Just A Thought ~ DRIVING IN REVERSE

"If you accept the literal truth of every word of the Bible, then the Earth must be flat. The same is true for the Qu'ran. Pronouncing the Earth round then means you're an atheist. In 1993, the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, issued an edict, declaring that the Earth is flat; anyone of the round-persuasion does not believe in God and should be punished. Among many ironies, the lucid evidence that the Earth is a sphere, accumulated by the second-century Graeco-Egyptian Claudius Ptolemaeus, was transmitted to the West by astronomers who were Muslim and Arab. In the 9th century, they named Ptolemy's book in which the spherity of the Earth is demonstrated, the Almagest, 'The Greatest'."

~ Carl Sagan, in The Demon-Haunted World ~

Islam had a glorious Golden Age many centuries ago, with great mathematicians, scientists, astronomers and medical specialists in such centers of lofty culture as Baghdad, Sicily and Spain, while Christian Europe was languishing through its Dark Ages. It was also remarkably liberal and tolerant compared with what it has become now. It means that it doesn't have to be like this; its past proves so.