the emperor’s new clothes

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Adjective form of clinamen, some ancient greek term about the deviation of an atom from its cosmic alignment, ensued by ramifying collision that differentially occasions the fabric of matter in the universe. Something to that effect. Also adopted I believe by Alfred Jarry.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I'm still getting a footing in Islamic intellectual history. Difficult for me, personally. As well as Asian intellectual history more broadly, but much of their philosophy comes somewhat easily.

Anyway yes, I would appreciate a proper hivestorm on Islamic maths, esoterica etc. Defining some regionally/religiously local narrative that connects it all.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The thing with Dawkins is he's a knob.
But it's very frustrating isn't it, we can live with footballers being stupid outside of football, rockkstars etc but when there is someone who has excelled in a brainy field by using their brain... and yet they are a knob, it feels like false advertising at best... at darker moments it feels as though the universe isn't working properly.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Personally I need to get a better handle on the naming conventions. I understand "ibn" means son, pretty sure in gendered way but I could be mistaken. And understanding of the holy figures ought to help in clearly distinguishing the names that would otherwise be too culturally remote, in my case, to sufficiently distinguish .
 

catalog

Well-known member
We need sufi to lead us on this one. Those moon poems he posred the other day were really good. Also there's that guy on urbanomic, Jason babak monagegh or something like that, he has done an interesting sounding book on angels, ghosts, something like that
 

catalog

Well-known member
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But it's very frustrating isn't it, we can live with footballers being stupid outside of football, rockkstars etc but when there is someone who has excelled in a brainy field by using their brain... and yet they are a knob, it feels like false advertising at best... at darker moments it feels as though the universe isn't working properly.
Like in physics or something when they discover a new and unpredicted behaviour for something and that means that they have to reconsider the theory that described how that thing was supposed to behave.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
We need sufi to lead us on this one. Those moon poems he posred the other day were really good. Also there's that guy on urbanomic, Jason babak monagegh or something like that, he has done an interesting sounding book on angels, ghosts, something like that
I second this, assuming sufi is even interested or feels remotely obliged to represent this.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I find it fascinating that somebody so obviously highly intelligent in one regard can be so thick about something else at the same time - it speaks to the sort of intelligence Dawkins has, which presumably is very logical, mechanical, intolerant of any sort of ambiguity and mystery. He needs symbolism to be along the allegorical lines of Animal Farm, where pigs = communists just as x = y.

Then again, perhaps it's more about his personality. To get where he is in life, he can't be a fundamentally lazy person - but he's lazy when it comes to things he doesn't consider worth his time. Hence his lack of engagement with theology in the writing of his atheist bestseller.

And that's another twist of the knife - his extraordinary intelligence when it comes to sciencey shit has made him too arrogant to admit he might have a blind spot.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I certainly don't understand advanced mathematics (or basic mathematics really) - but is that because I'm fundamentally too thick to understand it (thick when it comes to maths, I mean), or is it because I have no interest in it, and so have never worked long and hard enough on understanding it?

It's both, stupid.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Personally I need to get a better handle on the naming conventions. I understand "ibn" means son, pretty sure in gendered way but I could be mistaken. And understanding of the holy figures ought to help in clearly distinguishing the names that would otherwise be too culturally remote, in my case, to sufficiently distinguish .
Ibn means son of I guess.. but doesn't Bin meant that too? And maybe Ben in Israel
One thing I noticed or realised or maybe I always knew but it clicked when I was teaching is how names have many kind of regional variations. Like Josef is basically Yusef and many other similar ones and Ibrahim and Abraham are the same and... so on and so forth.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
I hate Dawkins and people like him because his staunch defiant atheism makes it harder for me explain humanism as a belief - that I don't actually give a fuck about whether there is a god or whatever because it's irrelevant to how I want to live and the values I admire in others, that humanism isn't centred around being a finger-pointing secular crusader so much as it's based on making decisions based on rationale, logic and science.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Ibn means son of I guess.. but doesn't Bin meant that too? And maybe Ben in Israel
One thing I noticed or realised or maybe I always knew but it clicked when I was teaching is how names have many kind of regional variations. Like Josef is basically Yusef and many other similar ones and Ibrahim and Abraham are the same and... so on and so forth.
Yeah I find that fascinating as well. Seems to really put an emphasis on names, in western culture, that aren't derived from the Abrahamic tradition.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Ibn means son of I guess.. but doesn't Bin meant that too? And maybe Ben in Israel
One thing I noticed or realised or maybe I always knew but it clicked when I was teaching is how names have many kind of regional variations. Like Josef is basically Yusef and many other similar ones and Ibrahim and Abraham are the same and... so on and so forth.
Ilyas = Elias?
Jibrail = Gabriel
Yacub = Jacob

That's all I can think of without looking it up.
 

version

Well-known member
I certainly don't understand advanced mathematics (or basic mathematics really) - but is that because I'm fundamentally too thick to understand it (thick when it comes to maths, I mean), or is it because I have no interest in it, and so have never worked long and hard enough on understanding it?

It's both, stupid.
I find things which are supposedly fixed or self-evident more difficult to contend with than things which are ambiguous. That being said, it helps when people frame stuff like science as description rather than explanation. It's telling you what's happening, not why it's happening.
 
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