I have a photo on my website where I'm playing an electronic bagpipe sitting in the ruins of the university of Harran, which is still as the Mongols left it. It took Oxford a couple of hundred years before it was in the same league. And that was second division compared with Baghdad and Bukhara.

I've got a photo of students at the ruins of the school of Ulug Bek, sultan, astronomer, and mathematician. It's kind of like the poem:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look upon my works ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains.

There were a bunch of kids from Siberia cheerfully picking up remnants of the stone work and giving them to the visiting Americans.

So I'm not sure what you're saying other than repeating my point.

Meanwhile I'm still pondering your attack on Michael Servetus, the inoffensive founder of Unitarianism, as somehow being obstreporous enough to deserve being burned at the stake at the instigation of John Calvin. Let me remind you; "After being condemned by Catholic authorities in France, he fled to Calvinist Geneva where he was burnt at the stake for heresy by order of the city's governing council."

Servetus' 'heresy' was apparently disagreeing with John Calvin. His scientific contributions were not a factor in his flaming finish, but this was an era where you could die for your words.