Post by Séamus on Feb 12, 2021 12:45:19 GMT
One of Canada's early pay-tv movies was an internationally aired whodunnit set in a spaceship returning from Mars. The fictional bipartisan crew came from the Cold War Superpowers and countries on both sides of the divide that were considered secondary superpowers at the time- East Germany, France, Italy, Britian and Canada. Despite a rise of Islam at the time nobody foresaw that the Iron Curtain would be gone before Mars exploration would really take off or that a nation, barely a decade independent at the time of airing, with constitution highly influenced by their monarchies and their religious belief would be in the forefront.
An unmanned probe from United Arab Emirates reaching Mars a few days ago doesn't only give food for thought on the shifting of world powers. I wouldn't personally by a long shot judge a nation by the yardstick of space exploration; hopefully EU countries could arise to any challenge if needed. Possibly foreign-national input in cosmopolitan Dubai contributed greatly also, as it does in many aspects of the nation.
We've seen through the years some of the academic and/or celebrity atheists citing space travel to tell us that Catholic dominance held back the development of the West from Rome's fall to the Reformation or,at least the Renaissance; maybe any of them who are still alive could note that currently in UAE premarital sex is punishable by flogging, as is adultery. Conversion from Islam if forbidden, as is blasphemy against Islam. Sharia Law is used for family law disputes. Nobody will call it theocracy but it's hard to call it anything else.
It may come as a surprise that flights by Qantas to Europe from Western Australia are rare, largely as a result of partnership with Emirates airline. Dublin-born Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, while constantly carping on through the years in support same-sex marriage, and sometimes viciously outspoken against it's opponents, sees no reason to do other than ignore UAE's policy of jailing homosexuals.
The current edition of National Geographic-History has included an article on excavation in Jiroft, Iran, where an ancient city was discovered through flood rains twenty years ago. Most of semiprecious stone artefacts depict animals; many show scenes of men with two of a particular species in what seems to allude to the Babylonian great flood legend, similar to Judeo-Christian Genesis. I couldn't help thinking how the entire world that year would focus on Muslim extremists attacking New York, around the time that this flash flood unobtrusively revealed this 4,000 year old Middle Eastern city and set many local Iranian scientists to work.
But in a sense the history of a region may still influence it's present. And, while nobody endorses a return to ancient flagellations, perhaps people are similarly missing the point still as they push maddening culture-cancellation and secularism in the West without considering that society need not be built by forgetting it's foundations.
An unmanned probe from United Arab Emirates reaching Mars a few days ago doesn't only give food for thought on the shifting of world powers. I wouldn't personally by a long shot judge a nation by the yardstick of space exploration; hopefully EU countries could arise to any challenge if needed. Possibly foreign-national input in cosmopolitan Dubai contributed greatly also, as it does in many aspects of the nation.
We've seen through the years some of the academic and/or celebrity atheists citing space travel to tell us that Catholic dominance held back the development of the West from Rome's fall to the Reformation or,at least the Renaissance; maybe any of them who are still alive could note that currently in UAE premarital sex is punishable by flogging, as is adultery. Conversion from Islam if forbidden, as is blasphemy against Islam. Sharia Law is used for family law disputes. Nobody will call it theocracy but it's hard to call it anything else.
It may come as a surprise that flights by Qantas to Europe from Western Australia are rare, largely as a result of partnership with Emirates airline. Dublin-born Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, while constantly carping on through the years in support same-sex marriage, and sometimes viciously outspoken against it's opponents, sees no reason to do other than ignore UAE's policy of jailing homosexuals.
The current edition of National Geographic-History has included an article on excavation in Jiroft, Iran, where an ancient city was discovered through flood rains twenty years ago. Most of semiprecious stone artefacts depict animals; many show scenes of men with two of a particular species in what seems to allude to the Babylonian great flood legend, similar to Judeo-Christian Genesis. I couldn't help thinking how the entire world that year would focus on Muslim extremists attacking New York, around the time that this flash flood unobtrusively revealed this 4,000 year old Middle Eastern city and set many local Iranian scientists to work.
But in a sense the history of a region may still influence it's present. And, while nobody endorses a return to ancient flagellations, perhaps people are similarly missing the point still as they push maddening culture-cancellation and secularism in the West without considering that society need not be built by forgetting it's foundations.