PhD thesis: The earth is flat! An example of how religion and science doesn't mix wel

format_quote Originally Posted by fromelsewhere

Once again, the theory of evolution does NOT claim to explain how life started out on earth. There are different hypotheses for that, but no good and clear scientific explanations thus far. Your argument is like saying that since the Theory of General Relativity does not explain how the universe started out, then it must be wrong. There is another theory for that (how the universe started out) that is called the Big Bang Theory.

One thing that we have learned, however, from the Miller-Urey experiment is that organic compounds (the most basic building blocks of life) can be made from inorganic compounds. This could give a small clue as to how life started out on earth, but once again, we cannot explain scientifically how life began on earth and we may well never have a full scientific explanation.

So go back and learn the Theory of Evolution because you have clearly not understood it well the first time you learned it.

Ok but there's a simple explanation things can't evolve unless its alive do u think this life just miraclesouly appeared on earth like here think about it a tree look at how complicated it is a seed of it just ya know came out of no where right? The life had to be placed there in order for evolution to exist because a rock doesn't start evolving now does it it needs DNA and genomes and all that stuff why can't I get up and see a rock walking? No disrespect in these questions they're just simple questions

format_quote Originally Posted by Muhammad

You will find all sorts of stories depending on which obscure websites you visit. It is not uncommon for facts to get distorted and become outright lies. To question this does not make one a conspiracy theorist.

Let's not turn this into another debate over evolution.

I don't want to turn this into another debate on the theory of evolution, but others seem to be inclined on bringing up the subject and making false claims about it, and I feel like it is our duty to set the record straight on what evolution is and isn't so that people don't end up on this forum getting more confused than they already are.

Like I said before, we can never be 100% certain about a news story, but when it comes from many different sources, excerpts of the work have been posted online, and even a Minister makes a comment about the whole affair, it starts becoming very credible. Either way, it is unacceptable to distort facts and evidence to have it fit with what one thinks is the truth.

format_quote Originally Posted by fromelsewhere

Greetings Eric H,



The person in question would not have believed that the Earth was flat (and the other weird theories she had) if it weren't for her religious views.



It certainly does not appear that she was using science, as all of the evidence points to a spherical earth that is billions of years old and that spins on its axis and orbits the sun.

When I was in elementary school I said that the sun spins and my teacher and the whole class laughed at me. Makes you think huh?

format_quote Originally Posted by sister herb

Now I start to wonder haven´t journalists anything real problems which they could write. There is a famine in Africa, millions of people are in danger to die and journalists lost their time (and readers time) because one student who created kind of thesis.

Poor world.

I think it is a real problem when people are trying to pass fake pseudo-science for real science. There is a whole anti-vaccine movement that is gaining pace in America, and it has already resulted in many measles and chickenpox outbreaks.

It is a small news story, but it still requires mention since it highlights a concerning trend: false ideas making their way to the higher education centers in Muslim countries.

format_quote Originally Posted by fyi

When I was in elementary school I said that the sun spins and my teacher and the whole class laughed at me. Makes you think huh?

I guess that he or she thought that you meant that the Sun spins around the Earth, in which case you were wrong. But an elementary school kid is allowed to be wrong on these things and needs to be taught. An adult, however, should know that the Earth orbits the Sun, and that the Sun itself takes the whole solar system with it on a journey around the Milky Way at a speed of ~500,000 miles/hr or 800,000 km/hr.

format_quote Originally Posted by Zafran

so somebody tried to pass a PHD claiming the earth is flat so what? - we live in an age where the most powerful man on earth doesn't believe in climate change - most of the planet doesn't believe in evolution. You have flat earth society, conspiracy theorist who think the world is ran by a shadowy organisation called the illunmanti and that the UK royal family are lizard aliens. I can go on and on.

I would normally laugh about it, but it worries me when this happens in otherwise reputable universities. This person was writing her PhD in geology, not in some random liberal arts department. Why this worries me is that false claims such as these end up de-educating people, and with time, people end up no longer knowing what is right from what is wrong... after all, a person with a PhD said X and Y... There are a lot of people who don't believe in vaccines, for instance, and this has led to the re-emergence of some diseases. There have been recent measles and chickenpox outbreaks in the US, for instance. A lot of these outbreaks have happened in California where you have a strong influence of the "anti-vaxxers", with celebrities giving their unwarranted opinions on the vaccines and spreading false myths about vaccines causing this and that disease. Polio is another disease that would have been completely eradicated if it weren't for people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria who were paranoid about the polio vaccines. False science may be funny, but it does have a bad, negative impact on people.

format_quote Originally Posted by fromelsewhere

Here is an article that shows a clear example of what happens when people try to take religious texts very literally and apply it to the laws of nature. It doesn't work! It leads to wacky ideas that have long since been proven to be false such as that the earth is flat, that it is young (a few thousands of years old), that it is immobile and fixed at the center of the universe, that the stars are mere ornaments in the sky, and so on and so forth...

http://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinkers...flat-1.2009202

"Last week, a huge scandal rocked the Tunisian and Arab scientific and educational world: a PhD student submitted a thesis declaring Earth to be flat, unmoving, young (only 13,500 years of age), and the centre of the universe..."

More like, this post shows a clear example of what happens when actual understanding of a subject is substituted for prejudice and shoehorning of events to fit an ideological, agenda-driven narrative. You have evidently no interest in what actually happened and how it was able to happen, because you're all too pleased with a simplistic "hurr durr look how stupid religion is".

format_quote Originally Posted by Eric H

Greetings and peace be with you fromelsewhere;


I look after a gentleman who was vaccinated for whooping cough when he was a child. He went straight into a coma for three months, when he came to, he was severely brain damaged, his body is covered in sores and he has suffered horribly for the last fifty years.

In the spirit of searching for God,

Eric

Brother there are people in this world that just blindly believe what governments say it is good for them. Read the comment of the OP, it looks like he is one of them. People who chooses to follow different things are kind of fishy..are automatically branded "conspiracy" nuts..

In one of the comments he said that he chooses to believe 9/11 was real and not a inside job..well i just gave up on this guy. People who really do question things including vaccination are strangers and nut-jobs. Within Islam we know that for every disease, there is a cure, however western "medicine", is not the cure that i am talking about. When a antidote is given for a disease, it should ONLY cure the disease, NOT give you side effects. I myself try to use pills and that sort of junk as little as possible, rather believe that plants and herbs are what we MUST look in to instead of trusting big pharmaceutical companies to "cure" us. But yeah..i am also being branded as a nut-job..

format_quote Originally Posted by AhmedGassama

Im from Tunisia dude, the Thesis was banned!

We Muslims used religion as well as science to prove that the Earth is round and the first man who designed a round map of the earth is a Muslim by the name of Al Idrissi while Europeans were living in the dark ages, but when Galileo came us with this idea (by stealing it from Muslim scholars) the Church has burn him because European were blinded by their twisted views.

While Europeans were living in the dark ages, without mentioning the dirty détails, we Muslims were living the GOLDEN AGE of Humanity and Science!

So wake up and respect Muslims and don't be like your ancestros!

It took quite some time for her thesis to get banned... she almost had her PhD. It is a relief that it was banned in the end. While it's true that the Church held the Europeans in the Dark Ages for quite some time, the Europeans have since come out of it. Unfortunately, the opposite trend seems to be happening with the Islamic world, and that is very sad. The Ummah needs to get back on the right track!