I have seen debates and read forum posts in which Aristotle is touted by Muslims as the Greatest Philosopher ever. Do you think this is a deservedly pride filled claim by Muslim's since they saved Aristotle's works and brought to the West making the Enlightenment possible ? Or do you think of this as a failure to accept the progressive nature of human learning?
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I believe it is merely to justify archaic information that has become obsolete.
Aristotle was a great philosopher in his time, but that is all. He was great for his time and so his information has become obsolete today. If he would see the world today he would change his opinion in a heartbeat. He would never dream of the civilisation we have created for ourselves today.
But some of the nonsense he dreamt of in his time was batshit crazy. its just that his crazy matches their crazy (I am quoting dead pool here)
The Persians were very progressive about knowledge. Even though they were traditional enemies, the Persians respected the Greeks for their knowledge and education. They went to great links to preserve said knowledge. The muslims carried on this tradition for a time until after the crusades. The Moors for example were among the most progressive and tolerant culture in history. They absorbed the knowledge and education of many cultures. It was the christian wars against the Moors in Spain that caused the loss of many inspired works.
It was Caesar that destroyed the library of Alexandria. It was the christians that destroyed many ancient works and texts.
I think if the crusades have never happened many ancient works of knowledge, and science would have been preserved by the Persians, but then again who's to say if a sect of islam wouldn't have acted out like the early christians and destroyed them anyway.
In 2016 I think Aristotle holds the same appeal to Muslims as he does to Christian apologists such as William Lane Craig. The ability to form formulaic endless-loop arguments and tout them as evidence in favor of their pet deity. To hold Aristotle up as the greatest thinker of all time is to negate the validity of the scientific method and the mass of empirical data gained since the late sixteenth century.
In my few encounters with Muslim debaters I have witnessed some pretty weird arguments that I've never seen from Christians and creationists. I suspect, as chimp3 seems to, that a lot of it traces back to Aristotle. Aristotle was amazing in his time, awesome, but the search for truth doesn't stop at authority figures. If you stop at some authority figure then you have very probably stopped short of the truth. Evidence and sound reasoning are the only things that count. Authority figures are useful for presenting a learned opinion that is widely accepted or worth considering. Never are they a substitute for facts and reasoning. Considering how much we have learned since Aristotle's time, it is just plain silly to invoke his arguments as though they were still relevant, as though the argument stopped there instead of wading into the ocean of new discoveries we have.