Moderate Muslims and Catholics-Nice But Dumb?

[David Sklansky]

I tranferred part of your reply to the SMP forum where some fundamentalists are refuting it. Perhaps you would like to visit there.

[Yo_Respek]

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it" (Luke 9:24)

That's what this whole debate comes down to anyway. People don't want to believe because they don't want to be controlled. All your smartness and smugness and arrogance means nothing. You are really pretty valueless and so am I.

If you knew for a fact you were going to die in five minutes would you be afraid? Would a small crack in your atheist armour develop? Think about it.

[Smasharoo]

If you knew for a fact you were going to die in five minutes would you be afraid? Would a small crack in your atheist armour develop?

Yes, everyone would be afraid regardless of faith, and I can't think of any reason at all an atheist would be more likely to reconsider his beliefs than anyone else. Is there going to suddenly be one single shred of evidence indicating there is any reason for anyone to believe in any sort of higher power? If not, I guess I don't understand your question.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
If you knew for a fact you were going to die in five minutes would you be afraid? Would a small crack in your atheist armour develop? Think about it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't have to think about it, I've been in situations near enough to that a few times. Thoughts at the time were along the lines of "Is there anything else I could do to get outta this mess" and loved one thoughts. I actually never had time to consider if Thor or Isis would be looking forward to meeting me.

[ QUOTE ]
You are really pretty valueless and so am I.

[/ QUOTE ]
To an atheist like me, human life is incredibly valuable, obviously. But you're starting to convince me of your latter point.

luckyme

[Yo_Respek]

[ QUOTE ]

If you knew for a fact you were going to die in five minutes would you be afraid? Would a small crack in your atheist armour develop?

Yes, everyone would be afraid regardless of faith, and I can't think of any reason at all an atheist would be more likely to reconsider his beliefs than anyone else. Is there going to suddenly be one single shred of evidence indicating there is any reason for anyone to believe in any sort of higher power? If not, I guess I don't understand your question.

[/ QUOTE ]

I figured out the problem with atheism. Atheists act as if they are 100 percent sure that something doesn't exist. People who believe in some higher power believe anywhere from 1-100 percent that it does exist. Neither side can prove their case as fact. So Atheism must be illogical because it fails to consider that God not existing hasn't been proven as fact. We can then conclude that there are some emotional reasons and not factual reasons behind the decision.

[benjdm]

[ QUOTE ]
If you knew for a fact you were going to die in five minutes would you be afraid? Would a small crack in your atheist armour develop? Think about it.

[/ QUOTE ]
I already know I'm going to die in <80 years. No, it wouldn't make a difference. If you knew you were going to die in 5 minutes, would you suddenly start doubting your conviction that Dumbledore is a fictional character and ask him to help you ?

[revots33]

[ QUOTE ]
So Atheism must be illogical because it fails to consider that God not existing hasn't been proven as fact.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe you could prepare a list of everything whose non-existence hasn't been proven as fact. I'll start: unicorns.

[WelshMackem]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe you could prepare a list of everything whose non-existence hasn't been proven as fact. I'll start: unicorns.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're just being silly now, everyone knows unicorns exist, I've ridden one (admittedly there was an heroic dose of psilocybin involved, but still)

[fretelöo]

(apologies if this has been stated before, but I didn't feel like reading 3 pages of posts, that - sorry - to a large percentage will miss the finer point here)

*disclaimer: I know this sounds arrogant. Its not intended to. But the problem is, there _is_ a finer point here, one that Moderate Muslims just as the cited Catholics adhere to, while not being aware of it, most of the time. In effect, their debate with hardcore Muslims/Protestants is most of the time futile as the basis of debate isn't the same - WHICH (and that is the crux of the matter) ISN'T CLEAR TO BOTH SIDES. At least most of the time.

So here's the finer point (and again, apologies if that has been covered): Both moderate Muslims and moderate Christians (and those can be BOTH catholic or protestant) have a different understanding of scripture than their extremist counterparts.

All of those believe the Bible/Kur'an to be inspired word of god. But what that actually measn, is explained differently in both groups.
A moderate Christian will say, that the Bible tells the story of gods history of interaction with human kind. BUT written from HUMANS, full of human errors and human misunderstandings.
That doesn't preclude that there's divine truth in those writings, but that truth isn't there with no single missing dot to the "i". The bible is normative, for sure, but not in every single of its 613 comandments as they are written there, as those were written in a certain sociological-historical environment and relate to that environment. That doesn't make the bible arbitrary, but definitely open to debate.

Same, with some modifications, as for a Muslim the Kur'an isn't just a book telling about the revelation of God, but IS the revelation (so, for the Muslim, the Kur'an is kind of like what Christ is for a Christian) itself, applies to Islam.

The problem when just watching a debate between extremists and moderates from the distance is then twofold:

1) You aren't aware of this difference in viewpoint - how could you?

2) Those taking part in the debate aren't themselves, very often. They just pick a few verses from the bible to support their view, and those quotes get shreddered by the opposing team. That shreddering of course isn'T accepted by the challengers and so on and so fort.

What lies at the bottom of this is a different understanding about what divine inspiration of the Holy Bible actually means. That different understanding isn'T made explicit, most of the time, and therefore the debate can go on and on and on. If it were made explicit, both sides would agree that it's a waste of time continuing arguing whether Lev 17,x tells us that homosexuality is indeed a sin or not, until we haven't figured out in what sense we take Lev 17,x to be normative in the first place.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
That doesn't preclude that there's divine truth in those writings, but that truth isn't there with no single missing dot to the "i". The bible is normative, for sure, but not in every single of its 613 comandments as they are written there, as those were written in a certain sociological-historical environment and relate to that environment. That doesn't make the bible arbitrary, but definitely open to debate.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds arbitrary. If there some definitive meaning surely the 500 -1800 years of debate would have found it. They solved Fermat.
If the debate is not resolvable ( which seems obvious), then any conclusions one comes to are arbitrary. You produce the salve that soothes your wounds.

luckyme