dis-proven.

Agreed on the BBC always hedging itself. Actually I find this fairly fucking annoying. Why can't they just HAVE an opinion on stuff. I realise that there is a conflict of interest because they are funded by the tax-payer but sometimes reading the plain facts is really, really dull!
written on 22-Apr-2008

Paul [http://www.webjam.com/paulsari] says:

I agree. I also know about Karl Popper and think he's right. I am little surprised that you would give the impressioin that you assume your reader does not know KP.

For that reason, I ask myself if you are trying to demonstrate your knowledge to me or genuinely make me think about something new.
written on 22-Apr-2008

chickerino says:

And I am a little surprised that you believe yourself to be my only reader
written on 22-Apr-2008

Paul [http://www.webjam.com/paulsari] says:

maybe I'm the only one of your readers who really is reading your blog and not just telling you are ... ha ha

althought my comment was allgemeingültig for all readers anyway.

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