So people are interpreting the doctrine in their hand to best suit their needs. But what is new? What is different than any other ideology? Doctrines' raison-d'etre is to be interpreted to suit people's need.
No, when it comes to religion, the raison d'etre is to suit Gods need.
Hmm, accepting that god either does not exist, either does not care about religion X from Y from Z, then your statement is not very useful to me. Suits who's need?
All religions and all doctrines, will be interpreted to suit people's need. Smarter and more educated and more famous people will have more influential interpretations then your average pawn or ponce. But everyone will interpret what he/she is presented to the best of their ability, to suit their needs.
Sorry, I dont understand your point - its nothing to do with you? People follow religion in order to meet Gods expectations of them?
It seems like I need to detach my point from syntax to avoid multi-interpretation.
Belief motivates Action.
Need motivates Belief.
If course, if there is no need, or if the belief fits your need, then belief will not change.
When you look at a religion, you can quickly and almost accurately determine what type of people came up with it. Were they hunter gatherers, tribals, agrarians, farmers, etc. Ultimately, the needs of people, will dictate what type of religion they have. That is on the social (macro) level.
On the personal (micro) level, I will have to also insist that we, will always interpret whatever laws and scriptures we have, according to our perceived needs. When Muhammad was about to lose Aisha to some good stoning, he came up with couple verses to protect her. Unluckily for most of us who are not prophets, we can not come up with verses, but we will always, always and every time, try to interpret the verses to the best of our abilities, to make them as beneficial to us as possible.
i.e. If your favored wife is about to get stoned, you might insist on her getting lashes instead. or vice versa. If your least favored wife is getting lashed, you might insist on a good stoning.
People want to please their god, but when it comes to the few days of the year, where you are getting paid, or you want something for yourself, you will interpret the crap out of anything you got within the permitted parameters, and try to get away with the most beneficial outcome. Often without even un-pleasing your god.
In that sense, our perceived need motivates our belief. And islam, like any other successful doctrine, made a very good job of managing the needs of its followers and aligned itself as a gateway to the needs.
And in that sense, I would say a religion or a doctrine reason for existence is not to cater to god, because the doctrine, as an entity, is not stupid to actually believe in god.
A Doctrine's only believe in managing and catering to the perceived needs of its followers.
Belief motivates Action.
Need motivates Belief.
Very biased. There is a lot of good stuff in the quran. In fact most of the bad stuff is directed solely at none believers. Have you not come across any good stuff related to charity, family, children, parents etc.
As far as Good Subjects go, I am not at all happy with the charity, family, children and or parents.
The koran has 6200+ verses, less then 1% is for doing good to humanity and then another 1% is for doing good to muslims. However in the other 99% of the book is enough ammunition to counter and obliterate the goodness of those 2%.
Worse, the 2% are not that good or enlightened or useful.
For example, on the subject of Parents: Muhammad is always more loved then your parents, setting the kid to be a religious cop against his family which comes Second, with all the negativity such a role will wreck.
Orphans: So little and few good verses in the koran, yet Five are 'spent' on the orphans. When I read those verses, I keep imagining the picture of Bush or Canada's Stephen Harper taking a picture beside a baby, to make themselves look more humane and they are not. To make it worse, on the subject of orphans, Muhammad prohibited adoption so he can get away with something, not very kosher with the quite young wife of his ex-adopted son.
Charity: Reduced the customer charity of the time from 10% to 2.5%. Also the concept of using charity to pay for sin does not lead to a fair society. Sure today, a rich person can hire better lawyers, but at least that is a fault of the system, not an enshrined command.
Unfortunately for me, I can go on. You can read some good verse here and there, but when you try to come up with a complete subject, some matter or subject that the koran handles and support with verses, the koran will always fall short.
You might not be aware of this, but I have a request (often misconstrued as a challenge), for people to give me a good subject from the koran. I need good subjects in the koran. It is integral for my criticism of the koran to have some good subjects from the koran. Without good subjects, I will always be accused of being biased, even by Brucepig.
So please, if you have a couple of good subjects from the koran, give them to me. Even if you are not sure, give them to me and tell me you are not sure. I will research them. Give me anything, that the koran is anti-fascism, anti-communism, anti-monopoly, honorable, good for old women, good for young women, good for unmarried women, good for married women, good for young men, good for old men, good for business, etc.. Anything, One or Two good subjects is all I ask for now.
I agree with everything you say (except the %ages). However this lends to my point regarding interpretation. The majority of Muslims will interprate the versus that they see as the good ones, and ignore the bad ones (as Islam commonly contradicts itself). However I think the overall point you are attempting to make will only be true if we found a majority of Muslims were accepting of terrorist activities or say for example death for apostates. So I am not sure what we would prove by going through this exercise. Do you feel that the majority of Muslims are not good people?
I will have to insist on keeping my statement directed to the koran. I am asking if you can tell me of One or Two good subjects in the koran. My statement was that koran does not containt good subject, for that statement, I was labelled as 'very biased', not just by you, but by most people who read my statement.
You answered by pointing at the muslims and how most of them are good, and I agree that they are mostly good albeit with a glass ceiling that seems to always stop them from becoming good and beneficial to themselves and to their children. And somehow the glass ceiling comes in, as soon as they implement that book in their society.
So I will ask again, to please give me couple of good subjects from the koran, that I can use in my arguments, so that people, and you included, will stop calling me 'very biased'.
Admittedly Islam has got more to answer for as it has not been formally adapted for the modern era yet, but that is primarly because Christianity for the moment exists is the developed world. If Islam existed in Europe under the same conditions, then I have no doubt it would have modernised and left Christians feeling like the underdogs and conversely fighting to rid the world of evil Islam via similar means such as terrorism.
That is a very wide jump. Basically you are implying that beliefs are pretty much inconsequential. You might as well replace the religions you mention with budhism and hinduism.
I am quite happy to replace Christians with Budhists and Hindus in the example I gave - any minority with a sense of injustice is perfectly capable of fighting when they feel vulnerable and oppressed.
Non-Sequitur. You stated that if islam was placed under the same conditions as Christianity in Europe, then islam would have reacted the same way. Then your answer to me, was about minority and injustice. Two very unrelated points. I guess you can Either rewrite the opening statement, either re-explain it for me, either rewrite the answer.
I'll rexeplain it as I think you misunderstood my point. If Islam existed in the developed world, as opposed to mostly undeveloped countries, then you would see a different version of the religion being interpretated.
When times are rosy, and the money is flowing, and the universities are built, and the hospitals are running, every system will look good. To claim that islam will look different in a rosy society, well so what?
My point is that islam constantly fails as a nation builder. It failed in Arabia after it exhausted the sassanid resources (the gold in the islamic golden age), it failed all the countries it entered in the fotouhat, it failed spain, it is now failing pakistan, compared with india right beside it.
Your point, is coming across to me as if it did not matter what religions the west started with, if it was islam, then islam would have been different today. And I am strongly opposed to such an assumtion. Because maybe, if the west adopted islam, then european progress would have been much faster, maybe if the west adopted buddhism, today they would be the garbage dump of asia. But to assume that islam would have been better if it was spread to europe? why so? why not assume that islam would have performed in europe, the same it performed in tunisia and turkey and egypt and pakistan?
Topic: Ex-Muslim Liberals, Please Wait a Minute!!