Check out this piece of propaganda

[donatello]

There are so many claims here, that I am quite suspicious. Please dissect what you can. Claims are present in various subjects - travellers, astronomy, architecture, medicine, mathematics, etc.

[mohankarthik]

This is exactly like the chain mail that is circulating that says how awesome India is. Pathetic.

I'm definitely sure most of the stuff is wrong. And HOW MANY people are going to use the "I invented 0" quote.

I've a question here though. Arbit video propaganda like this is going to keep coming every day. Is it our job to dissect it? I mean, we can sit here and dissect all the videos in the world, and religious people will find one more and tell us that that is why they follow religion. I dont think this is the most efficient way!

Wouldnt a better way be for us to propagate free thought itself, such that the audience itself will be able to dissect and critically analyse a propaganda video like this. Wont that be a better alternative? But I'm not really sure how we can go about it!

[donatello]

Dissecting and trashing religious/pseudoscientific propaganda material is pretty important I think. It has the potential to generate a conflict of ideas, and also helps exercise our sceptical thinking skills. Generating a conflict of ideas is something that could wake people up from their dreamy stupor. It is important to criticize this kind of stuff so that people who are taken in by it will know that there is an other side at the very least. Considering that most people in India subscribe to some religion (only 0.6 percent from the 2001 census did not state their religion or had none), to get their attention requires a lot of criticism of pseudoscientific material. When people take notice of that, they are more likely to see material that propagates freethought directly.

[astrokid.nj]

TO: WHOEVER GETS EXCITED BY THIS VIDEO

It is foolish to claim that "X civilization did the scientific revolution, and If not for them, it would have never happened".
Ideas are always in the air. Humans across the world are smart, and if one person doesn't propose/invent/discover something, somebody else will soon come by and do it, and probably do it even better. For e.g
a) Although Darwin proposed the idea of biological evolution, his grandfather Erasmus Darwin himself believed in transmutation of species (almost "biological evolution"). Also, Alfred Russel Wallace himself was on the threshold of "biological evolution by natural selection" at the same time as Darwin. Wallace had even figured out few geological principles in the process (Erstwhile Land Bridges connecting lands separated by seas now).

There are very few exceptions to this.. some are such geniuses that there is very little hope that such brilliance comes by again and again.. Newton, Einstein come to mind.

Islamic Civilization did contribute to science , and its foundation was the Greek Literature How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs
In fact, it would be shameful if Islamic Civilization HAD NOT contributed anything. After all, they ruled a good portion of the world, and encompassed huge populations. And Every civilization is BOUND to develop SOME good at least.
What is more shameful is that they contributed NOTHING in the last 1000 years, say. In the real world, a human being needs to be productive IN HIS PRODUCTIVE YEARS. You cant say "Oh.. In my primary school, I was 1st in my class, and hence I dont have to be innovative/work hard anymore"

The video starts lying very soon.
1) Astrolabe:
The principles of the astrolabe projection were known before 150 B.C., and true astrolabes were made before A.D. 400.

2) "Copernicus copied from Al-Battani"
I do not know if thats true, but even though Copernicus proposed Helio-centrism, it was actually Tycho Brahe/Johannes Kepler who actually PROVED it by painstakingly collecting data (25 years of Mars and Jupiter), and figuring out the actual theory/orbits that explain the data.
It was the scientific method that establishedthe idea. It was a victory of the method, as much as the idea.

3) Al-idrisi: "The first man to Build a globe to prove that the earth is round"?? Why would anyone BUILD a globe to prove that?? It is MORONIC to do that. The Greeks knew about the round earth not just by observing ships at the horizon, but also by noticing the circular shadow of the earth on the moon during the lunar eclipses.

4) Adventurers.. Whatever.