h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This isn't really a religious issue, though. It's a class issue.

In England, the overwhelming majority of faith schools are CofE. They tend to be good schools, well disciplined, with good exam results. This is little to do with a nominal connection with the church, or with the instilling of 'christian values' (c'mon - we're talking CofE!). It's far more to do with the fact that they are stuffed with nice, middle-class pupils whose educated parents are savvy at getting their children into them. ('Oh, yes, headmaster! We're regular churchgoers.')

Heaven forfend that these parents would have their travel subsidies removed. As with many state benefits, the wealthier families gain disproportionally.

Contribution from Adib Qasim U208494, moved from another convo:

'As a Muslim we believe that all living things are Muslim and gloryify God in their own way. But humans have free will and so have the choice to worship or not to worship.'

Welcome, Adib.

Fellow atheists - Adib is h2g2's resident Islamic correspondent and has produced several good Entries explaining Islam for the ignorant. I've been impressed by him on some threads where he's coolly and reasonably argued his point of view in the face of a tide of neo-racist Islamophobia.

I welcome Adib's presence here. There's nothing worse than a cosy consensus. We need a counterpoint to our arguments.

I don't expect you'll want to follow the thread (ahem) religiously, Adib, but feel free to pitch in whenever. Some of us - OK, me in particular - tend to put our arguments in robust language. No offence is ever intended.

>>'As a Muslim we believe that all living things are Muslim and gloryify God in their own way. But humans have free will and so have the choice to worship or not to worship.'

OK - I recognise that strand of Islam - that God is in everything, through everything...etc. etc. It's not too far away from the (Jewish) philosopher, Spinoza (god is everywhere/everything), or from Bishop Berkely (A3472986) who re-defined God as the sum total of all the matter and life in the universe (or, at least, that's how Recumbentman explained it to me).

What I can't square any of these with is how they originate in their various religions. For example - Berkely essentially had to ignore a lot of the Bible - as did David Jenkins (Bishop of Durham) who doubted the ressurection and the Virgin Birth, and more recently Richard Holloway (former Bishop of Edinburgh).

Now, it seems to me that this 'spiritual' (if you like) version of Islam isn't obvious to all Muslims...but who can blame them, since the texts they're working from (the Qu'ran and aHadith) a) leave a lot of room for interpretation and b) seem (to my eye) to have a lot that is irrelevant/ arbitrary (why lamb and not pork? - to take a trivial example).

So...are religions allowed to be Pic 'n Mix? And if so - why have them? And why Islam and not sincere, ethical atheism?

(Questions, questions, questions...)

I see your point. The main reason why Muslims may not see this point is simply down to cultural norm of ther country. Let me give you an example. In Pakistan it is seen that it is good to boast about your childs academic level, we have the same thing here in the west but not to the same level. but their is also big bragging rights on whos child has memorised the Qur'an the fastest, or how many times they have read it etc.

The problem here is that firstly they view "reading it" as in reading the classical arabic that the Qur'an is written in. But the children are not even taught how to understand normal arabic let alone classical arabic. They are only taught how to read the words which is useless.

So while a child may hae read the Qur'an 10 times by the age of 9 they understand next to none of it.

The second problem is that the Qur'an is not a normal book you can not just read it from cover to cover and go "right great book". A lot of the things in the Qur'an you only pick up on by really thinking about what its saying and knowing the back ground to relevent ayahs.

So you have a load of people reading the Qur'an in a language they do not understand and even if they could they are reading it to fast to get anything but the mere basics from it.

This is how people are drawn to extremitism easily, as you have impretional youth who have a load of ayahs and stuff stuck in there head but do not understand one bit of it all, and along comes an elder who says this means that, and that means this and you get a load of extremists.

Now you mix all that up with a country that mixes Islamic law with its own laws (which is not supposed to be) then you end up with people who only know a small area of the spiritual side of their religion.

Its like standing right next to a massive picture and because of that closeness you can only see that one small area of that picture, and unless you take a step or to back you will never see the whole picture in all its glory.

A lot of Muslims are very spiritual but only in one small area which means its asier to be led astray to doing things that are not allowed in your faith.

Their are plently of references in theQur'an and hadith that all living things are Muslim, and further more that every person is born Muslim but it is upbringing that makes you into some thing different. Thats why Muslims believe that untill a child reaches the age of responcibility they are free from sin.

Muslims don't really see it as a pic of mix of religions, though it does look like that in some ways. Muslims believe that all religions came from one original cource, that being God and all carried the same message. i.e. worship one God, do good etc. But over time the message was lost or changed and added to by man, by accident or intention.

Unless a person has recieved the message then they are sinless as well. For example a tribe in the middle of a rain forest for example may never have recieved the message of God like say Muslim, hinduism, Christianity etc and so they will not be judged as they where not aware of the message.

For people who are and choose to ignore it then they will be judged. Its like for example being in a country and you refuse to acknowledge the goverment in power and disobey their laws you will still be punished for breaking them. but of course it comes down to circumstance. After all you can not be judged for not following Islam if all you have heard of Islam is that it allows rape kiliing etc.

Or if all you have heard of christinity is that some vicors are chiold molesters etc. It don't make you want to know any more about it really.

OK...so we have to get on to the thorny subject of where 'the message' comes from. I have to say...I think it's straining credulity to insist that it was dictated to an illiterate man upon a mountaintop. Is this literal interpretation necessary to Islam?

Alternately...if the message is all around us...how come I don't see it?

NB this is not a post 21, this is a post 3.

Another bloody backlog to trawl through. I'll join in when I've had a whizz through.

Welcome onboard, R'man. In the absence of a sincere religious foil to our cosy consensus, I'm sure I can rely on you to inject some awkwardness.

A post 41 (I'll be up to speed soon, maybe)

G B Shaw gave the answer to the question "what harm is religion if it gives people comfort and makes them happy?" He said, the same can be said of beer.

A number of people hold on to the social parts of religion while keeping a naturalistic viewpoint uppermost. This could be compared to moderate drinking, perhaps?

Unitarian Universalists: 'Atheist Humanists who haven't kicked the God habit.'

Atheist Humanists : 'Unchurced Unitarians.'

The Bright (http://www.the-brights.net/) Daniel Dennet has a book out in which he argues that religion can and should be subject to scientific scrutiny. This has been regarded as a sincere attempt to engage the religious. It's something of a contrast to his Bright pal, Richard Dawkins who has a tendency to rub people's backs up by talking about religion as a mental illness.

It's made me think a little about my own debating stance. Yes, I'm known as something of a provocateur on this topic. I've annoyed many a religionist - generally of the fluffier 'I've rejected organised religion in favour of a personal belief system drawing from Navajo spirituality/ Dungeons 'n Dragons (delete as appropriate)' types by refusing to take them in any way seriously. This is (apparently) intolerant yadda yadda yadda.

Yes - I can see that this is an unproductive debating tactic. On the other hand...I see myself (vainly) as offering up an alternate model to the notion that we have to investigate/experience what we're fairly sure is going to be blatant tosh before we can reach a conclusion. What I'm saying is 'If you want me to take you seriously, be prepared to justify yourself.'

On the other hand...I'm occasionally a little politer with the established religions. Their believers are slightly less to blame, having inhereted their faith as part of their culture. But still, I feel the need to offer up a polite alternative: 'That only works if we accept that was actually written by , rather than being edited by committee.'

And then there are the barking mad god-botherers who just deserve a kicking.

Comments?

More fundamentally, though...why am I so bothered?

Yes, why bother? It is an act of indulging some urge, perhaps the urge to teach.

Christianity (among others) has counter-abuse programmed into it. Bless those that curse you; do good to those that harm you; turh the other cheek. These are wonderfully effective ways of absorbing blows; see Chaiwallah's Entry A1045784 on "Tonglen - a Buddhist Technique".

It is practically a sacred duty to challenge and mock the beliefs of the believers, and they are duty bound to thank you for it. Forgetful, aren't they, sometimes?

My motives are not nearly so lofty. It's a matter of aesthetics: I just don't like to hear people talking bollocks.

Which brings us to the Dalai Lama. Sure, nobody can seriously have anything against him. Lovely man. He's not like the worse kind of religious people, those who want to impose upon others. He just wants everyone to be happy. But then, thetre's all the malarkey about 'sending healing to others'. And the general concept that Buddhist practices can influence the external world for the good...they don't, of course - they just make practitioners feel happier about suffering.

But then...he knows this, doesn't he? And he's happier than I am.

Sending healing to others . . . I guess that's what happens when we wash the car and it purrs much more contentedly for it.

Heavens! Why would anyone want to wash a car?


On a tangentially related theme, they've just been talking about John Profumo on the radio. The subject was 'Redemption' - a broadly Christian concept, I guess. It is widely held that he redeemed himself through his many years of charitable work. The feminist Beatrix Campbell commented: 'But as far as I know he didn't do anything to help the two women whose lives were ruined.'


Oh pirates came and rob I...

Did she mean, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies's lives were ruined? How does she calculate that?

Mandy has gone into history with her wonderful mot: "Well he would say that, wouldn't he?"

I'm not sure that 'ruined' was the word. But, yes, their reputations weren't worth much afterwards. She also made a comment along the lines of 'He was wealthy enough to be able to devote the time to salvaging his reputation. But for them, their reputations were all they had.' Plus Mandy was jailed, was she not? He wasn't.

Thinking about it, it was an interesting case. In it's time - 'somewhere between Lady Chatterly's and the first Beatles LP' - it was associated in the public mind with sex. This would have been less significant now. The *real* issue, of course, was national security. But the resigning issue was lying to Parliament. Christine and Mandy were only involved in the sex part.

Anyway...it was a counterblast to the idea that Good Works somehow balance out bad deeds in some sort of spiritual ledger. It interested me because we don't always realise that such concepts emanate from religion.

>>we don't always realise that such concepts emanate from religion.



Retribution and restitution appear instinctive rather than religious notions to me.

Well...yes...but I'd like to poke this a little more, keeping with Profumo for starters:

Yes, he spent the remainder of his days cleaning toilets and raising funds for the homeless. Good deeds. But wholly unrelated to the wrongdoing that catapulted him out of office. It can be fairly said that he was a decent bloke who had an unfortunate slip-up in his past. The good works and slip-up are unrelated, surely?

Now let's think about our criminal justice system. We broadly agree that (some) criminals should be incarcerated. Why? There are various models:
- To keep them off the streets so they can't comitt further crimes. This is true for only a small number of serious cases.
- Pour encourager les autres.
- To re-educate them so that they don't do it again
or...
- Retribution - you do the crime, you do the time - after which you've 'paid your debt to society'. How? What's society got out of it?

In reality our reasons are a mixture of all of the above. However - I suggest that the last one is cultural rather than practical. It might feel right to us...but consider our shock at other cultures who believe that murders can be written off by the payment of 'blood money' to the victim's family.

Anyway...where am I going with this?

The idea that good deeds do nothing to redeem you is very . . . Calvinistic.

Answering this one late:

Ah, no. Calvinism holds that one will burn in hell for all one's misdeeds. Forgiveness appears to be absent.

What I'm trying to argue us that 'redemption' rests on the idea of abstract religious ideas of Good and Evil. Good deeds/ repentance can balance out Evil. The question is whether this originated in religion (Zorastrianism? And was hence carried through to Christianity, possibly via Manicheanism?) - or whether it's an innate human perception.

Undoubtedly we judge bad people as 'evil' in the abstract. Once bitten twice shy makes biological sense. Equally, we can forget bad deeds (which is the same as forgiveness?) if said person hangs around acting all nice. And there's also societal sense in not dwelling on pecadilloes or harbouring grudges.

But...to elevate this to an expectation, a religious duty?

I'm thinking of the example of Primo Levi, surely one of the most humane humans ever to have walked the earth. After his accounts of Auschwitz had become famous, he received a letter from a German who claimed to remember him from when he was a camp officer. They exchanged letters, and it was fairly obvious that he was a decent enough guy. But eventually Levi sent him a letter, basically saying 'You're trying to ask me for forgiveness. Why should I? You're out of my life.'