A Little Perspective On Religion

I would pretty much agree with that, but yes, I do think that bibles were actually meant to be taken literally. We have to remember that these were written so long ago with many less technological and scientific advances. But obviously, today, it's much harder to take them literally. (And yes, literal interpretation would discredit pretty much every holy book, which is why I don't believe in any holy book around today. I consider myself agnostic.)

So I'll follow up with this: How else can the violent promotions in the Qu'ran be taken? Can a Muslim just pick and choose the passages they like, and ignore these ones?

 

I think yall might be misunderstanding what is meant when someone says they take the scriptures literal. It does not mean I interpret them like a small child or drax the destroyer from GotG, eg I take everything as being surface value. It does mean that the reader takes into account vital characteristics of the literature such as genre, historical setting,author, purpose, audience, when and where its written from, use of literary devices such as but not limited to hyperbole, satire, poetry, allegory, etc etc.

For example, when Jesus instructs his followers to pluck out their eyeballs or cut off their hands to avoid sinning Drax assumes he meant people to remove their eyes and hands. Someone who interprets the scriptures literally would start from the position that Christ literally existed and literally said those things and use those tools listed above to determine what he meant.

this process and art of interpreting literature of any kind is called hermeneutics, and it along with most analytical arts seem to have been forgotten by the western world...

 

While I absolutely understand the points being made in this thread, I find them much too academic to be really applicable.

Yes, judging the teaching by the actions of followers, who are a heterogenous group, naturally, is incorrect. Yes, one that judges rarely conveys a proper statistical analysis on how natural the exibited behavior is for the teaching. Yes, the aforementioned observer influence (so, socio-economical position of the observer, for instance) is inescapable.

Buy that is how we, humans, perceive life and society. Through the glasses stained with personal experience, ingrained prejudices and stereotypes.

 

We - may have. Most - don't. And most is what matters.

 

Them the apples, T. I didn't mean to sound arrogant, but the facts of life are on my side. The majority rarely takes the time to, as Time put it,

 

Also, we weren't talking about whether it is worth it to teach ghm... the teaching to the masses. It is.

We were talking about the perception that those masses form, and it absolutely isn't based on research or some education.

Media, prejudice, bad neighbor, bully in school. Your pick.

 

I think this is where we differ, you are looking at what defines the masses perception of things, I am looking at what the actual definition of those things are. In the end I would never say ignore the masses, but I would say never be fooled into thinking that what "they" perceive to be true is actually true. Using Islam for example. The Western Masses seem to think its religion full of blood thirsty, the extremist masses think it teaches to blow people up for not being like you(and that its ok to rape lil boys), the moderate mulsim masses think its a religion of peace. The masses of the middle east seem to think its somewhere in the middle... So which is it? At that point to discover what the teachings of Islam really are you must look at the works of Mohammed and the history surrounding those writings.
Otherwise we are simply excepting critical thinking that is based on sway of the masses. If we do that we cannot stand and say this is right and that is wrong. As the masses change we are merely victims to it...

 

Mohammed recorded the Qur'an and is viewed as the highest prophet is Islam. The first pillar of Islam is Shahada aka faith and it is written as There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.

 

Rodgers, I get where you are coming from, and there certainly exists even in Christianity wonderful discussions as to what the "authors intent" really was, as well as who the author might be, and of course the entire field of textual criticism. But their is still a defined sandbox where those sometimes wildly different viewpoint are in play. And there is very much a boundary where once you cross it you are no longer talking about Christianity because you have left orthodoxy. For instance you may have a different take on platonic thought, but you still understand it through certain schema that are representative of what Plato taught vs what Aristotle or even Kant thought. There exists these frameworks that we all work within when discussing philosophy, religion, business, or even basketball...

 

As I mentioned earlier I do not know whether or not Islam is inherently violent, from the little I have looked at text from the Qur'an and the life of Mohammed there appears to be violence, but I am not very educated on the subject and therefor am not able to accurately speak on it.

And I agree, we all to often pigeon hole people because of labels and that is wrong. People should be measured by action, not preconceived notions based on labels.