But what does God say and how do we know what God says and how are we to interpret it and what do we do to fill in the gaps on what things he hasn’t said anything about yet?
(Just playing Devil’s... er, God’s Advocate?)
IvoryBlackBishopFebruary 18, 2020 at 07:35#3838860 likes
The dichotomy isn't as true as the OP is making it out to be, much as his claims are mistaken for a myriad of reasons.
For example, the "problem of evil" is both a problem within "religions" as well as philosophy.
The "because God say" is a strawman, or that arguments for God "saying" so developed in a 'vaccum' completely abstracted from whatever various circumstances proceeded or played a role in said arguments to begin with. Such as in Socrates' Euthyphore delimma.
(Another example would be the philosophy of the Common Law, as per Holmes and others; modern law and legal system having evolved or developed out of older systems of law and justice, including "religious" ones).
Likewise, nontheistic religious such as Taoism, some types of Buddism, or other nontheistic religions do not invoke a "God" necessarily.
Today, philosophy of religion is one of the most vibrant areas of philosophy. Articles in philosophy of religion appear in virtually all the main philosophical journals, while some journals (such as the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Religious Studies, Sophia, Faith and Philosophy, and others) are dedicated especially to philosophy of religion.
the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Say".
I guess I quite enjoy theological discussion because "Because God Say" acts as kind of creative-constraint. Theology is useful as a thought-exercise: if one accepts 'Because God Say', then what follows? Alot of interesting stuff. It's less a solution than a problem itself to be addressed. All bullshit of course, but it's bullshit that can teach us alot, when done well. Not that it's always or even often done well here, but still, it's not going anywhere.
DeleteduserrcFebruary 18, 2020 at 07:56#3838970 likes
because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says".
I count myself as one of the religious, but I agree with you. It's a matter of recognizing what domain you're in. If you're thinking discursively and inferentially, then you have to play by discursive and inferential rules. That's not an artificial limitation - if your relation to god is a relation to an intellectual stopgap for thorny intellectual thickets, you're probably mixing up faith with something else.
creativesoulFebruary 18, 2020 at 08:01#3838980 likes
Discussing the affects/effects of religious discussion does.
:wink:
DeleteduserrcFebruary 18, 2020 at 08:03#3839000 likes
Reply to StreetlightX I've read the introduction a million times, but haven't read the rest. Ricoeur wrote a book called Time and Narrative that begins with an analysis of Augustine's reflections on time. What Ricoeur says in the introduction is that by following Augustine's subtle lines of thought, and by seeing precisely where he brings in God as a way of settling things, we can proceed by subtracting 'god" and seeing the paradoxes his thought leads us to. And start from there. It's a nice way of looking at things. I think of it like this : Augustine had some probing thoughts about time, and his faith that an answer would eventually be provided allowed him to row a little farther out from shore than most. It's true that his trinitarian ways of resolving these questions shut down the radicality of his questions, but they still allowed him to press on to a further point than most before him
(In terms of my own ideas on faith and philosophy, I think it best to relate to God (or whatever) as radically other and alllow that to hold open a space that you can follow. (I think this is actually what Laruelle is essentially on about, but I'm nowhere near qualified to really touch on that)
Out of my element here but as far as I know not all religions (e.g. Buddhism, Taoism) posit an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being. In fact I'm not even certain this applies to all those working within the Judeo-Christian tradition, with process theologians and various mystics being possible counter-examples.
I know it's not relevant to the topic at hand but I like to think that if there is a God (in the traditional "omni" sense), and "He" gave us the ability to think and reason, then "He" would appreciate our using these faculties even if they ultimately lead to more questions than answers; to an honest skepticism or even atheism rather than a dogmatic theism; to a sense of wonder at the existence of this world over its dismissal in favor of future one.
Articles in philosophy of religion appear in virtually all the main philosophical journals
Perhaps this applies to the Anglo-Saxon world. I have checked the indexes of a dozen philosophical magazines in my country and found only one article related to religion: about Santayana's agnosticism.
Too much Anglocentrism, then.
StreetlightFebruary 18, 2020 at 09:33#3839080 likes
It's true that his trinitarian ways of resolving these questions shut down the radicality of his questions, but they still allowed him to press on to a further point than most before him
Yeah, this seems exactly right to me. I mean, to believe in God, and to make it philosophically consistent, requires some pretty crazy leaps of imagination. I don't mean this pejoratively at all. The God-constraint (in addition to - if I'm prejudicial here - the standard 'reality-constraint' that everyone else has to deal with) means you really have to push pretty hard to set things in order.
Deleuze and Guattari have this line in What Is Philosophy? where they speak about how religion always 'secretes' an atheism, and muse over the likeliness that religious concepts only attain philosophical standing when they become atheist in some way: "We have seen this in Pascal or Kierkegaard: perhaps belief becomes a genuine concept only when it is made into belief in this world and is connected rather than being projected. Perhaps Christianity does not produce concepts except through its atheism, through the atheism that it, more than any other religion, secretes. ... There is always an atheism to be extracted from a religion."
It's something that's always rang true to me, and in some ways I think, for instance, the Scholastic period of philosophy is for me almost paradigmatic of how interesting and amazing philosophy can be. A snippet from one of Agamben's books, on the resurrection of bodies in paradise:
Agamben, Nudities:"The body, as we have seen, is resurrected as a whole, with all the organs it possessed during its earthly existence. Therefore, the blessed will forever have, according to their sex, either a virile member or a vagina and, in both cases, a stomach and intestines. But what for, if, as seems obvious, they will need neither to reproduce nor to eat? Certainly blood will circulate in their arteries and veins, but is it possible that hair will still grow on their heads and faces or that their fingernails will grow, as well, pointlessly and irritatingly? In confronting these delicate questions, theologians come up against a decisive aporia, one that seems to exceed the limits of their conceptual strategy but that also constitutes the locus in which we can think of a different possible use for the body.
...It is with regard to two principal functions of vegetative life - sexual reproduction and nutrition - that the problem of the physiology of the glorious body reaches its critical threshold. If the organs that execute these functions - testicles, penis, vagina, womb, stomach, intestines - will necessarily be present in the resurrection, then what function are they supposed to have? ... It is impossible, though, that the corresponding organs are completely useless and superfluous, since in the state of perfect nature nothing exists in vain. It is here that the question of the body's other use finds its first, stammering formulation.
Aquinas's strategy is clear: to separate organs from their specific physiological functions. The purpose of each organ, like that of any instrument, is its operation; but this does not mean that if the operation fails, then the instrument becomes useless. The organ or instrument that has separated from its operation and remains, so to speak, in a state of suspension, acquires, precisely for this reason, an ostensive function; it exhibits the virtue corresponding to the suspended operation. Just as in advertisements or pornography, where the simulacra of merchandise or bodies exalt their appeal precisely to the extent that they cannot be used, but only exhibited, so in the resurrection the idle sexual organs will display the potentiality, or the virtue, of procreation. The glorious body is an ostensive body whose functions are not executed but rather displayed."
Ricoeur was supposed to be a Christian philosopher who separated his philosophy from his religious beliefs. I started reading his book on finitude. After advancing among increasingly suspicious allegations of the superiority of the Gospel message over any other of a mythical order, I ended up finding that I as not able to understand this superiority because I have no faith.
In Spain we say that for that journey we did not need those saddlebags.
NOTE: this is not the only thing I have read by Ricoeur, but it always gives off the same whiff of sacristy.
[s]because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes[/s] "Because [s]God[/s] Banno Says".
because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says".
Theologies worth discussing are logical within their self-contained systems and involve some degree of rigor in deciphering their texts. It's very similar to secular philosophy, especially where the object is in understanding the views of a particular philosopher. I find it particularity similar to the way you philosophize within your Wittgensteinian cult.
Deleted UserFebruary 18, 2020 at 15:22#3839430 likes
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CiceronianusFebruary 18, 2020 at 20:07#3839990 likes
Clearly, God said "discuss me" sometime or other. Why else would we do so, unceasingly and with so little to show for it, if not under compulsion? Thus is God's existence established. The Argument from Prolixity.
..because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says".
Is it an answer to every question because God says so, or is God says so an answer to every question because of God's nature? If the first, then logic is divine fiat, if the second, then God is logic.
.because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says".
I dont think so, because even if god DID do everything and that the answer to philosophical questions like what is moral or immoral is according to what god says it is, we would still need to determine what that is using the tools we have. Since nobody has a direct line to god, we have to use the tools we do have. Philosophy is one of those tools.
You could make the same objection to a world without god, swapping god for the laws of physics for example.
Scientific discussion is misplaced in philosophy because if the universe follows the laws of physics then the answer to all philosophical questions becomes “because science says so”.
Could do the same thing with clearly philosophical categories, like ethics. Without getting into the weeds of where ethics actually come from: Ethical discussion is misplaced in philosophy because if X is the full description of ethics then the answer to all philosophical questions “X did it”.
In any of those examples, its still worth philosophical discussion because knowing the source of all things (or ethical things, or scientific things) only answers the question of source. There are so many answers and questions on the way to an ultimate source that having a clear answer of that source (“god did it”) alone wouldnt give us much of a framework at all, none Id say.
So I disagree.
Snakes AliveFebruary 19, 2020 at 00:11#3840300 likes
Religion tends to be more interesting than philosophy, because it's less afraid of substantive claims (as opposed to 'conceptually necessary' ones that venture little) & it's more deeply tied to mankind's cultural origins and deepest fears / desires / etc. It's also generally a culturally more well-developed realm of human thought / action. Philosophy has some advantages, but if anything mixing the two debases religion, not vice-versa.
...because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says".
If science is true, the same argument can be made.
Moreover, you cannot discount the power of religion in human affairs. Wars have been fought, empires toppled in the name of religion. Religion deserves a place in philosophy for that reason.
Religion tends to be more interesting than philosophy, because it's less afraid of substantive claims (as opposed to 'conceptually necessary' ones that venture little) & it's more deeply tied to mankind's cultural origins and deepest fears / desires / etc. It's also generally a culturally more well-developed realm of human thought / action. Philosophy has some advantages, but if anything mixing the two debases religion, not vice-versa.
Clearly, God said "discuss me" sometime or other. Why else would we do so, unceasingly and with so little to show for it, if not under compulsion? Thus is God's existence established. The Argument from Prolixity.
:pray:
:rofl:
christian2017February 20, 2020 at 04:08#3843780 likes
How about a simple rule: anyone using the term "god" or anything like, has to make clear what he means by the word, in the sense of a good definition. My guess is that would take the oxygen out of the room.
I would argue matter is made up of spiritual entities (spiritual creatures) rapidly moving their arms really quick so that there is an appearance that there is a 3d object there. We the people are just particles (made up of particles) that flow through a river taking the path of least resistance. Our emotions are modified by and also a contributor to this river of particles. This feeling or emotion is a whole "object" that encompasses the whole universe (collective consceeeeeesss or collective soul). God is just the original personality that has no rational explanation as to why he/she has that personality. I don't feel this entirely breaks with the Pail of orthodoxy.
To some extent i adhere to the above beliefs, perhaps supplemented by a pseudo matrix movie theology strongly influenced by the new testament as well as the old testament.
Deleted UserFebruary 21, 2020 at 07:32#3846820 likes
...because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says".
If you are that particular kind of theist and you think all philosophical issues have been clarified by that kind of deity in a particular text. And, everyone else is. If you do not have that version of a deity or do not think that the deity has answered al philosophical questions, then there is a lot to discuss. And only more so, if others are not that kind of theist or theists at all. Given that so many issues are not resolved by scripture or revelation, there is tremendous room for discussion. A philosophy of language issues for example - of course it might impinge on scripture and hermeneutics, but then even that's a potential discussion.
Sure, it's a pretty dead end to philosophical discussion, if someone states their position and then supports it with 'God said so' but I rarely see theists, even of the omni-everything type, try to end every discussion with Because God Says, at least not in philosophical forums.
This seems like a kind of cherry picking, and one that could be applied to almost any philosophical position.
If you are that particular kind of theist and you think all philosophical issues have been clarified by that kind of deity in a particular text.
The knowledge database of religious advisories keeps growing every day. Look for example just at this one site: https://islamqa.info/en. Every time there is a question, an attempt is made to discover a suitable jurisprudential advisory that syntactically entails from scripture.
However, saying that all issues have been clarified by the scriptures would be equivalent to saying that all theorems and their justification are discovered already when publishing the axioms of a theory.
It took 350 years to discover the justification from number theory for Fermat's Last Theorem. So, knowledge discovery is not necessarily an easy thing in a formal system. It could be a lot of hard work.
Given that so many issues are not resolved by scripture or revelation, there is tremendous room for discussion.
Indeed, all theorems are not discovered in a theory, merely by publishing its axioms. Another remark to make is that the theory embodied in the scripture is a formal system for morality only. It will not answer other questions. For example, don't ask it to predict the weather.
Islamic law is consistent and complete in a sense that for every question concerning the morality of human behaviour a theorem can be discovered that syntactically entails from scripture.
Islamic law is consistent and complete in a sense that for every question concerning the morality of human behaviour a theorem can be discovered that syntactically entails from scripture.
Nevertheless it's locked in to a world in which slave trading was ok. That world is gone and thus Islamic law is crippled.
The only way out is to put Islam in a secular setting.
Nevertheless it's locked in to a world in which slave trading was ok. That world is gone and thus Islamic law is crippled.
I am absolutely not that sure that that world is permanently gone. It may just be gone for the time being. If the framework that prevents it, collapses, and it surely is collapsing, then slavery will re-emerge with a vengeance. Just look at what is going on in Libya.
Humanity is based on a non-human technology that we only very partially understand.
In earlier times, slavery seems to have been the primary way in which males would combat other males with a view on confiscating their females, i.e the biology-wide mating season. Marriage is a civilizing hack to that, which drastically reduces related violence. Therefore, we must be utmost careful when the principle of marriage is falling apart -- skyrocketing divorce rates and collapsing fertility rates -- because the principle of life being undefeatable, quite a few people will still successfully reproduce, but then by other means.
If the framework that prevents it, collapses, and it surely is collapsing, then slavery will re-emerge with a vengeance. Just look at what is going on in Libya.
What framework prevents the re-emergence of slave trading? I'm aware that slave-trading still exists in Africa. That's not a new development. What's new about Libya?
You seem to be saying that Muslims have never really accepted that slavery is immoral. They've just been going along with it because their European dominators saw things that way. Once Europe is gone, they'll go back to slave trading.
In earlier times, slavery seems to have been the primary way in which males would combat other males with a view on confiscating their females, i.e the biology-wide mating season.
So the first slaves were sex-slaves? Interesting speculation. Is there any evidence for it?
Therefore, we must be utmost careful when the principle of marriage is falling apart -- skyrocketing divorce rates and collapsing fertility rates -- because the principle of life being undefeatable, quite a few people will still successfully reproduce, but then by other means.
You seem to be saying that Muslims have never really accepted that slavery is immoral. They've just been going along with it because their European dominators saw things that way. Once Europe is gone, they'll go back to slave trading.
This is possible but not necessarily sure. Still, I would not dismiss it as impossible either. ISIS actually did exactly that with the Yazidi followers, justifying it by making use of an old Ottoman firman that called for that. The opinions in the Islamic world are very divided on that episode.
A major source of slaves had been Roman military expansion during the Republic. During the Pax Romana of the early Roman Empire (1st–2nd centuries AD), emphasis was placed on maintaining stability, and the lack of new territorial conquests dried up this supply line of human trafficking. Many captives were either brought back as war booty or sold to traders,[9] and ancient sources cite anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of such slaves captured in each war. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was extraordinarily low: seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females). Julius Caesar once sold the entire population of a conquered region in Gaul, no fewer than 53,000 people, to slave dealers on the spot.
Historically, slavery is clearly related to war.
Adult males are not particularly easy to manage as slaves. In fact, they could even be seriously dangerous. So, it is clear to me that the more interesting captives must have been women and children. The average recorded age at death also suggests that. Most older male slaves must have been born in slavery instead. Female slaves would obviously be sexually involved with their masters.
This is possible but not necessarily sure. Still, I would not dismiss it as impossible either. ISIS actually did exactly that with the Yazidi followers, justifying it by making use of an old Ottoman firman that called for that. The opinions in the Islamic world are very divided on that episode.
If the Islamic world is "very divided" on the morality of the actions of ISIS in regard to the Yazidi, then that would mark the doom of Islam. Young people won't embrace a religion of the diabolical.
Adult males are not particularly easy to manage as slaves. In fact, they could even be seriously dangerous.
Slavery takes many forms in many cultures. Adult male slaves have always been popular because they're stronger than females slaves. Muslim slave-traders knew this as far back as the 700s CE. You're obviously not a slave trader. I suggest you look into it more closely since it's directly tied to your religious outlook.
Adult male slaves have always been popular because they're stronger than females slaves.
Possibly, but only when born in slavery; not when originally free men. Controlling free men requires a prison structure. Otherwise, it is too dangerous. Furthermore, even males born in slavery could possibly join dangerous rebellions and insurgencies.
It is not simple to find data on at what age the slaves were typically enslaved. I have just found this:
He offers a graphic account of his kidnapping into slavery at the age of 11, and describes being held captive along the West African coast for seven months before was subsequently sold to British slavers, who shipped him to Barbados and then took him to Virginia.
Possibly, but only when born in slavery; not when originally free men. Controlling free men requires a prison structure. Otherwise, it is too dangerous. Furthermore, even males born in slavery could possibly join dangerous rebellions and insurgencies.
The vast majority of slaves transported in the Atlantic slave trade were male and were brought from the interior of Africa to the west coast by Moors. Apparently controlling them wasn't too difficult for the Moors because we know they weren't paid much per slave. They probably just chained them to one another.
Plus Egyptian depictions of massive numbers of conquered slaves should be enough to dispel the notion that most slaves in the ancient world were female. That's just not true.
But I think your goal was to show some biological basis for slavery in an ancient sex-slave trade. Your only backing for this is a mistaken notion about the difficulties of holding male slaves.
I'm not persuaded.
christian2017February 21, 2020 at 23:02#3848580 likes
The vast majority of slaves transported in the Atlantic slave trade were male and were brought from the interior of Africa to the west coast by Moors. Apparently controlling them wasn't too difficult for the Moors because we know they weren't paid much per slave. They probably just chained them to one another.
Plus Egyptian depictions of massive numbers of conquered slaves should be enough to dispel the notion that most slaves in the ancient world were female. That's just not true.
But I think your goal was to show some biological basis for slavery in an ancient sex-slave trade. Your only backing for this is a mistaken notion about the difficulties of holding male slaves.
I'm not persuaded.
Another thing to note is a person who fears the after life (doesn't necessarily imply a lack of character) will be less likely to "run away". Americans in the some what distant past were more likely to get violent with their neighbor than be obedient to their neighbor. American slavery was very bad and one of the things that probably kept the slaves enslaved was the bad theology taught to them. Bad Religion/theology is a great way to keep people "obedient". I don't necessarily believe the American slaves were cowards but if you are told that if you take corrective action A, B, or C to your plight that you are breaking an important religious law/notion, you will be more likely to be obedient. As you probably understand, their is more to life bending over backwards for a bunch of assholes everyday.
American slavery was very bad and one of the things that probably kept the slaves enslaved was the bad theology taught to them.
True, but teaching them Christianity was a first step in seeing them as human, so the first abolitionists were Christian missionaries and members of sects that prohibited slave ownership (like Methodists).
christian2017February 22, 2020 at 01:44#3849040 likes
[quote="frank;384879"]True, but teaching them Christianity was a first step in seeing them as human, so the first abolitionists were Christian missionaries and members of sects that prohibited slave ownership (like Methodists).
2 hours agoReplyOptions
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As a christian i see this as a huge plus but i don't feel anyone should feel obligated to live a long long life of crap just to meet some non Biblical theological standards in order to "maintain their salvation".
christian2017February 22, 2020 at 01:45#3849060 likes
True, but teaching them Christianity was a first step in seeing them as human, so the first abolitionists were Christian missionaries and members of sects that prohibited slave ownership (like Methodists).
As a christian i see this as a huge plus but i don't feel anyone should feel obligated to live a long long life of crap just to meet some non Biblical theological standards in order to "maintain their salvation
But I think your goal was to show some biological basis for slavery in an ancient sex-slave trade. Your only backing for this is a mistaken notion about the difficulties of holding male slaves. I'm not persuaded.
There is still an uncanny similarity between the pretty much biology-wide mating season and war.
In an agricultural society, there would probably still be some use for male labour, if sufficiently docile, because either born in slavery or captured very young, but what use could hunter-gatherers possibly have for male slaves? They certainly weren't going to incorporate them in their hunting groups.
I think that in slaveholder societies, many young men, especially poor but fit ones, would eagerly volunteer for war because it gave them ready access to sex and gold; things that would be much harder to obtain as a poverty-stricken young civilian male.
As Farges has argued, conquest also involves gendered representations of the sexuality of the enemy: It is as if the women of the conquered enemy belonged de facto and almost by right to the conqueror. Insofar as a woman is concerned, this form of belonging is implicitly perceived as being sexual. The anthropological dissymmetry between male and female provides the “natural” evidence of this stereotype: the sexual act is a possession of the feminine by the masculine and not the other way round. The conqueror says “this is mine” when he places his flag over the conquered city and rapes the women. In this sense, the two actions are homologous.
Some people seem to believe that this mating season-like behaviour during war would merely be a lack of discipline.
I do not think so.
I believe that the desire to exhibit this behaviour is the main driver behind the strong desire for young men to go to war. Humanity incessantly invents excuses for why war would be needed. In that deceptive lie, there would even be something like a "just war".
I think that war is the primary means of reproduction, while marriage is just a brittle, civilizing hack. The dynamics of the winner rightfully taking possession of his prize has undoubtedly much more legitimacy in the eyes of anybody involved than conducting an overly pacifist and nowadays increasingly meaningless ceremony.
And relating this back to Islamic law, you'd see this as evidence of the righteousness of Islam's association with slave trading? If your mother was captured and gang raped as the Yazidi women were, you'd consider that this may be approved by God?
I think that there is no need to become too personal in these matters. That is just going to cloud our insights.
In fact, these Yazidi women were in principle not gang raped but sold to the highest bidder. Especially gang rape is considered to be a serious lapse in discipline in the Islamic laws of war. Furthermore, the rules try to prevent confusion to arise over who is the father of child by demanding that sexual intercourse may not take place before the new mentrual period of the captive female slave.
In William Seabrook's book Adventures in Arabia, the fourth section, starting with Chapter 14, is devoted to the "Yezidees" and is titled "Among the Yezidees". He describes them as "a mysterious sect scattered throughout the Orient, strongest in North Arabia, feared and hated both by Moslem and Christian, because they are worshippers of Satan."
George Gurdjieff wrote about his encounters with the Yazidis several times in his book Meetings with Remarkable Men, mentioning that they are considered to be "devil worshippers" by other ethnicities in the region.
In H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Horror at Red Hook", some of the murderous foreigners are identified as belonging to "the Yezidi clan of devil-worshippers".[89]
- Their belief that Iblees is the peacock of the angels lead them to venerate statues of peacocks made of copper in the form of a rooster the size of a clenched fist. They take these statues around the villages to collect money.
-In their declaration of faith they say: “I bear witness that One is Allah and Sultan Yazid is the beloved of Allah.”
They prohibit the colour blue because it is one of the most prominent colours of the peacock.
The Yazidi prays facing towards the sun when it rises and when it sets, then he kisses the ground and rubs his face on it.
...
Then they began to venerate Iblees who is cursed in the Qur’an.
...
From the above it is clear that the Yazidis are a deviant and misguided sect who are beyond the pale of Islam. Based on that, it is not permissible for a Muslim to marry a Yazidi woman, just as it is not permissible to marry a mushrik (polytheist) or Magian woman, and the like. No exception is made regarding disbelievers who are outside the pale of Islam, with regard to marriage, except in the case of the Jews and Christians, because they are originally People of the Book. As for the Yazidis and others, they have no Book in the first place; rather they are an apostate sect who combine all kinds of disbelief in one religion.
I am not going to reject their qualification as "devil worshippers".
In times of peace and as long as there is law and order, Yazidi populations are merely ignored by their neighbours. Unfortunately, during the slightest breakdown in law and order, these neighbouring populations will mercilessly attack the Yazidi.
In the following article, the journalist tries to gloss over the real problem:
Yazidis have suffered centuries of religious persecution, based largely on the false idea that they revere the sun as God and worship a fallen angel. Though Yazidis pray toward the sun, and worship seven angels, they are monotheistic, and there is little to distinguish their God from the Muslim or the Christian one.
Under the Ottomans, Yazidi villages were raided so often that the word firman, which means “decree” in Ottoman Turkish, came to mean “genocide” among Yazidis. When Saddam Hussein was President of Iraq, Yazidi villages were razed, and their inhabitants were resettled in planned communities and compelled to identify as Arabs.
By the time that Pir was in college, in the early two-thousands, the Yazidis counted seventy-two genocides in their history.
It is regrettable that neighbouring mobs tend to attack the Yazidis, whenever they see the opportunity to do so, but that is the nature of a mob. I think that it is even worse that the ruling authority regularly does that too.
I conclude that as far as I am concerned, it is preferable not to be a member of the Yazidi religion because your security will regularly be at stake, and up in the air. Furthermore, I would personally not agree to worship Satan in any way or fashion. As you know, atheists are quite in the same situation. They also seem to trigger hate reactions from the mob.
We know they were gang raped because some escaped to tell about it.
Gang rape is a lapse in discipline and a violation of Islamic law. There is absolutely no religious scholar in Islam who would ever approve of that. It is just bad behaviour.
So if your daughter was captured and sold to the highest bidder, your god would approve. That's one fucked up religion you have, my friend.
How many times do we need to repeat to the plebs that personal attacks are never the solution to a problem? The only thing that you achieve by attacking people personally, is to reveal your lower social class and trailer-park origins.
Seriously, we do not discuss with people like you, because that is pointless. We use the royal mounted constabulary equipped with long, solid wooden sticks to charge at and disperse individuals of your despicable social class.
Reply to alcontali
And the Chinese government zaps people like you in the back if the head with a cattle prod for being hesitant about giving up Islam.
You sure you don't prefer my lower human-rights-loving class?
Anyway, I didn't attack you. I just drew your attention to the ramifications of your disgusting beliefs.
Anyway, I didn't attack you. I just drew your attention to the ramifications of your disgusting beliefs.
Well, you did, by turning it into a personal affair. It is not a personal affair.
Torah, Numbers 31:15-18 (KJV):And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? 16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
I personally believe what the Jewish scholar Hans Joachim Schoeps observed about Islam:
Hans Joachim Schoeps observes that the Christianity Muhammad was likely to have encountered on the Arabian peninsula "was not the state religion of Byzantium but a schismatic Christianity characterized by Ebionite and Monophysite views."[115]
Thus we have a paradox of world-historical proportions, viz., the fact that Jewish Christianity indeed disappeared within the Christian church, but was preserved in Islam and thereby extended some of its basic ideas even to our own day. According to Islamic doctrine, the Ebionite combination of Moses and Jesus found its fulfillment in Muhammad.[116]
As far as I am concerned the schism between Pauline Christianity and Islam took place at the Council of Jerusalem, where the antinomian Peter, along with Paul, designated "apostate of the Law", more or less usurped the position of James the Just, brother of Jesus, as the legitimate successor to the leadership of the congregation of the poor.
When prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace, was asked to succeed to Waraka ibn Nawfal, leader of the congregation of the poor, he eventually managed to achieve something that was simply amazing, and which snowballed into a global phenomenon. The prophet said that he succeeded in decoding signals en provenance from the transcendental origin of our universe, through some kind of intelligent communication mechanism, and I really believe that he did.
Beyond that, I am not interested in your baseless criticism.
For the believer, it is religious law that defines morality.
I consider your assessment of one formal system of morality in terms of another one -- which is in fact not even a system -- to be system-less bullshit. Furthermore, we are not going to solve any problem with your approach, and certainly not the problem of Yazidi persecution. You are simply not doing anything useful for them or sparing them in any way from future persecution. Helping the Yazidi clearly requires something else than mere shit talk.
If God approves of your daughter being sold as a sex slave, what's the problem? Are you in conflict with the Divine?
Islamic law forbids enslaving Muslims. Therefore, I do not run that risk by giving a proper education to daughters. In fact, external signs of Islamicity are very solid as a personal security measure. It is much better than carrying guns, my friend.
We are completely safe in Muslim lands, and given the strange and unexplainable twist in history, also safe in most non-Muslim lands. For an atheist, the situation seems to be going in exactly the opposite direction.
In my opinion, serious breakdowns in law and order are now on the horizon in the West. As I have argued already, the civilizing institution of marriage has lost all credibility in the West. Still, Muslims will undoubtedly be safe anyway. So, publicly proclaiming membership of the club could offer good cover from marauding gangs.
Islam is not just a goal for the believer. It is also a tool. It is also an instrument to achieve what you want or need.
Doctors in Thailand and Japan have used HIV medications to treat patients infected with the novel coronavirus with apparent success.
The Chinese government had better watch out with their arrogance in all matters, and not just in matters of religion. There seems to be a trivial way of organizing reprisals readily available, and not even particularly expensive, I guess. ;-)
That coronavirus may very well be a feat in "creative evil thinking" ... ;-)
Well, you did, by turning it into a personal affair. It is not a personal affair
Pointing out the implications your general principles would have on you specifically is not a personal attack, it is drawing your attention to the concrete consequences of your abstract ideas.
But if you want to talk about getting things personal...
How many times do we need to repeat to the plebs that personal attacks are never the solution to a problem? The only thing that you achieve by attacking people personally, is to reveal your lower social class and trailer-park origins.
This kind of classist bullshit makes me reconsider my opinion on guillotines. Maybe a few stuck up asshats like you should get their heads paraded around on pikes until the rest of you get the fucking message that this kind of thing is not acceptable.
Makes me reconsider religious tolerance too. Maybe I’ll go doodle Mohammed and then wipe my ass with it just to spite you. I’d tell your God that you’re the instigator behind that too, except he doesn’t exist and I try not to talk to myself.
I previously assumed your right-libertarianism was nominally a matter of anti-authoritarian principle and you were just happy to overlook or rationalize the anti-egalitarian consequences of it, like most internet techie manchildren, but now it’s clear that you’re simply someone who thinks he’s inherently better than others and only opposes authorities that challenge your own power.
The director of the OSTP, Kelvin Droegemeier, wrote in the letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences, Marcia McNutt, that a widely disputed paper on the origins -- subsequently withdrawn -- had shown the urgency for accurate information about the genesis of the outbreak. The OSTP also supports providing wider access to scientific studies on the coronavirus. "There are still many unanswered questions about the virus, which your colleagues are working hard to resolve," he said.
The "creating evil thinking" problem is about the following sentence in the Indian research paper:
The finding of 4 unique [HIV] inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.
Personally, I am just waiting for new scientific reports on the matter.
As you can see, Prashant Pradhan, Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, Akhilesh Mishra, Parul Gupta, Praveen Kumar Tripathi, Manoj Balakrishnan Menon, James Gomes, Perumal Vivekanandan, and Bishwajit Kundu, have put their reputation at stake by writing that sentence. They are not just going to give up, are they? Now they obviously want vindication of their views. ;-)
I don't think the Chinese are being arrogant. They just don't believe in human rights. But neither do you apparently.
"Human rights" are a concern. They are not a formal system. We use our formal system of morality, i.e. Islamic law, to address concerns, one by one, as they arise.
Human rights" are a concern. They are not a formal system. We use our formal system of morality, i.e. Islamic law, to address concerns, one by one, as they arise.
Nobody uses sharia alone. Your government outlawed slavery without consulting a sharia judge.
Your government outlawed slavery without consulting a sharia judge.
Which one of the 200+ governments on this planet?
When I fly around the globe, and while the airborne airplane crosses 35 national borders, does that mean that my system of morality would flip flop 35 times?
As far as I am concerned, the core job of a government is to keep out other governments. I am not keen on letting them do much more than that. This view is obviously subject to the regulatory restrictions on the matter that syntactically entail from the Islamic scriptures, but on which I do not feel that I would be the right person to produce a religious advisory.
NobeernolifeFebruary 22, 2020 at 05:59#3849760 likes
When I fly around the globe, and while the airborne airplane crosses 35 national borders, does that mean that my system of morality would flip flop 35 times?
To be honest, you appear psychopathic to me. I'm not attacking or insulting you. You just do.
..because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says"
The problem is your framing of the issue. And it's far from clear that those who describe themselves as 'religious' themselves would agree that this is what it means; Buddhists, Hindus and Taoists would certainly not think so. It's more like the typical Enlightenment framing of 'irrational' religion vs 'rational analysis', based on a rather cliched understanding of religious philosophy.
There's a passage from Josiah Royce paraphrased on William Vallicella's blog, which I think conveys the gist of religious philosophies far better than declaring them simply a matter of divine imposition:
I would put it like this. The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. If this doesn't strike a chord in you, then I suggest you do not have a religious disposition. Some people don't, and it cannot be helped. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to them. It is not, for them, what William James in "The Will to Believe" calls a "living option," let alone a "forced" or "momentous" one.
I'm quite happy to accept that this last sentence describes many contemporary philosophers, and many people who post here; as Thomas Nagel observes in a footnote to his essay, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament,
A number of prominent analytic philosophers are Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, and others, such as Wittgenstein and Rawls, clearly had a religious attitude to life without adhering to a particular religion. But I believe nothing of the kind is present in the makeup of Russell, Moore, Ryle, Austin, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Strawson, or most of the current professoriate.
So, it's natural that such writers will depict philosophy of religion in very simplistic terms, but that is because for them it's simply not a meaningful domain of discourse.
creativesoulFebruary 22, 2020 at 06:38#3849830 likes
A number of prominent analytic philosophers are Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, and others, such as Wittgenstein and Rawls, clearly had a religious attitude to life without adhering to a particular religion. But I believe nothing of the kind is present in the makeup of Russell, Moore, Ryle, Austin, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Strawson, or most of the current professoriate.
That's what makes them all great in their own respects...
Reply to creativesoul I don't know if they're 'great' in many respects at all. Philosophy, philo-sophia, was originally grounded in something like 'saving wisdom' i.e. an insight into the roots of the human condition and its amelioration through wisdom. Where it differs from religion, is that it seeks to realise these ends through reasoned discourse, and not simply the acceptance of dogmatic beliefs. But the problem is in modern culture, that the sapiential (i.e. salvific) aspects of philosophy have too often been discarded with the bathwater of religious dogma. Leaving philosophy to be mainly 'talking about talking', which in all fairness, does comprise a very large percentage of what goes on in this forum, too.
It is still Shariah, and Shariah only. That they began codifying it does not change that. Your Wiki article does not reference any other sources than the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths (i.e. Sharia) for the codified Saudi system. ISIS also "codified" Sharia, i.e. in their instruction manuals of how to handle sex slaves. Since the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths (the sources for Sharia) are not structured as legal books, of course a Sharia judge will have to codify them.
Laws vary by state, but practicing medicine without a license is illegal in all states. Common sentences range from one to eight years in prison, depending on whether it's a misdemeanor or felony offense. Many judges will also impose fines in addition to prison sentences.
Apparently, I would need to do the following things:
If you think you may have undergone medical "treatment" by someone who isn't in fact licensed to practice medicine, the first thing you need to do is report the person to local law enforcement. Since practicing medicine without a license is a serious crime, you need to get the police involved. This will hopefully lead to the offender’s arrest as quickly as possible, which is important because the offender may be continuing the fraud by "treating" or attempting to "treat" other victims.
Also, the patient should report the offender to the state medical complaint board. This board may be able to warn other potential patients and investigate how to prevent the problem in the future. For tips on where to go to make your report, see this page.
The patient may also file a lawsuit against the offender.
I think that, with your dangerous habit of practicing medicine without a license, you'd better have a lot of money, and a lot of time to spare, because there are numerous parties and official departments who would urgently like to talk with you about that.
is still Shariah, and Shariah only. That they began codifying it does not change that. Your Wiki article does not reference any other sources than the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths (i.e. Sharia) for the codified Saudi system. ISIS also "codified" Sharia, i.e. in their instruction manuals of how to handle sex slaves. Since the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths (the sources for Sharia) are not structured as legal books, of course a Sharia judge will have to codify them.
Sharia isn't the Koran or Hadiths. It's a practice. Codifying bypasses this practice.
Isn't licensing an overreach of government authority in your view?
That is indeed a potential problem.
In this case, I would be re-purposing an environment of existing licensing regulations to solve a problem, regardless of whether I like these regulations or not. Still, from the perspective of the individual believer, an existing government is merely a tool to achieve a particular goal, on the condition that the intended use is not in violation of Islamic law.
Who else could, on the territory that they control, rein in the (unlicensed) practice of medicine without permission of the patient and against his will? In all practical terms, I am afraid that it is most likely the official mafia that will have to do it. They even seem to have set up quite an impressive infrastructure for that purpose.
In the libertarian view, licensing is indeed a real concern, but not completely banned either. Richard Stallman created the General Public License in order to establish the copyleft regime with which he quite successfully neutralized the nefarious consequences of the copyright regime:
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.
Turning such regime against itself is, in my opinion, a stroke of genius. Therefore, I do not object to the copyright regime for software, simply, because the copyleft regime existentially depends on it. I am an avid GNU/Linux user and I shun copyrighted software like the plague by happily using the holier-than-thou approach invented by "Saint-Ignucius".
Concerning government itself, I am indeed reluctant to use government services because I subscribe to the idea that there is not one problem that the government will not make worse.
By the way, Richard Stallman sits pretty much on the radical left of the political spectrum. So, I probably disagree with him on everything else concerning government and/or morality.
Sometimes these pesky governments even force you to make use of their services; in which case, you are obviously free from any related responsibility, unless you could easily escape the problem. In that sense, I guess that article 8 of the August 1945 London Agreement was spot on:
The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.
NobeernolifeFebruary 22, 2020 at 13:08#3850480 likes
Sharia isn't the Koran or Hadiths. It's a practice. Codifying bypasses this practice.
Shariah is the practise of law based on the Koran, the Haddiths and the Sunna. When you base your legal system on Koran, the Haddiths and the Sunna, you have Shariah. Codifying that does not change that, it simply formalizes it. I don`t know where your confusion stems from.
Religion is a small evil, unless thought about more in a descriptive sense, a small thing. He was religious. Could mean high or holy.
"I am that cool looking word to say(shape to conceive)." It's toned down in a one religion sense, as it is. Religious people, like good people should be doing more than stake a claim in heaven.
I don't know what the age of ijtihad is, and I'm not a Muslim, so I dont really care how they do it.
I just know that the predominant legal schools in Islam see ijtihad as essential to Sharia.
I do not know where you "know" that from, but I have not seen that statement from any current leading cleric, either Sunni or Shia. Unless they define ijitihad in a very shallow way.
do not know where you "know" that from, but I have not seen that statement from any current leading cleric, either Sunni or Shia. Unless they define ijitihad in a very shallow way.
Hisham M. Ramadan (2006), Understanding Islamic Law: From Classical to Contemporary, Rowman Altamira, ISB:The sources from which the Hanafi madhhab derives Islamic law are, in order of importance and preference: the Quran, and the hadiths containing the words, actions and customs of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (narrated in six hadith collections, of which Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim are the most relied upon); if these sources were ambiguous on an issue, then the consensus of the Sahabah community (Ijma of the companions of Muhammad), then individual's opinion from the Sahabah, Qiyas (analogy), Istihsan (juristic preference), and finally local Urf (local custom of people).
The four main schools are all like that. No cleric needs to rule on it. The practice of codifying is a British intrusion.
the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says".
Is it always 'because God says'? Take some moral rule X. Is X a rule because God says, or does God say because X is really wrong? The former denies objective morals. If God said one must light a live puppy on fire at least once a month, then that's the rule, but a rule relative to God, not objective.
The latter would be God forbidding lighting live puppies on fire because that's just wrong, implying there's a higher authority than God.
How is this resolved? I resolve this by denying both.
NobeernolifeFebruary 22, 2020 at 14:48#3850860 likes
The sources from which the Hanafi madhhab derives Islamic law are, in order of importance and preference: the Quran, and the hadiths containing the words, actions and customs of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (narrated in six hadith collections, of which Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim are the most relied upon); if these sources were ambiguous on an issue, then the consensus of the Sahabah community (Ijma of the companions of Muhammad), then individual's opinion from the Sahabah, Qiyas (analogy), Istihsan (juristic preference), and finally local Urf (local custom of people). — Hisham M. Ramadan (2006), Understanding Islamic Law: From Classical to Contemporary, Rowman Altamira, ISB
The four main schools are all like that. No cleric needs to rule on it. The practice of codifying is a British intrusion.
Why is this important to you, anyway?
That is not ijitihad. He is simply saying that they interpret the scriptures for a Sharia decision, which I also said. So why are you arguing? Ijitihad goes deeper, it is questioning the sources fundamentally.
And why is this important to you? I simply pointed out that there indeed are places where Sharia is the law today.
And why is this important to you? I simply pointed out that there indeed are places where Sharia is the law today.
Actually you asserted that there are places where sharia law is used alone. You pointed to Saudi as an example. Slavery is illegal in Saudi, so that tells you they aren't using sharia alone.
I take it the question isnt important to either of us. Let's let it drop.
NobeernolifeFebruary 22, 2020 at 15:18#3850990 likes
Actually you asserted that there are places where sharia law is used alone. You pointed to Saudi as an example. Slavery is illegal in Saudi, so that tells you they aren't using sharia alone.
They ARE using Sharia alone. As you busily and eloquently proved, Sharia is of course based on interpretation of the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths by Sharia judges. If slavery is codified as illegal in Saudi, do they use another source for that than Sharia? If you know one, tell us.
They ARE using Sharia alone. As you busily and eloquently proved, Sharia is of course based on interpretation of the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths by Sharia judges. If slavery is codified as illegal in Saudi, do they use another source for that than Sharia? If you know one, tell us.
Slavery cant be outlawed by sharia law. You're kind of clueless.
Deleted UserFebruary 22, 2020 at 15:54#3851120 likes
The knowledge database of religious advisories keeps growing every day. Look for example just at this one site: https://islamqa.info/en . Every time there is a question, an attempt is made to discover a suitable jurisprudential advisory that syntactically entails from scripture.
However, saying that all issues have been clarified by the scriptures would be equivalent to saying that all theorems and their justification are discovered already when publishing the axioms of a theory.
It took 350 years to discover the justification from number theory for Fermat's Last Theorem. So, knowledge discovery is not necessarily an easy thing in a formal system. It could be a lot of hard work.
Seems like a terribly confused system, if actually created by a deity. A set of texts is given like a set of axioms so that good people (muslims) can assign and or become experts who render all theorums based on axioms or generate them in response to questions....I mean, why give humans a soul and a heart and urges. You could make machines to play moral chess. It seems like not honoring your own creation, us, by making all behavior the result of mathematical type deduction. What a waste.
And the Koran and other works cannot really demonstrate what philosophy of language one should have in relation to the texts, since if one uses part of the text to justify one's philosophy, then you have already applied a philosophy of language without it yet being justified when reading the text. You cannot justify the rules of justification either (deduction say) from scripture. And you cannot justify epistemological questions since if you accept scripture as perfect and right from the get go you already applied some kind of epistemology without it yet being justified. There are a lot of other things that scripture cannot resolve. And, at base, we as humans must take responsibility for some of our axioms, even if one of those axioms is 'I will do as that book seems to indicate or what experts of that book say it indicates'. Because one is still trusting oneself to choose the right book - so right there we have a radical intuitionist epistemology - or to find the right experts, or to be interpreting, whatever we argue confirms the scripture as correct, correctly.,
There is no escape from our own intuition, even if the one main, but enormous, act we use is saying we give up our intuition to book X because we know it is the right one.
NobeernolifeFebruary 22, 2020 at 16:12#3851190 likes
Oh, you mean "can`t". Yes that is correct. So if slavery is really outlawed in Saudi, I assume the Wahabi clerics found an elegant way around it. Maybe they base it on the fact that is enslavement of muslims is illegal under shariah, and since Saudi citizens are muslim by law, that would appy for them.
Well, you did, by turning it into a personal affair. It is not a personal affair
— alcontali
Pointing out the implications your general principles would have on you specifically is not a personal attack, it is drawing your attention to the concrete consequences of your abstract ideas.
But if you want to talk about getting things personal...
How many times do we need to repeat to the plebs that personal attacks are never the solution to a problem? The only thing that you achieve by attacking people personally, is to reveal your lower social class and trailer-park origins.
— alcontali
This kind of classist bullshit makes me reconsider my opinion on guillotines. Maybe a few stuck up asshats like you should get their heads paraded around on pikes until the rest of you get the fucking message that this kind of thing is not acceptable.
Makes me reconsider religious tolerance too. Maybe I’ll go doodle Mohammed and then wipe my ass with it just to spite you. I’d tell your God that you’re the instigator behind that too, except he doesn’t exist and I try not to talk to myself.
I previously assumed your right-libertarianism was nominally a matter of anti-authoritarian principle and you were just happy to overlook or rationalize the anti-egalitarian consequences of it, like most internet techie manchildren, but now it’s clear that you’re simply someone who thinks he’s inherently better than others and only opposes authorities that challenge your own power.
This is definitely one of the worst cases on this forum of people acting this way. I guess we need to make his sandwich quicker next time.
NobeernolifeFebruary 26, 2020 at 09:15#3861550 likes
Just curious why religious discussion should be misplaced on a philosophy forum, seeing that religion fundamentally is just philosophy for idiots? (Just to clarify, since most of the population consists of idiots, I do not consider that a bad thing.)
We have a mind and an infinitely complex world and universe to perceive.
It's good to be grounded in something. Be it theism or atheism. If that footing is sure, what is the harm in logically debate or discovery?
Not a place for tyrannical "thumping" or virtual death threats sure but surely such fundamentally broad and incredibly longstanding concepts have their avenues of debate. If you must, think of it like debating Hansel and Gretel, you're not debating the accuracy so much as just about anything else about the premise, what it implies, or its implication on society.
We could discuss some of the philosophical ideas of Gnostic Christianity:
[quote=http://gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn-meyer.html]The father’s thought became a reality, and she who appeared in the presence of the father in shining light came forth. She is the first power who preceded everything and came forth from the father’s mind as the forethought of all. Her light shines like the father’s light; she, the perfect power, is the image of the perfect and invisible virgin spirit.
She, the first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory among the realms, the glory of revelation, she glorified and praised the virgin spirit, for because of the spirit she had come forth.
She is the first thought, the image of the spirit. She became the universal womb, for she precedes everything,
the mother-father,
the first human,
the holy spirit,
the triple male,
the triple power,
the androgynous one with three names,
the eternal realm among the invisible beings,
the first to come forth.[/quote]
Comments (97)
(Just playing Devil’s... er, God’s Advocate?)
For example, the "problem of evil" is both a problem within "religions" as well as philosophy.
The "because God say" is a strawman, or that arguments for God "saying" so developed in a 'vaccum' completely abstracted from whatever various circumstances proceeded or played a role in said arguments to begin with. Such as in Socrates' Euthyphore delimma.
(Another example would be the philosophy of the Common Law, as per Holmes and others; modern law and legal system having evolved or developed out of older systems of law and justice, including "religious" ones).
Likewise, nontheistic religious such as Taoism, some types of Buddism, or other nontheistic religions do not invoke a "God" necessarily.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/
lol.
Philosophy topics don't belong in a philosophy forum because every philosophical questions becomes "Because Neeeeeeeeeech and Beetles says"
I guess I quite enjoy theological discussion because "Because God Say" acts as kind of creative-constraint. Theology is useful as a thought-exercise: if one accepts 'Because God Say', then what follows? Alot of interesting stuff. It's less a solution than a problem itself to be addressed. All bullshit of course, but it's bullshit that can teach us alot, when done well. Not that it's always or even often done well here, but still, it's not going anywhere.
I count myself as one of the religious, but I agree with you. It's a matter of recognizing what domain you're in. If you're thinking discursively and inferentially, then you have to play by discursive and inferential rules. That's not an artificial limitation - if your relation to god is a relation to an intellectual stopgap for thorny intellectual thickets, you're probably mixing up faith with something else.
:wink:
(In terms of my own ideas on faith and philosophy, I think it best to relate to God (or whatever) as radically other and alllow that to hold open a space that you can follow. (I think this is actually what Laruelle is essentially on about, but I'm nowhere near qualified to really touch on that)
I know it's not relevant to the topic at hand but I like to think that if there is a God (in the traditional "omni" sense), and "He" gave us the ability to think and reason, then "He" would appreciate our using these faculties even if they ultimately lead to more questions than answers; to an honest skepticism or even atheism rather than a dogmatic theism; to a sense of wonder at the existence of this world over its dismissal in favor of future one.
Perhaps this applies to the Anglo-Saxon world. I have checked the indexes of a dozen philosophical magazines in my country and found only one article related to religion: about Santayana's agnosticism.
Too much Anglocentrism, then.
Yeah, this seems exactly right to me. I mean, to believe in God, and to make it philosophically consistent, requires some pretty crazy leaps of imagination. I don't mean this pejoratively at all. The God-constraint (in addition to - if I'm prejudicial here - the standard 'reality-constraint' that everyone else has to deal with) means you really have to push pretty hard to set things in order.
Deleuze and Guattari have this line in What Is Philosophy? where they speak about how religion always 'secretes' an atheism, and muse over the likeliness that religious concepts only attain philosophical standing when they become atheist in some way: "We have seen this in Pascal or Kierkegaard: perhaps belief becomes a genuine concept only when it is made into belief in this world and is connected rather than being projected. Perhaps Christianity does not produce concepts except through its atheism, through the atheism that it, more than any other religion, secretes. ... There is always an atheism to be extracted from a religion."
It's something that's always rang true to me, and in some ways I think, for instance, the Scholastic period of philosophy is for me almost paradigmatic of how interesting and amazing philosophy can be. A snippet from one of Agamben's books, on the resurrection of bodies in paradise:
I love this stuff.
Ricoeur was supposed to be a Christian philosopher who separated his philosophy from his religious beliefs. I started reading his book on finitude. After advancing among increasingly suspicious allegations of the superiority of the Gospel message over any other of a mythical order, I ended up finding that I as not able to understand this superiority because I have no faith.
In Spain we say that for that journey we did not need those saddlebags.
NOTE: this is not the only thing I have read by Ricoeur, but it always gives off the same whiff of sacristy.
Sure. As an anthropological subject or sample of horrors religion is interesting. For something else I don't know what its use is.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Example of a widely-accepted unjustified and unjustifiable statement
Why? Possibly, because God says ... who knows? Other justifications are not readily available for this otherwise widely-accepted speculative claim.
(You can try to justify but your justification will almost surely be rejected.)
Theologies worth discussing are logical within their self-contained systems and involve some degree of rigor in deciphering their texts. It's very similar to secular philosophy, especially where the object is in understanding the views of a particular philosopher. I find it particularity similar to the way you philosophize within your Wittgensteinian cult.
I am curious.
C'mon!
Discussing whether pistachios taste better than pecans is appropriate in a philosophy forum.
Surely discussing religions is.
Is it an answer to every question because God says so, or is God says so an answer to every question because of God's nature? If the first, then logic is divine fiat, if the second, then God is logic.
If God is logic, then checkmate, atheist.
It depends on whether God said, "Let there be chairs", or God said, "Let there be particles arranged chair-wise".
Or alternatively, the chair-forms emanated from the ground of being, and the particles partake in the divine form.
That's correct, God did it!
Ok, my work is done here; next question.
(Sorry Banno, you asked a simple question, you got a simple answer. I think it's called the law of attraction. LOL)
Seriously, I think you should ask a more intriguing question, like, if God is all knowing, what does the [his] eternity of time mean(?).
I dont think so, because even if god DID do everything and that the answer to philosophical questions like what is moral or immoral is according to what god says it is, we would still need to determine what that is using the tools we have. Since nobody has a direct line to god, we have to use the tools we do have. Philosophy is one of those tools.
You could make the same objection to a world without god, swapping god for the laws of physics for example.
Scientific discussion is misplaced in philosophy because if the universe follows the laws of physics then the answer to all philosophical questions becomes “because science says so”.
Could do the same thing with clearly philosophical categories, like ethics. Without getting into the weeds of where ethics actually come from: Ethical discussion is misplaced in philosophy because if X is the full description of ethics then the answer to all philosophical questions “X did it”.
In any of those examples, its still worth philosophical discussion because knowing the source of all things (or ethical things, or scientific things) only answers the question of source. There are so many answers and questions on the way to an ultimate source that having a clear answer of that source (“god did it”) alone wouldnt give us much of a framework at all, none Id say.
So I disagree.
If science is true, the same argument can be made.
Moreover, you cannot discount the power of religion in human affairs. Wars have been fought, empires toppled in the name of religion. Religion deserves a place in philosophy for that reason.
:up:
:pray:
:rofl:
I would argue matter is made up of spiritual entities (spiritual creatures) rapidly moving their arms really quick so that there is an appearance that there is a 3d object there. We the people are just particles (made up of particles) that flow through a river taking the path of least resistance. Our emotions are modified by and also a contributor to this river of particles. This feeling or emotion is a whole "object" that encompasses the whole universe (collective consceeeeeesss or collective soul). God is just the original personality that has no rational explanation as to why he/she has that personality. I don't feel this entirely breaks with the Pail of orthodoxy.
To some extent i adhere to the above beliefs, perhaps supplemented by a pseudo matrix movie theology strongly influenced by the new testament as well as the old testament.
Sure, it's a pretty dead end to philosophical discussion, if someone states their position and then supports it with 'God said so' but I rarely see theists, even of the omni-everything type, try to end every discussion with Because God Says, at least not in philosophical forums.
This seems like a kind of cherry picking, and one that could be applied to almost any philosophical position.
The knowledge database of religious advisories keeps growing every day. Look for example just at this one site: https://islamqa.info/en. Every time there is a question, an attempt is made to discover a suitable jurisprudential advisory that syntactically entails from scripture.
However, saying that all issues have been clarified by the scriptures would be equivalent to saying that all theorems and their justification are discovered already when publishing the axioms of a theory.
It took 350 years to discover the justification from number theory for Fermat's Last Theorem. So, knowledge discovery is not necessarily an easy thing in a formal system. It could be a lot of hard work.
Quoting Coben
Indeed, all theorems are not discovered in a theory, merely by publishing its axioms. Another remark to make is that the theory embodied in the scripture is a formal system for morality only. It will not answer other questions. For example, don't ask it to predict the weather.
Islamic law is consistent and complete in a sense that for every question concerning the morality of human behaviour a theorem can be discovered that syntactically entails from scripture.
Nevertheless it's locked in to a world in which slave trading was ok. That world is gone and thus Islamic law is crippled.
The only way out is to put Islam in a secular setting.
I am absolutely not that sure that that world is permanently gone. It may just be gone for the time being. If the framework that prevents it, collapses, and it surely is collapsing, then slavery will re-emerge with a vengeance. Just look at what is going on in Libya.
Humanity is based on a non-human technology that we only very partially understand.
In earlier times, slavery seems to have been the primary way in which males would combat other males with a view on confiscating their females, i.e the biology-wide mating season. Marriage is a civilizing hack to that, which drastically reduces related violence. Therefore, we must be utmost careful when the principle of marriage is falling apart -- skyrocketing divorce rates and collapsing fertility rates -- because the principle of life being undefeatable, quite a few people will still successfully reproduce, but then by other means.
What framework prevents the re-emergence of slave trading? I'm aware that slave-trading still exists in Africa. That's not a new development. What's new about Libya?
You seem to be saying that Muslims have never really accepted that slavery is immoral. They've just been going along with it because their European dominators saw things that way. Once Europe is gone, they'll go back to slave trading.
Quoting alcontali
So the first slaves were sex-slaves? Interesting speculation. Is there any evidence for it?
Quoting alcontali
What?
This is possible but not necessarily sure. Still, I would not dismiss it as impossible either. ISIS actually did exactly that with the Yazidi followers, justifying it by making use of an old Ottoman firman that called for that. The opinions in the Islamic world are very divided on that episode.
Quoting frank
Quoting Wikipedia on slavery in ancient Rome
Historically, slavery is clearly related to war.
Adult males are not particularly easy to manage as slaves. In fact, they could even be seriously dangerous. So, it is clear to me that the more interesting captives must have been women and children. The average recorded age at death also suggests that. Most older male slaves must have been born in slavery instead. Female slaves would obviously be sexually involved with their masters.
If the Islamic world is "very divided" on the morality of the actions of ISIS in regard to the Yazidi, then that would mark the doom of Islam. Young people won't embrace a religion of the diabolical.
Quoting alcontali
Slavery takes many forms in many cultures. Adult male slaves have always been popular because they're stronger than females slaves. Muslim slave-traders knew this as far back as the 700s CE. You're obviously not a slave trader. I suggest you look into it more closely since it's directly tied to your religious outlook.
Possibly, but only when born in slavery; not when originally free men. Controlling free men requires a prison structure. Otherwise, it is too dangerous. Furthermore, even males born in slavery could possibly join dangerous rebellions and insurgencies.
It is not simple to find data on at what age the slaves were typically enslaved. I have just found this:
Quoting Childhood and Transatlantic Slavery
The vast majority of slaves transported in the Atlantic slave trade were male and were brought from the interior of Africa to the west coast by Moors. Apparently controlling them wasn't too difficult for the Moors because we know they weren't paid much per slave. They probably just chained them to one another.
Plus Egyptian depictions of massive numbers of conquered slaves should be enough to dispel the notion that most slaves in the ancient world were female. That's just not true.
But I think your goal was to show some biological basis for slavery in an ancient sex-slave trade. Your only backing for this is a mistaken notion about the difficulties of holding male slaves.
I'm not persuaded.
Another thing to note is a person who fears the after life (doesn't necessarily imply a lack of character) will be less likely to "run away". Americans in the some what distant past were more likely to get violent with their neighbor than be obedient to their neighbor. American slavery was very bad and one of the things that probably kept the slaves enslaved was the bad theology taught to them. Bad Religion/theology is a great way to keep people "obedient". I don't necessarily believe the American slaves were cowards but if you are told that if you take corrective action A, B, or C to your plight that you are breaking an important religious law/notion, you will be more likely to be obedient. As you probably understand, their is more to life bending over backwards for a bunch of assholes everyday.
True, but teaching them Christianity was a first step in seeing them as human, so the first abolitionists were Christian missionaries and members of sects that prohibited slave ownership (like Methodists).
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As a christian i see this as a huge plus but i don't feel anyone should feel obligated to live a long long life of crap just to meet some non Biblical theological standards in order to "maintain their salvation".
As a christian i see this as a huge plus but i don't feel anyone should feel obligated to live a long long life of crap just to meet some non Biblical theological standards in order to "maintain their salvation
There is still an uncanny similarity between the pretty much biology-wide mating season and war.
In an agricultural society, there would probably still be some use for male labour, if sufficiently docile, because either born in slavery or captured very young, but what use could hunter-gatherers possibly have for male slaves? They certainly weren't going to incorporate them in their hunting groups.
I think that in slaveholder societies, many young men, especially poor but fit ones, would eagerly volunteer for war because it gave them ready access to sex and gold; things that would be much harder to obtain as a poverty-stricken young civilian male.
The following is from the Napoleontic wars:
Quoting When Silence Reigns: Sexuality, Affect, and Space in Soldiers’ Memoirs of the Napoleonic Wars
Some people seem to believe that this mating season-like behaviour during war would merely be a lack of discipline.
I do not think so.
I believe that the desire to exhibit this behaviour is the main driver behind the strong desire for young men to go to war. Humanity incessantly invents excuses for why war would be needed. In that deceptive lie, there would even be something like a "just war".
I think that war is the primary means of reproduction, while marriage is just a brittle, civilizing hack. The dynamics of the winner rightfully taking possession of his prize has undoubtedly much more legitimacy in the eyes of anybody involved than conducting an overly pacifist and nowadays increasingly meaningless ceremony.
And relating this back to Islamic law, you'd see this as evidence of the righteousness of Islam's association with slave trading?
If your mother was captured and gang raped as the Yazidi women were, you'd consider that this may be approved by God?
I think that there is no need to become too personal in these matters. That is just going to cloud our insights.
In fact, these Yazidi women were in principle not gang raped but sold to the highest bidder. Especially gang rape is considered to be a serious lapse in discipline in the Islamic laws of war. Furthermore, the rules try to prevent confusion to arise over who is the father of child by demanding that sexual intercourse may not take place before the new mentrual period of the captive female slave.
Concerning the religious status of the Yazidi:
Quoting Wikipedia on the historical perception of the Yazidi
If you want some more details on the religious status of Yazidi in Islam, you can read the advisory "Is it permissible to marry a Yazidi woman?".
Quoting Religious advisory on marrying a Yazidi woman
I am not going to reject their qualification as "devil worshippers".
In times of peace and as long as there is law and order, Yazidi populations are merely ignored by their neighbours. Unfortunately, during the slightest breakdown in law and order, these neighbouring populations will mercilessly attack the Yazidi.
In the following article, the journalist tries to gloss over the real problem:
Quoting The Daring Plan to Save a Religious Minority from ISIS
It is regrettable that neighbouring mobs tend to attack the Yazidis, whenever they see the opportunity to do so, but that is the nature of a mob. I think that it is even worse that the ruling authority regularly does that too.
I conclude that as far as I am concerned, it is preferable not to be a member of the Yazidi religion because your security will regularly be at stake, and up in the air. Furthermore, I would personally not agree to worship Satan in any way or fashion. As you know, atheists are quite in the same situation. They also seem to trigger hate reactions from the mob.
So if your daughter was captured and sold to the highest bidder, your god would approve.
That's one fucked up religion you have, my friend.
Gang rape is a lapse in discipline and a violation of Islamic law. There is absolutely no religious scholar in Islam who would ever approve of that. It is just bad behaviour.
Quoting frank
How many times do we need to repeat to the plebs that personal attacks are never the solution to a problem? The only thing that you achieve by attacking people personally, is to reveal your lower social class and trailer-park origins.
Seriously, we do not discuss with people like you, because that is pointless. We use the royal mounted constabulary equipped with long, solid wooden sticks to charge at and disperse individuals of your despicable social class.
And the Chinese government zaps people like you in the back if the head with a cattle prod for being hesitant about giving up Islam.
You sure you don't prefer my lower human-rights-loving class?
Anyway, I didn't attack you. I just drew your attention to the ramifications of your disgusting beliefs.
Well, you did, by turning it into a personal affair. It is not a personal affair.
I personally believe what the Jewish scholar Hans Joachim Schoeps observed about Islam:
Quoting Wikipedia on the views on the Ebionites of Hans Joachim Schoeps
As far as I am concerned the schism between Pauline Christianity and Islam took place at the Council of Jerusalem, where the antinomian Peter, along with Paul, designated "apostate of the Law", more or less usurped the position of James the Just, brother of Jesus, as the legitimate successor to the leadership of the congregation of the poor.
When prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace, was asked to succeed to Waraka ibn Nawfal, leader of the congregation of the poor, he eventually managed to achieve something that was simply amazing, and which snowballed into a global phenomenon. The prophet said that he succeeded in decoding signals en provenance from the transcendental origin of our universe, through some kind of intelligent communication mechanism, and I really believe that he did.
Beyond that, I am not interested in your baseless criticism.
For the believer, it is religious law that defines morality.
I consider your assessment of one formal system of morality in terms of another one -- which is in fact not even a system -- to be system-less bullshit. Furthermore, we are not going to solve any problem with your approach, and certainly not the problem of Yazidi persecution. You are simply not doing anything useful for them or sparing them in any way from future persecution. Helping the Yazidi clearly requires something else than mere shit talk.
If God approves of your daughter being sold as a sex slave, what's the problem? Are you in conflict with the Divine?
Correct.
The Chinese are coming.
Islamic law forbids enslaving Muslims. Therefore, I do not run that risk by giving a proper education to daughters. In fact, external signs of Islamicity are very solid as a personal security measure. It is much better than carrying guns, my friend.
We are completely safe in Muslim lands, and given the strange and unexplainable twist in history, also safe in most non-Muslim lands. For an atheist, the situation seems to be going in exactly the opposite direction.
In my opinion, serious breakdowns in law and order are now on the horizon in the West. As I have argued already, the civilizing institution of marriage has lost all credibility in the West. Still, Muslims will undoubtedly be safe anyway. So, publicly proclaiming membership of the club could offer good cover from marauding gangs.
Islam is not just a goal for the believer. It is also a tool. It is also an instrument to achieve what you want or need.
Quoting frank
Well, at the same time someone else seems to be engineering HIV-related viruses to teach that very same Chinese government their own lesson:
Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag.
Quoting HIV treatments provide line of attack against coronavirus
The Chinese government had better watch out with their arrogance in all matters, and not just in matters of religion. There seems to be a trivial way of organizing reprisals readily available, and not even particularly expensive, I guess. ;-)
That coronavirus may very well be a feat in "creative evil thinking" ... ;-)
I doubt it. Viruses mutate all the time.
I don't think the Chinese are being arrogant. They just don't believe in human rights. But neither do you apparently.
Pointing out the implications your general principles would have on you specifically is not a personal attack, it is drawing your attention to the concrete consequences of your abstract ideas.
But if you want to talk about getting things personal...
Quoting alcontali
This kind of classist bullshit makes me reconsider my opinion on guillotines. Maybe a few stuck up asshats like you should get their heads paraded around on pikes until the rest of you get the fucking message that this kind of thing is not acceptable.
Makes me reconsider religious tolerance too. Maybe I’ll go doodle Mohammed and then wipe my ass with it just to spite you. I’d tell your God that you’re the instigator behind that too, except he doesn’t exist and I try not to talk to myself.
I previously assumed your right-libertarianism was nominally a matter of anti-authoritarian principle and you were just happy to overlook or rationalize the anti-egalitarian consequences of it, like most internet techie manchildren, but now it’s clear that you’re simply someone who thinks he’s inherently better than others and only opposes authorities that challenge your own power.
You are not the only one doubting things in that context:
Quoting White House asks scientists to investigate origins of coronavirus
The "creating evil thinking" problem is about the following sentence in the Indian research paper:
Quoting Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag
Personally, I am just waiting for new scientific reports on the matter.
As you can see, Prashant Pradhan, Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, Akhilesh Mishra, Parul Gupta, Praveen Kumar Tripathi, Manoj Balakrishnan Menon, James Gomes, Perumal Vivekanandan, and Bishwajit Kundu, have put their reputation at stake by writing that sentence. They are not just going to give up, are they? Now they obviously want vindication of their views. ;-)
Quoting frank
"Human rights" are a concern. They are not a formal system. We use our formal system of morality, i.e. Islamic law, to address concerns, one by one, as they arise.
Nobody uses sharia alone. Your government outlawed slavery without consulting a sharia judge.
That is a jurisprudential question for which I am not the right person to produce a religious advisory.
Quoting frank
Which one of the 200+ governments on this planet?
When I fly around the globe, and while the airborne airplane crosses 35 national borders, does that mean that my system of morality would flip flop 35 times?
As far as I am concerned, the core job of a government is to keep out other governments. I am not keen on letting them do much more than that. This view is obviously subject to the regulatory restrictions on the matter that syntactically entail from the Islamic scriptures, but on which I do not feel that I would be the right person to produce a religious advisory.
Incorrect. Saudi Arabia and ISIS use Sharia alone. The Koran is the constitution there.
To be honest, you appear psychopathic to me. I'm not attacking or insulting you. You just do.
Saudi doesn't use sharia alone. ISIS, I'll take your word for it.
What else does Saudi use? Any reference?
The problem is your framing of the issue. And it's far from clear that those who describe themselves as 'religious' themselves would agree that this is what it means; Buddhists, Hindus and Taoists would certainly not think so. It's more like the typical Enlightenment framing of 'irrational' religion vs 'rational analysis', based on a rather cliched understanding of religious philosophy.
There's a passage from Josiah Royce paraphrased on William Vallicella's blog, which I think conveys the gist of religious philosophies far better than declaring them simply a matter of divine imposition:
I'm quite happy to accept that this last sentence describes many contemporary philosophers, and many people who post here; as Thomas Nagel observes in a footnote to his essay, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament,
So, it's natural that such writers will depict philosophy of religion in very simplistic terms, but that is because for them it's simply not a meaningful domain of discourse.
That's what makes them all great in their own respects...
:wink:
They began codifying in 2010. See here
Yep.
It is still Shariah, and Shariah only. That they began codifying it does not change that. Your Wiki article does not reference any other sources than the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths (i.e. Sharia) for the codified Saudi system. ISIS also "codified" Sharia, i.e. in their instruction manuals of how to handle sex slaves. Since the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths (the sources for Sharia) are not structured as legal books, of course a Sharia judge will have to codify them.
And now you are even an amateur psychiatrist publicly practising medicine without a license.
Quoting Criminal Penalties for Practicing Medicine Without a License
Apparently, I would need to do the following things:
Quoting What to do as a victim of criminal unlicensed practice of medicine
I think that, with your dangerous habit of practicing medicine without a license, you'd better have a lot of money, and a lot of time to spare, because there are numerous parties and official departments who would urgently like to talk with you about that.
Isn't licensing an overreach of government authority in your view?
Sharia isn't the Koran or Hadiths. It's a practice. Codifying bypasses this practice.
That is indeed a potential problem.
In this case, I would be re-purposing an environment of existing licensing regulations to solve a problem, regardless of whether I like these regulations or not. Still, from the perspective of the individual believer, an existing government is merely a tool to achieve a particular goal, on the condition that the intended use is not in violation of Islamic law.
Who else could, on the territory that they control, rein in the (unlicensed) practice of medicine without permission of the patient and against his will? In all practical terms, I am afraid that it is most likely the official mafia that will have to do it. They even seem to have set up quite an impressive infrastructure for that purpose.
In the libertarian view, licensing is indeed a real concern, but not completely banned either. Richard Stallman created the General Public License in order to establish the copyleft regime with which he quite successfully neutralized the nefarious consequences of the copyright regime:
Quoting Preamble of the GPL
Turning such regime against itself is, in my opinion, a stroke of genius. Therefore, I do not object to the copyright regime for software, simply, because the copyleft regime existentially depends on it. I am an avid GNU/Linux user and I shun copyrighted software like the plague by happily using the holier-than-thou approach invented by "Saint-Ignucius".
Concerning government itself, I am indeed reluctant to use government services because I subscribe to the idea that there is not one problem that the government will not make worse.
By the way, Richard Stallman sits pretty much on the radical left of the political spectrum. So, I probably disagree with him on everything else concerning government and/or morality.
Sometimes these pesky governments even force you to make use of their services; in which case, you are obviously free from any related responsibility, unless you could easily escape the problem. In that sense, I guess that article 8 of the August 1945 London Agreement was spot on:
Quoting Charter of the International Military Tribunal - Annex to the Agreement for the prosecution and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis
Shariah is the practise of law based on the Koran, the Haddiths and the Sunna. When you base your legal system on Koran, the Haddiths and the Sunna, you have Shariah. Codifying that does not change that, it simply formalizes it. I don`t know where your confusion stems from.
Traditionally by way of ijtihad. I'm not too interested in debating it.
In both Sunni and Shia doctrine, the age of ijitihad is over. Again, I don´t know where your confusion is. Wishful thinking perhaps?
"I am that cool looking word to say(shape to conceive)." It's toned down in a one religion sense, as it is. Religious people, like good people should be doing more than stake a claim in heaven.
I don't know what the age of ijtihad is, and I'm not a Muslim, so I dont really care how they do it.
I just know that the predominant legal schools in Islam see ijtihad as essential to Sharia.
Have a nice day.
I do not know where you "know" that from, but I have not seen that statement from any current leading cleric, either Sunni or Shia. Unless they define ijitihad in a very shallow way.
The four main schools are all like that. No cleric needs to rule on it. The practice of codifying is a British intrusion.
Why is this important to you, anyway?
Is it always 'because God says'? Take some moral rule X. Is X a rule because God says, or does God say because X is really wrong? The former denies objective morals. If God said one must light a live puppy on fire at least once a month, then that's the rule, but a rule relative to God, not objective.
The latter would be God forbidding lighting live puppies on fire because that's just wrong, implying there's a higher authority than God.
How is this resolved? I resolve this by denying both.
That is not ijitihad. He is simply saying that they interpret the scriptures for a Sharia decision, which I also said. So why are you arguing? Ijitihad goes deeper, it is questioning the sources fundamentally.
And why is this important to you? I simply pointed out that there indeed are places where Sharia is the law today.
Actually you asserted that there are places where sharia law is used alone. You pointed to Saudi as an example. Slavery is illegal in Saudi, so that tells you they aren't using sharia alone.
I take it the question isnt important to either of us. Let's let it drop.
They ARE using Sharia alone. As you busily and eloquently proved, Sharia is of course based on interpretation of the Koran, Sunna, and Haddiths by Sharia judges. If slavery is codified as illegal in Saudi, do they use another source for that than Sharia? If you know one, tell us.
Slavery cant be outlawed by sharia law. You're kind of clueless.
Seems like a terribly confused system, if actually created by a deity. A set of texts is given like a set of axioms so that good people (muslims) can assign and or become experts who render all theorums based on axioms or generate them in response to questions....I mean, why give humans a soul and a heart and urges. You could make machines to play moral chess. It seems like not honoring your own creation, us, by making all behavior the result of mathematical type deduction. What a waste.
Quoting alcontali
which is nto really a philosophical issue.
And the Koran and other works cannot really demonstrate what philosophy of language one should have in relation to the texts, since if one uses part of the text to justify one's philosophy, then you have already applied a philosophy of language without it yet being justified when reading the text. You cannot justify the rules of justification either (deduction say) from scripture. And you cannot justify epistemological questions since if you accept scripture as perfect and right from the get go you already applied some kind of epistemology without it yet being justified. There are a lot of other things that scripture cannot resolve. And, at base, we as humans must take responsibility for some of our axioms, even if one of those axioms is 'I will do as that book seems to indicate or what experts of that book say it indicates'. Because one is still trusting oneself to choose the right book - so right there we have a radical intuitionist epistemology - or to find the right experts, or to be interpreting, whatever we argue confirms the scripture as correct, correctly.,
There is no escape from our own intuition, even if the one main, but enormous, act we use is saying we give up our intuition to book X because we know it is the right one.
Maybe, but you´d have to do a lot of interpretation for that. Can you show the source in the Koran, Sunna, or Haddith where it is forbidden?
And can we do without name-calling?
Oh, you mean "can`t". Yes that is correct. So if slavery is really outlawed in Saudi, I assume the Wahabi clerics found an elegant way around it. Maybe they base it on the fact that is enslavement of muslims is illegal under shariah, and since Saudi citizens are muslim by law, that would appy for them.
This is definitely one of the worst cases on this forum of people acting this way. I guess we need to make his sandwich quicker next time.
We have a mind and an infinitely complex world and universe to perceive.
It's good to be grounded in something. Be it theism or atheism. If that footing is sure, what is the harm in logically debate or discovery?
Not a place for tyrannical "thumping" or virtual death threats sure but surely such fundamentally broad and incredibly longstanding concepts have their avenues of debate. If you must, think of it like debating Hansel and Gretel, you're not debating the accuracy so much as just about anything else about the premise, what it implies, or its implication on society.
[quote=http://gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn-meyer.html]The father’s thought became a reality, and she who appeared in the presence of the father in shining light came forth. She is the first power who preceded everything and came forth from the father’s mind as the forethought of all. Her light shines like the father’s light; she, the perfect power, is the image of the perfect and invisible virgin spirit.
She, the first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory among the realms, the glory of revelation, she glorified and praised the virgin spirit, for because of the spirit she had come forth.
She is the first thought, the image of the spirit. She became the universal womb, for she precedes everything,
the mother-father,
the first human,
the holy spirit,
the triple male,
the triple power,
the androgynous one with three names,
the eternal realm among the invisible beings,
the first to come forth.[/quote]