Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

[FreshFish]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

God should not be restricted to one intelligent race.

when has god ever appeared to an intelligent race in the first place?

[LynahFan]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

You speak as if evolution has come to an end with us, many others might suggest that it is still ongoing and we are but a passing phase that will be replaced with another one in the future.

I guarantee that Kepler believes this also. Saying "these stages have happened" in no way implies that future stages can't or won't happen.

However, just as no ant can survive outside an ant colony, nor a honeybee outside the hive, no human can survive outside of society either. In some real ways (e.g., swarms) the entire collection of bees has an existence on a higher plane than any individual bee exists.

I'm not familiar with Jung's concept of a "collective unconscious"...it sounds like there is some communal entity that imbues everyone of us yet resides no place that any of us can identify nor access directly. I'm not expressing this idea very well I guess...there is another plane of existence, not that any individual ever accesses, but that exists as a collective entity that is "greater than the sum of all of us" so to speak.

There's no doubt that a collection of organisms (bees, ants, or humans) give rise to entirely new phenomenon not present in a single organism. For a single human marooned on a tropical island, the entire field of economics is completely irrelevant. However, I wouldn't call that "existence on a higher plane." First of all, because that's meaningless new-age babble, but secondly, because there's nothing special about biology in this instance. An entire collection of circuits gives rise to phenomena that are non-applicable to a single circuit - if you only have a single transistor, then you don't need the field of computer science.

So atheists are missing something really important (the individual self is not the highest pinnacle of evolution), while religious literalists are overstating their case (the Deity is not necessarily the Creator at all, etc.).

Whoa, whoa, whoa.... A collection of humans giving rise to the concepts of economics, sociology, technology, etc is *completely* compatible with atheism, so atheists are not missing anything.

You have the vanity to think that if you cannot sense it nor conceive it, it cannot exist. I prefer to live in the question rather than to assert I have all the answers. it is a lot more interesting that way, and leaves open the possibility of continued learning and growth.

Absolutely incorrect. You have this so flip-flopped it's beyond comical - it's pathetic. Scientists are the ones who are constantly developing new theories as new data becomes available. Religions are the ones who claim to have immutable truth - and claim that the unseen DOES exist.

Science makes no such absolute claims. I 100% guarantee that if a new phenomenon is discovered (and proven to be real) that invalidated the Theory of Relativity (or Gravity, or Evolution) then the entire scientific community would jump on board and adopt the new understanding of how the universe works. Case in point is the Higgs Boson. It was predicted in the 1970s, but not proven to exist until the 2010s. In the intervening time, many alternate hypotheses were proposed, debated, and discussed. However, now that the Higgs has been shown to exist, it is now part of the Standard Model of particle physics and all the hypotheses that were incompatible with the existence of the Higgs have been summarily discarded.

[joecct]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

I'm plunkong this here. This, to me, is abhorrent.

http://dailyrecords.us/killing-of-di...-autism-group/

[St. Clown]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

I'm plunkong this here. This, to me, is abhorrent.

http://dailyrecords.us/killing-of-di...-autism-group/

Why is this clearly abhorrent act in the religion thread?

[joecct]

Why is this clearly abhorrent act in the religion thread?

Where else? I thought about *** or Nice Planet, but neither sounded right.

But, what are your thoughts on a parent killing their austistic kid?

[St. Clown]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Where else? I thought about *** or Nice Planet, but neither sounded right.

But, what are your thoughts on a parent killing their austistic kid?

It's clearly abhorrent. It's just not suitable for a thread about religion discussions.

[FreshFish]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

I knew that there reportedly are two main theological "schools" in Islam, Shia and Sunni, I did not know that Sunni also had multiple "schools", Sufi, Salafi, Wahhabi.

Politics and various "schools" of Islam are getting entwined in many different ways. Recently there was a conference in Chechnya that tried to define what was "Sunni" and what was not, and they defined "Sunni" in such a way as to exclude Saudi Arabia.

I hope this link is not behind a paywall, it is very interesting.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/excommun...lam-1474553071

Political conflicts in the Middle East between the Saudi-led camp of Sunni powers and a rival Shiite camp led by Iran have already morphed into a religious war. Now, a theological dispute within Sunni Islam is causing another regional political rift—a result of an initially obscure conference in Russia’s Chechen Republic.

....

Representatives of Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment, dubbed “Wahhabis” by critics, weren't invited and neither were members of the broader Salafi current of Sunni Islam that seeks to return the religion to its “pure” origins at the time of Prophet Muhammad and his companions. (Chechen authorities have banned Salafi Islam and routinely imprison locals for praying or dressing the “wrong” way.)

Not surprisingly, the Grozny conference’s resolution defined Sunni Muslims as followers of the four traditional schools of jurisprudence and praised Sufi practices, implying that Wahhabis and Salafis fall outside the pale.

That article cites "four traditional schools," plus Wahhabis, plus Salafis, within Sunni, then add (at least one) Shia school, and we are up to seven.

[Kepler]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

I knew that there reportedly are two main theological "schools" in Islam, Shia and Sunni, I did not know that Sunni also had multiple "schools", Sufi, Salafi, Wahhabi.

This isn't a criticism, just an attempt to clarify. My understanding (admittedly very limited) is that neither of those divisions are "schools." School actually refers to something precise in Islam.

Shia and Sunni are denominations, like Catholic and Protestant. They divided over the succession to caliph when Mohammed died, like any garden variety royal succession crisis. The split has persisted and has grown over time into a full-bore political schism. It's also ethnic and national, with Shia concentrated in ethnic and national Persia (Iran/Iraq) and Sunni basically everywhere else. It's important right now because the Saudi theocracy is Sunni and the Iranian theocracy is Shia, and they are rivals for regional dominance. The majority Sunni regard the minority Shia as a weird cult like the Mormons, and the Shia regard the Sunni as lax backsliders like the Unitarians. They are Not Friends.

Sufi / Salafi aren't schools either -- they are methodologies. Salafis are dogmatic literalists, like Christians who preach Biblical inerrancy. Sufis are mystics -- you participate in the divine by putting yourself into an altered state, by say fasting until you see things. I think whirling Dervishes are Sufis -- the idea is you take yourself out of everyday mundane existence and reach a different plane where you tap directly into the godhead.

Wahhabiism is the closest to what we'd call a "school," since it has a specific origin and a specific teacher in the 18th century (a dude called, no surprise, Wahhab). It's crazy tunes conservative fundamentalist. They actually don't let themselves be called Wahhabi because they think that's a trivialization of their beliefs -- they claim to be Salafi but the Salafis treat them like they have B.O. They're like a weaponized WBC -- the other Baptists want no part of them.

The actual "schools" in Islam are really neat, because they trace back many hundreds of years and revolve around scrupulously methodical and precise interpretations of the Koran. They are called: Maliki, Hanbali, Jafari, Hanafi, and Shafii. They're like a cross between Talmudic scholars and Shaolin kung fu schools. They each take every verse in the Koran and refer to a rigorous interpretation by their founder followed by a whole evolutionary history of exegesis on that interpretation. They even have a formal calculus for figuring out what percentage of the force of divine law a given statement carries based on whether it descends in an unbroken line from Muhammad, or whether it's been "watered down" by secondary interpretations like a game of holy telephone tag along the way.

So, Muhammad explicitly in Verse 41,123 says don't steal a camel. A case comes before a Jafari justice involving your use of bandwidth of a smartphone plan that wasn't yours. Well, it is stealing, but the thing stolen isn't exactly tangible or property, so how does it fit under the verse? Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq, the founder of the Jafari school, says in the 7th century that "if you steal a man's candle, you have stolen not the candle, which is unimportant, but the light that the man would have used." The case seems very similar to that, but is there anything closer? Well, in the 19th century a Hanafi cleric interpreted the verse to apply to tapping into a telegraph line and using it without permission. This seems to be like that too, but the Hanafi, not being Jafari, only counts half as much as a direct lineal Jafari interpretation. Verdict: guilty. Sentence: only chop off your thumb and ring finger. Next case!

You basically get a PhD from one of the schools and that makes you able to teach anywhere in the Islamic world. Think of it as like the law schools in say Bologna, Paris, Heidelberg, Salamanca and Oxford in the 13th century but instead of secular law it's Islamic canon law, and instead of Latin it's Arabic.

I'm not sure but I *think* you can be either Sunni or Shia in any of the schools, since that split is more socio-political and the schools are strictly religious-judicial.

[leswp1]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Well, that was fascinating! Thanks!

[joecct]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

http://aleteia.org/2016/10/12/lesson...c255e91b1df657

[Kepler]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

http://aleteia.org/2016/10/12/lesson...c255e91b1df657

I gotta tell you, when I meet a child who says they want to be a saint, I edge towards the door.

[FreshFish]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

I gotta tell you, when I meet a child who says they want to be a saint, I edge towards the door.

Can't tolerate the competition, eh?

[Kepler]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Can't tolerate the competition, eh?

Practice, practice, practice. Your zingers are almost as clever as Trump's.

[joecct]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Practice, practice, practice. Your zingers are almost as clever as Trump's.

He (we!) has less money than Trump.

[Kepler]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

He (we!) has less money than Trump.

We don't know this for a fact. I would not be surprised if it turns out that Trump is flat broke and just donor check kiting across the abyss.