Saudi cleric tells students 'Earth does not rotate'

Sambostar

Allahu  Akbar

holnrew

Buy guys, he has FAITH. You've got to respect that.

imalone

Chuffola said:

The scary thing is that some IS nutter will now use this as a reason to attack students / scientists etc.

I doubt that, IS seem to be pretty much a death cult anyway, reasons are beneath them.

Bucket

I just don't have the words.

Clarky

this is utter shite..

when I flew to Texas, the plane floated perfectly still for 9 hours whilst the earth rotated under us until I got there..

Bucket

I've just found this btw, which is semi-related and well worth reading.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

imalone

Bucket said:

I've just found this btw, which is semi-related and well worth reading.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

"Graeme Wood March 2015"! Pay attention to this man because he is writing to us FROM THE FUTURE!

Bucket

imalone said:

Bucket said:

I've just found this btw, which is semi-related and well worth reading.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

"Graeme Wood March 2015"! Pay attention to this man because he is writing to us FROM THE FUTURE!

Didn't even see that

I've just finally got to the end, it's an excellent article which I learned a lot from.

imalone

Bucket said:

imalone said:

Bucket said:

I've just found this btw, which is semi-related and well worth reading.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

"Graeme Wood March 2015"! Pay attention to this man because he is writing to us FROM THE FUTURE!

Didn't even see that

I've just finally got to the end, it's an excellent article which I learned a lot from.

Yes, interesting read. I just wish he'd included the lottery numbers.

Edit: While it's now hard to find anything out about Bandar al-Khaibari other than rewrites of this story, the thing appears to have started off as an arabic hashtag, evidence there are still people in the middle east with sense. What I can't find (in two minutes of searching) is anything about whether he's particularly extremist on any other issue or just has a lot to discuss with people who think the moon landings didn't happen or relativity is wrong.

Edit 2: in trying to research this I have stumbled onto a thread of people discussing whether Barrack Obama is actually his father's son or instead the son of some paedophile. Except of course they call him "obammy". Am reminded we are monkeys with shoes. (well, apes)

ToneControl

here's some commentary on the Atlantic piece:

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/02/18/3624121/atlantic-gets-dangerously-wrong-isis-islam/

d8m

Bet he thinks the ice cream man only plays music when they have run out of ice cream.

Maynehead

Technically if you take the earth as the frame of reference he is correct in saying that everything revolves around it. It's all relative to the observer.

Grunfeld

imalone said:

What I can't find... [is] whether he's particularly extremist on any other issue or just has a lot to discuss with people who think the moon landings didn't happen or relativity is wrong.

I think that's a good point.  There are plenty of people who are not extremist "haters" but who happen to be scientifically ignorant to a degree which.... which I just can't get my head around.

You hear them on late night phone in programs.  It's 2am and they emerge.  Most of them seem to have a religious ideology, usually Muslim or Christian but those are the dominant ones).  And the others seem to have an "anti-science" ideology.

It's fascinating because it highlights how our reality can be entirely constructed out of thin air, and of course you kind of reflect how much of what you take to be true yourself could be similarly flawed.  How would you know?  People in the grip of dogmatic beliefs and ideology just don't know that they're deluded.  And then you start to ponder the little beliefs you've got which don't make sense (why do I keep on doing that fear of spiders?  Not the fucking Aussie bastards, just little house spiders).  But yeah, static earth, creationism, alien abductions, and phobias -- all weird stuff innit.

(Obviously I think scientific methodology gives us the best way yet of getting at reality; just saying.)

Col_Decker

Maynehead said:

Technically if you take the earth as the frame of reference he is correct in saying that everything revolves around it. It's all relative to the observer

 

Yeah I'm sure that's what he meant to say

d8m

Col_Decker;526885" said:

Technically if you take the earth as the frame of reference he is correct in saying that everything revolves around it. It's all relative to the observer.  Yeah I'm sure that's what he meant to say

I thought the world revolved around Axl Rose?

Fretwired

d8m said:

Col_Decker;526885" said:

Technically if you take the earth as the frame of reference he is correct in saying that everything revolves around it. It's all relative to the observer.  Yeah I'm sure that's what he meant to say

I thought the world revolved around Axl Rose?

These days its Kanye West ..

Col_Decker

Fretwired said:

d8m said:

Col_Decker;526885" said:

Technically if you take the earth as the frame of reference he is correct in saying that everything revolves around it. It's all relative to the observer.  Yeah I'm sure that's what he meant to say

I thought the world revolved around Axl Rose?

These days its Kanye West ..

Hey man, he is a creative genius you know!!!

imalone

ToneControl said:

here's some commentary on the Atlantic piece:

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/02/18/3624121/atlantic-gets-dangerously-wrong-isis-islam/

That was part of my reaction to it, though I decided while reading that it was more subtle than that. It does give interesting insight into the mindset behind IS though.

As to our stationary earth friend, it occurred to me last night that ironically jet streams are pretty much what he's talking about with his plane example (except they're localised and go to opposite way you'd naively expect because they arise out of a combination of mechanisms, one of which is the coriolis effect).

axisus

In all fairness, none of us on Fretboard can prove him wrong.

randomhandclaps

"If the earth truly rotated then surely the mountain would have come to Mohammed?  Simple innit?"