http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country Just look at this list. I would argue this has much more to do with economics than it does with religion, race or any other factor. As usual.
Hoojacks, great posts! I think you and I are really close on most of our views, I'm just a little more science-centric and you a little more well balanced. I don't have time to fully respond, but there also isn't much I feel the need to express. Just a couple quick things. I agree, but I think the bolded part is the toughest thing to communicate to a westerner. Outwardly, Muslims tend to talk more radical then we do, and we often take that at face value when it's just rhetoric. This is something I am learning.
But it is circular. The West started out coming from the base of the Dark Ages. Once they embraced science they became wealthy. The wealth fueled more science. I would also like to note that your comment about family, faith and happiness jumped out at me. The hard cold facts of the matter are that few individuals that make truly great contributions to advance science and knowledge (or for that matter most fields) without having put an absurd amount of time and effort into the endeavor. You have to be truly driven and not let other considerations get in your way. That means shortchanging your family and the church. There simply isn't enough time to go around.
SlyPokerDog is the most hateful and miserable poster on this board, and seem incapable of any sense of humor or satire regarding anything.
I knew this thread would end up like this. Ya'll are as bigoted in your own ways as anybody else. I started to just skim posts before it became some weird battle between Jews and Muslims. Hoojacks was actually close to the truth when he defended Dawkins. Then again, pointing out that far more whites have won Noble Science Award compared to blacks would be considered racist, although it's a fact, too. Or that the overwhelming majority of murders in the US is from black-on-black crime, yet the politicians do nothing to try and fix those communities, and liberals like crandc put their fingers in their ears and hum (after first attacking those facts) when somebody dares points it out.
Truth my brother. Okay. That's a good point. It's possible that more "family centric," less "individualistic" societies may not produce as many driven, creative, inventor types. Are you talking to yourself again? Maybe you should read what she said. I honestly can't figure out why you'd be so belligerently pissed about what she said. Besides your obvious anger management issues. I never defended Dawkins. AAAAAAND you once again bring it back to race. Get out of this interesting conversation and go start another "us whites are so oppressed" thread.
So after 3 pages of discussion PapaG concludes my post was hateful garbage - without reading it! Words fail me. But I would be curious if anyone who actually read what I wrote found it hateful, whether you agree or disagree? If I were a betting woman I'd bet no. I think some good points have been made, primarily that Twitter is not a good medium for nuanced discussion. One can argue whether political Islam (or any religion in power) impedes intellectual and creative development. It's a worthwhile discussion. But just saying "nyah nyah you didn't win the prize" hardly advances such a discussion. And even the further explanation fails to look at other discrepancies, not red haired people (a tiny minority) but for example why are African descended people and women of all nations less likely to win science Nobels? And what can be done to change that?
I thought it was a pretty interesting conversation all around, all sides had some interesting points, which is not usually the case. I think this will be changing more as time goes on. Who wins most directly has to do with which groups receive gobs of high level scientific education. America was at the leading edge here for years, with Europe close behind. This has been tapering off as other countries have been investing in a more robust scientific education. A few months ago my father, who is a scientist with over 100 publications, went to a college in India that invited him to give a week long lecture course about cutting edge scientific methods and protocols. That's just one instance of a foreign college trying to update their curriculum and bring their education up to modern standards. As more colleges in India, China, and elsewhere do this, we will see more Nobels being spread around geographically. The women earning Nobel prizes follows a lot the same road. In the past, science was looked at as a mans game, and women were not entering the fields nearly as much as men. Well, there has been a lot of stress over the past 20 years to rectify this situation and to teach science in ways that can excite all people. Personally, I work in a tiny lab, but we are surrounded by the very large Druker Lab (Brian Druker was passed over for a Nobel, but many articles were written about how he deserved to win one) and in that lab the majority of scientists, or at least half, are female. Most are young, having been in the field for fewer than a 10 years, but these women will be going out on their own and starting their own labs over the coming decades. Basically, science education at the highest level needs to be accessible. That means physically accessible, politically accessible and psychologically accessible for any group to rise up and become a large segment of nobel laureate population.
I wouldn't say that Islam has contributed anything to science. Muslim armies have conquered areas that already had a scientific tradition, such as Persia, and allowed them to continue their work. It's not much more meaningful than saying Christianity brought us calculus because Issac Newton was a christian. Or that christianity put a man on the moon because most americans are christian. The religion itself cannot take any credit.
Then would you agree that Dawkins was out of line then? I mean if you can't generalize that a specific "belief" doesn't contribute to science; but the individual? If that's the case, then atheists cannot contribute to science either. You can't have it one way.
No, I think he was right on. Christianity and Islam have been murderous oppressors of scientific inquiry at worst, and tolerate at best, but what have they actually contributed? If anything, he may have been too generous by giving them credit for the the contributions of the Persian culture, an area the Muslims conquered. The lack of believe in a God in and of itself doesn't contribute anything to science, but it does contribute to an atmosphere of seeking. If you don't believe you have all the answers, you're more likely to seek. You won't find any scientific knowledge or mathematical insights in the Koran.
Dawkins erred badly in that he singled out a religion rather than talking about religion in general. He'd be hard-pressed to show the contributions of one being much different from any other. Using a western yardstick, the Nobel Prize, as proof also seems a clumsy mistake for "the world's greatest thinker". Getting old?
Lmao of course you would think that. But then I guess we can stereotype atheism for murdering more people than all religions combined. Look no further than the communist regime who was responsible for billions of deaths.
Seems to me the church paid for Gregor Mendel's room and board and gave him all the resources he needed to discover genetics. At least they didn't burn him at the stake as a heretic.
I would say millions not billions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes