NICE!...

Keepreal

Alistair McGrath and others - hmmm God and religion – I think if I entered into a broader debate on the question ‘is there a God’ or ‘which is the true religion’ I might end up sat in a corner rocking backwards and forwards and drooling. I am excited by this debate (Islam and the Qur’an) because I am fascinated to try and understand why so many people believe so ardently in something which is so obviously absurd. I find it fascinating at how easy it is to convince people generally that black is white and white is black. Throw in the weight of God behind it i.e. God says black is white and it’s very easy. All that said, with something as absurd as the suggestion that the Qur’an is the word of God, there must come times, even for the dimmest person, when things just don’t stack up and a big question mark hangs over their heads. So I pose the questions on here for them to consider. I said early on in this debate that it is the Qur’an that will be the ultimate downfall of Islam. Why - because Muslims insist it is the word of God and the simplest of critical analysis proves it to be the words of a 7C tribal leader. As Muslims become better educated and as the debate on the authenticity of the Qur’an widens they will have to confront the difficult and impossible to answer questions. The Islamic leaders know this hence they incite the drones to rise to violence at any hint of anybody questioning the authenticity of Mohammed or the Qur’an.

How to eat an elephant – one bight at a time!

balaclava9, Trust, I have been doing a bunch of reading of American sites recently, and the far right Christian fundamentalists... they are the ones to be fearful of. Those are the individuals convinced that to understand the bible, one must read it literally. These are the people whom are about to label Obama as the anti-Christ. Regardless, interesting topic.

quote:

Originally posted by Joswell_B:
Christian fundamentalists...

Joswell,

I am sure you’re right but right now, Christian fundamentalists are not - trying to blow me up; cover my country with mosques, advocating an us or them divide; trying to change my culture or intimidate me and as far as I know, they are not in my country. I would be happy to join hands with anyone fighting Christian fundamentalists as soon as we sort the Muslims out. Sorry but for now – ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.

I found the programme very informative. I found some of the views of the people disturbing mainly treating women as 2nd class citizens. I didn't no anything about the Qur'an before i watched the show but i know it's not the only holy book which criticises other religous beliefs, for instance the old testament attacks people who do not believe in god can be punished by stoning. It was a quality programme that made me think.

I’ve just found this web site and this guy (a Muslim) just about covers all I’ve found on Islam and the Qur’an. I urge you all to visit this site and read what he says; it should be pinned to the wall in every school in the country (what say you Yuze?)

http://www.challenging-islam.org/articles/warraq-debate-muslims.htm

I'd like to see him invited to the live debate on Saturday!!

Early on in http://www.challenging-islam.org/articles/warraq-debate-muslims.htm Ibn Warraq points out that “the majority of Muslims are not Arabs or Arabic speaking peoples… Many educated Muslims whose native tongue is not Arabic do learn it in order to read the Koran, but then again the vast majority do not understand Arabic, even though many do learn parts of the Koran by heart without understanding a word.”

At the end “So let me summarise: You do not need to know Arabic to criticise Islam or the Koran. Paul Kurtz does not know Arabic but he did a great job on Islam in his book The Transcendental Temptation. You only need a critical sense, critical thought and scepticism. Second, there are translations of the Koran, by Muslims themselves, so Muslims cannot claim that there has been deliberate tampering of the text by infidel translators. Third, the majority of Muslims are not Arabs, and are not Arabic speakers. So a majority of Muslims also have to rely on translations. Finally, the language of the Koran is some form of Classical Arabic which is totally different from the spoken Arabic of today, so even Muslim Arabs have to rely on translations to understand their holy text. Arabic is a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Aramaic, and is no easier but also no more difficult to translate than any other language. Of course, there are all sorts of difficulties with the language of the Koran, but these difficulties have been recognized by Muslim scholars themselves. The Koran is indeed a rather opaque text but it is opaque to everyone. Even Muslim scholars do not understand a fifth of it.”

I mentioned earlier that I became an agnostic at the age of 14, spent 49 years of my life as an agnostic and in the last two years have taken my vows as an atheist. Relating this to the above quote, let me tell you how this came about and the implications I ultimately came to realise.

Being a member of an orthodox Jewish family, I was expected at my Barmitzvah to recite the whole Sedra or portion from the Torah in synagagoe on the appointed Shabbos or Saturday, not just a small portion of it which most Barmitvah boys do. Just like my elder brother before me, mine happened to be an exceptionally long Sedra, Va Yikrah. I could read Hebrew from an early age but like the Muslims to whom Ibn Warraq refers in his article, I did not understand it. Moreover, the Torah used in synagogue services, is written on a fabric scroll and has no vowels. Their exclusion is not as odd as might seem, since the consonants are the bigger letters while the vowels are indicated by up to three small dots underneath.

If I recall correctly from the documentary “The Qur’an”, copies of that often omit the vowels in Arab languages including Aramaic. Some Aramaic is used in Jewish liturgy including the text for the Pesach or Passover service in every religious Jewish home immediately before the evening meal. Few Jews in the Diaspora outside Israel can understand Hebrew or Ivrit, the contemporary version of Hebrew. Even less will understand Aramaic, but like Arabs evidently, they recite it in services just like parrots without having a clue what they are saying. The only difference with Hebrew, as far as I am aware, is that for those scholars or really devout Jews who do understand the language, I do not believe the omission of vowels creates any ambiguity.

When I was learning the Sedra for my Barmitzvah, I asked my teacher what it meaned but his response was “We do not have time for that”. He was a ever-so nice Minister in the Synagague, a very sensitive and gentle man who would not even have a hurt a fly. Nonetheless, I was dismayed at not knowing what my Sedra was about and this easy dismissal.

As a result, shortly after my Barmitvah, I started to ask myself why I was a Jewish believer? The answer was blindingly obvious, because I had been born into a Jewish family, hadn’t a clue what it all was about but, until then, had not even questioned it. Similarly, no doubt it is the same for many Muslims whose first language is not Arabic. I doubt there are many who understand Aramaic unless they are a few thousand years old. I maintain the same is true even where the language used in services is the mother tongue, like English in a Christian service. When, for example, the typical hymn is sung, how many do so thinking of the meaning, which is often obscure, out of date or irrelevant to their lives. A lot is poetry sung to a rousing tune and is lovely but no more so than Vaughn Williams setting of Greensleeves which is beautiful music and poetry. T S Eliot’s Four Quartets is mystical and mesmerising, especially the very famous bit near the end:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Is there a difference in the reality of how most participate in religious services? I do not really think so.

So here we have it. Most Jews and Arabs follow the traditions in their cultures, including the religious aspects which they recite fervently often will not a jot of understanding of the actual texts. Some have learned a little of the texts but still follow it by rote. Shemar Yisrael in Judaism which is beautifully worded and the Lords Prayer in the Christian Service which is utterly as beautiful. But who recites either cognisant of their actual meaning? Most do so in a ritualistic way and, even when they do understand the meaning, recite it on auto-pilot. Most participants will never have recited with the controls set to manual, that is consciously considering and evaluating the precise meaning and significance. This is not as idiotic as it may seem because the traditions are handed down and a general view of what it all about is passed from generation to generation in spite. That indirectly is why I can be an atheist Jew and it still make sense, I do understand some of the religious texts but reject them but I still am left with the culture.

However, even at the tender age of fourteen, I was not happy to be a believer simply because I had been indoctrinated. It was not that I ever rejected Judaism when I became an agnostic, merely that I realised how could I possibly know the unknowable? Hence I abhor the divisions between religions, including of course between Arabs and Jews. It is terribly sad how two civilisations whose roots are so close have become enemies, rather than remaining brothers.

This is partly because of the Holocaust, the Jews before 1948 not having their own country and the guilt of the world in not stopping their persecution in the diaspora. I have always abhorred this because they assuaged their guilt at the expense of the Arabs. It was not right to take lands away from them, even those who agreed to sell their lands. There can be no doubt those who did agree must have done so under some duress.

However, the fact remains that religions rely upon ignorance for the vast majority of their followers. I wonder, for example, how many Roman Catholics understand Latin?

As I have said before, there is a lot of good in religious belief. We all need a moral framework to live by and without religion the vast majority falsely believe that anything goes. However, in the Hitchins McGrath debate at http://richarddawkins.net/article,1752,n,n I was utterly shocked that McGrath, a learned man, is guilty of this utter fallacy.

As I have said before, "If you study ethical philosophy, you will discover that religion is not a prerequisite of moral standards, though religion has a lot to say about them. Just to live in a community demands certain rules of behaviour so that we can coexist in harmony rather than conflict.” Morality is innate to the human species, up to a point even some animals.

I took the trouble after becoming an agnostic to learn properly about ethics and there are many great philosophers from whom one can gain an understanding. Take Kant’s principle of Universality according to which if an action from particular instance rephrased in a generalised way is not sustainable, then the particular instance is not either. For example, as was in the news earlier this week in the UK, it is wrong in this country to discriminate against a girl who wishes to wear a ring with Sikh religious significance in school unless you prohibit all religious ornaments including crucifixes. And to do that is not necessary and would not be a good idea.

I have nothing against religion because it is impossible to live without beliefs of some kind. Even as an atheist or when I was an agnostic, I acknowledged that I was a believer in not being able to know or now knowing there is not. However, since I cannot prove either, why should I exclude those who believe in God?. We should all try to live a moral life and understand rationally what that really means, try to have some understanding of moral philosophy even if we are believers so that we understand what the faiths have in common rather than how they differ. For, with a proper rational understanding, members of every religious order will realise that we are all still brothers and should live accordingly. Not participates like parrots without actually having a clue what it really is all about or discriminate, persecute or kill primarily because our view of the unknowable is different.

I have written quite a lot in this forum and before I add some more, let me tell you the nature of my interest. Be aware that, to those of you who are not interested in philosophy or the spiritual, this will probably sound totally irrelevant but I am not going to spell out the connection I make with this discussion even at the end of this entry. If you understand it, you will understand the connection and if you do not you probably will not accept what it is I have to say even if I spell it out.

Having studied ethics and philosophy generally enables me to articulate better what I wish to say, especially about religion and morals. However, it has also enabled me to have an intimate awareness of a layer in our lives that is remote form our consciousness but of which many of us are still very much aware and be able to talk about it. I talk of the spiritual dimension to our lives and, even though admittedly I cannot talk with any precision about it, I can articulate well enough what it is I wish to say.

I love music with a passion, especially classical music and I would like to say more than a little about two of my favourite composers and then use it to illustrate the point I wish to make.

Religious people often think that the spiritual is to do with religion but this is not necessarily so. The spiritual is not physical. I cannot find words to say what it is but I am, as I said, very much aware of it. I do not believe it lives on when we die but I am convinced of it while we are alive. It is that which makes the hairs on my back stand up or brings me close to tears listen to parts of Bruckner’s symphonies, near to that with some of Mahler’s and make my jaw drop when I read T S Eliot’s Four Quartets.

Anton Bruckner 1824 –96 was an Austrian, a very devout Roman Catholic and in his day a famous organist. He started writing music fairly late in life and everything he wrote was to the glory of God. His symphonies are extremely long, close to single threaded expansion of one or two musical themes in a consistent mood rising to the most glorious crescendos, so full of emotion that occasionally some of them they raise the hairs on my back or brings me close to tears.

Gustav Mahler 1860 –1911 was an Austrian Jew and the most famous conductor of his day. He converted to Catholicism but there is no doubt in my mind that he did so merely because of anti-Semitism. He like Bruckner wrote very long symphonies but they are very complex musically, often changing from one melody and mood to another unexpectedly and in apparent contradiction. For the uninitiated, they are very difficult to understand.

I have learned to appreciate that sometimes music is more articulate than words. Bruckner his whole life through was convinced of his God and his music was all written to his glory. I find it utterly wonderful and a very satisfying emotional journey. Mahler, on the other hand, was very introspective and questioning (like I am) and spent his whole life searching for his God.

Mahler’s symphonies are filled with fears, doubts, uncertainty, trauma and hope. His ninth and unfinished tenth symphonies contain adagios which are utterly beautiful, and though both these reflect upon death with sadness they have acceptance of the inevitable with calm resignation rather than fear. Mahler knew he was dying when he wrote them, for his doctor had diagnosed a lethal heart condition.

Mahler’s increasing popularity among the classical music fraternity can easily be explained because his music increasingly reflects our lives in the later twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first. There is much more anxiety, stress and trauma in recent years in spite of great progress and an easier life for many of us but only in regard to the material. To that extent, I agree with those believers who talk of moral decline and say life used to be better. It was. I even wonder if it that that the Muslims so abhor of the non-Muslim world, for I do too! I agree it is not quite that simple, but you get the drift?

For nearly fifty years I have considered Bruckner and Mahler my equal favourite composers in classical music but recently I have given Bruckner a slight ascendancy. This is because Bruckner’s music expresses the world as we would all like it to be, no doubts, full of certainty and calm. However, Mahler tells it as it is.

Sorry about this. Perhaps CH4 could give us proper editing and preview features, like most of the BBC "Haved Your Say" message boards.

In para starting "Religious people" near the end of the last sentence, it should read "brings me close to tears when I listen to parts of Bruckner’s symphonies...".

Near end of penultimate para, "I even wonder if it is that..."

quote:

Originally posted by keepreal:
Little Miss Vixen - what you said about female mutilation I find horrifying but as Christopher Hitchens states in one of his arguments, if [the Christian] God intervened 2000 years ago, how do you account for his complacency in the way he did it, or the fact that he let homo sapiens stay around for at least 100,000 years beforehand without them also getting the benefit?

Thank you, I always make that point.

quote:

I watched that programme. What amazed me was that it seemed the main proponents of the practice were the haggard old women, they seemed to be pushing for it, some of the men seemed ambivalent. I don’t understand why that is?

Maybe jealously?? I'm not sure... it's strange isn't it? I look to older women for support and inspiration and yet this is the exact opposite....

Loving this discussion now some very interesting points being made

[QUOTE]Originally posted by balaclava9:
Keepreal

I am fascinated to try and understand why so many people believe so ardently in something which is so obviously absurd.

It is pretty obvious to me balaclava9:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."

Karl Marx (1818 - 1883), Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

or, as it usually is quoted:

"Religion is the opium of the masses"

Amazing quote. I suppose there's something nice about believing there's an extra meaning to why we are here etc, but I just cannot bring myself to believe the things written in those books. Especially the 'creation stories', when the visible evidence is so to the contrary.... Ie dinosaurs etc, etc...

Slightly related interesting article I just read on the Guardians' site:

"That golden age? It never happened, except in the minds of pessimists
Those who invoke a great British past might get a shock if forced to
live their lives then, instead of these privileged times
*
* Most of us, it seems, were born too late; we've missed the best
of Britain. The head of the teaching union, Voice, in complaining that
poor parenting has created a generation of children without moral
boundaries, finds himself fighting to get hold of the pessimist's
megaphone: recently the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and the former
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, have attributed the country's
problems to the loss of a religious moral framework. David Cameron,
though too canny a politician to risk getting involved with God, clearly
implies, by diagnosing a "broken Britain" now, that we had a fixed one
in the past.

Little Miss Vixen : The Guardian article is typical of the Guardian but I do not agree with it at all. As usual, it is very long-winded and probably accurate enough as regards the facts but there is no analysis or it usually is very thin.

When I was at university in the sixties, I used to travel to Manchester by rail with all my belonging at the beginning of each term in a single suitcase. Recently when my two children were at university, it took two trips for each in my car to transfer those belongings of theirs that they felt they could manage with. It is the same argument with domestic poverty, as opposed to that in the third world, where the standard is set largely by expectations.

Expectations have improved enormously since the sixties, running ahead of the status quo at an ever accelerating pace so much so that people feel worse off !!!!!!! It makes me sick with rage, for example when on the BBC’s programme Click about Information Technology, mobiles, IPODs and all the techie gizmos on offer you hear of the latest innovations – such as to be able to watch anything on your PC or TV, sorry PCs and TVs in any room at any time by wireless links integrating them into a whole or other innovations anything as dramatic. It doesn’t happen every week, but it is far too often.

Why do I feel sick with rage? Because we do not need all this, it does not make us any better off or happier. It does not make us any more productive and it does turn us into automatons much as your Guardian article describes. At it says there “Our new convenience tools - iPods, emails, Google - are robbing us of the ability to think, converse, concentrate and create.” Right on.

The fact is that what technology is enabling, and the rate at which its delivery is accelerating is incredible, but the use to which we put it as compared with the opportunity is declining, not growing expect to turn the greedy millionaires into billionaires and widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Likewise with our growing sophistication and access to expert information, why is the gap between what I will call the moral opportunity and moral delivery ever widening? The failure of the G8 Conference last week to deliver its previous promises of aid to Africa and its failure to agree to dismantle trading arrangements that imposed tariffs unfairly disadvantaging the Third World are abominations. We all know better than we used to what is going on and the economic processes that affect it, but too little is done even so.

I do not think there was a truly Golden Age in the past but compared with the opportunities, most definitely, the Italian Renaissance being one marked example. What we have today versus what is possible today, most definitely is lagging badly and I consider that decadent, even more so when the progress is negative as sometimes it is. Most of us are materialistic, stressed out etc (I do not need to repeat what I wrote earlier) and I do maintain that the morale decay is real, growing and I think probably terminal. Were I able to return from the next world or dust (which I think far more likely) and look down on this world in a few hundred years time, maybe less, I would expect to find that modern civilisation has collapsed entirely like the Romans did but, of course, I do hope to be proved entirely wrong.

I happen to have had a reason, that first arose last Wednesday, that does increase my hopes of being wrong. For if enough young people agree with me that the world has gone crazy, then there might be some hope that things will change and for the better. I had thought that was very unlikely but a see a tiny chink of light at the end of the tunnel and it may not be the proverbial express train hurtling towards me.

Please have a look at my article “Has the world gone crazy?” at http://community.channel4.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/520003...00113501#78400113501 and give me your critique of it. So far, I have had no comments and would like to hear what you and others think. It is not expressed directly in terms corresponding to your article or these comment on it, but I do think my point is valid.

There are thousands of examples. Take the news earlier this afternoon that Barry George has been cleared of killing BBC TV presenter Jill Dando following a retrial. I think it is wicked that a man physically and mentally disabled as he is was previously convicted with no factual evidence at all, just a lot of very flimsy circumstantial evidence that proved nothing except that the police and the judiciary had returned to the standards of the lynch mob.

Just one typo this time that might be difficult to figure out:

"The fact is that what technology is enabling, and the rate at which its delivery is accelerating is incredible, but the use to which we put it as compared with the opportunity is declining, not growing EXCEPT to turn..."

Dear keepreal... Off topic...BUT may I 'KISS THE HEM OF YOUR ROBE'..all so true!

M/m I agree with you - off topic, but very interesting and potentially topical. Thanks for introducing it LMV and the good response from Keepreal. So often we hear things that impinge on this, like, for example kids claiming they 'have nothing to do' and how society must provide amusement and act in loco parentis.

I guess all us 'of a certain age' can point to those things that were better and worse than they are now. How about a new thread?

quote:

Originally posted by malcolm/monica:
Dear keepreal... Off topic...BUT may I 'KISS THE HEM OF YOUR ROBE'..all so true!

This will definitely be my last comment on this thread as I do not want to hog it and I have said more than enough already. But I thought it would be ungracious no to thank malcolm/monica with whom I obviously have struck a chord.

Having said that and since I am already writing, may I briefly add just this:

Yes malcolm/monica and Grahamjt, of course it is off topic. In fact I thought Little Miss Vixen already was with the article from the Guardian, fascinating though it is. I did appreciate I was going to be even more off topic. However I decided to allow myself the liberty for the following reason.

I have tried elsewhere to raise similar issues on the moral and social decay more than once and got nowhere. On CH4 I started a thread on Religious Intolerance after seeing the programme The Qur’an and before this thread was started. However, next to nobody has visited it and I only got one reply. Therefore, since this thread is very active and interesting and getting mostly informed contributions from people with sensible and interesting things to say, I thought I would seize the opportunity.

If another person is sufficiently interested to debate the social and moral decay which makes me very, very upset and angry, I leave it to them. It is not right for me to try to impose my views on others. I have now made my point and hopefully enough people will read it and will think about it.

Dear Keepreal...Off topic..not a rebuke,more an observation.I have opened up my heart on'has the world gone crazy'...have a peep!
Yes a great topic...with a greater potental for a sensible outcome than the CLAPTRAP from some posters on these religous threads.AN UTTER WASTE OF TIME!