Can we ignore the link between religion and religious violence?

[LuisDantas]

As for me, I don't believe that God has any relation in what we do. Whether a mystic or a sage does something wrong, it is because of their free will, and not because of God.

So I take it that you don't believe in the validity of religions that claim to be revelations from God?

 

[knghtkings]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in response to the murder of French satirists, says no:

How we respond to this attack is of great consequence. If we take the position that we are dealing with a handful of murderous thugs with no connection to what they so vocally claim, then we are not answering them. We have to acknowledge that today’s Islamists are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in the foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer pretend that it is possible to divorce actions from the ideals that inspire them.

This would be a departure for the West, which too often has responded to jihadist violence with appeasement. We appease the Muslim heads of government who lobby us to censor our press, our universities, our history books, our school curricula. They appeal and we oblige. We appease leaders of Muslim organizations in our societies. They ask us not to link acts of violence to the religion of Islam because they tell us that theirs is a religion of peace, and we oblige.

Do you agree or disagree with Ali?

 

[knghtkings]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in response to the murder of French satirists, says no:

How we respond to this attack is of great consequence. If we take the position that we are dealing with a handful of murderous thugs with no connection to what they so vocally claim, then we are not answering them. We have to acknowledge that today’s Islamists are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in the foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer pretend that it is possible to divorce actions from the ideals that inspire them.

This would be a departure for the West, which too often has responded to jihadist violence with appeasement. We appease the Muslim heads of government who lobby us to censor our press, our universities, our history books, our school curricula. They appeal and we oblige. We appease leaders of Muslim organizations in our societies. They ask us not to link acts of violence to the religion of Islam because they tell us that theirs is a religion of peace, and we oblige.

Do you agree or disagree with Ali?

 

[knghtkings]

This is the truth, If I wrote an article on Christianity and denied each and every belief linked to Salvation within Christianity and then wrote the same thing concerning beliefs that were false within the Koran
if you were that writer
would you be afraid to walk through a crown of Christians who had just read/heard your report
as opposed to walking through a crowd of Muslums who had just heard/read your article against their Koran

While I would feel completely safe walking through a crowd of Christians /
While I believe I would be dead shortly after starting to walk through a crowd of Muslums

 

[Cephus]

There is a bit (unfortunately just a bit) of an exageration in there, Cephus. You are neglecting to acknowledge minority yet real groups such as certain UU segments and (so I have heard) Amish that do not rely on those "givens" nearly as much as you imply.

It is certainly true that both Christianity and Islam would be better off fully embracing the actual peripheral and optional nature of god-beliefs and adapting their doctrines accordingly and that they suffer and cause a lot of suffering for resisting that. But the questioning and the dissidence do exist, incipient as they still are.

Pointing out a minuscule minority of people who might not believe that way doesn't do a thing to disprove that the overwhelming majority do. It's like the people who pretend that their own very odd beliefs about something somehow proves that the massive majority of people believe something else. It doesn't really change anything about the point that was being made, any more than saying that nobody really believes in unicorns is altered by finding one guy in a mental institution who does. It's quibbling.

 

[Trantorfuzz]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in response to the murder of French satirists, says no:

How we respond to this attack is of great consequence. If we take the position that we are dealing with a handful of murderous thugs with no connection to what they so vocally claim, then we are not answering them. We have to acknowledge that today’s Islamists are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in the foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer pretend that it is possible to divorce actions from the ideals that inspire them.

This would be a departure for the West, which too often has responded to jihadist violence with appeasement. We appease the Muslim heads of government who lobby us to censor our press, our universities, our history books, our school curricula. They appeal and we oblige. We appease leaders of Muslim organizations in our societies. They ask us not to link acts of violence to the religion of Islam because they tell us that theirs is a religion of peace, and we oblige.

Do you agree or disagree with Ali?

First, Ali presents us with a false dilemma. ISIS and other Islamic supremacist terrorist organizations are neither handfuls of murderous thugs nor representative of most Muslims. There are a billion and a half Muslims in the world, of which only a fraction sympathize with the terrorists. In a world of seven billion people, that fraction is big enough to form transnational organizations.

Second, Ali tells us that the terrorists are inspired by the foundational texts of Islam, but fails to identify any relevant passages. This is insinuation, not rational argument.

Third, the idea that Western governments have an agenda of appeasing the terrorists is flat out false. If Ali doubts me, he can ask Osama bin Laden. He can also ask the many members of ISIS who have been subject to airstrikes from the West as well as from Jordon. As for censorship in the USA, it is a private company, Sony, that responded to ISIS with cowardice and lack of principle. It was the US government who persuaded them buck up. France has not given in to censorship demands either. So when Ali talks of "appeasement," he's not giving a fair characterization of actual parties involved in the fight against terrorism--he is merely using a hawkish buzzword to smear anyone in the West who doesn't share his Islamophobia.

Fourth, Ali's conflation of "Fundamentalist Islam" with "Islam" with "religion" is patently stupid. It is like saying that because cats are obligate carnivores, all animals that eat meat are obligate carnivores (no such thing as omnivores!), and that all animals are obligate carnivores. The fact that such conflation is popular among "New Atheists" does not make it any less stupid.

So, no, I do not agree with Ali's thoughts. In fact, I think that Ali has written one of an unfortunately large number of brainless Islamophobic smears, none of which deserve even the slightest respect.

 

[Chakra]

So I take it that you don't believe in the validity of religions that claim to be revelations from God?

Sorry, but how did you construe that from my response above?
Let me clarify what I meant by my original post.
The Brahma Sutras say that the Jiva is the independent doer. So, what this means is that I am the one who does the action, not God. Thus, free will is established in the Brahma Sutras. However, it adds another verse which says that the Jiva is a dependent independent doer. What does this mean? I'll give an example that I've heard from Sri Vaishnava scholars.

Let's say you have a singer who performs in front of hundreds of people. Now, when he does really good in a concert, he says that "This is the doing of God". Then, the next day, he does not do as well. Now, if God was responsible for him singing well, then it logically makes sense that God was responsible for him singing poorly. But God cannot do anything wrong. If he was responsible, he would make sure that the singer was singing perfect. So, what's the solution?

Basically, God gave the singer a body, money, singing education, and so forth that would help the singer prosper. God gave the foundation. However, the result of how the singer uses the foundation given to him by God is his doing only.

Similarly, let's say that Jesus or Allah is the real god. Allah has given the the foundation for all those Muslims to prosper and the live happily, but whatever they do, you can't blame it on Allah, but only the Muslims. I hope that this makes a bit more sense.

In any case, to answer your question, I'm quite distrustful of religions that are solely based on revelations. I feel that the revelations can also be illusory (which is how Vedantins explain other religious visions or life-death experiences), so the religion must have other authority to back up it's legitimacy. I feel Vedanta does well on that.

Regards

 

[Eileen]

The same Jesus who called Jews the children of the Devil?

Just for the record, Yeshua did not call all Jews children of the devil.

 

[LuisDantas]

Sorry, but how did you construe that from my response above?

Because you said:

As for me, I don't believe that God has any relation in what we do. Whether a mystic or a sage does something wrong, it is because of their free will, and not because of God.

It seems to me that it must follow that God has no reason to reveal a message, or even to have Prophets.

 

[LuisDantas]

Pointing out a minuscule minority of people who might not believe that way doesn't do a thing to disprove that the overwhelming majority do. It's like the people who pretend that their own very odd beliefs about something somehow proves that the massive majority of people believe something else. It doesn't really change anything about the point that was being made, any more than saying that nobody really believes in unicorns is altered by finding one guy in a mental institution who does. It's quibbling.

Religion isn't politics. It is defined by what the individuals do, not by the majority.

 

[Chakra]

Because you said:



It seems to me that it must follow that God has no reason to reveal a message, or even to have Prophets.

No. What I meant was that God generally stays out of a person's free will. He can definitely impart knowledge to people if he wants.

Regards

 

[LuisDantas]

No. What I meant was that God generally stays out of a person's free will. He can definitely impart knowledge to people if he wants.

Regards

That sure sounds like a form of interference to me, but then again I could never figure what free will was meant to be.

 

[Chakra]

That sure sounds like a form of interference to me, but then again I could never figure what free will was meant to be.

Do you mean to say that imparting knowledge to people is a form of interference? How so? I'd be interested to hear your perspective, if that's okay with you.

Regards

 

[Cephus]

Religion isn't politics. It is defined by what the individuals do, not by the majority.

Tell that to people in Muslim countries where those who do not comply are arrested, whipped, tortured and murdered.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The link between religion and violence, I suspect, may be very comparable to video games and violence. Looking at the world abroad, there just is not a strong enough correlation, and better correlations are found once other variables are examined. They both suffer from being issues that are impossible to convince people through logically working the issue out. But the fact that most people who go to church and indulge in violent media draws both hypotheses into question with one casual observation.

 

[LuisDantas]

Do you mean to say that imparting knowledge to people is a form of interference? How so? I'd be interested to hear your perspective, if that's okay with you.

My pleasure.

Knowledge can indeed be a very powerful influence, as can be its appearance, its denial and its absence.

I am personally convinced that knowledge, particularly personal knowledge created by direct experience, is an important, even fundamental tool of religious practice.

For one thing, it frees people from having to rely on dogma, because it enables them to make their own informed judgements. That is no less than an everyday sacred miracle by my estimation.

For another, it heals prejudice and enables wisdom. There is little nearly as useful for religious maturity than learning to deal directly with other people, the more varied the better.

 

[LuisDantas]

Tell that to people in Muslim countries where those who do not comply are arrested, whipped, tortured and murdered.

I would love to, actually. Odds are good that most will not want to hear me, but I wish they would.

All the same, and despite their abuse of their own Faith, religion is still a private matter.

They disagree and try to impose their beliefs on others out of some combination of ignorance, immaturity and malice, but that only shows how necessary it is to respect the private nature of religious belief.

 

[Cephus]

I would love to, actually. Odds are good that most will not want to hear me, but I wish they would.

All the same, and despite their abuse of their own Faith, religion is still a private matter.

They disagree and try to impose their beliefs on others out of some combination of ignorance, immaturity and malice, but that only shows how necessary it is to respect the private nature of religious belief.

It is indeed a private matter, only because we cannot control what goes on inside someone's own head. We can control what they are permitted to do in society however. I don't care if someone wants to molest children in their head, I most certainly can go after them if they actually do it in reality. Unfortunately, that only works if the society I am in actually agrees with me. In many Muslim societies, they do not. They don't care about organized rape gangs or pedophilic marriages or the like. Therefore I cannot actually stop anyone who does things that their societies agree with. The trick is encouraging those societies to change their minds, but that's a difficult change to bring about.

 

[LuisDantas]

I don't really disagree. Keeping societies sane is indeed a priority.

 

[Cephus]

I don't really disagree. Keeping societies sane is indeed a priority.

But if you talk to a lot of theists, including theists on this very forum, you get a lot of them who don't want sanity, they don't want rationality, they don't want logic or reason, they just want their emotionally comforting fantasies and some, although I wouldn't hope any here are like this, are willing to kill to get it.