"....give members a plain paper certificate and only allow those with gilded certificates to practice.."

Lol!

If I wanted to join, would they accept a lump of lead in payment for membership fees, I wonder? Or do they only take MasterCard or Visa, like all the boring old mainstream societies.

Are you making fun of Islamic science?

Is alchemy Islamic? Gosh.

Is it bollocks. It is probably from the arabic region, but it predates the Christian Era by a fair bit and Islam is about 600 years younger.

al-chemy. There's a clue there. David, I hope you're not hinting that most things of merit that come from the arabic region pre-date Islam? Awfy brave of you.

I know that the word "alchemy" has Arabic origin. So what? The word "television" is from the Greek.

And Arabic numerals are so called because they were introduced to Europe from Arabia. We've since discovered that they were in turn introduced to Arabia from India and not, as our ancestors thought, invented by Arabs.

Anyway, no, I wasn't making fun of any kind of science. Quite the opposite.

>>David, I hope you're not hinting that most things of merit that come from the arabic region pre-date Islam? Awfy brave of you.

It is quite obvious that I'm not hinting anything of the sort. Alchemy is 2500 years old. Islam is 1300 years old. Do the math. I'm hinting that things that originated in the Arabic region before Islam existed pre-date Islam.

>>al-chemy. There's a clue there. David, I hope you're not hinting that most things of merit that come from the arabic region pre-date Islam? Awfy brave of you.

Actually, come to think of it, your entire comment is unbelievably twattish. For a start you assume that anyone from an arabic speaking region is Islamic. You also assume that anyone who happens to be a Muslim takes offence that someone suggests that what is essentially a pseudo-science was not invented by a Muslim when it was invented before Islam existed. And then you end your comment with what could arguably construed as a threat. You are quite obviously an argumentative, not to mention patronising, troll.