Religion, what's the point?

carvajal said:
We could also say that I have to take the verses in a certain way to fit in a moderate image or because the truth is too hard when they are alone.
"Lucas 6:35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High,because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked" I don´t need to situate the verses of Bible in any context, to read the previous or the next verse or look for some philosophical interpretation to find the message of love.
If Qran is perfect each line should have a harmonious meaning by itself . In any case I understand what you mean, you must think that I try to catch the ugly things, the next time I'll look for verses on the same topic without individualizing
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Well as mentioned above, this is why tafsir, jurisprudence etc is so important as people have dedicated their lives to studying and codifying the religion, and breaking it down to illustrate what it means.

And you chose an overly nice verse to make your point, maybe you could that for us next time ;)
 
Do people really still argue using Bible and other text's quotes as evidence?

None are original and most were badly translated to start with and have been translated and interpreted again countless times. Non can be taken as factual or correct.
 
2cents said:
Mate it's impossible to understand Islam simply by reading the Qur'an and Hadith. There is a centuries old scholarly tradition that needs to be engaged with, through which Muslims have articulated a very diverse range of interpretations of the texts. So this means that while there is certainly a militant tradition for Muslims to draw on, there is also a peaceful, contemplative tradition at hand as well, and much in between - issues such as legitimate authority, consequences, etc. need to be considered. What tradition Muslims tend to emphasize at any given time will be largely determined by other factors external to the religious texts.

What ISIS and Salafis in general have done is abandon that scholarly tradition and taken it upon themselves to interpret the texts as they please. Even then most Salafis don't believe a legitimate authority exists to sanction much of the law, and so they remain mostly apolitical. Conveniently, ISIS have granted themselves that authority by declaring their caliphate.

In any case it's not for non-Muslims to decide what the 'true' Islam is and what a 'proper' Muslim is.
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But I 'm not judging what a proper muslim must be, we were talking about the literal interpretation of the text.
ISIS considers Islam of Salaf was the most powerful , this is nothing but an imperialist question that should finish with Al Andalus. It´s the "back to the origins because the outside influence has weakened us"
Tradition , scholars and what you want but the basis of religion is the book and its contents can not be denied or look away .
 
Uzz said:
Well as mentioned above, this is why tafsir, jurisprudence etc is so important as people have dedicated their lives to studying and codifying the religion, and breaking it down to illustrate what it means.

And you chose an overly nice verse to make your point, maybe you could that for us next time ;)
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Ok, the next time I´ll bring some funnier verse about astronomy or history :angel:, or you could find in the new testament some verse about women misbeheaving or holy war, in that way we could have a debate :p
 
carvajal said:
But I 'm not judging what a proper muslim must be, we were talking about the literal interpretation of the text.
ISIS considers Islam of Salaf was the most powerful , this is nothing but an imperialist question that should finish with Al Andalus. It´s the "back to the origins because the outside influence has weakened us"
Tradition , scholars and what you want but the basis of religion is the book and its contents can not be denied or look away .
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The texts (as a whole, not in snippets) can basically be literally interpreted in any number of ways. The point is that Islam is not just about a literal interpretation of the texts. Sunni scholars generally accept four (I think) sources of law, and the Qur'an and Sunnah (as revealed in the hadiths) are only two, the other two being analogy (qiyas) and consensus of the community (ijma). There is also the question of what is good for the greater community.

Muslims recognized early on that there were many issues not obviously covered in the texts so they had to improvise much through these means using logic/reason (ijtihad).
 
@carvajal the label 'Salafi' originally became popular in modern times through its association with a famous scholar at al-Azhar in late 19th century Cairo, Muhammad Abduh, and his pupil Rashid Rida. Abduh also believed in abandoning the scholarly tradition and going straight (back) to the texts. Yet he came to a completely different conclusion to modern-day Salafis, believing that there was nothing in the Qur'an or Sunnah that contradicted what he saw as the basic values of Western Civilization. He is famous for saying

"I went to Europe and saw Islam but no Muslims, then I returned home and saw Muslims but no Islam."

The trend he inspired became known as Islamic Modernism. I post this just to show there is no inevitable result from interpreting the texts literally. ISIS are just one manifestation of the trend.
 
GimmeAKitKat said:
Do people really still argue using Bible and other text's quotes as evidence?

None are original and most were badly translated to start with and have been translated and interpreted again countless times. Non can be taken as factual or correct.
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And more importantly will always be read out of context since we don't have the same cultural or linguistic reference.
 
2cents said:
The texts (as a whole, not in snippets) can basically be literally interpreted in any number of ways. The point is that Islam is not just about a literal interpretation of the texts. Sunni scholars generally accept four (I think) sources of law, and the Qur'an and Sunnah (as revealed in the hadiths) are only two, the other two being analogy (qiyas) and consensus of the community (ijma). There is also the question of what is good for the greater community.

Muslims recognized early on that there were many issues not obviously covered in the texts so they had to improvise much through these means using logic/reason (ijtihad).
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I know that , but I find it incomprehensible that try to soften certain verses about women or find a twist to the many belligerent verses, doesn´t matter the sources of law that they use, but it's just my opinion.
In Morocco a muslim suffered 11 hours of interrogation because they found a Bible in his backpack.
If I'm not wrong there are many laws that forbid leaving Islam.
Those aspects so restrictive are due to the nature of Qran or the many and wise sources of law
 
carvajal said:
I know that , but I find it incomprehensible that try to soften certain verses about women or find a twist to the many belligerent verses, doesn´t matter the sources of law that they use, but it's just my opinion.
In Morocco a muslim suffered 11 hours of interrogation because they found a Bible in his backpack.
If I'm not wrong there are many laws that forbid leaving Islam.
Those aspects so restrictive are due to the nature of Qran or the many and wise sources of law
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I'm not an apologist for the more archaic aspects of Islamic tradition. I accept that concepts like jihad and dhimma have often been interpreted in militant or oppressive ways. Those traditions do exist and are available for Muslims to draw upon.

I'm just trying to show that there exist paths that Muslims can, and do, take which negate them. When a Muslim says 'jihad is an inner struggle' he/she really believes it - that makes it every bit a part of Islamic tradition as the more militant and literal interpretations of jihad.
 
2cents said:
I'm not an apologist for the more archaic aspects of Islamic tradition. I accept that concepts like jihad and dhimma have often been interpreted in militant or oppressive ways. Those traditions do exist and are available for Muslims to draw upon.

I'm just trying to show that there exist paths that Muslims can, and do, take which negate them. When a Muslim says 'jihad is an inner struggle' he/she really believes it - that makes it every bit a part of Islamic tradition as the more militant and literal interpretations of jihad.
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Luckily 99% take the path of peace. You know a lot about history 2Cents. Did you study something related to it?
 
2cents said:
I'm not an apologist for the more archaic aspects of Islamic tradition. I accept that concepts like jihad and dhimma have often been interpreted in militant or oppressive ways. Those traditions do exist and are available for Muslims to draw upon.

I'm just trying to show that there exist paths that Muslims can, and do, take which negate them. When a Muslim says 'jihad is an inner struggle' he/she really believes it - that makes it every bit a part of Islamic tradition as the more militant and literal interpretations of jihad.
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You articulate my opinions better than I do.
 
carvajal said:
Luckily 99% take the path of peace. You know a lot about history 2Cents. Did you study something related to it?
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I have studied Islamic history for my MA. When I started it I had the more hardline view that Islamic doctrine was the root of all these problems. It took a couple of great professors in Israel of all places to help change my mind.
 
shivab said:
my two cents -

terrorism is not a religion problem - human beings are vile violent creatures. we are always living in fear of the 'other' and hence are always involved in conflicts. i cant think of a generation that hasnt had a major conflict which involves extreme violence.

this is not an islam problem - boko haram/ isis/ al quaeda make up 0.0003% of the 1.6 billion muslims in the world. this is a human problem.

few manipulate the many...some use guns as weapons some use economics other use both...at the end of the day it all becomes about perspective

when a bomb explodes in bhagdad it doesnt make the news. people are only worried when the west is affected. we are apathetic

people talk of reforming islam, but what we should be reforming is our human weakness. religion was probably created to address these weaknesses and keep them under control. somehow we managed to use that as a tool to destroy each other.

depressing

ps. every kid should read animal farm and candide or optimism. explains exactly whats wrong with humanity
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It becomes a religion problem when humans kill in name of religion.

What's the % of ISIS/boko haram to total terrorists in the world? They are called terrorists because they don't have majority support, so quoting small % doesn't actually make sense.

Yes, innocents getting killed in Baghdad is as sad as Paris, but after sometime apathy sets in. You rightly can't expect it to be in the news over years,sad as it may be. And Paris is not Baghdad. It's not a warzone or a conflict centre. Attacking Paris is fundamentally different to a bomb in Baghdad. Not a valid comparison.

It is reforming Islam. It was Christianity during middle ages and burning pagans. Not that different from killing Infidels now. We'll pass through this phase, imo.... But that doesn't take away focus on Islam.

Are all. Muslims terrorists? No. Not by any stretch. But unless the terrorist problem is fixed Islamophobia is a realistic problem. No circumventing that. Imo, the moderate Muslims have a big role in condemning terrorism and preventing it from full blown Islamophobia. And Non Muslims should not descend into default suspicion and avoid generalisations.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
It becomes a religion problem when humans kill in name of religion.

What's the % of ISIS/boko haram to total terrorists in the world? They are called terrorists because they don't have majority support, so quoting small % doesn't actually make sense.

Yes, innocents getting killed in Baghdad is as sad as Paris, but after sometime apathy sets in. You rightly can't expect it to be in the news over years,sad as it may be. And Paris is not Baghdad. It's not a warzone or a conflict centre. Attacking Paris is fundamentally different to a bomb in Baghdad. Not a valid comparison.

It is reforming Islam. It was Christianity during middle ages and burning pagans. Not that different from killing Infidels now. We'll pass through this phase, imo.... But that doesn't take away focus on Islam.

Are all. Muslims terrorists? No. Not by any stretch. But unless the terrorist problem is fixed Islamophobia is a realistic problem. No circumventing that. Imo, the moderate Muslims have a big role in condemning terrorism and preventing it from full blown Islamophobia. And Non Muslims should not descend into default suspicion and avoid generalisations.
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Agree totally with your sentiments in this post.

One question I have for you about the last part of your post is how would moderate Muslims do this? Do you not think they're in a catch-22 situation? This being in the sense people in general wouldn't believe them anyway?

I fear for law-abiding Muslims living in western countries as most people are too stupid to disassociate these people from the ISIL supporters. Just as people are too stupid to disassociate Israelis from Jews.

For the record I was born Jewish- but see myself as agnostic when it comes to the concept of God and I am very much anti-religion. I deplore Islam just as much as I deplore Christianity or Judaism.
 
KingCantona87 said:
Agree totally with your sentiments in this post.

One question I have for you about the last part of your post is how would moderate Muslims do this? Do you not think they're in a catch-22 situation? This being in the sense people in general wouldn't believe them anyway?

I fear for law-abiding Muslims living in western countries as most people are too stupid to disassociate these people from the ISIL supporters. Just as people are too stupid to disassociate Israelis from Jews.

For the record I was born Jewish- but see myself as agnostic when it comes to the concept of God and I am very much anti-religion. I deplore Islam just as much as I deplore Christianity or Judaism.
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Tbh, I still believe in religion. Irrespective of Islam,Christianity or otherwise. Not organised religion though. Morals vs traditions. I believe it still has its use.

As for your question, I don't have any answer. It's upto moderates to make efforts to disassociate themselves from the jihadis. It's best cleansed from within. Public condemnation and active anti-hardline propaganda will go quite a way, imo... But it needs to be true. Not a gesture.
 
The Man Himself said:
Mahabharat is not a religious book or THE religious book of Hindus. It is a narrative of a war and events related. Bhagavad Gita (which was narrated during Kurukshetra war of Mahabharat) can be said to be a religious book in similar mold but even that is not THE religious book like Quran or Bible. The way Hindu religion evolved, it can't have one religious book anyway. The vedas and upanishads are also very key religious scriptures in Hinduism.

This is not related to the point whether Hindu religious scriptures have violence or not, just an info so as to not make wrong comparisons. Otherwise also, unrelated to violence part, Abrahamic religions(Christianity, Islam, Judaism) and Dharmic religions (Hinduism and its offshoots like Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism etc) can't be compared. Totally different ways. I am not a religious person so I am not interested to go deep into it but I assume material must be available on web for how the concepts differ in these two branches of religions for those interested.
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Yeah, I know, although I do find the way the Gita is treated as a fundamental ethical text and the Mahabharat of which it is a part isn't. It always seemed a little bit expedient and revisionist to me. Let's pay attention to Krishna when he is preaching responsibility and duty but not when he condones drinking the blood of your fallen enemy. It's also difficult to compare, as you say, because Hinduism doesn't really have a single equivalent of the Bible/Quran.
 
@2cents and @Uzz talk lot of sense in this thread, probably because they are one of the few who are actually well informed about the subject they are talking about without learning things from google at the moment of posting and answering by just googling the answers.
 
GimmeAKitKat said:
Do people really still argue using Bible and other text's quotes as evidence?

None are original and most were badly translated to start with and have been translated and interpreted again countless times. Non can be taken as factual or correct.
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Not to mention events like the Council of Nicaea where a bunch of blokes sat round a table and decided what, in their opinion, should & should not be included.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
It becomes a religion problem when humans kill in name of religion.

What's the % of ISIS/boko haram to total terrorists in the world? They are called terrorists because they don't have majority support, so quoting small % doesn't actually make sense.

Yes, innocents getting killed in Baghdad is as sad as Paris, but after sometime apathy sets in. You rightly can't expect it to be in the news over years,sad as it may be. And Paris is not Baghdad. It's not a warzone or a conflict centre. Attacking Paris is fundamentally different to a bomb in Baghdad. Not a valid comparison.

It is reforming Islam. It was Christianity during middle ages and burning pagans. Not that different from killing Infidels now. We'll pass through this phase, imo.... But that doesn't take away focus on Islam.

Are all. Muslims terrorists? No. Not by any stretch. But unless the terrorist problem is fixed Islamophobia is a realistic problem. No circumventing that. Imo, the moderate Muslims have a big role in condemning terrorism and preventing it from full blown Islamophobia. And Non Muslims should not descend into default suspicion and avoid generalisations.
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Humans have killed in the name of democracy vs communism/oil/religion/honour. Theres no one reason. would you blame democracy for what the US did in Vietnam or oil for what they did in iraq? would you blame communism for what russia did to afghanistan? then why blame religion in this case? Bad people misinterpret and manipulate religion (or any other belief) to suit their needs and their rhetoric.

(read this- http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...gion-that-creates-terrorists-its-the-politics)



The label of "terrorist" and "terrorism" is the issue here not what %. what the US did in iraq was directly responsible for the creation of ISIS (which killed scores of women and children). nobody brands the US as a terrorist. What about israel? The % you talk of would be a lot smaller when we start labelling fairly instead of being biased. What about economics being used as means to attack a nation instead of guns? We are very restricted in our thinking and the media has a lot to do with it.

(read - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...eorge-w-bush-s-invasion-in-iraq-10115243.html)


Your third point is a misinterpretation of my point. Its quite clear that the media is eurocentric and westcentric. it doest make world wide news and things dont start trending on twitter when a bomb explodes in the developing world eg. india. and no those countries dont always have bombs exploding left right and centre. my point was not only about baghdad it was about apathy in general.



Christianity is still being used to kill people. Just take a look at africa, we just ignore this fact because the world is too busy right now with blaming islam and islamic fundamentalism. Do we talk of reforming Christianity or Buddhism (because of what happened in Myanmmar) or Hinduism (because of organizations such as RSS, VHP and bajrang dal)?

(read - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26274198)

you might think again that religion is to blame..i would again say - its a few people killing people for vested interests, power and control. These few manipulate the many uneducated unemployed misguided fools and soon you have an army of clueless idiots. religion is not the cause. its just a tool. when wall street steals money from people you dont blame money and currencies you blame the companies and their greed then why blame religion in this case?




" are all muslim terrorists?" why even ask that question. are all americans terrorists? does anyone ask that? no because that would be preposterous. But then do we go around asking every american to apologize for vietnam iraq etc. publically all the time? Muslims fight against ISIS and the educated ones are taking to social media to show their support. The media in my opinion doesnt do enough to highlight that. muslim terrorists killing people is just better sensational news. not muslims march against isis. take any incident and i will show you a small news story where muslims have condemned it. the notinmyname campaign is doing quite well but the moderate muslims need help from the media which they arent getting enough of.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...i-am-a-muslim-paris-attacks-social-media.html


Im a hindu. i know about and have experienced fundamentalism first hand. at the end of the day it was about power and control rather than religion. i believe in most cases its the same.
 
Uzz said:
So, why does the faith celebrate them in such a way? This is clear evidence for diversion in the faith. It is an innovation. The rituals have lost their meaning, and the religion doesn't know the right way to celebrate them. We have Santa Claus as the integral part of Xmas, a Christian celebration to celebrate the birth of Christ - Syriac scholars have said that the date was moved from Jan 6th to Dec 25th so it could coincide with a pagan festival. How is one meant to reconcile that?
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Christianity isn't about feasts and festivals. Christ gave us the bread and the wine in communion, which we're to take regularly in remembrance of him. we celebrate Christmas and Easter with Santa, Christmas trees and easter eggs because that's just all cultural. Why wouldn't you celebrate them as a Christian? It's only your heart condition and the worship that comes from it God cares about. If someone's worshiping a Christmas tree or an Easter bunny I think they've got problems.


Not really, no. Considering the contentiousness between the King James version and the New Intl version, and the fact that many eminent Christian scholars reject parts of one version, then parts of the other. Essentially, no one really knows which is one is more faithful to the original text, which means it is unreliable.
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There are some bad translations of the Bible and some good ones. The good ones tend to be more word-for-word in their translation. Certainly one can own a King James Bible and an ESV with no doctrinal ambiguity, for example, as I do.


See - even that rationale doesn't make sense.

Jesus (AS) came and taught his teachings. Does that supersede the OT? Then, the second temple was destroyed...so that means at that point the OT is obsolete? What about the period between Jesus (AS) and the second temple?
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The new fulfils the old. The new covenant, made in Christ's blood, supersedes the old covenant. The old testament is not the same thing as the old covenant. The new testament doesn't make sense without the old and the old is incomplete without the new. The old and new testament taken together tell the story of man's fall and God's sovereign redemption of his people.

The Lord was already teaching of a new covenant before its destruction. The temple's destruction didn't signify the point in time when people were supposed to embrace the new covenant. That happened at the place of Christ's crucifixion when the veil in the temple was torn, symbolically ending the separation between God and his people. God now dwells with his people in living temples (their bodies) and wherever believers gather together, they are like living stones in a temple that God dwells in.

John 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
 
A girl posted a video on FB which was a 1 minute sketch about God. A dentist was talking to a client and the dentist said "Who believes in God nowadays with all the misery going on"? The client said "Why do so many people have broken teeth when there are dentists on the world"?
The dentist answered "I can't help it that many people refuse to meet with a dentist". The client then said "That's exactly the same with God. He can't help someone when that person doesn't come to God".
Then you had people commenting stuff like 'this video tells the truth' and 'AMEN God is real (L)'.

Bizarre analogy, absolutely fecking ridicilous and simple. I am baffled.

 
VorZakone said:
A girl posted a video on FB which was a 1 minute sketch about God. A dentist was talking to a client and the dentist said "Who believes in God nowadays with all the misery going on"? The client said "Why do so many people have broken teeth when there are dentists on the world"?
The dentist answered "I can't help it that many people refuse to meet with a dentist". The client then said "That's exactly the same with God. He can't help someone when that person doesn't come to God".
Then you had people commenting stuff like 'this video tells the truth' and 'AMEN God is real (L)'.

Bizarre analogy, absolutely fecking ridicilous and simple. I am baffled.

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Obviously. The one true narcissist God is after all, omnipotent. Dentists are not. Even if dentists would want to have all people with healthy teeth, it would still be difficult. On the other side, if the God decides to make all people nice people, he would just need to wish so and it is done.

Always had the impression that if God exists, he either is a sadist or he isn't omnipotent. Or most likely, he just doesn't give a shit for us. In all three options, there is no point on worshipping such a figure.
 
Revan said:
Obviously. The one true narcissist God is after all, omnipotent. Dentists are not. Even if dentists would want to have all people with healthy teeth, it would still be difficult. On the other side, if the God decides to make all people nice people, he would just need to wish so and it is done.

Always had the impression that if God exists, he either is a sadist or he isn't omnipotent. Or most likely, he just doesn't give a shit for us. In all three options, there is no point on worshipping such a figure.
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Revan, I cannot comprehend the stupidity of that video. :wenger:
 
The dentist mentioned war, destruction and poverty, all man-made problems that stem from the corrupt character of man, and the patient correctly responds that God cannot right the wrongs of a man's character if he does not come to him. God did make people "nice", but man decided to follow his own schemes. God didn't create over-grown toddlers who have no responsibility.

It's really not very complicated.
 
Mutter Merkel said:
The dentist mentioned war, destruction and poverty, all man-made problems that stem from the corrupt character of man, and the patient correctly responds that God cannot right the wrongs of a man's character if he does not come to him. God did make people "nice", but man decided to follow his own schemes. God didn't create over-grown toddlers who have no responsibility.

It's really not very complicated.
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Are you implying that nobody who suffers asks for God's help?
 
Two days ago there was the bloodiest terrorist attack in the history of Europe, but I think it is better to debate about how bad are other religions, we must put them all in the same boat. The problem is in 2015 exactly the same for all.
Christians, although send tens of thousands of missionaries to Africa still run into conflicts in Centroafrica (a moderate country against muslim militias who were saints), or Buddhists, considered a global danger.
It is better to discuss how bad the Western has done, the power of money and the press. The Jihadi phenomenon is four kids throwing stones at some Israeli tank , certainly are not a current, a rising phenomenon or a style rooted in generations.
99% of muslims condemn it, with that all is said. It makes no sense to talk about reforms, progressive changes or look for possible causes or guilty.
The best is to follow the populist path and turning the other cheek
 
VorZakone said:
"God cannot right the wrong's of a man's character if he does not come to him".
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War, destruction and poverty are all directly linked to man's wickedness. So long as there are wicked men, there will be war, destruction and poverty.
 
Mutter Merkel said:
War, destruction and poverty are all directly linked to man's wickedness. So long as there are wicked men, there will be war, destruction and poverty.
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So where does this idea that God doesn't interfere with us come from? How do you know what God thinks?
 
VorZakone said:
So where does this idea that God doesn't interfere with us come from? How do you know what God thinks?
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It's not what I believe. I think your mum was trying to say that God gives man the ability to act of his own will.
 
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