Quote:Evidence that it happened. We have a poem whose authenticity is not disputed, referring to an inventor who's existence and engineering feats are not disputed, claiming that he did something that was right up his alley. Put simply, there is no good reason to assume that it wasn't true.
What happened exactly? The descriptions I have seen from you and others about his wondrous flying machine bear little resemblance to the reference in the poem about him breaking his neck.
Quote:The poem was very specific about what he did, so I don't know why you would call it "filling in the blanks".
This is what the poem says, according to your own link:
"He flew faster than the phoenix in his flight when he dressed his body in the feathers of a vulture."
That is the extent of it. As far as I can tell, this could just as easily be making fun of a doddery 60 year old man plummeting to the ground with a few feathers glued to his arms and snapping his neck on impact. This verse bears no resemblance at all to the dubious claims you have made about him, for example that he made some kind of hang glider. Hence, you are using the mere existence of an old document as justification for creating an elaborate fantasy, then insisting there is some kind of intellectual rigour to your fantasy because it has a vague resemblance to academic referencing standards. If I had known this is all you expected I wouldn't have been so reluctant to bother when you spent days criticising me for not living up to these 'standards'.
Quote:You cannot escape the fact that it is a primary document, which is a hell of a lot more than many other historical "facts" that were merely relayed to us second hand.
It is a primary document that refers to an imaginary creature in the same line as the reference to him, is not intended to be an historical account, and does not actually say anything about any sort of flying machine, just vulture feathers. You might as well be holding up a fairy tale as evidence.
Quote:Historians would generally agree that that would meet the minimum criteria for describing this as an historical fact.
If it wasn't a fairy tale and didn't fail to mention what you try to attribute to it.
Quote:The sensible way to describe the claim would be somewhere along these lines: Evidence from a contemporary poem suggests that the well known muslim polymath Abbas Ibn Firnas made an attempt at flying . Note that it doesn't state that it definitely did or didn't happen - merely that there is historical documented evidence that it did. That approach is eminently more sensible than your claim that it was "obviously fabricated".
Your claim that he actually flew is obviously fabricated. I also see no reason to doubt that he made the attempt. I just see no relevance of some fool jumping off a building with feathers glued to his arms.
Quote:no he wasn't. And comparing the preeminent mathematicians and scientists of their day with illiterate farmers who have no interest in advancing knowledge and science shouldn't even be dignified with a response.
It is called an analogy Gandalf. I even explained this to you in the vain hope that you wouldn't respond with something stupid like this.
Quote:right, and you realise discovering subatomic particles is done mathematically?
Maths is one of the tools scientists use. This does not mean maths and science are the same thing. Your insistence that these discoveries are done mathematically is ludicrous. It completely ignores the fundamental processes of scientific research.
Quote:where?
Here is an example, from the immediately preceding post:
freediver wrote on Mar 6
th, 2013 at 9:19pm:
Karnal:
Gandalf:
Quote:Muslims don't "cling" to this - as if its the only thing muslims can point to. Muslims "cling" to things a bit more concrete - like their contribution to maths, physics, medicine and the development of the scientific method as we know it today. Actually, I'd only heard about this interesting bit of trivia when you mentioned it - but I'd certainly heard of all the other things I mentioned - and its invariably these things that you'll hear mentioned when people (muslims as well as non-muslims) talk about islam's contribution to science.
Could you give a few examples that you think should be added to this list?
http://www.ozpolitic.com/evolution/christian-foundation-science.html Quote:even though it makes no sense to isolate maths as not having anything to do with basic science
How many times do I have to explain this Gandalf? What I am saying is that maths and science are not the same thing. Please stick to what I actually say.