One of the methods used to gain control of populations since time immemorial, is to convince them that you know something they don't. The reality is that people are easy prey to charlatans, witch-doctors, holy men, enlightenment-peddling cultists and used-car salesmen. In 350BC, Aristotle argued plausibly the world was a sphere.

Around 200 BC, ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes, using two positions of the sun over Egypt, measured the circumference of the globe accurate to about 50 miles, or 500 stadii. This knowledge was widely accepted throughout Greece and Arabia, but then along came the Abrahamic religionists with all their hokus pokus and secret ju-ju. They gained control of populations and the Dark Ages descended. Islam still has not recovered.

issuevoter wrote on Jul 24^th, 2018 at 8:26am:


Like those peddling the idea, without providing a shred of proof, that the sun is in a Grand Solar Minimum which will cause an ice age.

issuevoter wrote on Jul 24^th, 2018 at 10:26am:


What about the dark ages?

issuevoter wrote on Jul 24^th, 2018 at 10:26am:



In a word, Well... ummm.... arh .... caused, it's such a fraught word, isn't it.  Would you believe, 'didn't help with the preservation of the Roman Empire'?
Do consider that Mehmet II actually conquered the last of the Roman Empire when he took Constatinople in 1453.

The pope is a Roman Empire relic, his title is pontifex maximus, ("pontiff") and has been since Rome adopted Christianity.

But of course Rome could not survive in any case but the Christians and the Muslims were instrumental in its demise, in its PARTICULAR demise. And the particular does matter, always.
In the case of Constantinople, it was a joint effort by Roman Catholics and Muslims - ecumenism for ya. (but at least the West has an inbuilt correction reflex and motivation that Islam doesn't). 
Had the Western Romans not devastate Constantinople in the 13th century, the Muslims would not have been able to take it in 1453. Had they not taken Constantinople, there wouldn't have been a siege of Belgrade (midday church bells remember us) and in the end no siege of Vienna in 1683, expelling the moors from Europe.

But the fall of Constantinople gave us a full-fledged Renaissance of ancient learning (the fleeing Greeks after the fall, rather than the Muslims gave us the texts of antiquity that spurred on the rebirth of ancient learning called re-naissance, re-birth), then the reformation and the rest that followed.

So Christianity and Islam did play a huge part in the destruction of Rome but Christianity then played a decisive part in rescuing what could be rescued - ideas, books, sensibilities - from antiquity. Islam is still on a warpath against all those ideas and sensibilities and shirks translating many of the books into their vernacular because they do not accord with the koran.

Brian Ross wrote on Jul 24^th, 2018 at 6:56pm:



So Muslims who believe the koran are as stupid as a quarter of Americans - and that's your great come-back of an argument, Bwian???


You are thicker than Turdie McTurdface (back, karnal, BACK) You are thick like the treacle buried in the tundran ice for millenia, Bwian.

freediver wrote on Jul 24^th, 2018 at 7:16pm:

Looks pretty meaningless to me.  A graph and some yammer. Not sure what you are saying.

Brian Ross wrote on Jul 24^th, 2018 at 6:56pm:


They probably don't believe in global warming either, but that does not forgive Islam for perpetuating superstition, ignorance, genital mutilation, and fatwas against non-muzlims for no other reason than they are not Muzlim. Do you actually give a God damn whether 88 Australians were killed by them in Bali? Here comes your relativist answer . . .