/lit/ - Literature

Hogwash.

>>3081539
>Hogwash

What's hogwash?

>>3081540
The wash off a fucking hog. Your whole "premise" is pure fucking shit. Go back to AP English I and try to pay attention. "lol religion", "lol Judaism", suck the fuck up and go read some Hemingway.

>>3081544

Could you please elaborate?

>>3081537
From my understanding, the Koran mentions followers of Judaism and Christianity as 'fellows of the book' who are afforded special circumstances as far as spreading of Islam to other populations is concerned.

Therefore it follows that Islam is not as black and white when it comes to 'infidels' as most critics like to think. There's a variety of interpretations, mostly it comes down to individual people or organisations.
It's the same with all the great monotheistic faiths.

My point is: all religions afford, or are made to afford room for interpretation. Even those with written codes that form the basis of modern states and empires - there's nothing truly solid about them.

So to me they just seem like any other human organisation based on thought - politics and rugby team supporters come to mind.

So what's special about religion that warrants it's own discussion about whether or not it should be permitted.

I think a more interesting question would be to ask "Is factionalism inherent to human communities?"

>>3081540
anti jew body soap

>freedom

Religion is a tool to control the masses.

>>3081691
It is inherent , I think. Wanting to belong to something is natural for a social animal.

>>3081691
It is inherent , I think. Wanting to belong is natural for a social animal.

>>3081728
Everyone has existential crises, not just the masses. The people at the top are troubled with the issues of mortality and final justice and whatnot also.

>ohnoes, people think about ethics extending passed themselves??
>>3081691
>koran
>k

>>3082320
>Everyone has existential crises, not just the masses.

I don't think the masses do. The less intelligent someone is, the less likely they are to have an 'existential crises.' Can you seriously see the people in the link being plagued by existential issues?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS2SzGUwaMI

>>3082349
>The less intelligent someone is, the less likely they are to have an 'existential crises.'

But smart people do have existential crises. That's why there are smart people who are also religious.

And think carefully before you tell me that religious people cannot be smart. Very carefully.

>Religion answers difficult to answer questions
>It is for those people not capable of dealing with existential questions
Heh, no.

I went to a lecture yesterday to hear Princeton, NYU, and Drew professors talk about the history and linguistics of Judaism and Christianity... It's unbelievably complex.

Three part answer:
I don't know quite as much about Judaism or Christianity, but the ambiguity of the Koran is truly astounding. You can look from one translation to another, say, from the Yusuf Ali translation to the Laleh Bakhtiar translation, and have the same phrases come to completely opposite meanings. And the translations themselves are still entirely valid. Even the original Arabic Koran has the ambiguities within it. One of the verses that comes to mind is "Each of these [Koranic verses] has more meanings than man can ever know." It's literally written within the Koran that you cannot come to one single "true" interpretation that works for everyone.
I'm going to extrapolate here to religion as a whole. Even if you could come up with a religion defined by specificity, where each phrase has one meaning that is accepted by all adherents, without any contradictions between the tenets, and so on and so forth, my guess is that religion would last a couple years at most. The religions that actually last, the ones that we know, are all as ambiguous as the examples I gave above. Otherwise they wouldn't survive.

Pt. 2
As for your specific examples, I'm not sure why you singled out Judaism and Islam. All monotheistic religions I know of (yes, including Christianity) have verses attacking apostates & such. And all monotheistic religions have verses stating "There is to be no compulsion in religion." That one's from the Pickthall translation of the Koran. If you want to "understand" a religion, you can't just read from the holy books. You have to go to the religious communities, see what people think, see why they think it, etc. More often than not (and perhaps even always) you'll find that their traditions are more influenced by historical and political contingencies than from a straight reading of their holy book. The defenses of these traditions are sometimes rationalized by scripture, but rarely are they rooted in an "objective" (whatever that means) reading of the scripture.
Does this in any way take from the beauty and awe of these holy scriptures? Of course not. The King James Translation will always be one of the greatest literary achievements of the English language, the Koran in its original Arabic is sublimely poetic, and so on. It just means the argument "Their religion hates freedom because their god tells them to" isn't a particularly reliable, persuasive, or accurate argument.

>>3081537
You don't know shit about religion, and even less about Judaism or Islam. It's not your fault. You weren't raised to know, and you've never had a reason to know. But now that you've humiliated yourself you should read on the subjects and be awed by how vast these bodies of knowledge actually are. Yes, you can do this without accepting them as true. No, there is nothing wrong with accepting them as true.

Pt. 3
This is in regards to this picture >>3082376
This picture is of the shrine of the Eighth Imam, ‘Alī ibn Mūsā al-Riḍā. It is located in Mashdad, Iran. Looking at it, it is quite distinctly influenced by "Islamic architecture." You could not possibly get the shrine confused with an American Evangelical Protestant church in Kansas. Does the Koran give the specific, central tenets of how "Islamic" buildings should be designed? Is there a Sura on architectural aesthetics? Of course not. But it would be blind and ignorant to deny the "Islamic" character of the architecture anyways, or deny that there is a school of "Islamic architecture."

OP, you're in deep shit now.

"Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged." (Deuteronomy 17:12)

>>3081537
>Religions answer questions that are really, really difficult to answer; like why we are here, how we should live, etc
Nigga you serious?

>>3082357

But not that smart.

>>3081691
Muslims who believe that Jews and Christians are their brothers are the minority. Wahhabism is a cancer.

>>3082385

I apologize for my wording.

What I meant is that there are questions that are really difficult for the average Joe to deal with. The apparent lack of an objective meaning of life, for instance, is something I bet the vast majority of humans lack the ability to face.

Religion, on the other hand, offer answers that the adherents take for granted and feel content with. Finally, god X or Y is the answer for those questions that the adherents in question spent anxious nights struggling with.

>>3082449
Except you're still missing the point. Do you think that religious people have all the answers? The religious struggle with the same problems as everyone else, perhaps more. A cursory inspection of Christian theology would tell you as much.

>>3082461

I was a Muslim at one point (born so), and it was possible to derive all the answers (many of which were "because Allah wants it to be so"), what made me "leave" was that the answers crumbled under scrutiny when I suspended my belief. I thought the rest of the religious are content with God as an answer.

I am ignorant to Christian theology, could you please elaborate?

>>3082479
Abrahamic Religions don't pretend to have answers to every question- "because [God] wants it to be so" just means "I don't know why this is like this, and it's not something that I would know". Which is intellectually honest. Although sometimes it does mean "this is just how it it and don't you dare question it", which is bullshit and 99% of the time from a fundie nutcase that should be ignored anyway.

What I'm saying is, you can't expect every joe shmoe to be able to get into illuminating and sophisticated lectures on philosophical/theological/scientific matters.

>>3082479
>I am ignorant to Christian theology, could you please elaborate?
When you ask this, you need to be REALLY specific as to the time period.

Are we talking about the period when Christians were almost solely Jews and a handful of Negroes imported by the Egyptians? When Christianity was just spreading into Rome, and it was basically a religion of urban terrorists and shifty merchants? When it was just being introduced to the Germanics, and the Romans had to bribe the rich and kill the poor because Yeshua was seen as weak for letting himself get crucified? When it was the religion of the Middle Ages? The Renaissance? Modern?

And then you run into what specific branch (Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, Anglican, etc, etc, etc).

>>3082635
>urban terrorists and shifty merchants
>had to bribe the rich and kill the poor
>pretending to know this

>>3082642
Fine, there was never any violence and it was all peaceful and love-dovey and the Jews didn't mind converting and everyone had fun. Happy?

>>3082656
>it has to be ALL THIS or ALL THAT
Not even once.

1. Making shit up is not answering questions. It's silencing questions.

2. Freedom and religious truth cannot be made to live together. Religions are not democratic and not liberal. You don't vote or decide what is true in a religion. That's why modern democracy are separated from every church.

>>3082669
>1. Making shit up is not answering questions. It's silencing questions.
There is some truth to this. The difference between some guy saying "this is the way it is, Yahweh showed me", and a religion having evolved "this is the way it is" through the cultural and biological evolution of a people towards that conclusion ("Of course Atlas holds up the sky. It makes sense, and it's not like we have a better explanation").

>2. Freedom and religious truth cannot be made to live together. Religions are not democratic and not liberal. You don't vote or decide what is true in a religion. That's why modern democracy are separated from every church.
Well, no. The separation of Church and State was instituted so people would make decisions based off of secular reasoning, and so no man could ever use "GOD WILLS IT" as a reason for people to vote for him (as people rarely will vote against god). Saying "you don't vote or decide what is true in a religion" is silly. Of course you don't. Religion acts as an explanation for natural phenomenon, much like how science does. It's not like a bunch of men in labcoats meet every weekend and say "Okay, gentlemen, let's take a vote. Should the gravitation of a neutron star effect the tidal currents of a gas giant?".

>>3082669
true, but it's not licit to take it for granted that democracy wins out over religious faith

>>3082698
> The separation of Church and State was instituted so people would make decisions based off of secular reasoning, and so no man could ever use "GOD WILLS IT" as a reason for people to vote for him (as people rarely will vote against god).

not really. separation of church and state is a consequence of the 16th/17th century wars of religion, an attempt to find a way for different religions to coexist civilly without the kind of total breakdown that occurred as a result of the protestant reformation. the primary intent is to eliminate religious persecution and to maintain civil order, to keep the state unified so that it doesn't splinter along religious lines, to prevent the transcendent claims of religion from destroying the civil order. but it's certainly not about prevent religious demagogues from taking power, and that kind of specifically RELIGIOUS demagoguery was very far from the minds of the founding fathers, i think.

>>3082669
>2. Freedom and religious truth cannot be made to live together. Religions are not democratic and not liberal. You don't vote or decide what is true in a religion. That's why modern democracy are separated from every church.

That argument can only work if you view all religions as monolithic bodies stuck in pre-Enlightenment mentality, ignoring all theology of the last century (Oscar Romero, liberation theologists, red Shi'ism, Dr. Ali Shariati, etc), and ignoring the Papal conclave.
And it only works if the only states you consider "modern democracies" are the U.S., France, and the former Soviet Bloc. The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Scandinavian nations, Spain, literally dozens of other "modern democracies" have institutional ties to various churches.

>>3083052

No I believe that you are the one that are framing me in to much a strict discourse.

Revealed religions and modern states are at odds in their essence. If you try to accomodate them with each other you will only betray one or the other.

Kierkegaard and Hegel cannot be put together.

On one side you have revealed religion that are based on a truth that is absolute and yet cannot be justified or explained publicly.

On the other you have modernity which is skeptical and requests a public justification for every belief.

So theologies that try to compromise towards liberalism want to hold the holy spirit, the community of christians, without having to deal with the father.

And the moderns that want to tent to religions are those that desire rationality only in as far as it does not touch their private dominion.

In the end both with Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, which attempt to be the most modern of theologians, the results is always silence on part of theology.