Making the news today....

[matelot]

9 minutes ago, stihlmadasever said:

Read the last line...

Its doesnt say of note

I'd think it would have went without saying that I was talking about "important" inventions....

 

We could all go into our garden sheds and invent something. It doesn't mean our inventions are any good...

 

Heres someone that attached a chainsaw to a shotgun. Yeah, you could describe it as an "invention". However it's not much good....

 

 

[WesD]

6 minutes ago, stihlmadasever said:

Read the last line

Having also done a bit of research the top 100 universities in the Middle East are all ranked within the top 20% of universities globally. Not bad eh!

 

 

[stihlmadasever]

1 minute ago, forestboy1978 said:

OK you are correct. It was a cavalier paragraph and you were pedantically accurate where as he was not. I would still infer his meaning to be what I alluded to before about the disproportionally less world changing inventions from the middle east compared to the secular and Christian west.  

I dont know enough about the quantity or quality of the  inventions in the middle east to compere it with the wests but i get your point.

I wouldnt infere to the inner workings of matelots mind...i dont think even he knows exactly whats going on in there sometimes.

The problem is he posts before he rereads what hes about to post.

Dont think he's a bad bloke and i begrudgingly agree with him on some things just not islam,multiculturalisn or immigration.

[forestboy1978]

Fair enough :-)

[matelot]

9 minutes ago, WesD said:

Having also done a bit of research the top 100 universities in the Middle East are all ranked within the top 20% of universities globally. Not bad eh!

 

 

Is that something you've just made up? Do you have any proof?

[the village idiot]

26 minutes ago, forestboy1978 said:

I think the point he was trying to make was not that they didn't invent a single thing. That would be absurd! It was that the number of influences were disproportionately low over the last several centuries.

 

We can dress this up however we like, it's the reality. The question is why! And that question is important IMO, and its answer is important. Its answer is the reason why it is illegal to burn a Quran but perfectly legal to burn a bible in the UK.  It's the exact same reason that a 20 year old kid was imprisoned for 2 years, as I recall, for putting a bacon sandwich on a mosque door handle, also in the UK. That turned out to be a death sentence for him btw. People need to stop dressing up Islam and call it for what it is. That being a inculcating, subjugating, totalitarian doctrine. It has no place in a free thinking, free speaking modern democracy.

 

As progressive as we all like to think we are in our openness to other cultures, we will be walking backwards 100+ years if it flourishes! Having that perception is not racist, it's reality, and it is certainly not preferential or self serving thinking. It wasn't racist when Winston Churchill declared it and it's not racist now!

This is exactly the way we need to be talking about this. It's about bad ideas, not bad sets of people.

 

We were very lucky to have been born in the West at the time that we were. It is wrong to feel superior about this. We were just lucky.

 

If we had been born to a poor family in Pakistan it is very likely that we would be Koran thumping Muslims with little or no opportunity to 'better' ourselves or our nation.

 

If we had stuck rigidly to the teachings of the old testament instead of embracing science and reason we would be as stuck in the brutal past as much of the Middle East is now.

 

We need to focus on reducing the commitment to demonstrably bad ideas wherever they occur. This is no easy task, but it's the only thing that can work long term, giving as many people as possible to opportunity to reach their potentials.

[matelot]

24 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

We need to focus on reducing the commitment to demonstrably bad ideas wherever they occur. This is no easy task, but it's the only thing that can work long term, giving as many people as possible to opportunity to reach their potentials.

We've tried that before. We went to Asia and Africa etc to share our values. How did that end up? We were asked to leave...

 

The biggest failing the West has is that we stick our nose into other cultures and try and impose our values. We should just let the rest of the world run their countries how they see fit. 

[Mark Bolam]

1 hour ago, matelot said:

I'd think it would have went without saying that I was talking about "important" inventions....

 

We could all go into our garden sheds and invent something. It doesn't mean our inventions are any good...

 

Heres someone that attached a chainsaw to a shotgun. Yeah, you could describe it as an "invention". However it's not much good....

 

 

Have you got a link?

How much?

[WesD]

1 hour ago, matelot said:

Is that something you've just made up? Do you have any proof?

I only speak with substance to back it, given it was your claim I busted I’ll let you do your own leg work rather than hand it to you on a plate. 

 

Ill give you a few days if your struggling I’ll post evidence. 

[the village idiot]

36 minutes ago, matelot said:

We should just let the rest of the world run their countries how they see fit. 

This is where I totally disagree with you, and the issue I personally have with a lot of your posts.

 

Your compassion for the human race only extends to the borders of Europe. You are rightly outraged if children are caused to suffer in the UK, but seem nonplussed about children who suffer outside of Europe.

 

Your view seems to be that we should protect those lucky enough to be born in a certain geographical region and not bother about the rest. I can't wrap my head around ths way of thinking, and I think others struggle too. Hence the oposition to most of your posts.

 

It was pure chance that you were not born as a girl in Somalia about to have your clitoris cut off. Try to put yourself in other people's shoes from time to time.