funny and interesting
By the way, I was - in a strange way - involved in a cloning project. There was a project afoot to send me into outer space along with a lot of other people. Not the whole me, though - just a hair from my head, while I still had some. It was quite a serious project by a company that launched a lot of spacecraft. The idea was that maybe in a hundred million years or so, an advanced civilization would find this little space capsule containing my hair, an Arthur C. Clarke would be cloned from it, and I would thus pop up in another galaxy in the distant future. Interesting thought.
FI: Yes, but perhaps a little disturbing.
Clarke: Well, it's better than the Celestes Project, in which you have to be dead before your ashes are sent into space.
LOL! he's certainly good for a laugh. The Islam bit is funny too .. but he is right about Arabic astronomy and algebra (to my knowledge).
Btw, re the basis of humanism as you quote it -
Don't do unto anybody else what you wouldn't like to be done to you." It seems to me that that's all there is to it.
Hillel agrees with you .. still, I suppose Clarke et al could argue: in that case why bother with the religion at all - just stick with the common sense. Like Ockham's Razor - sounds good, but ultimately I don't go for it. Infinity is really, really big, and science - even though it is the greatest 'tool' devised by the human race - is still finite, and artificial. Scientific models are based on cognition, language, human physical experience, and culture. They should be used as tools rather than proto-theology, IMO.
If we 'explain' existence as the result of the big bang followed by stellar, planetary and biological evolution, we are stating correct facts and conclusions (as far as they are known today), but we are not saying anything about how, or why, anything exists in the first place - even existence itself. My conclusion is: don't discount the possibility that we are embedded in an overall, creative 'intelligence' (that word is insufficient). I might be wrong but my bets are on it.
I do like Clarke's open and flexible mind, still interested in everything. Seems like that's the way to stay young in old age (or to even reach old age, for that matter)