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Religion in general, or Islam in particular?
Jul. 17th, 2006 | 02:00 pm
This was previously relegated to the comments section of a previous entry, but I find this line of discussion interesting enough to promote to its own post.
On July 16, 2006, Anonymous wrote:
Let's recognize that, by virtue of preserving the technologies that they stole from the peoples that they subjugated, the Muslims at least demonstrated wisdom and comprehension of the value of those technologies. We can give them at least this much credit, thereby conceding your assertion that Muslims have "contributed much to the betterment of mankind" without entering a debate about which specific advances or contributions come from Muslims originally.
Do I give a shit? No.
I might be giving a shit if I were living in the fifteenth century. I might be giving a shit if the Muslims with which I coexist were predominantly Sufi spiritualists or Persian scholars.
Unfortunately, in the here and now, Islam is a force of barbarity and primitivism. Muslim nations today are back-asswards dictatorial hellholes overrun by murderous gangs of self-righteous Koran-spewing gunmen. The Muslims of today are holding the world back from the technological progress and religious pluralism for which misguided moral relativists credit the Ottoman Empire. In the world of today, we are the forces of tolerance and progress - we, the West, complete with our multicultural school programs and our hippie protest marches and our West-hating university linguistics professors and our leader-bashing comedians. If you value these things - or if, like me, you value being able to have these things, even (especially) if you dislike them - then you uphold Western values and the American way of life, even as you denounce it.
Therefore, let us recognize that Muslims en masse have contributed to the betterment of mankind - specifically, the great-great-great-great-great-great-grea
The funny thing about religion is that, in the end, it only applies to what the other guy thinks. Let me remind you something about the concept of "belief": That which you "believe" is, by definition, that which you take as fact. You could say that I believe that I am sitting in a chair right now, and by virtue of believing it, the thought does not honestly enter my head that it can be otherwise; this chair is reality, as far as I'm concerned. In other words, you may say that I "believe" in the chair I am sitting in, but if I were to use the word "believe" to describe my awareness of this chair, then I would sound like I'm unsure of my own perceptual faculties, as if I leave room for doubt about my own sanity. Rather, if asked, I would claim that I know I am sitting in a chair, and am very secure in that knowledge about that aspect of my world.
Christians do not go through life saying to themselves, "...But, you know, when you really get down to it, this whole Jesus thing is just a quaint little story I tell myself so that I can get along with my fellow Christians." Their perceptual faculties lead them to know that God exists, that the afterlife is real, and that salvation is possible through Jesus Christ. It is not something they "believe", it is something they are aware of. The atheist's failure to perceive these things, from the viewpoint of the Christian, is a result of the atheist's blindness, or stupidity, or ignorance, or naivete or gullibility.
Contests between religions are not simple arguments about who's got a cooler imaginary friend in the sky. They're fights over fundamental understandings of reality, which in turn dictate the consequences of individual and collective actions. For example, if you believe (and I do mean believe, as in you know it as fact) that the God of the Harvest will be displeased and destroy all your crops if anyone in your village eats meat on Fridays, then you'd damn well better go out of your way to make sure everyone in the village is complying with the Harvest God's decree, otherwise your family will be dead of starvation come January. If you know that you'll experience damnation if you refuse to serve the will of Allah by being unwilling to stone a convicted adulteress, you'd be an idiot to refrain from throwing that rock. If you know that all the people driving SUVs will melt the polar ice caps and destroy your cousin's house in Miami, then you'd darn well insist that the government use drastic enforcement powers to ration the use of fossil fuels. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that your opinion of the nature of reality is self-evident to everybody else.
My point is, atheism is not some kind of exception to a rule. Wanting an all-atheist world is no less a Holy War than wanting an all-Christian world or an all-Muslim world. Being an atheist doesn't put you "above it all". It doesn't exempt you from the enforcement of dogmatic collective imperatives by others - thinking that Muslim fundamentalists would only bury Muslim homosexuals alive is like thinking that enviromentalists believe that CO2 emissions only contribute to global warming if they come out of an automobile owned by a fellow environmentalist. It also doesn't nullify your tendency to act in a self-preserving manner in light of information about reality as you perceive it (nor should it nullify it!).
Most importantly, being an atheist likewise doesn't give you a monopoly on smugly asserting that your understanding is the self-evident correct one, and everybody who thinks otherwise is some kind of moron or sheep or rube or just plain weirdo. Every religion has that in spades - including yours.
As a footnote, I'd like to point out that I myself am an avowed atheist. I'm not talking hedge-my-bets agnostic, I'm talking that I flat-out know that there is no supernatural being that lives outside our reality and yet guides our world and issues moral decrees. Ethnically and culturally I self-identify with Judaism, but Judaism does not dictate my theological opinions.
I do not intend the reader to interpret my commentary above as moral relativism. Personally, I do think of superstitious or mystical people, for the most part (with many exceptions) as morons or sheep or rubes or just plain weird. I recognize that they, in turn, think of me likewise. Of course, there is a very important key difference between them and me: the fact that I happen to be right. Right? :)
Of course, me simply asserting the fact that I'm right and they're wrong does not make for a very compelling argument, neither to convince them nor to convince an on-the-fence observer. Me telling a Christian that he's an idiot for believing in God is no more convincing than a Christian telling me that I'm an idiot for not believing in God.
My point is, the tendency of atheists to declare themselves to be inherently smarter or less gullible than Christians, or Muslims, or adherents to any religion at all, shows a dramatic and deplorable lack of wisdom. In trying to broker a reconciliation between conflicting parties, it is incredibly unhelpful to project the attitude that you're better than both of them and therefore know what's best for them. At best, the only unifying result of such an approach is to give both sides a common enemy.
On July 16, 2006, Anonymous wrote:
Err, excuse me, but Islam and Muslims have contributed much to the betterment of mankind.Yes, let's talk about the Muslims giving us architecture by stealing it from the Byzantines, or decimal numerals by stealing the "zero" from the Hindus, or anatomic medicine by stealing it from the Greeks (by way of the Library of Alexandria, which they tragically destroyed, thus setting back mankind's scientific knowledge by centuries), each in wars of conquest.
Let's recognize that, by virtue of preserving the technologies that they stole from the peoples that they subjugated, the Muslims at least demonstrated wisdom and comprehension of the value of those technologies. We can give them at least this much credit, thereby conceding your assertion that Muslims have "contributed much to the betterment of mankind" without entering a debate about which specific advances or contributions come from Muslims originally.
Do I give a shit? No.
I might be giving a shit if I were living in the fifteenth century. I might be giving a shit if the Muslims with which I coexist were predominantly Sufi spiritualists or Persian scholars.
Unfortunately, in the here and now, Islam is a force of barbarity and primitivism. Muslim nations today are back-asswards dictatorial hellholes overrun by murderous gangs of self-righteous Koran-spewing gunmen. The Muslims of today are holding the world back from the technological progress and religious pluralism for which misguided moral relativists credit the Ottoman Empire. In the world of today, we are the forces of tolerance and progress - we, the West, complete with our multicultural school programs and our hippie protest marches and our West-hating university linguistics professors and our leader-bashing comedians. If you value these things - or if, like me, you value being able to have these things, even (especially) if you dislike them - then you uphold Western values and the American way of life, even as you denounce it.
Therefore, let us recognize that Muslims en masse have contributed to the betterment of mankind - specifically, the great-great-great-great-great-great-grea
Extremism is the problem, and I think no religion is free from violent extremists. Perhaps getting rid of religion is a good way to start solving the mid-east crisis - can we drop some atheism bombs?Yeah, 'cuz avowed atheists never use violence to enforce the ubiquity of their beliefs. Just don't tell that to the Jews and Eastern Orthodoxists in the Soviet Union, the Catholics in Cuba, the Christians and Falun Gongs in China, and so on.
The funny thing about religion is that, in the end, it only applies to what the other guy thinks. Let me remind you something about the concept of "belief": That which you "believe" is, by definition, that which you take as fact. You could say that I believe that I am sitting in a chair right now, and by virtue of believing it, the thought does not honestly enter my head that it can be otherwise; this chair is reality, as far as I'm concerned. In other words, you may say that I "believe" in the chair I am sitting in, but if I were to use the word "believe" to describe my awareness of this chair, then I would sound like I'm unsure of my own perceptual faculties, as if I leave room for doubt about my own sanity. Rather, if asked, I would claim that I know I am sitting in a chair, and am very secure in that knowledge about that aspect of my world.
Christians do not go through life saying to themselves, "...But, you know, when you really get down to it, this whole Jesus thing is just a quaint little story I tell myself so that I can get along with my fellow Christians." Their perceptual faculties lead them to know that God exists, that the afterlife is real, and that salvation is possible through Jesus Christ. It is not something they "believe", it is something they are aware of. The atheist's failure to perceive these things, from the viewpoint of the Christian, is a result of the atheist's blindness, or stupidity, or ignorance, or naivete or gullibility.
Contests between religions are not simple arguments about who's got a cooler imaginary friend in the sky. They're fights over fundamental understandings of reality, which in turn dictate the consequences of individual and collective actions. For example, if you believe (and I do mean believe, as in you know it as fact) that the God of the Harvest will be displeased and destroy all your crops if anyone in your village eats meat on Fridays, then you'd damn well better go out of your way to make sure everyone in the village is complying with the Harvest God's decree, otherwise your family will be dead of starvation come January. If you know that you'll experience damnation if you refuse to serve the will of Allah by being unwilling to stone a convicted adulteress, you'd be an idiot to refrain from throwing that rock. If you know that all the people driving SUVs will melt the polar ice caps and destroy your cousin's house in Miami, then you'd darn well insist that the government use drastic enforcement powers to ration the use of fossil fuels. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that your opinion of the nature of reality is self-evident to everybody else.
My point is, atheism is not some kind of exception to a rule. Wanting an all-atheist world is no less a Holy War than wanting an all-Christian world or an all-Muslim world. Being an atheist doesn't put you "above it all". It doesn't exempt you from the enforcement of dogmatic collective imperatives by others - thinking that Muslim fundamentalists would only bury Muslim homosexuals alive is like thinking that enviromentalists believe that CO2 emissions only contribute to global warming if they come out of an automobile owned by a fellow environmentalist. It also doesn't nullify your tendency to act in a self-preserving manner in light of information about reality as you perceive it (nor should it nullify it!).
Most importantly, being an atheist likewise doesn't give you a monopoly on smugly asserting that your understanding is the self-evident correct one, and everybody who thinks otherwise is some kind of moron or sheep or rube or just plain weirdo. Every religion has that in spades - including yours.
As a footnote, I'd like to point out that I myself am an avowed atheist. I'm not talking hedge-my-bets agnostic, I'm talking that I flat-out know that there is no supernatural being that lives outside our reality and yet guides our world and issues moral decrees. Ethnically and culturally I self-identify with Judaism, but Judaism does not dictate my theological opinions.
I do not intend the reader to interpret my commentary above as moral relativism. Personally, I do think of superstitious or mystical people, for the most part (with many exceptions) as morons or sheep or rubes or just plain weird. I recognize that they, in turn, think of me likewise. Of course, there is a very important key difference between them and me: the fact that I happen to be right. Right? :)
Of course, me simply asserting the fact that I'm right and they're wrong does not make for a very compelling argument, neither to convince them nor to convince an on-the-fence observer. Me telling a Christian that he's an idiot for believing in God is no more convincing than a Christian telling me that I'm an idiot for not believing in God.
My point is, the tendency of atheists to declare themselves to be inherently smarter or less gullible than Christians, or Muslims, or adherents to any religion at all, shows a dramatic and deplorable lack of wisdom. In trying to broker a reconciliation between conflicting parties, it is incredibly unhelpful to project the attitude that you're better than both of them and therefore know what's best for them. At best, the only unifying result of such an approach is to give both sides a common enemy.