Islam is unable to relate to the diverse contemporary cultures

[shunyadragon]

I leave that to the judgement of the folks reading this discussion.

But, needless to say, pinging my own words back at me does not refute the accuracy of my original criticism.

Needless to say your arguments as well as those by @Augustus, reflect a religious agenda, and do not remotely represent any sort of democracy outside the Roman Church, nor any remotely descriptive of the separation of church and state, when all through this period rule by Divine authority remained the absolute case. The beginnings of the separation of church and state are rooted in secular intellectual movements, and hallmarks such as the Magna Carta.

True separation of church and state and democracy are intimately linked, rooted in the Athenian philosophers cited, early Native American democracies acknowledged by the founding fathers, and the secular intellectual movements. and evolved over time.

 

[Vouthon]

Needless to say your arguments as well as those by @Augustus, reflect a religious agenda.

Not true.

@Augustus is an atheist, whilst I and he are both referencing the voluminous scholarship on the issue, by qualified professionals who don't have any axe to grind.

I understand that you disagree, and you are at full liberty to do so, but impunging our motives for simply directing you towards the consensus of professional academics who do not share your personal interpretation, is unbecoming and counterproductive.

If you seek to refute the arguments, then go ahead and counter them with corresponding scholarship and primary source material.

Accusing us of being agenda-driven is simply an evasion of the issue, and an uncalled for one at that.

 

[Unguru]

Needless to say your arguments as well as those by @Augustus, reflect a religious agenda

This entire thread reflects a religious agenda from you, it's far more obvious than whatever Augustus' is (who is only giving facts here)

 

[shunyadragon]

Needless to say your arguments as well as those by @Augustus, reflect a religious agenda, and do not remotely represent any sort of democracy outside the Roman Church, nor any remotely descriptive of the separation of church and state, when all through this period rule by Divine authority remained the absolute case. The beginnings of the separation of church and state are rooted in secular intellectual movements, and hallmarks such as the Magna Carta.

True separation of church and state and democracy are intimately linked, rooted in the Athenian philosophers cited, early Native American democracies acknowledged by the founding fathers, and the secular intellectual movements. and evolved over time.

The arguments of @Augustus in this thread and others do not reflect those of an atheist.

 

[Vouthon]

The arguments of @Augustus in this thread and others do not reflect those of an atheist.

I do not believe it is for you, or me or anyone, to question someone else's religious affiliation or lack thereof.

An argument, in and of itself, is simply an argument. It rises or falls based upon it's evidential basis, and @Augustus has argued his stance impeccably based upon the best scholarship.

It is a classic case of ad hominem to impugn the motives of the person making an argument when one finds themselves unable to adequately rebut the facts raised by said argument

 

[shunyadragon]

This entire thread reflects a religious agenda from you, it's far more obvious than whatever Augustus' is (who is only giving facts here)

The references cited @Augustus only reflect the views of the Roman Church, and not the evolution of secular democracy, and not the separation of church and state in the period of his references, which the secular state did not exist at the times he referenced.

 

[shunyadragon]

I do not believe it is for you, or me or anyone, to question someone else's religious affiliation or lack thereof.

An argument, in and of itself, is simply an argument. It rises or falls based upon it's evidential basis, and @Augustus has argued his stance impeccably based upon the best scholarship.

. . . and only the scholarship that supports the view of the Roman Church.

 

[Vouthon]

. . . and only the scholarship that supports the view of the Roman Church.

The scholarship raised is not partisan.

It testifies to a widely-shared assessment in academia of the available evidence from the medieval period by medievalists and intellectual historians. It happens to argue what it argues because what it argues is well-evidenced, as opposed to the arguments that you have been making in this thread which, IMHO, are for the most part no more than your own unsupported opinions (that you are perfectly entitled to hold but unsupported all the same).

One has to question, again, why you are turning from rebutting the actual argument to apparently impunging the motives of the individual making the argument. That is never a wise or fruitful avenue for proving your point, or endearing others to your POV.

 

[shunyadragon]

The scholarship raised is not partisan.

The problem is not the scholarship, but the selective misrepresentation of the scholarship to justify the origins of secular democracy and separation of church and state with describing the administrative structure in the Roman Church, which maintained absolute Divine Right in the church, and all the rulers of Europe.

 

[Vouthon]

The problem is not the scholarship, but the selective misrepresentation of the scholarship to justify secular democracy and separation of church and state with the administrative structure in the Roman Church, which maintained absolute Divine Right in the church,and all the rulers of Europe.

If this is what you think @Augustus has been arguing, then you quite clearly have not understand his argument from the offing.

There is no "selective misrepresentation" going on here.

No one has said, nor even suggested (apart from you in the above), that the medieval Roman Church was a "secular democracy" or had "separation of church and state" within its administrative structure.

Rather, what the scholarship explicitly says and what we are concurring with, is that the concepts of political representation, consent of the governed, rule of law, separation of the ecclesiastical and secular into two spheres and subjective natural rights (among other factors) which comprise the essential precursors of what became secular liberalism (the "liberal" element of liberal democracy), can be traced - not to ancient Greece or Rome, where this concepts had not yet arisen even in a germinal state - but to the canonical tradition of the medieval Church, following its declaration of independence from lay investiture by the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century, and from the resulting tussle between church and state.

And that is true and evidenced by the facts.

This does not mean that the Church was a secular democracy (a ludicrous notion), as you seem to be thinking we are saying, but rather that its doctrines provided the intellectual seedbed and rationale from which the liberalism of the 17th century eventually sprung, rather than classical Greece (which provided democracy but no foundation for liberalism or proto-secularism) and Rome (which provided the division between private/public law and the Justinian Code, but again not proto-liberal ideas).

 

[shunyadragon]

If this is what you think @Augustus has been arguing, then you quite clearly have not understand his argument from the offing.

There is no "selective misrepresentation" going on here.

No one has said, nor even suggested (apart from you in the above), that the medieval Roman Church was a "secular democracy" or had "separation of church and state" within its administrative structure.

Rather, what the scholarship explicitly says and what we are concurring with, is that the concepts of political representation, consent of the governed, rule of law, separation of the ecclesiastical and secular into two spheres and subjective natural rights (among other factors) which comprise the essential precursors of what became secular liberalism (the "liberal" element of liberal democracy), can be traced - not to ancient Greece or Rome, where this concepts had not yet arisen even in a germinal state - but to the canonical tradition of the medieval Church, following its declaration of independence from lay investiture by the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century, and from the resulting tussle between church and state.

And that is true and evidenced by the facts.

This does not mean that the Church was a secular democracy (a ludicrous notion), as you seem to be thinking we are saying, but rather that its doctrines provided the intellectual seedbed and rationale from which the liberalism of the 17th century eventually sprung, rather than classical Greece (which provided democracy but no foundation for liberalism or proto-secularism) and Rome (which provided the division between private/public law and the Justinian Code, but again not proto-liberal ideas).

Contradiction in your response here in the bold that is where the disagreement is in this thread.

The first reference does not correctly represent my view: that the medieval Roman Church was a "secular democracy" or had "separation of church and state" within its administrative structure. nonetheless . . .

Nothing in the references cited supported: separation of the ecclesiastical and secular into two spheres, because the secular government and institutions did not exist.

Regardless of how you consider the Justinian Code it was written as Roman Law under Justinian and implemented under Justinian and his Divine right of rule for Rome and not a secular code. Justinian was not a secular Emperor

 

[Vouthon]

Contradiction in your response here in the bold that is where the disagreement is in this thread.

The first reference does not correctly represent my view: that the medieval Roman Church was a "secular democracy" or had "separation of church and state" within its administrative structure. nonetheless . . .

Nothing in the references cited supported: separation of the ecclesiastical and secular into two spheres, because the secular government and institutions did not exist.

Well, I apologise if I in turn have misunderstand an element of your argument as well. But you did write: "to justify secular democracy and separation of church and state with the administrative structure in the Roman Church".

This looks like your saying that we were trying to "justify" secular democracy as being indebted to the actual administrative structure of the Roman Church. If that's not what your saying, then I must admit that I really don't know what the language you employed above actually means.

As to your second point, there was clearly "two spheres" in the European order after the Papal Revolution. The Concordat of Worms at the end of the Investiture Contest was an early attempt to precisely delineate the boundaries of these two hegemonic institutions, to prevent the Emperors interfering with the independence of the church in running its own affairs and corresponding attempt by the monarchs to buttress their own claims with their own secular royal law and bureaucracy, the first such attempt in European history:

Investiture Controversy - Wikipedia

As historian Norman Cantor put it, the controversy "shattered the early-medieval equilibrium and ended the interpenetration of ecclesia and mundus". Indeed, medieval emperors, which were "largely the creation of ecclesiastical ideals and personnel", were forced to develop a secular bureaucratic state whose essential components persisted in the Anglo-Norman monarchy.[15]​

 

[shunyadragon]

As to your second point, there was clearly "two spheres" in the European order after the Papal Revolution. The Concordat of Worms at the end of the Investiture Contest was an early attempt to precisely delineate the boundaries of these two hegemonic institutions, to prevent the Emperors interfering with the independence of the church in running its own affairs and corresponding attempt by the monarchs to buttress their own claims with their own secular royal law and bureaucracy, the first such attempt in European history:

Investiture Controversy - Wikipedia

As historian Norman Cantor put it, the controversy "shattered the early-medieval equilibrium and ended the interpenetration of ecclesia and mundus". Indeed, medieval emperors, which were "largely the creation of ecclesiastical ideals and personnel", were forced to develop a secular bureaucratic state whose essential components persisted in the Anglo-Norman monarchy.[15]​

You missed the point big time: separation of the ecclesiastical and secular into two spheres did not exist in Europe, because the secular government and institutions for there to be two spheres. In European nations DID NOT have secular bureaucratic secular governments during the time referenced by @Augustus and you, and that is where the discussion is. If you wish to discuss the British Isles evolution of government it is a separate discussion. I alluded to it in referencing the Magna Carta.

A more accurate description of the evolution of Law goes back as far as Sumerian Law the
Code of Ur-Nammu, sectarian Amglo-Saxon Law, Celtic and Germanic Law at least, and are not related to the fact that the Christian Empires, Cantons, Kingdoms, and whatever were NOT ruled by secarian rule, but Christian leaders by Divine authority.

 

[Augustus]

The arguments of @Augustus in this thread and others do not reflect those of an atheist.

A very odd thing to say, which unfortunately isn't exactly surprising.

It would be even odder if the dominant modern European paradigm had developed despite the single biggest cultural influence, rather than the single biggest cultural influence being, you know, influential. Don't you think?

There exists a certain kind of person, who for some reason views themselves as highly rational, that believes all atheists must be fanatically anti-religious to the point that they must believe that the religion in question has produced nothing but pain and misery for millennia. They don't realise that correcting their massive bias against religion, does not constitute irrational support for that religion.

The problem is that there is a 'common knowledge' among such people that Greeks were rational types, sort of secular proto-humanists, who were dealt a great blow with the rise of Christianity which plunged the world into darkness and irrationality violently oppressing any attempts for people to think for themselves. Then these forbidden Greek texts appeared again and a few brave souls learnt the power of reason freeing themselves from mental slavery and reintroducing the Hellenic ideals into the West. This alone created secularism, The Enlightenment and modern science and the rest is history.

Despite having never read so much as a single bit of academic scholarship on this history, such people are so sure of their own rationality that their belief such 'common knowledge' is reflective of the truth is unshakeable. As such, any attempt, no matter how well evidenced, to challenge this facile, mythical view of history is viewed as agenda driven apologetics that can be dismissed out of hand.

I used to be one of these people, until I actually read some history with and, over time, found my beliefs to be completely unsustainable (and somewhat juvenile). There are probably few topics where the views of experts are more clearly differentiated from those of 'common knowledge', as you would discover if you had actually read anything of substance on the issue we are discussing.

Perhaps you might also benefit from reading some contemporary scholarship regarding this issue, as it is painfully obvious you never have.

 

[Augustus]

No my references tell a different story than your assertions that are unfounded and do not reflect the reality of the Greek texts and their influence on the governance of the Church and Divine rule of the states.

Greek science and literature remained alive in the Byzantine world, and Byzantine philosophy drew heavily on Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists, even if it was now Christian in tone... Byzantine society was well educated by the standards of its time, with high levels of literacy compared to the rest of the world. Significantly it possessed a secular education system that was a continuation of the academies of classical antiquity. Byzantine Philosophy

It's quite telling you insist on arguing against a very basic, objectively true historical fact, even when conceding you were mistaken on this minor point would have absolutely no impact on whether or not your views on the main topic under discussion are true/false. It doesn't exactly paint you as a fair-minded and rational participant in the discussion.

Why is it so difficult to admit there is, in fact, plenty of evidence that the Greek Byzantines had access to Greek texts (which is hardly surprising) and were not dependent on getting them all from the Arabs as both my and your sources stated?

The basic factual question of whether they had them or not is a completely separate issue of whether or not they were influential in a completely different empire with a significantly different culture on a far more complex issue that entails a degree of subjectivity.

True separation of church and state and democracy are intimately linked, rooted in the Athenian philosophers cited,

With reference to the actual views of specific philosophers, can you explain why you believe the Athenian philosophers promoted a separation between their equivalent of 'church and state'? Or if you don't believe this, explain how separation of C&S are rooted in Athenian philosophy, again with specific reference to the 'philosophers cited'?

 

[Muffled]

I believe that at one time Islam was a light to the world and the spiritual renewal of civilization, but no more. As time passed Islam remained cloaked in ancient tribal culture, outdated Shiria Law, failure to separate religion from the secular state, violently divided and failure to acknowledge a diverse evolving world.

I believe Sharia law must be derivative. It doesn't seem that the Qu'ran provided a coherent code of ethics similar to Jewish law which simply means anything that God commanded but the closest thing to a code of ethics is Deuteronomy. At any rate from a Christian point of view laws were given to people for specific needs and don't necessarily transfer well to other people. For Christians, Jesus is all the law we need and right up to date to satisfy our needs.

 

[shunyadragon]

I believe Sharia law must be derivative. It doesn't seem that the Qu'ran provided a coherent code of ethics similar to Jewish law which simply means anything that God commanded but the closest thing to a code of ethics is Deuteronomy. At any rate from a Christian point of view laws were given to people for specific needs and don't necessarily transfer well to other people. For Christians, Jesus is all the law we need and right up to date to satisfy our needs.

To a certain extant I agree about Islam, but I believe the Islamic laws, particularly the Quran itself, was given to people for specific needs, and the Sharia is derivative, variable and inconsistent, which today they are out of context with the contemporary changing evolving world of diverse cultures and religions, and by the way science. I believe the problem with Christianity in that claims like 'Jesus is all the law we need and right up to date to satisfy our needs,' do not provide a coherent code for the contemporary world. The varied claims in Christianity concerning morals; values, and spiritual laws also result in variable derivatives and interpretations of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

 

[shunyadragon]

A very odd thing to say, which unfortunately isn't exactly surprising.

It would be even odder if the dominant modern European paradigm had developed despite the single biggest cultural influence, rather than the single biggest cultural influence being, you know, influential. Don't you think?

There exists a certain kind of person, who for some reason views themselves as highly rational, that believes all atheists must be fanatically anti-religious to the point that they must believe that the religion in question has produced nothing but pain and misery for millennia. They don't realise that correcting their massive bias against religion, does not constitute irrational support for that religion.

The problem is that there is a 'common knowledge' among such people that Greeks were rational types, sort of secular proto-humanists, who were dealt a great blow with the rise of Christianity which plunged the world into darkness and irrationality violently oppressing any attempts for people to think for themselves. Then these forbidden Greek texts appeared again and a few brave souls learnt the power of reason freeing themselves from mental slavery and reintroducing the Hellenic ideals into the West. This alone created secularism, The Enlightenment and modern science and the rest is history.

Despite having never read so much as a single bit of academic scholarship on this history, such people are so sure of their own rationality that their belief such 'common knowledge' is reflective of the truth is unshakeable. As such, any attempt, no matter how well evidenced, to challenge this facile, mythical view of history is viewed as agenda driven apologetics that can be dismissed out of hand.

I used to be one of these people, until I actually read some history with and, over time, found my beliefs to be completely unsustainable (and somewhat juvenile). There are probably few topics where the views of experts are more clearly differentiated from those of 'common knowledge', as you would discover if you had actually read anything of substance on the issue we are discussing.

Perhaps you might also benefit from reading some contemporary scholarship regarding this issue, as it is painfully obvious you never have.

Amazing exercise of self reflection of your problem,

Bottom line there is no secular government, nor separation of secular state and religion, at a time when secular states did not exist in the Christian Roman Empires, and the Kingdoms, cantons and other divisions of the empires, and no influence to promote the formation of a separate secular government. As cited there were secular other influences such as Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian sources, and non-Christian legal systems for older non-Christian cultures.. I believe the influence of Greek philosophers are also influence, which is a problem that you have to ask about the Athenian philosophers, and not do your own reading. I may address this in a later post if you cannot spoon fed yourself.

 

[Firemorphic]

I believe Sharia law must be derivative. It doesn't seem that the Qu'ran provided a coherent code of ethics similar to Jewish law which simply means anything that God commanded but the closest thing to a code of ethics is Deuteronomy. At any rate from a Christian point of view laws were given to people for specific needs and don't necessarily transfer well to other people. For Christians, Jesus is all the law we need and right up to date to satisfy our needs.

The Qur'an provided almost everything needed, there is no need.....(nor did one formulate early on).....for a strict legal system in Islam, this is a religion/spiritual path not politics. Shariah is speculative too, anyone claiming they have the 'true Shariah' is lying and using it to control. Islam is an individualistic religion, you look after yourself, your family and your community. You do good works and try to make the world a better place along with your growth in spiritual realization.

(oh and following the Sunnah of the prophet is not blindly mimicking everything he said or did, it's supposed to be a way of internalizing our relation to the world around us, that the spiritual is not separate from the secular. Properly taken in by the believer, should inspire them in their own personal approach to reconcile the spiritual journey as within the world and not secluded from it)

 

[Augustus]

Bottom line there is no secular government, nor separation of secular state and religion, at a time when secular states did not exist in the Christian Roman Empires, and the Kingdoms, cantons and other divisions of the empires, and no influence to promote the formation of a separate secular government. As cited there were secular other influences such as Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian sources, and non-Christian legal systems for older non-Christian cultures.

You see something like Magna Carta as a step towards democracy which is clearly true (although less clear is how it is a step towards secularism), even though there was no democracy after it. It was just a step on a long path

Anything connected to Christianity, natural rights, focus on the primacy of the individual, the Idea of Progress, changes in power structure separating state power from church power, etc. you see as definitely not being a step on a long path towards secular, liberalism.

Do you believe Christianity had any role in the development of secular, liberal democracy? If so, what?

I believe the influence of Greek philosophers are also influence, which is a problem that you have to ask about the Athenian philosophers, and not do your own reading. I may address this in a later post if you cannot spoon fed yourself.

We both know that means you have absolutely no idea but if you can find something suitable on Wikipedia, you'll copy/paste it as being gospel

So, again:

With reference to the actual views of specific philosophers, can you explain why you believe the Athenian philosophers promoted a separation between their equivalent of 'church and state'? Or if you don't believe this, explain how separation of C&S are rooted in Athenian philosophy, again with specific reference to the 'philosophers cited'?