Euclid and Jesus¶
Metadata¶
- Author: C.K. Raju
- ASIN: B00CKDE2TK
- ISBN: 9833046177
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CKDE2TK
- Kindle link
Highlights¶
When the Portuguese arrived in India, in the 16th c., they set up the first Roman Catholic mission in 1500 in Cochin, close to this large Syrian Christian community. They soon discovered that their own Latin version of the Bible was vastly different from the Aramaic version used in India. Eventually, in 1599, Bishop Menezes of Goa called the so-called Synod of Diamper (Udayamperoor). Having tricked the Indian bishops into parting with their handwritten Bibles, he proceeded to make a bonfire of them. In this way, most of the earliest Aramaic Bibles from India were destroyed. — location: 1494 ^ref-6716
of Bible burning in India ordered by a Portuguese bishop — location: 1564 ^ref-57809
one could say Christian priests invented religious war. — location: 1594 ^ref-7186
This business aspect of the Crusades is rarely brought out in the numerous histories of the Crusades, which usually base themselves on documents penned by priests. However, this is like going by the official version of the Iraq war given out by the Bush government: — location: 2240 ^ref-37532
King Frederick II who knew Arabic and had experience of Muslims in Sicily, easily secured165 by negotiation the right for Christian pilgrims to travel to Jerusalem, — location: 2244 ^ref-38022
Crusaders, recounts with great pride the cleverness of the Christians in discovering that “they could find byzants [gold coins] in the stomachs and intestines of the dead” Muslims who might have swallowed them. Accordingly “they burned a great heap of dead bodies, that they might more easily get the precious metal”. — location: 2249 ^ref-5901
The Toledo translators misunderstood this “jb” as “jaib”, a word in common use, for they were completely ignorant of the subject. These howlers are interesting because they bring to light the real history buried under voluminous concoctions. — location: 2328 ^ref-3816
(Islam did not permit the burning of books, so the Islamic conquerors of Istanbul did not burn down its library, as the Crusaders did when they captured Constantinople a couple of centuries earlier.) — location: 2441 ^ref-26736
The difference between early Greek texts and late Byzantine Greek texts was completely overlooked—both were seen as just Greek. — location: 2444 ^ref-46487
It was from these late-Greek or Byzantine Greek texts that the first translation of the Elements from Greek to Latin eventually took place in the 16th c. CE. — location: 2449 ^ref-22675
The conquest of Spain had provided Christian priests the excuse to launch the Inquisition. Initially directed against Jews and Muslims (or forced converts from among them), it later became just a way to loot through extortion. — location: 2469 ^ref-64566
People dared not acknowledge learning anything from non-Christian sources, for fear of being branded heretics. — location: 2479 ^ref-62250
Even today, over 50 years after his sources were exposed, Harvard historians continue to justify the terminology “Copernican revolution” by saying that his was a case of “independent rediscovery”. — location: 2486 ^ref-2067
Open any encyclopedia and its history of any scientific topic will begin with an account of what the early Greeks did, and then jump to post-renaissance Europe. — location: 2497 ^ref-27151
That church history erased or belittled all opponents of the church would have been a hugely comic matter, except that this constant belittling was used to justify the physical erasure and genocide of non-Christians. — location: 2498 ^ref-54972
The terms like “offspring of the devil”, and the reference to Jesus and the Apostles, show that these genocides were instigated by the doctrines of Christian priests. — location: 2518 ^ref-58561
Las Casas estimated that some 12 million people were killed thus. This holocaust involved twice the highest estimate of the number of Jews killed by the Nazis. — location: 2520 ^ref-23175
while Hitler is regarded as the embodiment of evil, the genocide in the Americas is seen as the epitome of heroism. The same Hollywood which produces dozens of World War II films also produces dozens of Western films which celebrate the cowboys. — location: 2527 ^ref-55641
He reasoned that the land was originally theirs and should be restored to them. The judge, however, argued that the US had inherited its laws from England. Though England was a Protestant country, he said, it accepted the Doctrine of Christian Discovery—that the first Christian who sights any land becomes its owner, notwithstanding any prior inhabitants on that land. As proof of this, he cited the case of the Cabots, sent out to “discover” new lands for England. So, this Doctrine of Christian Discovery, which encouraged genocide for 5 centuries, is still the Law for all. — location: 2534 ^ref-58391
Being the Society for Propagation of the Gospel, they branded the word “Society” on the chests of their slaves. — location: 2550 ^ref-54594
Jamaica produced at a loss, and the surplus sugar in England piled up.181 Eventually, Britain passed a law against the slave trade in 1833. At this time slave owners such as the Archbishop of Canterbury were paid, and the Bishop of Exeter led all the rest—he received the maximum compensation, for 655 slaves. — location: 2558 ^ref-55897
The bull Romanus Pontifex, not withdrawn to this day, directs Christian kings to turn the non-Christian “Negro” into slaves. — location: 2569 ^ref-64692
the stock tactic is to use false history to denigrate the group to which the individual belongs. This allows the church to establish its superiority. The church employs thousands upon thousands of people who incessantly recite a litany of these lies. No marketing company today, no TV channel, nor even an entire nation can compete with such propaganda. — location: 2586 ^ref-15431
Today, the usual apologia for this rabid moralising is that these thinkers were products of their times which left no European untouched by racism and a deep-seated belief in inequity. Without doubt we must reject their sick thoughts and cast aside their books like the other racist products of their times. However, to say that they were the products of their times is to overlook the root cause of their attitude—the false history created for church propaganda—which — location: 2612 ^ref-27251
pre-Alexandrian Greek knowledge derived from Egypt. — location: 2643 ^ref-26986
with the combination of Crusades and Inquisition, the Christian priests had unleashed the most repressive and totalitarian regimes of terror ever known to humankind. — location: 2681 ^ref-24199
From my Arab teachers I have learnt one thing, to have reason as my guide, while you are dazzled by the show of authority and led by a halter. — location: 2694 ^ref-60632
al Ghazali did not attack reason on grounds of faith. On the contrary, he allowed that Allah was constrained by reason (though not by any laws of cause of effect), and could not create an illogical world. — location: 2742 ^ref-7061
truths were viewed by al Ghazali as “necessary” truths not in the sense of being true for all time (eternally true), as Plato or Proclus had thought, but in the sense of being true in all possible worlds. — location: 2751 ^ref-24969
from the theological point of view, this was a startling innovation in theological doctrine, for it allowed mathematical truths to bind God, without interfering in creation — location: 2755 ^ref-46480
philosophers were banned from Christendom in the 6th c. But now, after the military failure of the Crusades, the Christian priests took over philosophy. They used the methods of the philosophers not as a path to truth, but as a new tactic in their war against Muslims. — location: 2766 ^ref-16748
As Aquinas advised Christian missionaries, the Old Testament could be used to persuade Jews, while reason should be used with Muslims. — location: 2795 ^ref-6911
before the priests could use reason as a weapon against Muslims they had to first make it their weapon. This required another alteration in church doctrine: Christianity was again changed. The resulting alteration, which I call post-Crusade Christian theology (to clarify its social cause in the Crusades), is also known as the Christian rational theology of Aquinas and his schoolmen. The adjective “Christian” is necessary to distinguish it from the similar Islamic rational theology or aql-i-kalam which it copied. — location: 2796 ^ref-26414
This, then, is the real importance of “Euclid” and the Elements. This new prophet and new gospel anchored the change in the church doctrine to the Christian theology of reason (as distinct from the Islamic philosophy of aql). — location: 2808 ^ref-8048
“reason”, as understood by the church, and as propagated in the West, refers to a mechanical and sterile means of proving something or persuading others—for “persuading” others was the only thing the church was interested in. — location: 2814 ^ref-16014
In a way this is not something to be marvelled at, for the priest can reinterpret anything to mean something else! Christianity, which originally was a doctrine of universal love, was reinterpreted by the priest as supporting slavery, genocide, and the tortures of the Inquisition (all of which contributed only to the Christian priests’ unbridled lust for power). It was through such a process of reinterpretation that the Bible, which meant one thing to Origen, came to mean something altogether different in later times. — location: 2819 ^ref-55437
mathematics was transformed: from “the science of learning” or the “science of arousing the soul” to “a method of compelling argument”. That is also how mathematics is taught today, as a doctrine of proof. — location: 2836 ^ref-62258
The earliest Bibles in Aramaic, available in India, would also have given away this process of doctoring. But, we have seen (p. §) that those original sources were burnt by Europeans, to hide the evidence of tampering, since those Bibles were irreconcilable with the Bible and the understanding of Christianity then prevailing in Europe. — location: 2851 ^ref-32952
the post-Crusade appropriation of reason by the priest brought an end to the war between the priests and the philosophers, when the Islamic theology of reason (aql-i-kalam) was absorbed into Christian rational theology—after making it theologically correct, and eliminating most of the things dear to the philosophers. — location: 2853 ^ref-9271
the church’s embrace proved to be deadlier for philosophy than its earlier persecution of the philosophers! — location: 2856 ^ref-49141
Pope Sylvester’s blunder in understanding the Indian numeral system amply demonstrates how very bad they were even at that calculation (which they didn’t get right until 1582). What they needed for conversion was a means of convincing argument. — location: 2863 ^ref-31397
scientists and engineers today use mathematics for calculation, and don’t much care about proofs, especially in frontline areas like high-energy physics. — location: 2868 ^ref-46350
It is true that empirical means of proof are fallible. But, in that case, we repeat the observation more carefully. For example, we prod the rope/snake with a stick to check whether it moves on its own when prodded. Indeed, the fault lies with the religious claim of infallibility that is made on behalf of Christian metaphysics, for there is no infallibility in this world, — location: 2891 ^ref-44614
Nevertheless, they continue to be taught as “laws” to school children to predispose them into believing in the post-Crusade Christian theology of natural laws. — location: 2942 ^ref-30470
This deliberate propaganda is then also used against Muslims, by claiming that Islam has fallen behind the West in science just because (al Ghazali) does not believe in laws of nature. — location: 2944 ^ref-43320
mathematics is metaphysical proof actually originated from post-Crusade theology. — location: 3004 ^ref-23137
when the myth about Greek mathematics as proof did not fit the Elements, they rewrote the book! This is the typical way in which theology proceeds, from metaphysics to facts. When the facts don’t fit the interpretation of a key book like the Elements or the Bible, it is the books which are adjusted to fit. — location: 3009 ^ref-54976
This belief that empirical proofs are less certain than metaphysical ones is neither universal nor justifiable—though it is a belief which pervades post-Crusade Western thought. It derives, like racism, from theology. — location: 3047 ^ref-29198
Al Ghazali had made that concession just to clarify that he was arguing against causal implication, and not logical implication. — location: 3049 ^ref-20601
Hilbert’s reinterpretation of equality in the original Elements as congruence fails for this proposition since it concerns incongruent areas. — location: 3117 ^ref-2287
The falsehood of the theory is apparent from the constant need to keep advancing new hypotheses. — location: 3127 ^ref-60883
While the word aql means creative intelligence, Hilbert’s notion of reason was purely mechanical. A mathematical proof today is, by definition, something which can be mechanically checked, by a machine or a moron. — location: 3129 ^ref-11969
The resulting Christian rational theology of Aquinas and his schoolmen (post-Crusade theology) modified Islamic rational theology to make it compatible with the first (post-Nicene) alteration of Christianity. — location: 3213 ^ref-37476
The belief in racial superiority originated from the belief in Christian superiority. The very same false history was later used by Western “philosophers” like Kant and Hume to justify racism and to claim that white-skinned people were superior—the political power from that claim persisted until very recently in South Africa. — location: 3246 ^ref-12553
What blacks, browns, “yellows”, “reds”, Muslims and Hindus need to understand is this: the false history of “Euclid” is part of a systematic technique of building power through lies which attack your self-esteem. — location: 3251 ^ref-24358
this technique of building political power through lies which are then propagated through the education system, — location: 3255 ^ref-12087